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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 



Other persons to his house for eating and drinking), 

 and by personal characteristics which render him 

 agreeable and respected in the eyes of others. Among 

 the personal characteristics admired are geniality, 

 capacity for food and drink, honesty in dealing with 

 others, and a disposition to mind one's own business. 

 Anyone who achieves distinction outside the com- 

 munity by becoming a successful professional man 

 also enjoys prestige among his fellows, although he 

 usually is no longer a functioning member of the 

 society. Ability to read and write and to acquire 

 "influence" with the powers that be is gradually 

 becoming a most important prestige-giving character- 

 istic, and therewith is developing a powerful "ac- 

 quired drive" (Gillin, 1942) within the culture which 

 should produce an increasing rate of acculturation. 



Women acquire prestige by their beauty and sex 

 appeal while young. Once settled down, a woman 

 is valued for her housekeeping and child-raising 

 qualities (ability to perform woman's tasks effi- 

 ciently), by her success in marketing, trading, and 

 financial operations (providing she does not habitu- 

 ally cheat the other women), by being a good enter- 

 tainer and providing good food and drink for house- 

 hold guests, and by personal qualities of afTability, 

 virtue (i. e., not being a man chaser once she has 

 formed a household), and capacity for food and 

 drink. Literacy for women is likewise acquiring an 

 increasing value, and certain girls who have secured 

 positions of a clerical nature or as teachers outside 

 the community are highly regarded. 



A man or woman who is a bnijo (witch) or a 

 curandcro (curer) has prestige because of power and 

 knowledge. The attitude toward such individuals is 

 mainly one of respect, mixed with a certain amount 

 of fear and awe. Since their profession is illegal, 

 the brujos are not publicly advertised or overtly 

 recognized. The prestige which a "bad brujo" 

 (malero) enjoys is something like that of a malevo- 

 lent, but powerful underworld character among 

 North Americans, while that of a "good brujo" who 

 specializes in counteracting black witchcraft is some- 

 thing like that of a North American lawyer who 

 "fixes" the difficulties of people, although he has to 

 operate on the quiet and according to legally shady 

 methods. 



Thus it is that prestige in the community itself is 

 rather loosely defined, and practically all of the 

 prestige statuses are of the "acquired" type. 



SUMMARY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 



From what has gone before it appears that if I 

 were to portray the social organization of Moche 

 graphically, I could not use one of those neat "or- \ 

 ganization charts" so common in business organiza- 

 tions and government offices, in which clear lines 

 from top to bottom and side to side connect rectangles 

 representing groups, such as departments X, Y, and 

 Z, all neatly suspended from a higher rectangle rep- 

 resenting a group called "Board of Directors" or 

 "Executive Committee," and the like. In social or- 

 ganization in Moche, the only constituent groups are 

 the immediate families, and these, as we have seen, 

 often have a somewhat blurred position from the 

 legal and religious points of view. There are other 

 groupings to be sure, the association of irrigators, 

 the two cultural clubs, the body of Government of- 

 ficials, the amorphous group of forasteros set of? from 

 the group of Mocheros, the neighborhood or regional 

 groups in the campina, the pueblo as set ofT from the 

 campina and playa, etc. But at the present time the 

 relations of these groups to each other are indistinct 

 and "unorganized", i. e., no clear-cut general pat- 

 tern of relationships has been worked out. This 

 situation may well represent a phase of development 

 and change in the community and in the course of 

 time patterns of group and social organizations could 

 be expected to emerge. 



As the case now stands, however, a diagram show- 

 ing the socially significant relationships in Moche 

 would depict individuals, each with a varying num- 

 ber of lines radiating from him. Most adult individu- 

 als could be enclosed in rectangles representing the 

 limits of their respective household groups, but even 

 so the majority of the significant relationships bur- 

 geon from the individuals within the household 

 groups leading to specific individual relatives, "in- 

 laws," ceremonial kinsmen, and so forth. 



Certain of these individuals would be placed on a 

 slightly higher prestige level than others because 

 they happen to be relatively wealthy farmers, or are 

 ardent and successful organizers of religious de- 

 votions and celebrations, or because they are lavish 

 entertainers, etc. However, their status would not 

 appear as a function of the family groups to which 

 they belong. I f we may use the metaphor, we miglit 

 say that outstanding individuals in Moche yre those 

 who have the most lines of functioning social relation- 

 ships radiating from them; as a result of the more 

 numerous and more tightly drawn lines connecting 



