All alike anyway: an Amazonian ethics of incommensurability

Urarina people of Amazonian Peru rarely make explicit comparisons of a kind that would focus attention on differences between entities being compared, especially when this could imply, or facilitate, a value judgement. As such, the kinds of comparisons in which anthropologists routinely indulge – of groups and cultural practices, or forms of life – seem to be all but absent, as do interpersonal comparisons of the kind well-described by social comparison theory in psychology. This chapter examines the various forms of thinking and social practice to which an ethics of non-comparison gives rise, arguing that it is closely related to a general reluctance to assume or assert knowledge of the capacities of others: a kind of evaluative abstinence that ultimately amounts to an important way of showing respect. By recognising the singularity of persons and things – not only their incommensurability, but also interdependency – Urarina people avoid establishing relations of dominance and the imposition of hierarchy.