Becoming kin: the making of kinship in Indigenous Amazonia mit Aparecida Vilaca

As a central component of social life, family conveys rules and norms, shaping desires, fears, and aspirations. Yet, there is no fixed definition of what constitutes a family. In different times and cultures, family can be understood and lived in vastly different ways.

The interdisciplinary lecture series ‘Family in Relation’ focuses on the complex realities of the nuclear family model, which is particularly prevalent today in Western industrialized societies, and explores global perspectives on alternative models. Esteemed scholars from various disciplines and fields present current research that examines the potential of alternative family and kinship concepts, exploring their creative, ethical, and innovative dimensions.

The interdisciplinary lecture series is the prelude to the programme year of the same name at the Humboldt Forum, set to launch in the fall of 2025. Concept of the series: Prof. Dr. Daniel Tyradellis (Humboldt University of Berlin), Dr. Alia Rayyan (Humboldt University of Berlin), Dr. Laura Goldenbaum (Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss). The lecture series is being held as part of a collaboration between all institutions of the Humboldt Forum. Head Curator for the Programme year 2025-26: Dr. Laura Goldenbaum.

In this seminar, Prof. Dr. Aparecida Vilaca intends to discuss, based on her personal experience recounted in the book Paletó and Me. Memories of my Indigenous Father (Stanford 2021), how Amazonian indigenous peoples conceive of kinship not as something given from biological relationships, but to be produced in perpetuity through acts of care and recognition.

Aparecida Vilaça is Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology/MuseuNacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and a researcher for the National Science Research Council (CNPq). Since 1986 she works among the Wari’ Indians of South-Western Amazonia, Brazil. Her fieldwork has been financed by the Ford Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She was Professeur Invité at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1999, Directeur d’Études Invité at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the same city in 2000, Visiting Professor of the Centre of Latin American Studies of the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2001 and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Social Anthropology at the same University in 2004.

Aparecida Vilaça is the author of multiple books, including Strange Enemies: Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounters in Amazonia, Praying and Preying: Christianity in Indigenous Amazonia, Comendo como Gente: Formas do Canibalismo Wari’. Keen to collaborative research, she has recently co-authored Science in the Forest, Science in the Past. Her book Paletó and Me: Memories of My Indigenous Father has recently won the Casa de las Americas nonfiction award, the most important Latin American book prize. Her powerful essay, Mourning Kin After the End of Cannibalism, has appeared in Sapiens.

- Free Admission

- Language: German

- Location: Ground Floor, Hall 3

- Part of: Lecture series “Family Matters”