Cultural change and sociality among the Moré of the lower Guaporé River

Abstract

This article investigates cultural continuity and change among the Moré Indigenous people of the Lower Guaporé River in Bolivian Amazonia. Drawing on 21 months of cyclical fieldwork and immersive participant observation in two Moré communities, it asks why core elements of Moré sociality persist despite profound transformations in settlement patterns, material culture, and market integration. The study identifies conviviality— shared living and shared commensality creating group cohesion—and alterity—strategic engagement with outsiders—as dual mechanisms through which the Moré selectively incorporate innovations while reproducing enduring social forms. Ethnography ilustrates how industrial clothing becomes a technology of social embodiment, how caiman-skin commerce reshapes subsistence while longstanding food taboos remain intact, and how household and kinship structures adapt to sedentarization without losing social force. By integrating Amazonian theories of sociality with attention to emerging cash economies and globalization pressures, this article contributes a nuanced account of indigenous agency in mediating tradition and transformation.