This work investigates how indigenous populations in the Bajo Urubamba region of the Peruvian Amazon integrate historical change and acculturation into their own systems of kinship and social identity. Peter Gow, an anthropologist with extensive field experience in the region, challenges the assumption that acculturation represents a loss of indigenous culture. By analyzing the productive transformation of the forest and the commodity economy, he argues that these external influences are actively incorporated into the local framework of creating life and maintaining social relations. The book posits that historical processes are not external forces acting upon these people, but are instead internal components of their ongoing social reproduction.

Scholars in the field of Amazonian anthropology recognize this text as a significant contribution to the study of social change and indigenous agency. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which requires a foundational understanding of anthropological theory to fully appreciate the author's arguments.