Dear member of the Société des américanistes,

We are pleased to invite you to the next conference of the Société des américanistes on Thursday, February 19, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. in the cinema room of the Quai Branly Museum.

Mickaël Orantin, CNRS Research Fellow (ECHELLES Laboratory, UMR 8264), will present and discuss his book with Isabel Yaya-McKenzie (EHESS/LAS):

Les prêches du labeur. Anthropologie historique du travail dans les missions jésuites du Paraguay (1609-1768).

Between 1609 and 1768, missionaries from the Society of Jesus founded and administered some thirty large villages in Paraguay, where they evangelized the region’s indigenous peoples, mostly Guaraní. Among the social transformations brought about by conversion to Christianity, those related to work practices and representations played a central role. Missionary production ensured the material sustainability of the villages and, thus, the conditions for evangelization. As an instrument of domination, work also enabled social integration. Its transformations were inextricably linked to those of kinship structures, social assistance, techniques, exchange, identity, and, of course, religion. Through, among other archival documents, the translation and examination of an unpublished monolingual Guarani work catechism written in the missions in the 18th century, this book uses the tools of historical anthropology to uncover the conflicts and collaborations that arose from the encounter between European and Guarani conceptions of work, as well as the misunderstandings that persisted for 150 years.

The lecture will be given in French.