This chapter argues that structuralism and Marxism are better equipped to provide an account of architectural change in an Amazonia that is increasingly subsumed within capitalist processes. It compares the trajectory of indigenous Shuar architecture with that of hispano-descendant Macabeo settlers in the Morona-Santiago Province of Ecuador and their mutual transformation of each other. The chapter argues that alliance determines these trajectories up to the point where wage-labour becomes the new determining social relation. The architectural transformations are immanent to the societies where they take place but occur as a function or their transforming relation to outsiders
Original language
English
Title of host publication
Time and Its Object : A Perspective from Amerindian and Melanesian Societies on the Temporality of Images
