Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ARHEM Kaj The Maku The Makuna and The Guiana System 1989 PDF
ARHEM Kaj The Maku The Makuna and The Guiana System 1989 PDF
Ethnos
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713685190
The makú, the Makuna and the Guiana system: Transformations of social
structure in northern lowland South America
Kaj Arhema
a
University of Uppsala, Sweden
To cite this Article Arhem, Kaj(1989) 'The makú, the Makuna and the Guiana system: Transformations of social structure
in northern lowland South America', Ethnos, 54: 1, 5 — 22
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00141844.1989.9981377
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.1989.9981377
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
The Makú, the Makuna and
the Guiana System:
Transformations of Social Structure in Northern
Lowland South America
by Kaj Arhem
University of Uppsala, Sweden
// is argued that the Makuna society in the Colombian Vaupés is an intermediate form
between two contrasting but related types of social organization, represented by the
Carib societies of the Guiana region and the Tukano groups of the Northwest Amazon.
The paper suggests that current changes in Makuna society may, in part, be understood
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
Amerindian societies in the Guiana region (what I shall here refer to as the
Tukano and Guiana systems respectively).3 In this comparative scheme the
Makuna and the enigmatic Makú—forest-dwelling, non-Tukano speaking
Indians living interspersed among the dominant Tukano groups in the
Northwest Amazon—will be singled out as cases of particular interest. I
shall try to show that the changes currently taking place among the
Makuna may, in part, be understood in the comparative context and
analytical perspective outlined in this paper.
Before embarking on this comparative venture, a note of caution is in
place. This paper is essentially a reconsideration of material published
elsewhere. My ambition is analytical rather than descriptive, and my
treatment of ethnographic data hence schematic. The reader who feels he
needs more substantial documentation of the issues raised and discussed in
the paper is therefore advised to go to the sources (listed in References).
Perhaps I should also state at the outset that the analytical perspective
employed in the paper is purportedly structuralist. I am consequently more
interested in discovering the structural regularities underlying the empirical .
diversity of social forms than explaining this diversity in terms of the
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
generative processes and determinant factors which produce it. This does
not mean that I am uninterested in causal or generative explanations; on
the contrary, I have devoted a recent paper (Arhem 1987) to a detailed
study of individual marriage strategies in order to arrive at a generative
model of the Makuna marriage system. But here my aim—and the analyt-
ical procedure I must follow—is different: to shed light on certain aspects of
social change among the Makuna by relating them to the pattern of socio-
structural variation in northern Lowland South America in general. What
is needed is an analytical procedure which permits me to handle the
problem of structural variation in space (the empirical diversity of social
form) and time (the process of social change) within a single explanatory
framework. Structural analysis offers such a framework.4
house is a root model of the Tukano descent system. Each longhouse, today
comprising some 3-6 families, replicates the ancestral society of a set of
brothers born by the same mythical father and originating from the same
mythical birth place, the "waking-up house" of each Tukano language
group." Descent, then, in the Northwest Amazonian context involves the
stipulated patrilineal descent from a mythical ancestor and the patrilineal
inheritance of a distinct language (as well as shared control over ritual
property, including a set of personal names recycled in alternate genera-
tions within the descent group).12 The rule of virilocal residence, finally, is
consistent with this strong emphasis on the unity and solidarity of male
agnates and the rule of descent group exogamy. It is ideologically expressed
in a preference for (ritualized) "bride capture" whereby wives, who in
terms of Tukano ideology are "strangers" and "outsiders", are abducted
from distant groups of affinables (i.e. the members of which are classified as
marriageable; cf. Riviere 1984).
west Amazon, for it is strikingly similar to the way the Tukano groups
describe the non-Tukano speaking Makú, inhabiting the interfluvial forests
of the Northwest Amazon. In other words, the Guiana system sounds very
much as a Tukano characterization of the Makú society.
The term Makú is generic and (probably) of Geral origin (the Tupi-
Brazilian lingua franca introduced to the Amazon centuries ago by mission-
aries, traders and settlers). 13 It has multiple referents. In its most precise
sense—and as used in the recent ethnographic literature on Northwest
Amazonia—it refers to three linguistic groups of Indians: the Cacua (or
Bará Makú), the Jupda (Ubde or Hupdii), and the Yohop (Yühup) (Jack-
son 1983:149).I4 They all rely predominantly on hunting-and-gathering and
characteristically enter into various kinds of "symbiotic" relationships with
Tukano groups in which they play a subordinate role. These can be
relatively temporary relationships involving occasional exchanges of meat,
labour, or various forest products for cultivated foods and "white" trade
items. Or they can involve long-term servant-master relationships between
Makú families and a specific Tukano settlement (ibid:148—9).
As used by local traders or settlers, or by the Tukano when communicat-
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
ing with "whites", the term Makú has a derogatory connotation. For the
former it loosely designates "wild" Indians—those least contacted, least
clothed, who are said to have no houses, to practice no cultivation and to
lead a nomadic existence in the forest. For the latter, the term (and its
various Tukano counterparts) generally alludes to the relationship of super
and sub-ordination between the two groups (ibid: 149).
Due to their elusive existence in the forest away from the rivers, the Makú
are ethnographically relatively little known. It is not clear whether they
constitute remnants of an original population of hunters-and-gatherers of
the interfluvial forest, or have devolved from previously more complex
riverine and horticultural societies. The difficulties in accounting for the
complex ethnic situation in the Northwest Amazon is further enhanced by
the fact that various Makú groups are reported to have been assimilated
into particular Tukano groups, thus adopting the status of low-ranking
Tukano sibs (cf. Goldman 1963, Koch-Grünberg 1906, Silverwood-Cope
1972, cited in Jackson 1983:149).
Until recently, the little we knew about the Makú in Northwest Amazon
derived from the Tukano (and a few fragmentary reports by missionaries
and travellers). The Tukano describe the Makú society very much in
contrastive terms to their own: they say that the Makú lack longhouses and
have no proper clans, that they (the Makú) marry within the language
group, and that kin and affines live together in the same settlements. Makú
men are even said to "marry their sisters" (which is probably another way
10 Kaj Arhem
of saying that kin and affines are not "properly" separated in terms of the
Tukano ideal of local, lineal and linguistic exogamy) Qackson 1983:150).
The incestuous character of Makú society is reiterated, in a different
cultural register, in the Tukano assertion that the Makú are "cannibals";
not only do they disregard Tukano food restrictions—eating snakes, sloths,
rats, and vultures—but they are also said to hunt and eat human beings
"simply for food" (ibid:151-2). And they are described as "naked", as
wearing no clothing or body adornment, to lack knowledge about myth and
ritual, to have no songs and dances (ibid: 153).
All in all, to the Tukano the Makú are not fully "people". They are sub-
human, animal-like, and therefore treated as inferiors. Certain Tukano
groups refer to the Makú as "Jaguar children" (Giacone 1949:88, cited in
Jackson 1983:151). Consequently, the Makú are not considered potential
marriage partners. All the features that define the Tukano concept of
human society and which distinguish human beings from the beasts of the
forest—descent and language group exogamy, marriage rules and eating
restrictions, knowledge of myth and ritual, dances and songs, and the
wearing of body adornments—are said to be lacking among the Makú. The
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
Makú are all that the Tukano are not and ought not to be. They provide the
Tukano with a prototypical image of the monstrous, the bestial and the sub-
human.
Obviously this characterization of the Makú is exaggerated and mostly
false. The recent work by Peter Silyerwood-Cope (1972) and Howard Reid
(1979) shows that the Makú presently (and perhaps always did) subsist on
rudimentary horticulture as well as hunting, fishing and gathering of wild
forest produce.15 They lack the elaborate fishing technology of the Tukano,
do not build or use canoes, and depend on agriculture to a far less degree
than the Tukano. But they share with the Tukano the same basic cosmol-
ogy, and have a system of religious beliefs, myths and ritual practices which
is closely related to that of the Tukano. According to both ethnographers
they also have patrilineal, exogamous descent groups, a two-line relation-
ship terminology, and an explicit preference for direct exchange marriage.
At the level of social organization there are, however, some significant
differences between the Makú and the typical Tukano pattern. Makú
settlements, consisting of clusters of single-family houses or shelters, tend to
be small, impermanent and fluid in composition. Various adjacent settle-
ments are grouped into localities of closely related and interacting settle-
ments (which Jackson calls "circumscribed regions"). The settlements
studied by Reid (1978:2) ranged from 13 to 40 individuals. Though families
frequently alter their residence and move between adjacent settlements, the
structure of the settlement remains basically the same: a group of closely
The Makú, the Makuna and the Guiana System 11
between the Makuna and the Makú forms of social organization which in
part is responsible for the curious similarity between the names by which
the two groups are known? Both names, it is true, are given them and
mainly used by others, indians and non-indians. The Makuna and the
Makú themselves use sib names as auto-denominators, and in the case of
the Makuna there exists no generic name for the entire language group.
However, the terms Makuna and Makú have been used in the region for at
least two centuries and are, in fact, the terms used by Spanish-speaking
Indians themselves when communicating with non-Indian "outsiders". 17
Consequently, it is these names that have entered into the ethnographic
literature of the region. According to Martius (1867:547), the term "Ma-
cuná" means "black Macú". I do not know the etymology or original
meaning of any of the terms, and Martius gives us no clue, but I offer the
tentative hypothesis that the terminological contiguity implied by the two
names in fact stands for the objective similarity in terms of social organiza-
tion between the two groups.
Less speculative, and perhaps more important, is the evidence that
suggests that the Makuna recognize their closeness to the Makú. While the
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
Consider, for example, the case of the Piaroa. Their social organization
closely follows the stereotypical Guiana pattern with cognatic and ideally
endogamous settlements and no permanent groups of any kind beyond the
personal kindred. Yet we are told by their ethnographer (Overing Kaplan
1975, 1981) that the Piaroa have a notion of patrifileal clans and moieties
which is operative in cosmogonic myths and eschatological beliefs. These
clans and moieties are associated with the mythical birth place of the Piaroa
as a people, and the mortuary homeland to which all Piaroa are believed to
return after death. Clans and moieties among the Piaroa exist, as it were,
only before birth and after death in a sort of spiritual, super-human
"society" where the members of each clan are supposed to live together in a
single settlement, separated from all other clans, from affines, animals and
all other beings separated from self (Overing Kaplan 1981:162). This
"society of spirits" is absolutely static, timeless and sterile. Human society
only emerged, according to Piaroa myths, when clans and moieties inter-
mingled and intermarried, and their social and spatial distinctiveness be-
came blurred and ultimately abolished (ibid. 1975:205).
The Piaroa concept of clans and moieties are thus exclusively cosmologi-
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
relegated its logical complement to the realm of ideology and turned it into
•a highly negatively charged counterpoint model, a model of non-human
society—indeed, of anti-society. In this way, the counterpoint models serve
to demonstrate—much like myths in structuralist thinking—the practical
impossibility of alternative social models and the necessity of the existing
normative order. By presenting the other organizational possibilities offered
by the symmetric alliance structure as inhuman, the Piaroa and the Tukano
negate them and thereby justify the present social order.
In this light the Makuna anomaly takes on added significance. Among
the Makuna the patrilineal descent ideology and the rule of exogamy are
still categorically effective. The Tukano system is recognized as the norma-
tive ideal. Yet, the Guiana system is vaguely present in the actual working
of the Makuna marriage system. Consistent with the pronounced dichot-
omy between categorical ideal and social practice, which sets the Makuna
apart from other Tukano groups and brings them closer to the Makú, they
do not share the derogatory view of the Makú held by other Tukano groups.
In other words, the consciously articulated relationship between normative
social order and its negatively charged counterpoint model, which we
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
process of change currently taking place among the Makuna. The fragmen-
tary information available on the situation of the present-day Makuna
strongly suggest that their society is in the process of transforming into a
more Guiana-like system along the lines sketched above. Settlements are
changing from the traditional Tukano multi-family longhouse based on a
local descent group, to larger, nucleated villages of single-family houses
related by ties of agnatic kinship as well as close affinity. In other words, the
new villages are structured, not on the pattern of the old, exogamous
longhouses, but on the highly endogamous local groups of intermarrying
longhouses which I discerned among the Makuna 15 years ago (Arhem
1981a). From "the inside", these villages are differentiated into kin and
affines both in terms of relationship terminology and unilineal descent
categories (just like the Makú settlement), but from "the outside" each has
the appearance of a kindred group similar to the prototypical Guiana (and
Makú) settlement.
This process of village formation is apparently not (yet) taking place on
the same scale among the other Tukano groups in the Pira-Paraná area.
The traditional settlement pattern centred on the longhouse still lives on
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
Arhem 1981a). New social and territorial groupings thus emerged which
differed considerably from the idealized, descent-based structure. However,
the Makuna social system apparently easily accommodated the changes. It
contained in itself the seeds of change. It was as if the external pressures set
the Makuna social system in motion along a trajectory of change already
present in the system as a latent potentiality. In this light, the current
changes—activated by the recent cocain boom and the intensified mission-
ary activities in the area—represent but another step along the same
trajectory. It crystallizes and solidifies a trend present in Makuna society
for decades, and certainly visible at the time of my fieldwork in the early
1970s.
With the imminent disappearance of the longhouse—the very root model
of the Tukano descent structure—there is little left of the typically Tukano
features of the Makuna social system. Perhaps we are beginning to discern
among the Makuna the outlines of a "post-Tukano" society where the
longhouse and, ultimately, the notion of descent are relegated, as among the
Piaroa, to the realm of mythic thought and eschatological beliefs?20
It may be appropriate thus to end a rather speculative paper: with an
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
NOTES
1. My fieldwork was carried out in the Pirá-Paraná area of the Colombian Vaupés territory
between 1971 and 1974. Published results, relevant to the theme of this paper, are listed in
the references below. I would like to acknowledge the constructive comments on an earlier
draft of this paper by T. Gerholm, D. Heinen, A. Hornborg, and P. Riviere.
2. See list of references.
3. I use the term Tukano here to refer to the totality of the Eastern Tukano-speaking groups.
These groups share a similar culture and pattern of social organization (sec below).
4. Let it also be said that my concern with the formal properties of the social systems
examined here is partly due to a lack of the precise data required for constructing
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
generative models of structural variation and change. Yet I think that a comparative,
structural analysis such as the one attempted here needs no justification. After all,
structural and causal explanations are complementary and equally necessary in the
development of anthropological theory.
5. The summary account of the Guiana system which follows is based entirely on Riviere
(1984). An insightful review of the book is offered by Hornborg (1987). Since the paper was
written, another useful review of the Guiana societies has appeared in print—the collection
of papers edited by Butt Colson and Heinen (1983-84).
6. In the description of the Tukano system I rely on my own field work as well as the writings
of, principally, Goldman (1963), C. Hugh-Jones (1979), S. Hugh-Jones (1979), Jackson
(1983) and Reichel-Dolmatoff (1968). Let it be stressed again that I use the term Tukano
here to refer to the totality of Eastern Tukano-speaking groups and not to the specific
exogamous group, known by the same term, which constitutes one of the 15 or so language
groups making up this totality.
7. The Pirá-Pananá area where I carried out fieldwork is such an area. However, along the
Vaupés River, and particularly near the large settlement of Mitú, the regional capital,
indigenous life has changed dramatically and the traditional Tukano pattern of social
organization is largely shattered. Here settlements invariably take the form of nucleated
villages of varying social composition, determined by missionary and administrative
dictates rather than endogenous developments.
8. I have borrowed the term language group from Jackson (1983). C. Hugh-Jones (1979) uses
the concept of Exogamous Group for the same unit of Tukano social structure.
9. It should perhaps be pointed out that the Cubeo (and the Makuna, which will become
apparent in the course of the paper) deviate from this ideal pattern. The Cubeo constitute a
language group divided into three exogamous phratries which intermarry among them-
selves (Goldman 1963).
10. The hierarchical structure of the exogamous group is furthermore articulated in terms of an
idealized set of "specialist roles" so that sibs are arranged in order of seniority, from the
first-born to the last-born, in a series of five "specialist roles": chiefs, chanters, warriors,
20 Kaj Arhem
shamans, and servants. To each of these categories corresponds a set of personal names
recycled among its members in alternating generations.
11. The notion of "people waking-up house" (masa yuhiri wi in both Barasana and Makuna
languages) denotes the mythical birth place of an exogamous descent group as well as the
ancestral home to which the souls of its members return after death.
12. Cf. C. Hugh-Jones (1979:31) and note 10 above.
13. Alternatively it has been suggested that the term Makú might be of Arrawakan origin
(Ortiz 1986).
14. The information on the Makú presented here derives essentially from Jackson (1976, 1983).
Jackson's accounts of the Makú are largely based on material published by others, and
exhaustive bibliographies on Makú ethnography are given in her works.
15. At the time of writing I did not have access to these works, but they are both summarized
in Jackson (1976, 1983), and I have had the opportunity to discuss some of the issues raised
here personally with Howard Reid.
16. As noted above (note 9), this also applies to the Tukano Cubeo. However, the Cubeo have
all the other typical Tukano features of social organization, and differ sharply from the
Makuna in their strong emphasis on territorial exogamy.
17. The term Mucunas appears as a name of a group of Indians living on the Apaporis River
(most probably the present-day Makuna) in the late 18th century. At the same time the
Makú of the Vaupés Region are mentioned for the first time in the chronicles of Sampaio
(1775) and Ferreira (1878); cf. S. Hugh-Jones 1981:31, 43).
18. In the context of general theoretical anthropology this idea of multiple or alternative,
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
coexisting models is, of course, not new at all; cf. for example, Leach (1954) and Salzman
(1978). An example immediately relevant to the present ethnographical context is Overing
Kaplan's (1973) examination of alternative models of marriage exchange among the
Piaroa.
19. As mentioned earlier, in other parts of Vaupés, nucleated villages predominate. Their
composition is highly variable and tends to be predicated on missionary influences and the
migrant labour pattern evolving in the most acculturated parts of Vaupés. It has, for
example, been a pronounced policy on the part of the Catholic mission to mix various
language groups together in missionary settlements. Nevertheless, nucleated settlements in
Vaupés tend in general to follow the Tukano pattern of agnatic/patrilateral rather than
uterine of affinal extensions (Chernela 1985, but cf. Jackson (1983:69).
20. It may be relevant in this context to point out that in Makú mythology the founding fathers
of the Makú sibs inhabit huge ancestral longhouses to which the souls of the living
generations of people return after death (just as among the Tukano and the Piaroa) (Reid
1978:10). Among the living Makú, though, there are no longhouses. The world of the dead
constitute an inversion of the world of the living.
21. In a subsequent paper I hope to come back to these questions. At the present moment
(1988) I am carrying out renewed field research among the Makuna, focussing precisely on
the theme of cultural change.
REFERENCES
ARHEM, K. 1981a. Makuna Social Organization. A Study in Descent, Alliance and the Formation of
Corporate Groups in the North-Western Amazon. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 4.
- 1981b. Bride Capture, Sister Exchange and Gift Marriage: A Model of Marriage Exchange.
Ethnos Vol. 46:1-11.
— 1987. Wives of Sisters. The Management of Marriage Exchange among the Makuna of
The Makú, the Makuna and the Guiana System 21
Northwest Amazonia. In Natives and Neighbours in South America. Anthropological Essays, edited
by H. O. Skar and F. Salomon. Etnologiska Studier 38. Gothenburg.
BUTT COLSON, A. and HEINEN, H. D. 1983-84. Themes in Political Organisation: The Caribs
and Their Neighbours. Antropologica 59-62.
CHERNELA, J. M. 1985. The Sibling Relationship among the Uanano of the Northwest
Amazon: The case of Nicho. Working Papers on South American Indians 7. Bennington College,
Vermont.
DREIFUS, S. 1977. Propositions pour un modèle Sud-Americaine de l'alliance symétrique. Actes
du XLIIe Congrès International des Americanistes, Vol. II:379-85. Paris: Société des American-
istes.
FERREIRA, A. R. (1878), 1885-6. Diario de viagem philosophica pela Capitanía de S. Jose do
Rio Negro. Revista do Instituto Historico y Geografico Brasileiro, XLVIII, i; XLIX, i; L, ii; LI, i.
GIACONE, A. 1949. Os Tucanos e outras tribus do Rio Uaupés. Sao Paulo.
GOLDMAN, I. 1963. The Cubeo. Indians of the Northwest Amazon. University of Illinois Press.
HORNBORg, A. 1986. Dualism and Hierarchy in Lowland South America: Trajectories of Indigenous
Social Organization. Doctoral Thesis at Uppsala University.
- 1987. Review of R. Rivière: Individual and Society in Guiana. In Ethnos Vol. 52:III-IV.
HUGH-JONES, C. 1979. From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HUCH-JONES, S. 1979. The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 1981. Historia del Vaupés. Maguare Vol. 1, 1:29-51. Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Downloaded By: [Silva, Cacio] At: 06:41 3 March 2011
JACKSON, J. E. 1976. Relations between Tukanoans and Makú of the Central Northwest
Amazon. MS. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- 1983. The Fish People. Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
KOCH-GRÜNBERG, T. 1906. Die Makú. Anthropos 1:877-906.
LEACH, E. R. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma. London: Bell.
MARTIUS, C. F. P. VON. 1867. Zur Ethnographie Amerikas zumal Brasiliens. Leipzig.
ORTIZ, F. 1986. Mitología y organización social en el oriente de Colombia. Maguare Vol. III,
No. 3:9-20. Universidad Nacional, Bogotá.
OVERINg KAPLAN, J . 1973. Endogamy and the Marriage Alliance. Man (NS) 8(4):555-70.
- 1975. The Piaroa. A People of the Orinoco Basin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 1981. Review article: Amazonian Anthropology. Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 13,
1:151-64.
RAMOS, A. R. and ALBERT, B. 1977. Yanoama Descent and Affinity: The Sanuma/Yanomam
Contrast. Actes du XLIIe Congrès International des Americanistes Vol II:71-90. Paris: Société des
Americanistes.
REICHEL-DOLMATOFF, G. 1968. Desana. Simbolismo de los Indios Tukano del Vaupés. Bogota:
Universidad de los Andes.
REID, H. 1978. Dreams and Their Interpretation among the Hupdu Maku Indians of Brazil.
Cambridge Anthropology Vol. 4, 3:2-28.
- 1979. Some Aspects of Movement, Growth, and Change among the Hupdu Maku Indians of Brazil. Ph.
D. diss. Cambridge University.
RIVIÈRE, P. 1973. The Lowland South American Culture Area: Towards a Structural Defini-
tion. Paper presented at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological
Association. New Orleans.
- 1984. Individual and Society in Guiana. A Comparative Study of Amerindian Social Organization.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SALZMAN, P. C. 1978. Ideology and Change in Tribal Society. Man (NS) 13(4):618-37.
22 Kaj Arhem