TEEN PREGNANCY ON THE OIL ROAD: SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF TEEN PREGNANCY IN AN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY OF THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON

Teen pregnancy in the Waorani community is related to traditional marriage patterns. Nevertheless, it is currently influenced by the context of oil exploitation and its correlation with development and modernity. Before the colonization of their territory and through the present day, some women under 19 years of age began to have children, within socially recognized marriages arranged by older people. Teen pregnancy in the community currently takes place both within and outside of marriage. Oil extraction and development has led to a number of social transformations that affect gender roles, produce changes in forms of being an adult, and the experience of teen pregnancy, through three ways: increased wage labor; insertion into formal education; modernization and development of the community. Oil extraction, which is connected with the demands of the world economic system, is not only shaping the national Ecuadorian economy, but also impacting local communities in significant ways, with effects on intimate relationships and marriage, gender roles, women's bodies, and cultural conceptions of adolescence, adulthood, and fertility.Master of Scienc

THE GENDER OF OIL: GENDER DYNAMICS AND OIL EXTRACTION IN THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON

Since the early 1970s, oil exploitation has largely formed the basis of the Ecuadorian economy, and as a result indigenous groups in the country’s Amazon region have lived through significant cultural, social, economic, and territorial changes as a direct consequence of the oil boom. The Waorani were the final indigenous group to face colonization and integration into Ecuadorian society, occurring with the intervention of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in 1958. Until that time, the group lived in isolation from other groups as hunter-gatherers. The narrative and setting of this colonization are deeply interconnected with the growth of the exploration and extraction of oil within the country.This work investigates the impact from oil drilling on Waorani men and women by exploring women’s political organizing and their ways of responding to the oil industry. It places special focus on the political organization of the Waorani Women’s Association, Amwae, based in the city of Shell in the Pastaza Province. I argue that the reconfiguration of Waorani society, with notable gendered effects, resulted from this oil extraction. Beyond analyzing the ways in which oil extractivism affects Waorani territory, society, and gender dynamics, this dissertation examines the response to and resistance against oil drilling from the organized Waorani women of Amwae. In considering how the latter defend their territory from oil-related activities, I argue for the vital importance played by the political and organizational development of the indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Moreover, I demonstrate the importance of indigenous cosmovision and ways of engaging with and symbolically representing the Waorani territory. Most notably, I show that the organized women of Amwae are emerging as activist-leaders in much the same way that male warriors did in the Waorani past.Doctor of Philosoph

The effects of market integration on childhood growth and nutritional status: The dual burden of under- and over-nutrition in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon: Indigenous Childhood Nutritional Status

Market integration is an important source of cultural change exposing indigenous populations to epidemiologic and nutrition transitions. As children and adolescents are biologically sensitive to the health effects of market integration, we examine community variation of anthropometric indicators of nutritional status and growth among a cross-cultural sample of Kichwa, Shuar, Huaorani and Cofán indigenous groups in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon