Amazonian Friendship - Shame and Stigma

Available for over a year

AMAZONIAN FRIENDSHIP Fernando Santos Granero is a Peruvian anthropologist and Staff Scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He has researched the social organisation, cultural practices and histories of the indigenous peoples of Upper Amazonia, doing fieldwork among the Yanesha and Ashanika of Central Peru. Fernando Santos Granero has lived with the Yanesha in the Amazonas region of Peru just east of the Andes and has written a paper entitled Of Fear and Friendship: Amazonian Sociality beyond Kinship and Affinity for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He discusses the importance and value of friendship between members of different tribes and how such friendships are maintained and initiated. He argues that these relationships are not as different from western friendships as other anthropologists have claimed. SHAME AND STIGMA Dr Rachel Condry, Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, has spent several years attending a self help group for the families of serious offenders to find out how serious crimes - such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sex offences - have affected their lives, and how they have been treated by friends and family. Her research has revealed that the relatives of the accused had strong feelings of shame and stigma. Rachel’s findings have now been published in her new book entitled Families Shamed. Laurie Taylor is joined by Dr Rachel Condry to discuss where this stigma comes from and how it gets transferred, and asks if families are somehow seen as responsible for the crime.