A study of the modes of predation used by and against the Sanema people of Venezuela.

Predation is central to the cosmology and lifeways of the Sanema-speaking Indigenous people of Venezuelan Amazonia, but it also marks their experience of modernity under the socialist “Bolivarian” regime and its immense oil wealth. Yet predation is not simply violence and plunder. For Sanema people, it means a great deal more: enticement, seduction, persuasion. It suggests an imminent threat but also opportunity and even sanctuary.

Amy Penfield spent two and a half years in the field, living with and learning from Sanema communities. She discovered that while predation is what we think it is—invading enemies, incursions by gold miners, and unscrupulous state interventions—Sanema are not merely prey. Predation, or appropriation without reciprocity, is essential to their own activities. They use predatory techniques of trickery in hunting and shamanism activities, while at the same time, they employ tactics of manipulation to obtain resources from neighbors and from the state. A richly detailed ethnography, Predatory Economies looks beyond well-worn tropes of activism and resistance to tell a new story of agency from an Indigenous perspective.

"

Penfield’s work demonstrates the value of conducting holistic, interethnic-focused, and system-based anthropological work in grasping the difficulties and necessities of state-based citizenship acts, many of which resist the machinery of capitalism while falling prey to some of the same strategies they utilize.

"Predatory Economies masterfully walks a difficult line between the specificity of Indigenous ideas and the entwinement of Amazonia with the wider world...Clearly written in a language that suits advanced undergraduate students and those further along in their studies, Predatory Economies will be of interest to a wide range of academics keen to learn more about how cosmologies of both capitalism and the forest overlap." - Economic Anthropology

"Predatory Economies is an unusual and valuable addition to the ethnography of Indigenous Amazonia. The material on Sanema efforts to exploit state resources and the setting in socialist Venezuela will be of great interest to specialists in the region. The intriguing case studies and lively ethnography make the book accessible to general readers. The book could easily be assigned in both undergraduate and graduate classes." - Journal of Anthropological Research