Egalitarians despite themselves: envy and leadership in Ecuadorian Amazonia

The Shuar of Ecuadorian Amazonia once pursued eminence through warfare and vision quests. While vision quests have been retained, today – settled in villages – they seek eminence through economic success and political leadership. This article examines an apparent paradox: whilst envy suspicions pervade public life, they legitimize rather than level inequality. Successful individuals publicly accuse less wealthy neighbours of envious sorcery, while complaints about stinginess and failure to share remain private. Leaders reframe kinship obligations as malicious envy, justifying their accumulation of wealth as beneficial for collective progress. We argue that this represents not merely a shift from egalitarianism to inequality, but a contextual shift from relational autonomy to self‐possessive autonomy. In the past, eminent warriors remained embedded in relations of mutuality and remained vulnerable to others. Today's leaders, by contrast, actively ‘de‐kin’ themselves and claim exclusive possession of wealth. This contextual shift is enabled by the centralizing dynamics of nucleated village settlement, which allows the separation of economic from social relations and fosters new regimes of private property. The Shuar case reveals how envy talk can become a tool for entrenching inequality.