Quadripartite Structures: Categories, Relations and Homologies in Bush Mekeo Culture

Quadripartite structures Categories, relations, and homologies in Bush Mekeo culture

Quadripartite structures Categories, relations, and homologies in Bush Mekeo culture

MARK S. MOSKO Hartwick College

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521105385 © Cambridge University Press 1985 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1985 This digitally printed version 2009 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Mosko, Mark S., 1948Quadripartite structures. Bibliography: p. 1. Mekeo (Papua New Guinea people) DU740.42.M67 1985 306'.0899912

I. Title. 84-19906

ISBN 978-0-521-26452-5 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-10538-5 paperback

Dedicated to the memory of Kaiva Muniapu

Are we satisfied, then, that everything is generated in this way opposites from opposites? - Plato's Phaedo

Contents

List of figures, tables, and maps

page viii

Preface

xi

1

Introduction: the problem and the people

2

Between village and bush

21

3

Body and cosmos

38

4

Sex, procreation, and menstruation

60

5

Male and female

73

6

Kin, clan, and connubium

100

7

Feasts of death (i): de-conception and re-conception

150

8

Feasts of death (ii): the sons of Akaisa

182

9 Tikopia and the Trobriands

1

200

10 Conclusions: indigenous categories, cultural wholes, and historical process

234

Appendixes 1

Village resources derived from bush resources

250

2

Ingestion and ingestibles

251

3

Categories of food

254

4

Work and nonwork skills

256

5

Categories of human dirt

257

6 The myth of Foikale and Oa Lope

258

7 The afinama myth

265

Notes

271

Bibliography

278

Index

289 vn

Figures, tables, and maps

Figures 1.1 The trajectories of Nature and Culture 1.2 Fipa mythical and social values 1.3 Hohfeld's fundamental legal relationships 1.4 The structure of the Klein group in mathematics 2.1 The sphere of ordinary transfers 2.2 The sphere of extraordinary transfers 3.1 Water transformation: boiling 3.2 Water transformation: roasting 3.3 Food transformation: boiling 3.4 Food transformation: roasting 3.5 Food transformation: drying 3.6 Food transformation: ripening 3.7 Work transformation: house building 3.8 Nonwork transformation: hunting 3.9 Culinary work transformation: boiling food 3.10 Culinary nonwork transformation: roasting food 3.11 Sweet/unsweet body transformations 3.12 Blood and flesh synthesis: capacities for work and nonwork 5.1 Female ritual cycle 5.2 Male ritual cycle 5.3 Alternating gender categories 6.1 Atsi atsitsi terminology (patrilateral) 6.2 Atsi atsitsi terminology (matrilateral) 6.3 Ipa ngaua terminology (matrilateral) 6.4 Ipa ngaua terminology (patrilateral) 6.5 Ipa ngaua terminology (Ego's and descending generations) 6.6 Composite lineage history (Nganga clan) 6.7 Pisaua friendship network (Amoamo tribe) 6.8 Children-of-"first cross-cousin," or "second-cousin," marriage 6.9 Akaila public marriage compensation exchange 6.10 Agnatic, cognatic, and affinal bloods 6.11 Bush Mekeo marriage system (i) 6.12 Bush Mekeo marriage system (ii) 6.13 Bush Mekeo marriage system (iii) viii

page 5 6 8 9 26 36 42 42 43 43 44 45 47 47 48 48 50 51 85 89 93 105 106 107 108 110 119 131 135 136 140 143 146 147

Figures, tables, and maps 7.1 7.2 7.3

Mortuary feast-givers and -receivers Mortuary-feast categories and clan identities De-conception and re-conception of grandmothers'clan bloods

ix 172 176 178

Tables 1. 2. 3.

Village and tribal populations Offices, lineages, and subclans of Nganga residential clan Friend and nonfriend kofuapie betrothals and elopements

15 118 133

Maps 1. 2.

The Bush Mekeo The Bush Mekeo and their neighbors

14 17

Preface

Not without humor, Bush Mekeo villagers will occasionally retell the story of how their ancestors first came to be known as the "Bush" Mekeo. Whenever a government patrol entered the area during the early years of contact, they say, their ancestors hid in the bush until the strangers had left. Once, upon entering a deserted village, a patrol officer remarked, "Oh, so these must be the 'Bush' Mekeo, because they are always hiding in the bush." Figuratively speaking, the Bush Mekeo have remained "in hiding" ever since. In his classic study, The Melanesians of British New Guinea, Seligmann does refer to "a small but uncertain number of villages on the middle reaches of the Biaru River [which] must be considered to constitute an ethnographical annexe to Mekeo" (1910:311); but now, even after nearly a century of contact with Europeans, the Bush Mekeo are still essentially unknown to the outside world. Although there have been numerous in-depth studies of their closest neighbors, virtually nothing substantively new concerning the Bush Mekeo themselves or their culture has appeared. This book is partially intended to help fill this lacuna and bring the Bush Mekeo, as they would say, "out of hiding." This book, however, also attempts something rather more theoretical and, for that reason, potentially fruitful in other ways. In the course of struggling to interpret Bush Mekeo tradition in my own thought as a "total social phenomenon," a structure of an unanticipated form gradually took shape. It became clear that the meanings of many (if not most) of the cultures diverse contexts are ordered by and through it. That structure, as it turns out, is generally fourfold or quadripartite. But with the specific inner operations of its working among the categories of the culture, it is more accurately characterized in the terms of homologously bisected dualities. This book is, then, principally devoted to revealing this particular structure and its logically consistent ramifications throughout Bush Mekeo culture. Nonetheless, I was inevitably led to a detailed exploration, in much the same terms, of several related Oceanic cultures - most notably, the classic cases of Tikopia and the Trobriands. The results of those inquiries are contained in this volume as a separate chapter. Finally, emboldened, XI

Xll

Preface

perhaps, with these (to me) ethnographic and comparative successes, I have ventured still further. I propose that, in a manner previously unsuspected, the structure of bisected dualities characterizes - or underlies, informs, and links together - a number of fundamental, but otherwise heretofore disconnected, formulations within social anthropology itself, particularly those dealing with the relations of myth to ritual and of structure and synchrony to history and diachrony. Therefore, in addition to bringing the Bush Mekeo out of hiding, this book represents an effort to reveal what perhaps has long been hidden within two of the most welldocumented ethnographic cases on record and within a few of the more notable sectors of anthropological tradition as well. I feel by now a particularly keen sense of indebtedness to the many persons who have helped and .encouraged me along the way. Although I shall never be able to recompense them adequately, I should now like to acknowledge these debts and express my gratitude. The writings of Edmund Leach, Claude Levi-Strauss, Marshall Sahlins, and David Schneider among living anthropologists stand out clearly as my main theoretical inspirations. My greatest intellectual debt of a more personal and immediate sort is to my doctoral adviser, Professor Stephen F. Gudeman. The exceedingly high standards for quality, integrity, and thoroughness he demands, not so much of others as himself, have done more to inspire and guide me to think like a social anthropologist than he might ever guess. Professor Eugene Ogan conscientiously served the no doubt tedious role of my principal theoretical foil; thus, in addition to keeping me laughing and moving, he at least tried to keep me honest. Others whose scholarly support and encouragement I cannot fail to mention are Robert C. Kiste, Alan Rew, Paul Wohlt, Marilyn Strathern, David G. Baker, John M. Ingham, Mischa Penn, Richard L. Haan, and Laurie Lucking. My fieldwork and dissertation write-up were generously supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (Grant No. 01164). Hartwick College has also financially helped in bringing this book into being by covering some of my costs of revision and production. Ron Embling skillfully worked to complete the numerous figures contained in the text. Dot Parmerter and Georgette Corrao meticulously typed the several drafts of the manuscript. Among those deserving foremost credit for their contributions to this study are the Bush Mekeo villagers themselves. The patience, generosity, and tolerance they so often displayed were truly astonishing. For the benefit of those Papuans who might someday read this book, I would like truthfully to declare that never were my family and I without food among the Bush Mekeo. I must especially acknowledge the friendship so freely

Preface

xiii

offered my family and me by Pavivi Menga, Mangemange Muniapu, Menga Piomaka, Ameaua Tsibo, Thomas Ae, Peniamo Peniamo, Peter Keanga, Apou Kaengo, Piomaka Fala, and Marcello Apou. Particularly, I would like to thank the village women collectively in appreciation of their many kindnesses to my wife. A great many others outside the Bush Mekeo from 1974 to 1976 also provided invaluable assistance in one form or another. Among them are Bill and Antje Clarke; Paul and Ruth Wohlt; Paul and Agi Kipo; Bishop Vangeke; Fathers Boudaud, Didier, Diaz, and Bouseau; Sister Christine; Epeli and Barbara Hau'ofa; Michael Monseel-Davis; Eliza Marshall; Nigel and Joan Oram; Andrew and Marilyn Strathern; Jeff and Laura van Osterwick; the staff of the National Archives; Waigani Lodge; WCA Boroko; Bereina Government Offices; and the country order department at Steamy's. I thank them all for their time, energy, resources, and hospitality. My parents have given me their unflagging support and encouragement (moral and financial) at every stage in spite of their silent misgivings about so unlikely a profession. My gratitude for their wisdom and constancy goes very deep. My wife, Cassandra, has been a constant source of undivided support, encouragement, and inspiration. Her toils and sacrifices in the field and afterward have allowed me immeasurable freedom, without which I would have been devastated long ago. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my wide-ranging indebtedness my to Bush Mekeo confidante, Kaiva Muniapu. Kaiva took it as a personal mission to teach me his people's customs and to see that I did not leave without understanding them to his satisfaction. But above everything else, Kaiva taught me the meaning of trust and friendship and, by his own example, what it means to be a Bush Mekeo man. Because Kaiva's untimely death in May 1977 prevented his ever seeing this book - the final realization of his efforts and dreams as much as my own - it is especially fitting that it be dedicated to him. M. S. M.

1 Introduction: the problem and the people

This account of a Papuan culture is avowedly structuralist. In this view, ethnographic description and explanation essentially consist of translating the meanings of indigenous culture categories into our own language, and constructing in the process a model of the total culture (Schneider 1972, 1980). For non-Western cultures like the Bush Mekeo, meanings cannot be assigned or adduced either a priori or ad hoc from Western concepts. Rather, meaning, as argued by Saussure in terms of linguistic value (1959), is neither random nor piecemeal, but systematic and logical. It resides in the interrelations among indigenous categories, in their relations of difference and similarity, in the underlying structure of ideas. Moreover, the meanings of particular cultural elements are inseparable from the wider synchronic "whole" or "totality." The notions of meaning, indigenous category, structure, and cultural whole are thus central to my treatment of Bush Mekeo traditions. In the current "post-structuralist" era (Kurtzweil 1980; see also Friedman 1974) there has been a tendency for these conceptions to be superseded by reemphases upon social action, history, and diachrony. Undoubtedly, the revival of Marxian approaches (e.g., among others, Friedman 1974; Worseley 1968; Harris 1968; Sahlins 1972; Bourdieu 1977; Godelier 1977) is largely responsible. Although certain elements of this development are necessary and welcome, others are premature if not regrettable - premature in that some of the most valuable and useful insights deriving from the structuralist perspective have been passed over without yet receiving adequate opportunity for empirical verification, and regrettable in that the risks have consequently increased of seriously distorting our conception and understanding of the essential nature of cultural systems and how they are constituted. Namely, the contemporary historicist approaches tend implicitly or explicitly to deny or ignore both the analytical validity of indigenous categories and that cultures can profitably be seen to consist of total integrated systems of ideas. Quadripartite structures in anthropological perspective

It is also in response to these challenges, then, that I offer the following structuralist interpretation of Bush Mekeo culture. Through the sequence 1

2

Quadripartite structures

of my chapters, that culture unfolds as a synchronic whole. In the process, I focus upon the replication of a particular quadripartite structure evident among the categories impinging upon various cultural and social contexts or domains of village life. By unearthing this replicative structure or pattern as I move from one context to another, the culture of the Bush Mekeo and the meanings embodied in it are represented as a series of homologies or metaphors. The notion of structural replication has a long tradition in anthropological theory and can be traced back to the very founding of the discipline late in the nineteenth century. The systematic replication of relationships within a single culture is fundamental, I think, to Durkheim's conceptualization of "collective representations" and Mauss's idea of "total social phenomena." It is also central to Hertz's classic studies of religious polarity and mortuary ritual. Structural or patterned replication is implicit as well in the Boasian tradition, as evidenced by Benedict's "configurationalist" theory and its intellectual cognates. More modern and explicitly structuralist anthropological insights following chiefly from the works of Evans-Pritchard, Levi-Strauss, and Leach have sustained and refined the pursuit of culture's systematic nature through the internal replication of form. Noteworthy examples of this approach include Douglas (1966), Bulmer (1967), Burridge (1969a), Strathern and Strathern (1968, 1971), M. Strathern (1981), Fernandez (1974), J. J. Fox (1971a, 1971b, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1980a), Ostor (1980), Jamous (1981), Gell (1975), Schneider (1969, 1972, 1980), Kelly (1977), S. Hugh-Jones (1979), C. Hugh-Jones (1980), Needham (1962, 1973, 1979), Dumont (1970), Tambiah (1968a, 1968b, 1983), Gudeman (1976), Vogt (1969), Sahlins (1976), Bourdieu (1973), and Shapiro (1981). My description and interpretation of Bush Mekeo culture in the following chapters should be generally viewed, then, as a continuation of this core anthropological tradition. It is probably fair to say that the greater share of anthropological studies in this tradition has focused on binary or dualistic forms. Nature/Culture, Sacred/Profane, Right/Left, Male/Female, Life/Death, Above/Below, This World/Other World, and Wife-Giver/Wife-Receiver are among the more familiar (Durkheim 1915; Hertz 1960; Needham 1973; Leach 1954, 1964, 1966a; Levi-Strauss 1969a; J. J. Fox 1971b, 1973, 1974, 1975; Lancy and Strathern 1981). Indeed, of considerable significance here, one recent observer has noted that the culture of the neighboring Central Mekeo is particularly marked by a wide and complex assortment of binary-category oppositions (Hau'ofa 1981:289-91). Nonetheless, replicative structures with more than two elements or relations have also been proposed (cf. Needham 1973, 1979). These more complex structures, although still formally reducible to binary oppositions, have been in terms of their cross-cultural significance predominantly either tripar-

Introduction

3

tite (e.g., Levi-Strauss 1963a, 1966b; Leach 1964; Douglas 1966) or quadripartite (e.g., Levi-Strauss 1963a; Foster 1974; Leach 1958a, 1961). With triadic structures, the third element is typically added to the binary pair in order to "mediate" or "resolve" the opposition between them. With quadripartite structures, a similar function is performed by the inversion or reversal of the initially opposed binary pair. Obviously, binary, tripartite, and quadripartite structures are not mutually exclusive in a formalistic sense (Hammel 1972). Clearly, also, the notions of contrast, opposition, contradiction, reversal, and inversion are implicit in all three kinds of structure. Unfortunately, as it has been noted, the theory of reversal in anthropology "is still rather more random than formal" (Foster 1974:346; cf Geertz 1972:26; Leach 1954, 1961:132-6; Levi-Strauss 1963a; Gell 1975:335-8; Fortes 1970; Kelly 1977). In any case, the kind of structure that I show to be replicated throughout Bush Mekeo culture is not simply binary nor triadic but quadripartite. Categories distinguished and mutually defined as belonging to the same set systematically come in fours. Each fourfold category group is initially composed of a single binary opposition (X' : Y"), which is itself bisected by its own inverse or reverse (Y' : X "). The complete category set can thus be expressed in terms of a double analogy: X' : Y" :: Y' : X"

(1)

This is the structure of bisected dualities that, I shall argue, systematically underlies the category distinctions of Bush Mekeo culture and that constitutes the homologous or metaphorical relations among the culture's varied contexts. It is of some considerable significance to indicate preliminarily that this particular structure of bisected dualities is isomorphic with several other important quadripartite structures that have been proposed both within and without anthropology. First, Levi-Strauss's cryptic formulation of the underlying structure of myth corresponds almost precisely with my notion of bisected duality: Fx(a) : Fy(b) = Fx(b) : Fa-ify) Here, with two terms, a and b, being given as well as two functions, x and y, of these terms, it is assumed that a relation of equivalence exists between two situations defined respectively by an inversion of terms and relations, under two conditions: (1) that one term be replaced by its opposite (in the above formula, a and a - I); (2) that an inversion be made between the function value and the term value of two elements (above, y and a) (Levi-Strauss 1963a:228; see also LeviStrauss 1967; Leach 1970:62-86).

The only major difference between Levi-Strauss's equation and my own concerns their respective ranges of application. Levi-Strauss has re-

4

Quadripartite structures

stricted his efforts in this context largely to mythological or narrative texts (cf. Maranda and Maranda 1971). Furthermore, he has characteristically dealt with the mythical literatures of many societies - all of Amerindian myth in his Mythologiques, for example - as a total corpus rather than with the myths alone (or, more preferably perhaps, the myths alongside the related institutions) of a single cultural tradition. The most noteworthy exception here is probably his celebrated essay on the Tshimshin myth of Asdiwal (1967). As convincing as Levi-Strauss's general approach to mythology might appear to some (to others not), it has nonetheless tended to leave aside the structural integrity of separate cultural traditions. Also, because he draws the myths for his transformational groups from across cultural boundaries, Levi-Strauss's efforts have too often suffered for lack of empirical verification by comparison with nonmythical materials of the same traditions (Maybury-Lewis 1969; Burridge 1967; Willis 1967). My own exploration of structures of bisected dualities, by contrast, is initially restricted to a single cultural system, the Bush Mekeo, and involves comparisons between mythical as well as nonmythical contexts: conceptualizations of space and time, physiological process, gender roles, social organization, leadership and authority, ritual, etc. Geertz (1973, 1974; see also Schneider 1972), for one, has argued for such a hermeneutic for similar reasons, but he stops short of seeking formalistic interconnections in favor of highly elaborated exegesis, or "thick description," of native text. Inasmuch as the ideas impinging upon these various contexts of Bush Mekeo culture all conform to the quadripartite structure of bisected dualities, the total culture - not merely its parts in isolation nor in comparison with analogous parts of other traditions - constitutes a "whole" or transformational group in its own right. In another theoretical treatment of mythical thinking, Godelier (1971) posits a similar structure, but one of subs tan tively specific elements, namely, the possible "trajectories of analogical linkage" between Nature and Culture (Figure 1.1). The form of these relations, however, is still that of a bisected duality. The trajectories are thus four in number. Combined in a kind of vectorial algebra of the imagination, "[they confer] on mythical discourse and mythical thought their inexhaustible polysemia and symbolic richness" (1971:100). Any particular mythical projection can be thereby plotted along one of the indicated trajectories of the graph. In this way, all the possible kinds of understanding that can be mythically created between Nature and Culture may be characterized: I. Culture II. Nature III.

Culture <

IV. . Nature *

> Nature »

• Culture • Culture * Nature

Introduction Trajectory I NATURE ^

CULTURE

IV

I III

NATURE

^ CULTURE Trajectory II

Figure 1.1. The trajectories of Nature and Culture. (From M. Godelier, "Myth and History," New Left Review, vol. 69, p. 100. Reprinted by permission.)

such that I : IV :: II : III Of course, one has to accept here not only the universality and significance of the Nature/Culture dyad (Levi-Strauss 1969b; cf. MacCormack and Strathern 1980), but also, in Godelier's handling, the reality of such reified entities as Myth, Society, and History. The alternate and empirically verifiable notion of a structurally integrated cultural whole is thus still lacking. Nonetheless, Godelier's formal convergence with LeviStrauss upon the structure of myth in terms of bisected dualities is provocative. Attempting to overcome empiricists' critiques of structuralism generally and Levi-Strauss's handling of myth in particular, Willis (1967) has examined the systematic distinctions embodied in Fipa mythology against the backdrop of the wider system of Fipa social organization. He discovers that the mythical structures are homologous with the more readily verifiable structures of the sociopolitical system, and the form they share in this instance is that of bisected dualities. In both contexts, relations of complementary opposition are systematically inverted through being attributed contrasting values, positive (+) and negative (—) (Figure 1.2). Mythically and socially, Fipa sometimes attribute the "Head" positive values (maleness, intellect, authority, seniority) and the contrasting "Loins" negative ones (femaleness, sexuality, reproduction, juniority), whereas other times the "Head" receives the negative values (lightness, fewness, weakness, constraint) and the "Loins" the positive ones (heaviness, numbers, strength, fellowship). Thus, (+) Head : (-) Loins :: (+) Loins : (-) Head This represents a decisive step in the directions I am suggesting. First, Willis is struggling to make structural models more empirically satisfactory. He is notedly successful in this particular case because, second, he

Quadripartite

structures

Figure 1.2. Fipa mythical and social values. (From R. G. Willis, "The Head and the Loins: Levi-Strauss and Beyond." Man [n.s.] 2:524.) deals with diverse contexts of the culture together as if that culture were a total system. And third, the exact structure he posits for the Fipa is convergent with that characteristic of the Bush Mekeo culture, that is, as a system of bisected dualities. In his essay "Structure and Dialectics," Levi-Strauss (1963a:232-41) gives at least a passing indication of these possibilities. Exploring the relation between myth and ritual, contra Malinowskian wisdom, he most vigorously advocates the comparison of myths and rituals from different societies out of their respective contexts (see also Foster 1974:346-7). Nevertheless, he does briefly mention the possibility of establishing structural homologies between myths and rituals of a single society. Moreover, in the two ethnographic cases of this sort he discusses, he finds just such a correspondence between the structure of twofold opposition that generates the myths - his analogic model given above - and the patterning of the rituals (cf. Gell 1975:341-6). Unfortunately, LeviStrauss has never fully developed this specific procedure elsewhere. The study of ritual separate from myth has of course also preoccupied generations of anthropologists. To many today, the foremost classical authority on ritual is Arnold Van Gennep (1960). Van Gennep observed that rituals in different societies frequently followed the general pattern of "rites of passage," characterized by a tripartite sequence of separation, transition, and incorporation. Modern symbolist explorations of ritual largely continue to follow Van Genneps formula, as, for example, in the splendid works of Victor Turner (1967, 1969). However, it is Leach (1961:132-6) alone who so far has recognized the essentially fourfold character of rites of passage in the form of a double opposition - sacred (transition) time versus profane time, and separation (sacralization) versus aggregation (desacralization) - or, in my terms in the form of a bisected duality: sacred : profane

:: separation

: aggregation

The structures of myth and rites of passage can thus be seen as homologous. Foster (1974) reaches virtually the same conclusion with respect to myth and ritual generally in her comparison of Navaho and American sacred activity. This heretofore barely recognized convergence could well have a major bearing on the classical issue of the relation between myth and ritual. Although such prominent figures as Robertson Smith (1957), Jane Harrison (1903, 1912), Durkheim (1915), Radcliffe-Brown (1939),

Introduction

7

Malinowski (1948), Kluckhohn (1942), and Spiro (1964) have argued as to the relative priority of one over the other, all have been taking predominantly substantive elements only into consideration. Neither viewpoint has been satisfactorily supported with ethnographic materials (LeviStrauss 1963a:232-41). And this, I strongly suspect, is because the perceived congruities are structural rather than substantive, and empirically verifiable perhaps only in the context of comparing rituals and myths of the same tradition, at least in the preliminary stages of research. Several modern descendant adaptations (acknowledged or otherwise) of Van Gennep's original formulation, which have received considerable recognition, exhibit the same logical scheme. By what amounts to projecting rites of passage onto the level of whole societies or major segments of societies undergoing "millenarian movements," for example, Burridge isolates three phases additional to a fourth period of stable tradition and old rules: (1) doubt and uncertainty (old rules in doubt), (2) orgiastic and other activities (no rules), and (3) new rules (1969b: 165-70). Thus, the phases of millenarian movements are homologous with rites of passage: sacred : profane :: segregation : aggregation no rules : old rules :: old rules in doubt : new rules affirmed To take a second example dealing with the same class of phenomena under the alternate rubric of "revitalization movements," Wallace (1956) develops virtually the same quadripartite1 temporal ordering: period of steady period of period of cultural distortion ' state " increased individual stress ' revitalization Still other quadripartite structures have been proposed by anthropologists for application to non-Western materials. Douglas's (1970) graph of "grid" (private vs. shared classifications) and "group" (control of other people vs. being controlled by other people) is one recognizable instance of a double opposition. The evident intent in this case is to plot and classify the overall comparative similarities between different cultural traditions rather than to portray the homologous relations between categories indigenous to particular cultures as the logic by which the very nature of those separate traditions is made manifest (i.e., as wholes). Significantly, also, part of the meaning of Douglas's "group" dimension had been explored elsewhere by Hohfeld with his four fundamental types of legal relationship (Figure 1.3). However, Hohfeld's quadripartite formulation is composed of substantive elements that of course are very likely not to be found all together beyond the boundaries of Western jurisprudence. And in any case, it constitutes only one part of the totality of Western culture.

Quadripartite I. II. III. IV.

Person A Demand-right < Privilege-right Power Immunity

structures Person B • Duty No-demand-right Liability No-power

Figure 1.3 Hohfeld's fundamental legal relationships. (From E. A. Hoebel, The Law of Primitive Man, p. 48. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954. Reprinted by permis-

The possibility inevitably arises that these several instances of bisected dualities in the theory of social anthropology are logical devices specific to our own manner of viewing the world, including the perception of other cultures, rather than inherent in the nature of those other systems. Are we as anthropologists, in our efforts to interpret other cultures free of ethnocentric distortion, ourselves guilty perhaps of inadvertently imposing upon them the very forms of logic and order characteristic of our own culture (Hallpike 1976)? All the versions of quadripartite structures I have mentioned are in essence compatible with the theory of the transformational or "Klein group" in mathematics (Figure 1.4). The suspicion increases still more because other social sciences have also fixed upon the same class of transformational structures in the contexts of their investigations: the relations of phonology, syntax, and semantics in linguistics (Jakobson 1948; Chomsky 1957), and the INRC (identity, negation, reciprocity, correlation) group of operations of Piagetian developmental psychology (Piaget 1949, 197O:31n), for example. Closer to home, Andriolo (1981) has recently shown by applying ethnosemantic techniques to myth and history as a single domain that conventional anthropological contrasts between these two in dualistic terms are inadequate for capturing the full breadth of issues involved. Specifically, two intersecting dimensions replication versus differentiation and vector versus field - are required. In this one critical context, then, anthropology is revealed to be itself built upon a foundation of bisected dualities. In a more comprehensive examination, Auge (1982) plots the whole of modern and traditional anthropological theory along two cross-cutting axes constituted of the oppositions "symbol versus function" on the one hand and "evolution versus culture" on the other. The ultimate significance of these several structural parallels in anthropology and related disciplines, and the philosophical implications of reflexivity to which they give rise, go considerably beyond the ethnographic limitations of this work. But still they bear upon it. Although, indeed, in the process of interpreting the culture of the Bush Mekeo it will be (as it always is) impossible not to draw upon constructs of our own

Introduction

Figure 1.4. The structure of the Klein group in mathematics. (After M. Barbut. From Michael Lane [ed.]: Introduction to Structuralism, p. 368. Introduction and compilation © 1970 by Michael Lane. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, Inc., Publishers.) tradition, it nevertheless remains at least partially an empirical question. This can be briefly illustrated here with an example taken from the recent literature pertinent to the Bush Mekeo and other Melanesian cultures. Brunton (1980) attempts to cast doubt upon the various symbolic interconnections in ida ritual that Gell establishes in his book, Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries (1975), dealing with the Umeda culture of Papua New Guinea. Gell elicits the meanings of the ida on the basis of two kinds of "lexical motivation": "sematic motivation" or polysemy, where a word has multiple meanings, metaphorical or metonymical; and "morphological motivation," where a meaning is obtained from the compounding of distinct lexical elements (Gell 1975:121-3; cf Ullmann 1963). Conceding that Gell produces the most sophisticated and detailed attempt of this sort to date, Brunton is still not convinced. In the process of questioning some of the ethnographic instances of motivation posed by Gell, Brunton focuses upon the issue of formulating a convincing picture of the cultural whole, as I have argued earlier in this chapter. He emphasizes that Umeda villagers themselves, on the one hand, offer few reliable clues; they typically do not engage in exegesis of their rituals and whenever pressed give highly individualistic, tentative, and varying interpretations. And, he argues, on the other hand, that additional rituals of the same system, by which Gell's symbolic analysis through comparison might be empirically verified, are lacking (cf. Geertz 1974). Thus, judging Gell's account deficient on these counts, Brunton proposes that this and other extreme instances of presumed logical order in cultural and religious systems are the product of imposing an Aristotelian discipline foreign to many Melanesian situations. Presumably, should an account of impressive logical ordering in a Melanesian culture be offered, supported by both sufficient native exegeses and a broad range of diverse rituals, and

10

Quadripartite structures

supplemented with analyses of even additional contexts of that culture, then the sort of skepticism voiced by Brunton should be overcome. In any case, the question of the relative orderliness and structuring becomes one of empirical investigation as well as theoretical presupposition. My interpretation of Bush Mekeo culture is intended to answer this challenge on both counts. I shall show, first, that meaning and order are intrinsic to the very nature of the culture-as-constituted (Sahlins 1976); second, that meaning resides in the relational values (including, in Gell's terms, the lexical motivations) of the indigenous culture categories; third, that the order consists of a total system of conceptualizations ramifying throughout the culture structured in the form of bisected dualities; fourth, that because these relations are comprehensive of diverse contexts or domains of the culture, they are not merely artifacts of the outsider's or analyst's thought processes; and fifth, that comparisons with other historically related cultures as analogous wholes suggest the widespread distribution of this particular structure in the Oceanic cultural sphere. As Willis aptly puts it, "What is needed . . . is not less structuralism but more - at the 'grass-roots' level of ethnography" (1967:531). Overall, then, my aim is to unravel the structural relations and replications among the indigenous categories of Bush Mekeo culture as a total, unified system. Nonetheless, I do ultimately focus upon the categories and relations underlying Bush Mekeo society, particularly as they are represented in gender roles, kinship, clanship, and marriage, and in rituals and feasts of death and mourning. To reach this point, however, it is necessary to elucidate certain categories from other spheres that are preliminarily invoked in the cultural ordering of social distinctions and relations. Also, as implied here, the numerous contexts of the culture as I describe them become increasingly complex. Therefore, it will prove useful first to articulate fully the basic structure in one beginning context of the culture and then to move on to others related to it. Not arbitrarily, I have selected indigenous conceptualizations of space and time to serve in the next chapter as this beginning context. Some of the key oppositions in Bush Mekeo culture that express categories of space and time are village/bush, inside/outside, resource/waste, ordinary/extraordinary, aboveground/belowground, and, very importantly, the bisected subdivisions of these. Chapter 3 proceeds to reveal similar classificatory distinctions among material things as they are ideally situated with respect to categories of space and time, and especially the human body. In addition, the notion of transformability expressed in terms of hot and cold will be introduced here. Some of the relevant contexts that will be discussed in this chapter include culinary procedures, work and nonwork, eating, digestion, excretion, health, illness, and curing. A few of the pervasive categorical opposi-

Introduction

11

tions are inside/outside of the body, sweet/unsweet, and bloody/bloodless, along with their respective subdivisions. Chapter 4 focuses upon a major ideological contradiction that is implicated when certain relations coalescing around food, eating, digestion, excretion, bodily health, and growth or life are transposed in the culture to the context of sex, birth, and reproduction. In this case, conceptualization of the latter is similar to that of illness and death and the reverse of health and life, rather than, as one might expect, the other way around. By a close comparison of the indigenous theory of conception with those ideas pertaining to excretion, menstruation, and parturition, the apparent categorical contradiction is resolved in the culture, and the homology of eating, health, sex, and reproduction is preserved. The terms of this contradiction and its resolution are further represented in the indigenous classification of gender roles and in the activities appropriate to each. In Chapter 5, I show, through an analysis of reversible ritual state alternations, that Bush Mekeo adult males and females resolve basically the same kind of contradiction arising from their complementary sexual identities. In this way, the bisected categories male and female are shown to be homologous with the categories discussed in the previous chapters. In the last three substantive chapters, the various persistent category distinctions revealed in other contexts of the culture are shown to be represented in the classification of Bush Mekeo social relationships: cognatic kinship, agnatic clanship, kofuapie affinity, exchange friend, and hereditary clan office. In Chapter 6, I show that embedded in Bush Mekeo society there exists a contradiction resembling that discovered in the comparisons of ideas concerning eating and sex and female and male, and this contradiction is expressed in the classification of interpersonal relations and in the exchange of marriage compensation. Briefly stated, the contradiction takes the following form: All members of the ideally endogamous tribe are "one blood" and acknowledged relatives to one another, but marriage rules prohibit persons of one blood from intermarrying. Resolution of this contradiction at the societal level is achieved in rituals and feasts having to do with death and mourning. Parallel with the resolutions noted above, the deceased and survivors are "de-conceived" or "re-conceived" (Mosko 1983), both replicating and reversing the conceptualized transmissions of blood that individuals and groups accomplished earlier at the moment of conception in sexual reproduction. The death ritual and feasting described at length in Chapters 7 and 8 are, in other words, homologous with, or a metaphor of, marriage and reproduction and the other contexts of the culture expressed in terms of the same juxtaposed, categorically bisected dualities. Once I have completed my description and interpretation of Bush

12

Quadripartite structures

Mekeo culture as a "total social phenomenon" within this schema of persistent bisected dualities, I shall explore its potential comparative use by reexamining other well-documented Oceanic cultures that are linguistically and historically related to the Bush Mekeo. For this purpose, I have selected the Trobriand Islands from Melanesia and Tikopia from Polynesia. As far as possible, I employ both classic and contemporary materials. In each case, nevertheless, a number of significant and heretofore unrecognized ethnographic and interpretive insights are proposed. Finally, in the light of these empirical investigations, I reconsider in the last chapter the several theoretical issues I have already raised here. Most especially, I shall argue that the structure of bisected dualities characteristic of Bush Mekeo and related cultures (if not elsewhere) possesses a particular efficacy for analytically encompassing such distinctly diachronic phenomena as social action and historical event. Indeed, a structuralist approach such as the one I am suggesting here, following Sahlins (1976, 1981) and Kelly (1977), is neither antithetical to considerations of history and diachrony nor merely complementary to them. Rather, a prior consideration of any culture as a structured whole can well make definitive, positive, and otherwise unique contributions toward resolving issues distinctly historical in nature. In other words, the value of synchrony even for studies of diachrony in anthropology (Saussure notwithstanding) has not yet been exhausted. The data-gathering methods on which this study is based consist largely of standard ethnographic procedures (e.g., Malinowski 1922:1-25; EvansPritchard 1962:64-85). Over the twenty-six months of my stay among the Bush Mekeo (April 1974 to June 1976), I acquired a certain proficiency in the indigenous language; conducted intensive interviews; participated in, observed, and recorded all aspects of village life; conducted a survey and census of all households in one village; constructed genealogies linking the members of the community to one another; and kept a daily journal. A major share of the material presented in the following chapters, however, consists of idealized statements about village life, and of articulations of the indigenous culture categories gleaned through intensive interviews with knowledgeable key informants. It is worth emphasizing that these last-mentioned kinds of empirical information are particularly amenable to the task of constructing a synchronic model of the traditional cultural system as manifested in the contact situation. One important digression concerning empirical method, and change and continuity as well, is at this moment in order. Bush Mekeo social life has in several respects dramatically changed from the aboriginal condition over the past ninety or so years of contact with Europeans. Nevertheless, there does exist in the contemporary situation a very strong and pervasive continuity with the past. This particular cultural tradition, moreover,

Introduction

13

retains a remarkable degree of coherence despite the multiple exigencies of the colonial presence. Recent ethnographic and historical studies explicitly confirm this impression for the neighboring Central Mekeo (Hau'ofa 1971, 1981; Stephen 1974), and I think it is all the more demonstrable with respect to the Bush Mekeo, given their generally less intense and less direct exposure to external forces. But the issue here is still to a considerable degree theoretical as well. It concerns the Saussurean precept of the priority of synchrony over diachrony, or as Levi-Strauss (1966a) has stressed, the priority of structure over event (see also Sahlins 1976 regarding the contrast of culture-asconstituted vs. culture-as-lived). I incorporate into my analysis certain elements of Bush Mekeo tradition that, as a result of historical changes, are no longer exercised, but that continue to be viable in the consciousness of villagers and thereby retain their significance in the contemporary culture. The conceptualization of "warfare" (aoao) as distinct from its present-day nonoccurrence is an obvious example.2 In the precontact past, warfare was both an intrinsic ideational component of the total culture and an occasional event. With pacification, of course, warfare in the latter sense has disappeared. It no longer occurs as an event, and I did not witness it in the field. But in the former sense, warfare continues to play its traditional role. Indeed, its conceptualization still contributes significantly to the definition and comprehension of other elements in the contemporary culture (many of which are observable as events), and they to it. I would argue in the same vein, moreover, that no complete understanding of any postpacification developments and changes in Bush Mekeo social life could be achieved without some appreciation of the nexus of ideas concerning traditional warfare and its place in the structure of the total cultural system. Once more, it is upon this specific theoretical issue that I dwell, especially in my concluding remarks in the final chapter. The Bush Mekeo Before I begin the actual juxtapositioning of the categories and relations indigenous to the culture, however, it might well prove useful to orient the reader to the Bush Mekeo in terms already familiar. Thus, in the remainder of this introductory chapter, I shall locate the Bush Mekeo very generally in our own conceptions of space and time. I shall describe who they are, where they live, what conditions they lived under aboriginally, and finally how those conditions have changed, broadly speaking, with contact and colonial rule up until the time of Papua New Guinean independence. The Bush Mekeo are an Austronesian-speaking riverine people of the main island of New Guinea. Today they live much as they did before

14

Quadripartite structures

Map 1. The Bush Mekeo. Europeans arrived, in consolidated villages scattered along the middle reaches of the Biaru River and its tributaries that drain the Mount Yule range and empty into the Papuan Gulf (Map 1). This area, measuring approximately 250 square miles,3 is predominantly swamp or grassland, depending on the season, except that toward the northern edge near the foothills of the mountains the terrain changes to virgin and secondary rain

Introduction

15

Table 1. Village and tribal populations Amoamo tribe Engeifa village Ioi village Maipa village

Totals

Kuipa tribe 228 130 225

583

Ameiaka village Apanaipi village Papangongo village Inaukina village Piunga village

170 578 181 192 137 1,258

forest. The total population of the Bush Mekeo - 1,841 persons as of 1970 (Bereina 1970-1) - has been traditionally divided among two political units or "tribes": the Amoamo, among whom I conducted most of my fieldwork, and the Kuipa. Each tribe speaks a dialect of a common language. The two dialects are distinguished only by three or four differences of sound, and they are mutually intelligible. As far as I was able to ascertain, the respective cultures of the two groups are virtually homogeneous. Nonetheless, a perpetual state of war prevailed between the two tribes aboriginally, and they did not intermarry. Traditionally, then, each tribe was essentially endogamous, and peace reigned only within it. Open warfare is now, of course, outlawed, but otherwise these intertribal relations and the verbalized attitudes that are consistent with them still characterize the contemporary Bush Mekeo scene. Each tribe consists of several villages. In general, Bush Mekeo villages are considerably smaller, simpler in plan, and more widely scattered than the comparatively metropolitan villages of the Central Mekeo. The censusfiguresfor Amoamo and Kuipa villages as of 1970 are listed in Table 1. Traditional subsistence activities include swidden agriculture along the banks of rivers and streams, hunting, and fishing. The stable crops are sweet potato, banana, taro, and coconut. Fish and game (wild pig, cassowary, wallaby, and bush fowl and other birds) abound in the bush and supply villagers with a relative abundance of protein. Pigs as well as dogs are domesticated and roam the village freely, but they are eaten only infrequently and principally on ceremonial occasions. Before the introduction of village constables and councillors under the colonial regime, there existed no overlapping village-level authority. Instead, power and authority were (and still are) largely vested in several categories of specialized, hereditary clan office. Ideally, each clan represented in a village possessed its own peace chief, peace sorcerer, war chief, and war sorcerer. Eldest sons according to rule succeeded their fathers. Although the qualities of diffuse and effective leadership were not

16

Quadripartite structures

irrelevant to hereditary clan authority, the Bush Mekeo pattern does not conform to the stereotype of the Melanesian "Big Man" (Sahlins 1963), as has been noted also of the Central Mekeo (Hau'ofa 1971, 1981). As with official succession, clan recruitment and membership are conceptualized in terms of patrifiliation and descent. The several patrilineal clans of the tribe are ideally exogamous, but the tribal entity, as mentioned above, is basically endogamous. The immediate neighbors of the Bush Mekeo include the culturally and linguistically related Central Mekeo and Waima-Kevori (Roro) tribes of the subcoast and coast, respectively, the non-Austronesian-speaking Toaripi of the Papuan Gulf, and the Kuefa and Kunimaipa of the mountains to the north (Map 2). Traditionally, interethnic relationships between these groups were dominated by intermittent peace and war. During eras of peace, the Bush Mekeo participated in trade exchanges with their non-Bush Mekeo neighbors. From the mountain peoples, the Bush Mekeo received weapons and tools of polished stone, dogs' teeth, and feather ornaments. The Bush Mekeo in turn supplied their subcoastal and coastal trade partners with some of these articles, along with smoked bush meat, cassowary bone implements, barkcloth, and bird of paradise skins they produced themselves. Shell ornaments of several varieties, lime, clay pottery, and areca nut were traded in the opposite direction, passing through the Bush Mekeo on their way from the coast to the mountains. The Amoamo Bush Mekeo4 were first contacted by Europeans in the year 1890 following a raid they perpetrated on the Central Mekeo (Veke) village of Ififu that left twenty of the latter dead. The administrator of British New Guinea himself, Sir William MacGregor (1890:88-90), happened to be patrolling in the Central Mekeo at the time. On hearing news of the attack, he trekked through the swamps to the Bush Mekeo and "pacified" the Amoamo without further bloodshed.5 From that time until Papua New Guinea achieved self-government and independence in the mid-1970s, the Amoamo have been officially administered by the British (up until 1906) and the Australians. Both these administrations, particularly the latter, have been noted for their relatively lenient and paternalistic approach to "native affairs" and "development" (Mair 1970). This is especially the case as regards the Bush Mekeo - not out of administration benevolence, however, so much as neglect. Surrounded by swamps on three sides and the perilous mountain range on the fourth, the Bush Mekeo have been physically insulated from many of the direct outside influences experienced by their nearest Papuan neighbors. Unlike the Central Mekeo, for example, the Bush Mekeo never had to pay the annual "head tax" until they were brought into Kairuku Local Government Council jurisdiction in 1963. They were never required to plant either coconuts or rice for government or mission.

Introduction

17

Map 2. The Bush Mekeo and their neighbors. Villagers were supposed to dig and maintain latrines and to bury their dead in cemeteries away from the village, but for many years these policies and others were neither regularly practiced nor enforced. After nearly thirty years of contact, one patrol officer noted that the government still lacked much control among the Bush Mekeo (Humphries 1923:233). According to my own informants, the only serious intrusion

18

Quadripartite structures

government agents made into village life (beyond maintaining the peace) until World War II and into the 1950s involved the recruitment of adult males to carry loads for infrequent patrols going into the mountains to pacify the Kuefa and Kunimaipa peoples. Unquestionably, the Catholic mission (Sacre Coeur) has had a greater impact on village life than government, but here again these effects have been restricted to a limited sphere. Unlike their Protestant counterparts established elsewhere along the Papuan coast, the priests, nuns, and lay brethren of the mission historically adopted a comparatively more enlightened, tolerant, and patient approach to traditional Bush Mekeo village life (Dupeyrat 1935; Belshaw 1951). One of the priests stationed at Beipaa in the Central Mekeo would periodically patrol the Bush Mekeo villages, but several months might pass between visits. Thus, by 1920, the same patrol officer mentioned above notes that the mission was hardly more influential than government in the villages. Aside from converting the people to Christianity, introducing the sacraments, and more recently providing health care and primary education (gains that are indeed impressive), the church seems to have been only fairly successful in counteracting the few traditional practices that are incompatible with its tenets: adultery, polygyny, and sorcery, in particular. The one traditional area where the mission has been considerably more successful is in lessening the severities of physical abuse directed against widows, widowers, and other persons in mourning. Moreover, mission activity in the Bush Mekeo seems not to have been particularly intense until sometime in the 1940s or thereabouts, when the Protestants of the London Missionary Society worked up the Biaru River from the gulf and tried to establish a foothold in the Bush Mekeo from which they could strike up into the mountain villages. It was at this point, apparently, that the Beipa'a priests focused their zeal on the Bush Mekeo. Despite pacification, depopulation, colonial administration, and missionization, then, exposure to the outside world for the Bush Mekeo up until the time of World War II was generally mild in comparison with the experiences of their immediate coastal and subcoastal neighbors (cf. Stephen 1974). The war and its aftermath, of course, had a great impact on the lives of villagers, and change since that time has been ever-accelerating. More and more the Bush Mekeo have been brought into the stream of local, regional, and national developments. During the war, many of the men who are now among the elders had served as carriers for the Allies on the "road" to Bulldog and Wau, and along the Kokoda Trail. The rapid growth of Port Moresby and other urban centers in the country since then has offered new opportunities for wage employment. Most of the men now living in the village spent at least one or two of their bachelor years in

Introduction

19

the towns doing menial labor of various sorts before returning home to marry. During the 1960s, the Bush Mekeo began to vote in local and national elections. It was during this period also that villagers planted their first cash crops (coffee and cacao) and first attempted to run local businesses. A number of trade stores were opened in each village, and a few local entrepreneurs purchased outboard motors for their canoes to transport passengers and cargo to and from the Gulf. In the middle and late 1960s several villages even cooperated to clear and maintain an airstrip. For a year or so a small Port Moresby airline firm sent in weekly flights to buy garden produce, which was later to be sold to the urban expatriate population. Early in the 1970s, Department of Agriculture agents organized villages and clans in the Bush Mekeo to begin work on cattle-raising projects. In 1972, after two earlier and unsuccessful attempts, a seasonal feeder road linking the Hiritano Highway from Port Moresby to the border of the Bush Mekeo (Papangongo village) was finally completed. Villagers now had unprecedented access to the town, and especially to its lucrative areca and betel trade. Although these several recent innovations and changes have had a major impact on Bush Mekeo village life, it is noteworthy that almost every one of them has been short-lived. By 1974-6, the coffee and cacao were completely neglected and overgrown, the airstrip had reverted to grassland, few motorized canoes still operated on the rivers, only a couple of trade stores intermittently opened for business, and the cattle projects never progressed beyond the state of marking land boundaries. The Port Moresby areca market remained the principal source of cash, but only a few of the Bush Mekeo villages produced much beyond their own subsistence needs.6 Those who did produce a surplus often could not transport it to market except in the dry season when the market was already glutted and prices were their lowest. Given these disappointments after a decade or so of enthusiasm for economic "development," it is perhaps not surprising that village life among the Amoamo Bush Mekeo in the early and mid-1970s was perceptibly dominated by a low-key revival of traditional forms, especially as regards subsistence production, and mourning and feasting obligations and reciprocities. It can be justifiably argued that, in spite of recent changes, the postwar era has generally witnessed an extension of the prewar contact pattern. Exposure to the outside world for the Bush Mekeo has continued to be markedly more tempered and more gradual than has been the case for many other Papuan groups. Throughout their entire history, the Bush Mekeo have had none of their lands appropriated, no expatriate plantations have been established nearby, and there has been a general lack of European business and enterprise in the area. Until my family and I arrived in 1974, no European had even come to live among the people.

20

Quadripartite structures

To their own chagrin, in short, the Bush Mekeo have been historically relegated to the backwaters of Papuan development. The waves of abrupt change that struck the coast and subcoast populations under colonial rule were hardly more than ripples by the time they reached the Bush Mekeo. In most respects, villagers have yet to be brought "out of hiding" to join the rest of Papua, the nation, and the modern world.

2 Between village and bush

Bush Mekeo villagers comprehend their own location in the world and in the universe very differently from the way we Westerners might view either ourselves or them. Indeed, the Bush Mekeo see themselves and their world in quite distinct terms. It will be most useful, then, to begin the description of Bush Mekeo culture and society by examining their notions about the ordering of space and time and their own place in it (Durkheim and Mauss 1963; Evans-Pritchard 1940; Fortes 1970). I shall introduce a number of indigenous ideas that nonetheless approximate certain familiar paired concepts fundamental to anthropological thought. "Village" and "bush," for example, roughly parallel Levi-Strauss's opposition of culture with nature (1966b, 1969a, 1969b). Similarly, what I shall distinguish as "ordinary" and "extraordinary" corresponds in many respects to the Durkheimian separation of the sacred from the profane. I hope to show that human social life as the Bush Mekeo view it is predicated upon the transferral of certain objects between the village and the bush that surrounds it, and that there are two separate spheres of these transferences: the ordinary and the extraordinary. These two spheres are distinguished according to divergent temporal frames as well as by particular subdivisions of space that cross-cut the village/bush axis. At the end of the chapter, I shall argue that space and time for the Bush Mekeo represented as ordinary and extraordinary spheres of village/bush object transfer are fundamentally structured according to the bisection of dual oppositions. This initial conclusion will set the stage for my handling of other related contexts of indigenous cultural and social interrelationships, for in subsequent chapters I shall deduce structures of homologous form. Permit me one cautionary note at the outset. In certain respects, connections between some of the indigenous categories I discuss may initially contradict our intuitive English-speaking (and perhaps even our anthropological) understandings. For instance, the village is described as an "outside" place in opposition to the bush, which is "inside." This will seem all the more paradoxical as, in the language of the Bush Mekeo, the center space of the outside village is termed its "abdomen." Hopefully, this warning and my explanatory remarks in the text will prevent undue confusion. 21

22

Quadripartite structures

Village and bush - outside and inside Two distinct kinds of places, "village" (paunga) and "bush" (ango aonga), compose all the world as the Bush Mekeo view it. The village is, of course, the human place. Were it not for the human labor of clearing it out of the bush, there would be no village. Humans, say the Bush Mekeo, are "village beings/creatures/things" (paunga aunga). They live at the village and eat, sleep, and reproduce there. Indeed, the overwhelming share of daily human interactions are village affairs. Children's play, adolescent courting, adult-female domestic activities, and the public proceedings of married men are all conducted at the village. The more infrequent and spectacular events of Bush Mekeo life - marriage exchanges, installations of hereditary officers, mourning rituals and feasts, and even intertribal warfare - are planned and staged here as well. Moreover, just as the interests of humans are concentrated at the village during their lives, the soil of the village eventually and permanently encloses their bodies in burial. In short, the village is the locus of Bush Mekeo social life. But the village is not a place limited to humans. Other things are also village beings/creatures/things: domesticated animals (pig, dog, fowl, and nowadays the cat), various plants (including coconut, areca, and breadfruit), and a whole range of human-fashioned material objects (dwellings of several sorts, household implements and tools, weapons, etc.). Humans, then, are not the exclusive claimants to village status. A well-defined croton hedge bounds the periphery of the village from the other, larger part of the world - the bush beyond. The bush is divided into numerous named and geographically differentiated places: primary and secondary forest of the mountains and coastal plain, garden, grassland, swamp, and river or stream. Although humans do not live in these places, the bush provides the natural setting for other beings and things. These include the many species of wild animals (atsi), nondomesticated and domesticated plants, and mineral resources. In addition, some categories of spirit beings and dreaded human sorcerers are said to inhabit certain parts of the bush. All these are "bush beings/creatures/things" (ango aonga aunga).

The village and its inhabitants are far from self-sufficient. Although human life as the Bush Mekeo know it is predicated upon the conceptual and physical separation of themselves and their place from the surrounding bush, villagers depend upon the bush for an astonishing array of material resources. The bush serves, moreover, as the final repository for the "rubbish" or "wastes" (kamakama) of village life. Thus, various categories of village and bush things are transported between the two places despite their separation and distinction otherwise.

Between village and bush

23

These transfers between village and bush are conceptualized and ordered in terms of "inside" and "outside," by further spatial partitioning of the village and of the bush, and by the temporal regulation of the daily cycle. The language of the Bush Mekeo opposes the village and the bush as "outside" (afanga)1 and "inside" (aonga), respectively. Ango aonga, the indigenous term for bush, literally means "land inside." An alternative expression for village is ango afangai, or "land outside." As with placing anything inside a receptacle, a person going from the village to the bush "goes inside" (isa ekoko). Moving in the opposite direction from bush to village is described as "going outside" (isa ebualai). Furthermore, the creation of a new village involves clearing it "out" of the bush, as I implied earlier in this section. This construal of the village as outside and the bush as inside reverses the natural or intuitive judgment of many English speakers. For most of us, I think, the town (or city) is generally "inside" and the country is "outside." We live "in town," but upon heading for the countryside we "get out of town." Now in certain other English-speaking contexts, the reverse would seem also to hold. Rural dwellers, for example, live "in the country." But the expression "out in the country" is equally acceptable, whereas living "out of the country" (i.e., "in town") and "out in town" are less, if at all, intuitively sensical. Nonetheless, at least one context in English is comparable to the Bush Mekeo associations of bush to inside and village to outside. For English speakers, one unambiguously goes "into the woods" (or forest) and comes "out of the woods" to town. For example, Lets hide in the woods, or We're not out of the woods yet. Perhaps these familiar expressions will serve some readers as mnemonic devices in grasping how, in Bush Mekeo culture, village and bush are analogously related as outside to inside. The daily cycle and ordinary village/bush transfers In the hum and activity of village life, there is a temporal patterning and regularity that synchronize transfers of things between village and bush. The two directions of flow are linked to a daily cycle and thus segregated from one another. In the early morning, villagers remove accumulated wastes to the bush, that is, from outside to inside. As evening approaches, villagers carry fresh or raw resources in the opposite direction, from bush to village, from inside to outside.

24

Quadripartite structures

Two of the more prominent features of the morning routine involve bodily elimination and the clearing of the village. Only nursing infants, who do not yet know better, and the domesticated animals that roam the village may defecate and urinate on village grounds. All others must retreat into the surrounding bush. Moreover, this collective movement is linked to the initial hours of each day.2 With the first hint of dawn, solitary villagers in a staggered procession head for the secluded parts of the bush nearby (maka), empty their abdomens of feces and urine, and several minutes later reappear at the village to get on with the other activities of the new day. However, if urination only is called for, it is not necessary to seek such privacy - remaining in the sight of others, a man or woman needs only place him- or herself in breaks of the bounding croton hedge and aim into the bush. While the sporadic procession into and out of the bush continues, the members of each household energetically devote themselves to cutting new sprouts of kunai grass from village grounds with bush knives. After an hour or so of this, women and girls scoop the cuttings along with other discarded rubbish (areca rinds, coconut husks and shells, animal feces, food scraps, firewood chips, etc.) into piles on the flat central area of the village. The term for this clear open space free of trees, dwellings, or other structures is paunga inaenga, or "abdomen of the village."3 The females of each household then empty the village abdomen of its collected rubbish. They deftly carry the debris to the edge of the village and toss it over the croton hedge into the bush. Each village household is responsible for the grounds surrounding its house, including that portion of the village abdomen immediately in front of it. The clearing of people's and the village's abdomens of wastes therefore characterizes the early-morning routine. Late afternoon and evening contrast with morning by object movement in the opposite direction (Appendix 1). With village clearing complete by midmorning, most villagers set off for other pursuits in the more remote parts of the bush. Some members of each household head for their gardens. A few men of the village often go hunting or fishing, alone or in small groups, deep into the forest. Parties of women and girls may spend the day wading through creeks or along the river bank with their nets searching for prawns or fish. A few people will stay back at the village the old and feeble, the very ill, newly delivered babies and their mothers, brides, and those in mourning seclusion - but, for the most part, they, staying in their houses, are not to be seen. Even the pigs and dogs leave the village to forage in the surrounding bush or, in the case of the latter, to hunt with their masters in the forest. As the afternoon wears on, those who left earlier begin straggling out to the village burdened with their

Between village and bush

25

quarry: vegetables, meat and fish, firewood, and various materials for house and canoe manufacture or other village industries. During the remaining hours of evening and into the night, with the stock of resources replenished, the village and its inhabitants begin the process of accumulating new rubbish and wastes in their respective abdomens for bush disposal the next day. Women rekindle their hearths and prepare the evening meal. Married men gather on chiefs' clubhouses discussing events of the day while they wait for their wives to serve them their food. Bachelors haunt the margins of the village together hoping for the chance to impress their loves, and young children play. After the men have been fed, the women serve food to the others of their own households and to the pigs; finally, they too eat. Women frequently carry an extra bowl of cooked food to a neighboring relative's house. As darkness gradually overtakes the village, the adults relax with their talk, tobacco, and areca. The drone of voices and laughter sinks, and, eventually, everyone retires to a night of sleep. Thus, each day resources are taken from the inside bush to the outside village, and the next morning wastes of the village are sent back into the bush. Resources move in one direction, wastes in the opposite direction. But because the two movements occur in distinct periods of the day, and village wastes are thrown away immediately before fresh resources are brought from the bush, the chance for the mixing of the two kinds of objects is minimized. Moreover, resources and wastes, whether inside the bush or outside at the village, are spatially separated from one another; that is, resources are extracted from regions of the bush where village wastes are not deposited (and vice versa), and bush resources are stored in parts of the village where wastes derived from them do not accumulate (and vice versa). Village and bush are therefore not uniform places. This last point requires some elaboration. Inverted outside and everted inside By virtue of the daily transfers of objects between village and bush, outside and inside domains are bisected by a reversal or inversion of each, such that the outside village has its own inside place (i.e., an inverted outside) and the inside bush has its own outside (i.e., an everted inside). The Bush Mekeo village is ideally erected around the central, elongated abdomen. Clubhouses of the resident clan chiefs stand prominently at the ends. Domestic dwellings, platforms, and other structures are arranged in parallel rows facing one another across the width of the abdomen. The abdomen itself is entirely clear of permanent buildings and features.4 Even the towering coconut and areca palms of the village are

I

/

adjacent bush

Figure 2.1. The sphere of ordinary transfers. Bush resources —> village resources; village resources —» village wastes; village wastes —> bush wastes.

Between village and bush

27

planted behind the lines formed by the facades of adjacent buildings (Figure 2.1; cf. Hau'ofa 1981:49-76). Materials brought from the bush at evening are taken to the peripheral part of the village. Here, on the raised floors of platforms, houses, and clubhouses, the resources are processed, transformed, and consumed or otherwise utilized (Chapter 3). Only the wastes and by-products of resources originating in the bush are tossed to the ground and, in the morning, swept to the abdomen of the village. The abdomen as part of the village is outside, but in a number of contexts including this one the abdomen is regarded as inside. Rubbish swept to the abdomen goes inside (isa ekoko). The abdomen is then primarily or initially an outside place, and secondarily inside. It is as if the village were topographically inverted, turned or pushed within itself, separating and distinguishing the abdomen from the rest of the village around it. Villagers may sweep their rubbish into the abdomen, but for all that it is still outside, that is, occupying village space and not that of the bush. Designating the village abdomen as inside may appear at first paradoxical. However, the rule that enjoins excretion directly in the bush suggests that the abdomen of a human being is homologously conceived as inside the body only insofar as it is an inversion of space outside the body. If other nonbodily rubbish and wastes must be swept into the village abdomen before final deposition in the bush (I frequently wondered while in thefield),why do villagers not also deposit and collect their own bodily excreta on the village abdomen and thereby integrate more closely both processes of waste removal? The answer, I think, is that feces and urine collected in (sic) the abdominal cavity are already outside the body. By emptying their abdomens directly in the bush, bodily wastes move from outside to inside homologous with the transfer of nonbodily wastes from village to bush. In subsequent chapters dealing with indigenous theories of food and nutrition, sexuality, reproduction, and certain categories of social relationship, I shall be describing other relations whereby the abdomen (or stomach, pregnancy, womb, mother) is similarly and systemically conceptualized in Bush Mekeo culture as an "inverted outside." The bush as a spatial entity includes its own analogously "everted" region - the band of land (maka) used for waste disposal immediately surrounding the village. There is no direct transfer of things, due at least to human intervention, between this and the more remote part of the bush. Resources extracted from the latter are taken only to the peripheral inhabited village; and abdominal wastes are deposited only in the former. The absence of intrabush transference contrasts with the regular movement of things directly between the two village zones, that is, from village periphery to village abdomen. Yet, because of this, villagers indirectly

28

Quadripartite

structures

transport resources from the remote bush to the adjacent bush after they have been transformed at the village into wastes. Therefore, although wastes moved from the village to the bush (from outside to inside) reverse the direction by which bush resources are taken to the village (from inside to outside), the complete process is also unidirectional: bush resources remote bush

village resources peripheral village

village wastes village abdomen

bush wastes adjacent bush

Moreover, each crossing of the village/bush threshold is a movement from inside to outside if inverted and everted subdivisions are included: inside —» outside —> inverted outside —» everted inside The daily cycle, then, expresses a series of homologies systematically relating conceptualizations of space (village and bush, inside and outside) with things (resources and wastes): bush resources remote bush inside

village resources peripheral village :

outside

:

village wastes village abdomen inverted outside

bush wastes adjacent bush everted inside

(2) (3) (4)

Extraordinary village/bush transfers The daily unidirectional transfer of ordinary resources and wastes is not entirely comprehensive; that is, there exists another opposing sphere of village/bush intertransfer that is set apart. To the extent that the things and beings, human or otherwise, involved in daily transfers are ordinary, the beings and things implicated in this other, temporally more irregular sphere are extraordinary. Also, where everyday transfers are unidirectional, the displacements of extraordinary beings and things are hi- or ambidirectional. Nonetheless, the categories of place involved in this extraordinary sphere are homologous with those of the ordinary everyday resource and waste cycle. The village/bush duality, in other words, is similarly bisected, but along an additional spatial dimension: aboveground versus belowground. Human beings (papiau) possess either "spirits" (tsiange) or "souls" (laulau), depending upon whether the body is dead or alive, respectively. Human spirits and souls inhabit and animate bodies and their leavings, particularly the bloody ones. Because they incorporate a spirit or soul, human blood and flesh (ifa) are considered "dirty" (iofu) and "hot" or

Between village and bush

29

"potent" (tsiabu) for causing sickness, death, and other misfortunes, especially if they are eaten (Chapters 3-5). Also, a person's soul can be attacked in certain ritual contexts if a knowledgeable specialist secretly acquires some of that person's blood or the blood of his or her recently deceased relative. The blood or flesh of a dead human being can also be used in certain other ritual contexts to attack nonrelatives. Villagers never send the blood or flesh of their own bodies in any form to the bush. Rather, upon leaving the body or upon the body's death, human blood and flesh are placed and contained within certain specific regions of the village, termed "holes' (ine). In this way, villagers isolate human spirits and souls from everyday affairs and minimize the potential for misfortune. And once placed in a village hole, human blood and flesh are never casually removed. Blood and bloody tissues excreted by the living, as for example in childbirth and chronic illness, are buried in catchments dug underneath domestic dwellings. Wherever else human blood and flesh may fall on village grounds, villagers scoop up the soil with wooden digging sticks or shovels and turn it over and underground. People bury the bodies of the deceased in "graves" (ongo) dug in the soil of the village abdomen or beneath their houses.5 By contrast, resources and nonbloody wastes and excreta of daily life are not buried in these underground village holes. The village also embodies a catchment hole for human blood and flesh aboveground - the rear compartment (ialiali) of chiefs' clubhouses. For months on end, adult males who are preparing or practicing various types of aggressive ritual (war sorcery, courting, garden, etc.) and adolescent bachelors who are learning these arts seclude themselves in the compartment away from women, children, and ritually unprepared men. These male ritual initiates perform their extraordinary acts by manipulating charms, weapons, or other objects (depending upon the category of ritual involved) that are contaminated with, or contain, bloody human remains. These bloody charms and weapons are never removed from the rear compartment unless they are to be employed. Conversely, everyday resources and wastes are systematically kept out. (This aspect of male ritual separation will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5). The bush also contains a number of holes segregated from the sphere of ordinary daily transactions with the village. One category of practicing ritual specialist, the "peace sorcerer" (ungaunga) (see Chapters 5 and 6), is excluded from the compartment of the chief's clubhouse and, indeed, from the entire village. Peace sorcerers base their operations in special ritual dwellings called fauapi, which are erected away from the village in the adjoining bush (maka). Similarly to village specialists, peace sorcerers prepare, manipulate, and store their nefarious charms and paraphernalia in their fauapi dwellings. These

30

Quadripartite structures

charms and other objects include stolen bloody human remains among the critical ingredients. No ordinary villager - man, woman, or child would dare enter a sorcerers bush dwelling unless, in the case of an adult male, he first takes the appropriate and elaborate precautions. Moreover, the rules that isolate the contents of sorcerers' dwellings from ordinary resources and wastes are identical to those I mentioned earlier in this chapter concerning the ialiali compartments of peace chiefs' clubhouses. The more remote bush contains its own category of holes. These holes harbor two kinds of "spirits" (tsiange) in animal forms. The spirits of dead humans take the form of deadly poisonous snakes {afi, death adder; and auama, Papuan black snake), which live in holes under trees, rocks, or fallen logs. Another nonhuman kind of spirit, termed ongokapu, takes the form of certain animals known as faifai. Pythons, eels, catfish of several varieties, some species of frog, fresh-water prawns, and perhaps several other species are commonly regarded as faifai.6 Faifai animals, like poisonous human spirit-snakes, live in holes in the ground, or in holes underwater (beneath waterfalls, in depressions of the stream bed, under stones, or under logs left by the flood). These underground and underwater holes of the remote bush and their inhabitants are also associated with the blood and flesh of death. The flesh of poisonous spirit-snakes and faifai animals is said to be exceptionally bloody. Supposedly, blood copiously flows when they are cut open. The spirits animating poisonous spirit-snakes are, of course, those of dead humans. Ongokapu spirits offaifai animals are also associated with death. The term ongo means "grave." Also, villagers say that although ongokapu spirits in faifai animal form do not have poison like human spirit-snakes, "they have other ways of killing you." In addition, human and ongokapu spirits may both abandon their animal bodies of their own volition and become invisible. Villagers insist that ongokapu spirits are distinct from spirits of the human dead. Virtually nothing concrete is known or ventured concerning the origin of ongokapu, except that they did not originate from the death of humans. Nonetheless, ongokapu, or rather their corporeal faifai animal forms, are conceived as beings of the bush analogous to human villagers. Villagers speak euphemistically of ongokapu and faifai as "bush people" (angoaonga papiau). Among their various faifai guises, ongokapu may appear in peoples dreams as humans, but with white skins, long straight hair, a large head, or some other gross deformity. Ongokapu keep their own domesticated "pigs,"7 and, like humans, they are social beings. Villagers consider the more expansive and permanent bush holes (beneath waterfalls, deep pools in the river bed, etc.) as ongokapu "villages," and the boulders strewn nearby as ongokapu "houses." Many people have said to me they have heard ongokapu singing, dancing, drumming,

Between village and bush

31

and feasting at their bush villages like humans do at theirs. Ongokapu communicate with one another in their own spoken language, and when they appear to villagers in dreams they take human shape and speak the Bush Mekeo language. Some faifai species (python, prawn) are explicitly recognized to shed their skins and grow new ones like humans reportedly did in mythical times (see Chapters 6-8). Ongokapu sometimes evince certain humanlike emotions such as anger, much as offended human spirits of the dead do in response to human trespass and the theft of their pigs. Consequently, they too can cause villagers to suffer illness, run amok, and die. One specific illness caused by ongokapu, for example, is "python sickness."8 An invisible snake wraps itself around and constricts its victim, so movement is impossible. Similarly, when a sorcerer unearths a fresh grave, the corpse will supposedly rise and try to wrap its arms about him. Lastly, pregnant women who mistakenly eat the flesh of faifai animals risk giving birth to a faifai baby. Ongokapu are said to "spoil the baby" (imi ebalifua) in these cases, so the baby is born dead and, often, with a large head or other faifai deformity. A middle-aged woman of the village gave birth to just such a stillborn hydrocephalic faifai infant during my stay. At another village, a woman reportedly gave birth to a faifai in the form of a dead snake along with her healthy and otherwise normal baby boy. According to indigenous categories, faifai animals possess a certain limited and perverted potency for interbreeding with human females. I shall return to this issue offaifai sexuality momentarily. In sum, all the things and beings villagers associate with holes in the village and in the bush are bloody, are human or humanlike, and possess extraordinary and spiritual powers. In virtually every case it is at least implicit that the extraordinary or spiritual powers are dangerous to ordinary humans living at the village. Sorcerers and other ritual specialists, the spirits of the dead, ongokapu, human corpses, faifai, and the eviscerated blood of the latter and living humans must, therefore, be isolated in holes away from the sphere of ordinary daily village life. Aboveground versus belowground Each of the four places in the world resulting from the bisection of the village and the bush according to the ordering of ordinary resource and waste transfer has its corresponding hole or holes. Moreover, no one of the four spatial categories may have a hole appropriate to one of the others. Human villages (along with the bands of bush land immediately adjacent to them) are purposefully erected where ongokapu and faifai are known not permanently to reside. Peace sorcerers may not erect their fauapi at the village nor in the remote bush, and so on. These correspondences between categories of holes and the other categories of space are

32

Quadripartite structures

maintained in part according to a distinction of aboveground versus underground. The hole or holes appropriate to each kind of place at the village and in the bush are either aboveground or underground, but never both. Remote bush holes occupied by poisonous spirit-snakes and faifai are underground (or underwater). The peace sorcerers' fauapi in the waste-disposal region adjacent to villages are aboveground. laliali clubhouse compartments of the occupied peripheral village are aboveground. Finally, graves are dug in the ground beneath the village abdomen. Graves and catchments for human blood and flesh dug directly underneath domestic dwellings might be thought initially to occupy the periphery of the village; thus, in contradistinction to the pattern described above, the periphery of the village would appear to include holes both aboveground and belowground. But graves and catchments underneath houses are homologous rather with the ground underneath the village abdomen. Human corpses may be buried in either location without apparent discrimination, except that, when burial occurs below the village abdomen, a small house or platform is erected over it to seclude the mourners (see Chapter 7; cf. Guis 1936:127). When bodies are buried beneath peripheral village houses, mourners will occupy the house directly above. More significantly, the bloody tissues collected in holes underneath houses fall from the abdomens of postpartum and chronically ill villagers straight down. Corpses and bloody tissues alike, in other words, fall into underground holes directly beneath village and bodily abdomens. Although domestic dwellings and the rear compartments of chiefs' clubhouses9 stand together in the periphery of the village, holes dug in the ground for catching blood and flesh under the former are homologous with holes underneath the central village abdomen. This homology, moreover, is comparable to the daily emptying of feces and urine from human abdomens directly into the bush rather than first into the village abdomen (see above; cf. Young 1971). Thus, there is a hole, or category of holes, associated with, but set apart from, each of the four bisected village and bush places. The locations of these holes above- or belowground (or underwater) serve to bisect the village and the bush along a distinct vertical dimension that, although it involves extraordinary beings and things as opposed to ordinary ones, is nonetheless congruent with the horizontal spatial orientation of ordinary resource and waste location and transport: ., inverted everted ... . #1 inside : outside :: ., . ., (4) remote bush

'

peripheral village

"

L outside village abdomen

'

inside adjacent bush

,~v

Between village and bush

33

bush village village bush ,^ underground aboveground underground aboveground Just as village and bush each have their own inside and outside regions, village and bush each possess corresponding holes both aboveground and belowground. Furthermore, moving from left to right, it will be noted that underground and aboveground holes are horizontally next to one another just as each inside and outside place as defined in the ordinary daily sphere is next to its opposite. Although holes of all categories are spatially isolated from one another and systemically set apart from the sphere of ordinary, everyday village life, there is a certain amount of interchange and transfer between them. Extraordinary beings and things occasionally move or are moved from one kind of hole of the village or the bush, aboveground or belowground, to another. This has been implied a number of times already in the foregoing discussion. Peace sorcerers leave their fauapi bush houses near the village and steal human flesh and blood from graves and catchments underneath human and village abdomens. Peace sorcerers also require faifai animal tissues from remote bush underground holes for some of their deadly practices, and it is claimed they also keep poisonous snakes in their fauapi houses and entertain spirit-snakes there. When a peace sorcerer temporarily retires from his practice, he stores his various materials in his chiefs clubhouse compartment, or he buries them secretly underground in the remote bush. As sometimes happens, especially since the introduction of shotguns, a peace sorcerer shot wandering away from his fauapi is buried in a grave dug in the remote bush. Under certain conditions, a ritual specialist isolated in a clubhouse compartment at the village will go live with a peace sorcerer in his fauapi. Bachelors and widowers in the clubhouse compartment, who have ritually prepared themselves for courting ritual but who lack the appropriate spells or charms, are often reputed to serve as helpers or apprentices of peace sorcerers who will help them in return. Indeed, any adult male who takes the ritual steps enabling him to enter the ialiali may also (and with relative safety, apparently) enter a peace sorcerer's fauapi. Like peace sorcerers, ritual specialists of the peace chiefs clubhouse compartment must have the bloody remains of poisonous snakes or faifai animals for some of their techniques. In one kind of destructive garden magic, the specialist plants faifai remains in the ground of remote bush gardens, for example. War sorcerers and other specialists secluded in clubhouses do use certain kinds of bloody human excreta (e.g., desiccated human penis, semen, menstrual blood), but these are neither taken from graves nor from catchments underneath houses of the village. Finally, while I was living at the village, a faifai (python) was once killed trying to raid a village chicken coop. Its

34

Quadripartite structures

body was immediately buried in a grave dug underneath the village abdomen. These examples illustrate a number of significant aspects about the transfer of beings and things between different holes of the extraordinary realm. First, only extraordinary beings such as sorcerers, ritual specialists, and human or nonhuman spirits intervene in or instigate these events - not ordinary villagers, who are actually threatened by their occurrence. The man who buried the python after it was killed, for instance, was a peace sorcerer, although he was not practicing at the time. Also, in the particular case of a sorcerer shooting reported to me, the accused murderer was widely regarded in the area as a peace sorcerer himself. Second, this extraordinary sphere is distinctly "male" or "maleish." Only adult male humans may become sorcerers or any of the other kinds of ritual specialist I have mentioned who practice in either bush fauapi or clubhouse compartments. Faifai species and spirit-snakes have undeniably phallic connotations. They possess elongated bodies, live in holes, and have as regards the former a certain sexual potency with human females. Although the ordinary sphere of daily resource and waste transfer is not exclusively "female" or "femaleish," it is the only context of the two whereby women actively participate, intervene, and predicate object movement from place to place (e.g., carrying garden produce home to the village, preparing food, sweeping rubbish into the village abdomen, and depositing it in the bush). Conversely, in the extraordinary-realm, village women are only passively involved; they are always acted upon by men and other maleish beings, never the reverse. I shall elaborate upon various additional aspects of this gender distinction in relation to the ordinary and extraordinary spheres at a number of points in subsequent chapters. Third, transfers of extraordinary beings and things must cross over the space ordinary humans occupy in the daily routine. As these beings and things move from hole to hole, they present a danger to the human population of the village. Whenever this occurs, villagers take immediate action to return the threatening beings and things to holes where they will not present further danger. On the other hand, transfers of ordinary beings and things from place to place in the daily cycle presume movement entirely exclusive of holes. Thus, the ordinary and the extraordinary spheres are maintained separate, or set apart from, one another. Fourth, movements between holes are ambidirectional, not unidirectional like transfers of the ordinary sphere. The diverse kinds of transfers between holes listed above illustrate that extraordinary beings and things may move in either direction, that is, parallel with resources and wastes or in reverse. Also, transfers between holes are not necessarily ordered in linear sequence. Some of them "skip" or "short-circuit" steps of the daily

Between village and bush

35

resource/waste spatial progression. Faifai that have left their underground bush holes and come to the village, for example, are killed and then buried in ground beneath the village abdomen rather than in an aboveground hole (i.e., clubhouse compartment) of the village periphery. Fifth, like the ordinary sphere of transfer, the extraordinary sphere has a beginning and an end, but in the latter case this boundary exists at the village rather than in the bush. In the daily routine, recall, resources are taken from the remote bush to the village, then finally deposited in the bush adjacent to the village. There is no direct, ordinary transfer between remote and adjacent bush zones. In the extraordinary sphere, objects are moved in both directions between remote and adjacent bush, but not in either direction between village periphery and village abdomen. This is because ritual specialists in clubhouse compartments do not rob graves in order to acquire their bloody human remains. A war sorcerer, for example, must take the penis for his charm from the corpse of an enemy slain in battle, that is, from a dead body that has not yet been buried underground. Nor is there any burial in the village abdomen of things and beings taken directly out of the clubhouse compartment. This distinction of extraordinary as opposed to ordinary village/bush relations is represented in Figure 2.2. The coincidence of this boundary at the point where the village is bisected will have significant implications in the context of social relationships conceived through males as opposed to females (Chapters 6-8). In these several respects, the sphere of extraordinary transfers between holes oppose and contradict the ordinary, everyday, unidirectional sphere of resource and waste transfer. Holes are spatially set apart from everyday village life, and the two realms are ordered and conceptualized in contradistinction to one another. Nonetheless, the two are homologously structured, that is, according to the bisection of the village/bush duality: remote bush :

.,? village

::

ii abdomen

:

adjacent bush (3)

Ordinary Sphere . ., inside

:

(daily time, hole-less places) ., inverted outside :: ., outside

:

everted . .i inside

Extraordinary Sphere (irregular time, holes) bush village village bush underground ' aboveground " underground ' aboveground. In more abstract terms, both spheres take the same form: X' : Y" :: Y' : X"

/AS

(4)

,_*

(1)

remote bush

r

adjacent bush peripheral village

f

village abdomen

ialiali

> fauapi

i

S-4

\

\ \

v\

J

j H grave

i

Ti i /

faifai house/village

Figure 2.2. The sphere of extraordinary transfers. Bush belowground -^a—^village aboveground; village aboveground <—b—•> bush aboveground; bush belowground ^c—> village belowground; village belowground ^d—» bush aboveground; bush belowground - ^ e ^ bush aboveground.

Between village and bush

37

I must emphasize that the form of homologously bisected dualities I have revealed here also structures the categories and relationships of the remainder of Bush Mekeo culture and society. This assertion must, of course, be tested against empirical observation, and it is to this task I devote the following chapters. However, even at this preliminary stage of the investigation, there is one sense in which it is possible to foresee this conclusion. The village and the bush, as well as the spheres of ordinary and extraordinary transfers that together crosscut or bisect them, are utterly comprehensive. Beyond them - in the world traditionally occupied by the Bush Mekeo - there is nothing else. All seemingly "other" contexts of Bush Mekeo cultural and social life are in essence themselves integral aspects of the same categorical relations. Whatever additional relationships, discriminations, boundaries, or oppositions the Bush Mekeo have carved out of their experience, all are embedded in and part of the same unified reality, and they in turn are structured accordingly. Moreover, if the culture of the Bush Mekeo is indeed so ordered and systematic, as I am assuming, there should be a certain homogeneity of cultural or semantic content as well as structure whether the specific contexts in question are village versus bush, ordinary versus extraordinary, or, as we shall soon see, body versus nonbody, plant versus meat food, bloody versus nonbloody, food versus sex, female versus male, kin versus nonkin, and so on. In the next chapter, keeping these ideas in mind, I shall expand upon the various conceived subsidiary processes by which villagers transport objects between village and bush and transform them from diverse sorts of ordinary resources into equally diverse kinds of wastes.

Body and cosmos

The ordinary and extraordinary spheres in Bush Mekeo culture are predicated upon the bisection of the inside bush and the outside village. However, every spatial transfer in either of these spheres involves the bisection of yet another inside/outside duality - the human "body" (kuma). As the world is composed of village and bush, there is an outside to the body and an inside. I suggested twice earlier that the outside and the inside of the body have inverted and everted parts - abdomen and excrement, respectively - that are homologous with the village abdomen and the adjacent bush. Thus, everything transported between village and bush either remains outside the body, goes into the body and stays there, passes to the abdomen, or comes out of the body. Moreover, bodily tissues set apart in holes of the village and bush are extracted from holes of the body. The overall purpose of the present chapter, then, is to delineate the various aspects of this homology between conceptions about space and the body in both the ordinary and extraordinary spheres of Bush Mekeo culture. My handling of indigenous conceptualizations of bodily processes will be considerably more complex than was the case with village/bush relations. This is unavoidable because every object transfer relating to spatial distinctions also involves a corresponding transformation or change of state, and these transformations cannot be described independent of how they relate to the inside and outside of the body. Also, the body, or rather distinctive aspects of the body, is variously conceived as either the agents of transformation, the objects of transformation, or, in some cases, both. Therefore, it will be necessary to distinguish systematically among numerous transformers and the correlative transforms in a certain variety of contexts. Most critically, the interrelation of these contexts involving conceived bodily states and processes will be dependent upon the distinctions among four categories: "sweet" (mitsia), "unsweet" (etsiu), "hot dirt" (iofu tsiabu), and "cold dirt" (iofu ekekia). Sweet and unsweet as two types of the clean1 are opposed by the two types of the dirty - hot and cold. 38

Body and cosmos

39

The clean, the dirty, and the human In at least two significant respects, sweet and unsweet are differentiated from one another relativistically. First, all living creatures in the world are visualized as distinguishing between what they regard as sweet and "like" (mitsia), and what they consider unsweet and "dislike" (etsiu). But what is sweet and unsweet varies between species and, in certain conditions, even between members of the same species. The village as a place to live is generally sweet to humans and domesticated animals, for example, and the bush is unsweet. However, undomesticated animals find the bush sweet and the village unsweet. So among all the diversity of living beings, the sweet and the unsweet vary with regard to spatial and ecological habitat, food preferences, intraspecific behaviors, interspecific interactions, night-versus-day activity, weather, season, and so on. The complete depiction of Bush Mekeo animal taxonomy, then, would partly involve discriminations according to complementary sets of sweet and unsweet for each animal category.2 Second, sweet and unsweet are relative as to context. With respect to the same being or category of being, a thing may be sweet in one context but unsweet in another. A mans food and his axe, for example, are both sweet to him, but only in different situations. Food is sweet for eating, the axe is sweet for working in the garden. But axes are unsweet for eating and food is unsweet for felling trees. Furthermore, food and axes are both unsweet as objects for sexual gratification; here, by contrast, a man's wife is sweet to him. Thus, categories of animals and humans are differentiated from one another according to contrasting sets of sweet and unsweet predispositions relativistically ascribed to them in all contexts of their respective lives. This extreme relativity of sweet and unsweet might give the misleading impression that the Bush Mekeo categorization of humans and animals (and particularly the boundary separating them) is arbitrary or capricious. For two reasons, however, this is not so. First, what is sweet or unsweet to each category of human being - male and female, young and old, kin and nonkin, married and single, etc. - is standardized by traditions (kangakanga) inherited through many generations from the ancestors who lived long ago. Whenever I queried a cultural observance, the first and seemingly automatic explanation informants offered was simply, "That is the way our ancestors [au apoutsi, or "old men"] did it." To do as the ancestors did is itself sweet to their present-day descendants. When villagers portray in their actions sweet and unsweet dispositions appropriate to their respective statuses, it is "good" (verlo); when they do not, it is

40

Quadripartite structures

"bad" (abala). The sweet and the unsweet carry a strong component, then, of the ideal and the moral for human beings. The only animal species that possess inherited traditions are the faifai and ongokapu, or "bush people." In this respect, the sweet and unsweet constellations of humans and bush people are distinct from all other living creatures. Second, the conceiving of an opposition between clean and dirty absolutely differentiates human beings from all animals, including bush people. Other creatures of the village and bush are seen by villagers to show no sign of distinguishing dirty things from clean things. Human feces and flesh, for example, are cold and hot dirt, respectively, and therefore are entirely inedible to humans. Yet, if and when they have the opportunity, village pigs and dogs will eat either, as well as the flesh and feces of their own species, as if they were sweet. All other nonhuman living things including faifai animals supposedly fail to distinguish any category of dirt beyond the clean. Thus, the conceptualization of the dirty in opposition to the clean serves to uniquely differentiate human beings from all nonhuman beings. In this connection, it should be noted that for humans there is generally no relativity between hot and cold dirt comparable with that of sweet and unsweet. Hot and cold dirty things are uniformly designated as such for all humans in all contexts but one: mortuary feasting. I shall return to this important point later in this chapter and in Chapters 7 and 8. With these preliminary remarks about the contrasts between sweet, unsweet, and hot and cold dirt kept in mind, I turn to the relations between conceptualizations of the body and of the world. Village resources: sweet/unsweet The village and its resources are sweet to human beings. The bush and its resources, on the other hand, are generally unsweet. Nonetheless, villagers are largely dependent upon the unsweet resources of the bush to provide them a considerable portion of their total assemblage of sweet village resources. Appendix 1 gives a partial but fairly representative list of these village resources. Even articles that the Bush Mekeo do not make themselves from local bush resources - clay pottery, some kinds of shell and feather ornament, polished stone axes and adzes, etc. - are recognized as originating in the bush elsewhere. Unsweet bush resources are adapted to village life by the application of human "skills" (etsifa), which transform them into sweet village resources. But because there are different kinds of village and bush resources and human skills are so diverse, there are many different ways of transforming the unsweet into the sweet. Nonetheless, among all these there are fundamentally two general ways that unsweet things are ordinarily transformed into sweet things and integrated into village life.

Body and cosmos

41

Villagers are scrupulous about what they will and will not allow to enter their bodies. Some unsweet bush resources are made sweet for humans and passed into their bodies by "eating" (earn), "drinking" (einu), or "chewing" (euwa), for example. In this context, it is significant that "cooking" (emitsi) is the predicate of sweet (mitsia). Other unsweet things are also made sweet, yet they remain outside the body and are not ingested. In this distinction, things sweet for putting inside bodies are unsweet for keeping outside, and things sweet when kept outside bodies are unsweet for ingesting. The variety of things sweet for eating, drinking, and chewing is impressively large, and includes the many kinds of garden food and animal meat along with water, tobacco, salt, milk, areca nut, betel pepper, lime, and certain ritual and curative substances (see Appendix 2).3 Of these, only the first three - "plant food" (fokama), "meat" (tsitsi), and "water" (ivi) - are considered critical for daily bodily sustenance. The daily meal, even to the most discriminating palate, ideally consists of chunks of plant food and meat boiled and served in water and coconut oil. Every household strives to sustain its members and guests in this way as often as possible. Plant food, meat, and water are "big" or "important" (apoutsi) and unlike the other kinds of ingestibles because the human body is understood to require at least minimal quantities of each to survive. Although villagers often remark that sorcerers and other ritual specialists "eat or drink nothing" as part of their rigorous "tightening"4 procedures, they will acknowledge that even these practitioners must eat some food ("just one bite") and drink some fluid. This also suggests that no one of the three staples is a possible substitute for either of the other two. A person could eat enormous quantities of plant food with water, for example, yet die of meat starvation. This will be explained more fully in a subsequent section of this chapter. Food and water transformations

The everyday method of "boiling" (eanga or epanganga) chunks of plant food and meat in clay pots transforms these "raw" (maisa) staples from unsweet to sweet so they can be eaten. However, boiling is only one skill among four of food preparation. Staple vegetables and meat can also be "roasted" (euma) directly over smoldering coals. Some kinds of plant food can be consumed without prior cooking once they "ripen" (eaipa) and mature. Most meats can be more or less indefinitely preserved by constant "smoking" or "drying" (eongongo). Thus, to comprehend the indigenous processes of transforming the unsweet to the sweet in the context of ingestion, it will be necessary to first compare these four skills with one another and later examine their contrasting implications for bodily suste-

Quadripartite structures

42

cold/hot (no fire/fire)

„ sweet (wet, hot)

unsweet (wet, cold) "

Figure 3.1. Water transformation: boiling. cold/hot (no fire/fire)

unswe

(wet, cold)

»sweet (dry, hot)

Figure 3.2. Water transformation: roasting.

nance. The analysis that follows has been most significantly inspired by Levi-Strauss's article "The Culinary Triangle" (1966b; see also Tambiah 1968a). The features that critically differentiate sweet from unsweet as regards food preparation and transformation are hot versus cold in addition to wet versus dry. The simplest place to begin is with water. Water is "wet" (ekome) and may be drunk whether it is hot or cold. But villagers will rarely drink plain cold water because it is also unsweet. To be sweet for drinking, water must be boiled as the broth in which food is cooked (or nowadays as tea), or it must be taken from coconuts or wild banana stalks that have been roasted. With boiling, water becomes sweet and remains hot (Figure 3.1). With roasting, however strange it may seem, water becomes dry as well as sweet (Figure 3.2). Whether by boiling or by roasting, unsweetened cold water is transformed to sweet hot water by "fire" (ito). Fire is hot, and it is this "hot" that changes the unsweet cold water to sweet hot water. It is also significant to note now, for I shall return to this point later in the chapter, that sweet and unsweet states of water are temporary. Allowed to cool away from fire, the sweet water reverts to being cold and unsweet. Most raw staple foods, both plant and animal (Appendix 3), can be

Body and cosmos

43

cold/hot (no water/water)

sweet

unsweet

(dry, cold) ^

{wet, hot)

Figure 3.3. Food transformation: boiling. cold/hot (no fire/fire)

unsweet

> sweet

(wet, cold)

(dry, hot)

Figure 3.4. Food transformation: roasting.

transformed from unsweet to sweet when they are boiled, together or separately, in water. After the hot of fire transforms the water from cold to hot and unsweet to sweet, the hot of the water transforms the chunks of food from cold to hot and unsweet to sweet. Like the water they are cooked in, boiled foods are wet. Also, boiled foods allowed to cool before they are eaten will revert to being cold and unsweet, but they will remain wet (Figure 3.3). Nearly all the categories of plant and animal food that are ordinarily boiled before eating may also be roasted (Appendix 3). Here, the hot of the fire directly transforms the pieces of raw cold unsweet food to hot sweet food that is edible. Unlike food transformation by boiling, with roasting there is no mediation by hot water. Thus, roasted plant food and meat are dry. When left uneaten, roasted foods will remain dry, but they revert to being cold and unsweet to humans (Figure 3.4). The remaining two categories of food processing - ripening, and smoking or drying - are not sweet/unsweet transformations as such (i.e., by mediation of hot), but they do involve analogous changes of state from wet to dry, or dry to wet. In smoking or drying, butchered meat (never plant food) is placed atop a wooden platform approximately a meter or so over a low, smoldering fire. The fire is hot, but the meat remains cold and unsweet, or un-

44

Quadripartite structures cold/heat (no fire/fire)

unsweet (wet, cold)

• unsweet (dry, cold)

Figure 3.5. Food transformation: drying transformed. Smoking merely dries the meat. Indeed, smoked meat is considered still raw. In this instance, fire's temperate "heat" (pangaingai), not its hot (tsiabu), dries the meat. Smoked meat must be subsequently boiled in water like other raw meat for it to be transformed into hot, sweet, wet, and edible food (Figure 3.5). Villagers cultivate a number of plant foods that may only be eaten raw (coconut, pineaple, paupau, watermelon, sugarcane, almond fruit, ripe banana, etc.). The fruit of these plants is unsweet, cold, dry, and inedible while it is immature, but allowed to ripen in the garden it becomes sweet, villagers say. This requires some qualification. According to my fieldnotes, it is the "sun" (tsina) that produces this change of state, and I once presumed (quite erroneously, I think) it to be the hot (tsiabu) of the sun rather than its heat (pangaingai) that ripened the plant foods. Lacking further and more conclusive data, this interpretation must be revised because ripening, like smoking but unlike cooking, does not make these foods hot (tsiabu); they remain cold.5 The fully ripened fruit of these plants, I am arguing, is said to be "sweet" (sic) only insofar as it is wet. Otherwise, it is untransformed and unsweet. Here is an instance of the relativity of sweet and unsweet, so I must be extremely cautious. In its unripened, unsweet condition, the fruit is dry. Ripened, it becomes merely wet. This change corresponds to the simultaneous change of seasons. Villagers clear their gardens at the beginning of the "dry season" (April to October). After the fallen trees have been fully dried in the sun toward the end of the dry season, they are burned off. At the onset of the "wet season" (November to May), the gardens are planted. The fruit of edible raw plants thus ripen during the season when there is comparatively less direct sunlight but more heat from the sun as well as more moisture. It would seem that ripened fruit is changed from dry to wet by the heat of the sun, according to the culture, much as wet raw meat is dried by the heat of fire, except in reverse (Figure 3.6). Wet ripened plant food and dry smoked meat are therefore both cold and unsweet.

Body and cosmos

45

cold/heat (no sun/sun)

un sweet <

. unsweet

(dry,coId)

(wet, cold)

Figure 3.6. Food transformation: ripening.

In a later section of this chapter, I shall discuss another critical feature of the category sweet as regards food and water, namely, hot for blood synthesis. The fact that ripened plant food and smoked meat are alike cold and unsweet in this context and boiled and roasted foods are not, according to indigenous Bush Mekeo views, supports my interpretation above regarding ripened foods as unsweet. The four categories of food processing and transformation can be distinguished from one another in the following terms: Sweet roasting : boiling hot dry : hot wet

:: ::

Unsweet ripening : smoking cold wet : cold dry

(6)

(7)

The sequence of categories in these homologous statements is intentional. I shall return to this point as well as to other relations of these culinary skills once I have described the indigenous theory of digestion and blood synthesis. For the moment, it is merely necessary to note that sweet foods (roasted and boiled) are transformed by hot (tsiabu) without and with water, respectively; and unsweet raw foods (ripened and smoked) are changed by heat (pangaingai) with and without water, respectively. Nonfood transformations: work and nonwork Many categories of unsweet bush resources that are transformed into sweet village resources are not cooked. Nor are they intended for eating or for other kinds of bodily ingestion. Nonetheless, hot associated with skills other than cooking is still the active, transforming agent. In their pristine bush condition, stone, clay, shell, animal skin, feather, bone, bamboo, wood, bark, leaf, vine, and so on are unsweet to villagers, but upon their retrieval these things can be made into village resources that are sweet to human beings (tools, weapons, charms, pottery, dwellings, canoes, etc.). Moreover, these categories of village resources are, with respect to manufacture and use, all sweet outside as opposed to inside

46

Quadripartite

structures

the body. Each inedible village resource is made and used according to specific skills. However, these skills are distinguished from one another as either "work" (pinaunga) or "nonwork" (aisepinaunga, or simply etsifa "skill").6 This distinction also applies to skills employed in culinary processes described in the last section. Boiling food and smoking meat are work skills, and roasting and ripening are nonwork skills. Other categories of work and nonwork skills are listed in Appendix 4. Work and nonwork skills are both hot, but they differ critically in how the body participates. With work, the body becomes hot through its own exertion, and this exertion directly transforms unsweet things to sweet things. With nonwork, on the other hand, bodily exertion is cold or irrelevant for transformation. The significant transformative hot of nonwork is nonbodily. This contrast between hot bodily work and hot nonbodily nonwork transformations can be best illustrated by comparing examples of each: house building, and hunting with bow and arrow, respectively. As a man's house shows signs of age and delapidation, it becomes unsweet to him. The idea of a fine new house becomes correspondingly sweet. The members of his household, sometimes with help from relatives, gather building materials from the bush: timber for pilings and frame, palm or bamboo for flooring, split sago branches for walls, kunai grass or sago leaf for roofing, and split vine for joining all the various parts. These bush things are initially unsweet. Gathering, transporting, trimming, fitting, and binding them are separate skills. By virtue of their planned combination, hot bodily exertions transform the unsweet bush materials into a sweet village resource: the complete dwelling (Figure 3.7). The tools and other implements the house builders employ in their work are also sweet village resources that have been transformed by bodily work skills in their manufacture. Thus, the sweet products of work conserve the hot of the active body and are themselves hot for transforming other unsweet bush resources to sweet village ones in appropriate work contexts. To any European who has tried it, stalking game in the tall rain forest (even nowadays when shotguns are used) is hardly less a physical effort than any one of the skills employed in building a house. To Bush Mekeo conceptions, however, hunting of all kinds is nonwork. As he stalks through the steamy forest, the hunter's body does become perceptively warm, but this is only temperate heat (pangaingai) and not hot (tsiabu). The hunter successfully retrieves game another way, with another nonbodily hot. It was explained to me this way by one of the best hunters in the village: Pigs [and other game] fear people. People are unsweet to them. That is why they run away . . . so he [the hunter] possesses hot (tsiabu) hunting charms (kabukabu

Body and cosmos

47

cold/hot

unsweet <

•sweet

(bush resources)

(village resources)

Figure 3.7. Work transformation: house building.

^ebodV

cold/hot

unsweet

(toward humans)

sweet

(toward humans)

Figure 3.8. Nonwork transformation: hunting. tolina) and spells (menga). . . . The pig's unsweet becomes sweet toward humans and it does not run away. It does not matter that you go walkabout every day. You must carry hot charms or you will never shoot a pig.

This skill of hunting then consists in manipulating nonbodily hot objects outside the body upon other objects likewise outside the body. Hunting spells and the ingredients of charms are secret. The charms are made from certain combinations of dried bush leaves (fuka). The ingredients are unsweet to the hunter for eating but sweet to him for hunting, and they are carried outside the body around the throat. The manufacture of charms and the learning of spells are nonbodily or nonwork skills. And the bush resource they transform - the pig - is unsweet to the hunter for ingestion; that is, he will not eat his own prey but distributes it instead among his relations. Hunting and other kinds of nonwork contrast with work skills such as house building in that the relevant source of hot is nonbodily. Nonetheless, and this is a critical point, nonwork not less than work presumes a distinction between the inside and the outside of the body. For work, hot emanating from inside the body, or of the body itself, transforms things outside the body from unsweet to sweet. With nonwork, hot manipulated

Quadripartite structures

48

cold/hot

unsweet

> sweet

(raw food)

(cooked food)

Figure 3.9. Culinary work transformation: boiling food.

cold/hot

unsweet 4

(raw food)

> sweet

(cooked food)

Figure 3.10. Culinary nonwork transformation: roasting food.

outside and apart from the body transforms things that are likewise outside the body from unsweet to sweet (Figure 3.8). The categories work and nonwork relate back to food transformation. Fire and the sun are not the only sources of hot and heat involved in culinary processes. Bodily work (gardening, carrying, skinning, the making and fueling of fire, and the other manual exercises of cooking) and nonbodily nonwork skills (especially gardening ritual) are also hot for transforming inedible unsweet plant food to edible sweet plant food. Similarly, game becomes sweet edible meat partially by the work of carrying, butchering, and cooking after the nonwork of hunting has been successful (Figures 3.9 and 3.10). Bodily work and nonbodily nonwork alike are hot for transforming unsweet bush resources into sweet village resources of both ingestible and noningestible categories. The question remains: What criteria differentiate those things that are sweet for taking into the body and those that are sweet in contexts outside the body? The answer will involve examining indigenous theories of bodily digestion and blood synthesis according to still other transformations of unsweet to sweet by mediation of hot, and relating these back to the culinary skills of preparing and transforming food.

Body and cosmos

49

Food digestion, blood synthesis, and dirt

Cooking transforms inedible unsweet food and water into sweet edible food and water outside the body. Once these transformed substances are ingested, they are themselves hot for transforming the inside of the body, or rather specific parts of it, from unsweet into sweet. It is in these terms that villagers express hunger, thirst, and satiation. In the language of the Bush Mekeo, "hunger" for plant food is expressed literally as "abdomen unsweet" (ina etsiu). After eating hot transformed plant food, the abdomen becomes sweet (ina mitsia), and hunger is "satiated." "Throat unsweet" (also etsiu), or "meat hunger," independently becomes "throat sweet" (also mitsia) when hot transformed meat is eaten. Villagers will often communicate their sensations of plant food and meat hunger and satiation by gesturing to the appropriate parts of the body - abdomen and throat, respectively. Thirst for and satiation with hot boiled water are perceived in the throat, like meat, but not entirely in terms of unsweet and sweet. Instead, "thirst" is expressed as "throat closed" (also ekupu), and lack of thirst or "satiation" as "throat unclosed" or "open" (aiso aisekupu). Nonetheless, drinking hot sweet water does transform the inside of the body generally (aonga) from unsweet into sweet (Figure 3.11). Transformations of the body's abdomen, throat, and inside by ingested hot food and water are homologous with transformations of food and water outside the body by hot fire, work, and nonwork. These internal bodily transformations are likewise only temporary. Whenever hot transformed plant food, meat, and water are not ingested over several hours, the abdomen, throat, and inside of the body, respectively, revert from the sweet to the unsweet condition. Untransformed (i.e., raw, ripened, or smoked) foods and water are cold rather than hot. Even if they are eaten in substantial quantities, abdomen, throat, and bodily inside will remain unsweet. Noningestible things that may be transformed and sweet to humans in other contexts external to the body (e.g., a tool, house, article of clothes) are likewise cold for transforming the body and its parts to sweet. Also, because each category of sweet ingestible is hot only to the specific body part, no one of them can be substituted for one of the others. Some of all three sweet and hot staples are thereby regularly required to sustain the life of the body. Hot transformed plant food, meat, and water, beyond assuaging hungers and thirst, sustain the life of the body by mixing together to form "blood" (ifa), or, perhaps closer to the indigenous view, elements of plant food and meat mix with water to form blood. In contrast, unsweet things such as untransformed food and cold water and noningestibles like tools and weapons are cold for synthesizing blood. The blood within one's body is sweet, and the more blood the more sweet the body. Blood is itself one

Quadripartite structures

50

cold/hot (no fire/fire)

MEAT

hot sweet (cooked meat)

cold unsweet (raw meat)

• throat sweet

throat unsweet <

cold/hot (no fire/fire)

cold unsweet (raw plant food)

PLANT FOOD

* hot sweet (cooked plant food)

outsidebodv^ ~uSde body abdomen unsweet

abdomen sweet

cold/hot (no fire/fire)

cold unsweet (fresh water)

. hot sweet (boiled water)

body inside unsweet

WATER

o u t s idebody_

body inside sweet

Figure 3.11. Sweet/unsweet body transformations.

kind of meat or flesh (tsitsi), but distinct from the rest in that the latter are made from it; that is, sweet blood is hot for making all other meat tissues. Blood transforms them from unsweet to sweet, and they too increase, so the body contains a great deal of wet, hot, bloody flesh. By restricting the

Body and cosmos

51

cold/hot (no fire/fire)

cold unsweet (raw food & water)

^

hot sweet (cooked food & water)

cold unsweet (throat/ abdomen/ body inside)

hot sweet (throat/ abdomen/ body inside)

cold unsweet (lack of blood)

^ hot sweet (abundance of blood)

hot sweet (abundance of flesh)

cold unsweet (lack of flesh)

cold unsweet (non-work)

- ^ hot sweet (work)

&\&

Figure 3.12. Blood and flesh synthesis: capacities for work and nonwork.

52

Quadripartite structures

intake of transformed food and water, less hot blood will be synthesized, and there will be less of all other hot sweet meat tissues. The body generally becomes unsweet, thin, and dry. When the body possesses plenty of blood, it is hot for work. When it lacks much blood, it is cold for work but nonetheless capable of performing nonwork skills. Left entirely without any one of the hot transformed staples over a prolonged period, there will be no blood, and then the body will die (Figure 3.12). This last point suggests that illness and death are reversals of the bodily states of health and life defined by an abundance of blood. This can be demonstrated through consideration of the category dirt, mentioned only briefly at the opening of this chapter, and its relation to the processes of digestion and excretion. Villagers acknowledge that all bodily excreta are by-products or residues of the things that previously went into the body. These excreted things are all termed "dirt" or "dirty" (iofu). Villagers distinguish between those dirty things that are bloody and hot, and those that are bloodless and cold. The members of these two categories are listed in Appendix 5. Cold bloodless feces and urine are regularly deposited in the bush. Other bloodless dirt of the body (sweat, areca spittle, nail parings, hair, etc.) that are not excreted from the body's abdomen are swept into the village abdomen and then discarded into the bush.7 Blood does not ordinarily emerge from the body, but when it does it is dirty and buried underneath the village abdomen. Dirt, whether hot and bloody or cold and bloodless, is not the only indigenous category of inedibility. Unsweet things, it will be remembered, are also inedible. However, unsweet things are either transformable into sweet ingestibles or they are transformable and sweet to villagers in contexts other than ingestion. Inedible bloody and bloodless dirt in all its forms is a final state - the temporal end product of transforming and ingesting food and water and excreting their residues. Nonetheless, the categories bloody and bloodless dirt are conceptually related to the categories sweet and unsweet. For although dirt must never be eaten by humans, villagers told me numerous times, "dirt is very much the same thing as food." This paradox can be explained by comparing indigenous ideas regarding the differential effects of dirty, sweet, and unsweet things upon the health, illness, and curing of the body. Health, illness, and curing Transformed outside the body, hot sweet food and water synthesize the body's blood after they are eaten. The body's blood is also hot and sweet as well as wet. Blood and the meat or tissues it synthesizes, in turn, remain inside the body and are not ordinarily excreted. Therefore, inges-

Body and cosmos

53

tion of all three staples - plant food, meat, and water - transforms them, or certain elements of them, into the blood and flesh of the inside of the body: Outside body hot sweet food and water

Inside body > hot sweet wet blood and flesh

The indigenous Bush Mekeo definition of bodily life or health, of course, involves precisely this transformation of outside ingestibles into inside blood and flesh. However, the life and health of the body predicates a separate transformation whereby things inside the body are excreted to the outside. Even foods and water transformed by the hot of fire contain some unsweet residues that are cold for synthesizing blood. These residues are ordinarily excreted from the abdomen to the outside of the body as cold feces and urine as well as the other types of bloodless dirt. The eating of cold unsweet bloodless elements of transformed food and water is comparable in its effects upon the body to eating raw foods and water that have not been transformed by fire. The eating and drinking of these cold unsweet substances together will not synthesize blood for the body, so they will be excreted as cold bloodless dirt. But because cold water is a member of this category, the body will become temporarily wet. The excretory transformation that is subsidiary to health and life, then, involves regular excretion of cold and bloodless dirty wastes: Abdomen (inverted outside) cold unsweet food and water

Body inside-out (everted inside) > cold bloodless dirt

In the condition of health or life, then, the four categories of things associated with blood synthesis and excretion correspond to particular conceptualized spaces or regions of the body: inside blood

: outside : sweet food

:: inverted outside :: unsweet food

: everted inside : bloodless dirt

(4) (8)

Health or life also constitutes a temporal state. Occasionally, villagers become "ill" (eisaoa; literally, "see inside"), and sometimes that illness can be cured, restoring the body to health. But other times illness results in death. Thus, illness, like health, is a temporal bodily state. Villagers diagnose illness by observing the excretion of blood from the body. In the state of health, a persons blood is hot and sweet while it is inside the body. Once blood comes out of the body during illness, it immediately becomes dirty. This dirty blood, however, remains hot because it can transform the health of still other persons into illness, and they in turn will also excrete hot dirty blood. According to native etiology, excreted human blood8 can cause illness

54

Quadripartite

structures

in one of two general ways: (1) by ingestion as a "poison" (ipani), or (2) by its ritual manipulation with respect to the intended victim's captured "soul" (laulau). In either case, the hot bloody dirt reverses the bodily transformations conducive to health, as described above. It will be instructive to examine both techniques of causing illness in this light. After hot dirt is administered as a poison and the patient or victim consumes cooked food and water, the hot sweet elements of the latter are not synthesized into blood of the inside of the body. Instead, they are excreted from the abdomen as blood. Simultaneously, cold unsweet elements of ingested food and water are not excreted as feces and urine but rather are retained inside the body. Here it must be noted for later reference that with illness the inside of the body becomes dry for the lack or loss of wet blood, but it becomes internally wet with the fluids that would otherwise be excreted as urine. Thus, illness by poisoning is precisely the reverse of health: Outside body cold unsweet food and water Abdomen (inverted outside) hot sweet food and water inside : outside bloodless wastes : unsweet food

Inside body > cold wet bloodless dirt Body inside-out (everted inside) > hot dirty wet blood :: inverted outside : everted inside (4) :: sweet food : bloody dirt (9)

Hot dirty blood can also contribute toward illness in humans when it is ritually manipulated from afar, that is, when the intended victim does not actually ingest it. There are a number of conceptually distinct skills of this sort, but they all have certain features in common. I shall use the skill termed mefu to illustrate that the bodily transformations these techniques are thought to cause are identical with those of poisoning. With mefu, the soul of the victim is captured in a "bottle" (immature coconut shell, gourd, clay pot) with a specimen of his or her bloodless bodily dirt. The bottle also contains the hot bloody dirt of a dead human being. As the bottle is hung over a fire, the hot dirty blood attacks the captured soul; and as the soul suffers, so too does the body exactly as described above when it is poisoned. The victim will excrete blood and retain the substances that would ordinarily be excreted as feces and urine. Some mention too should be made here concerning indigenous skills for curing illness, for these demonstrate conclusively the opposed conceptualization of health and illness. Most native "medicines" (mulamula) are plant materials extracted from wild species of the bush. Raw areca nut, ginger, and chili, however, are also medicines, and they are cultivated in most household gardens.

Body and cosmos

55

Knowledge of which plant species may be used as medicines is generally secret. Medicines, including areca, 9 ginger, and chili, are ordinarily unsweet; that is, they are cold for synthesizing blood and sustaining health as they are not food. Yet, medicines are hot and sweet when they are administered to people who are ill. From what I have been able to gather, most medicines are boiled in water before they are consumed. Chili and ginger, however, are both hot when eaten raw. Medicines work by cooling the foreign blood that caused the illness and, in the case of poison, purging it from the patient's body in his/her urine. Blood in the urine is a sign of recovery from illness. Once the foreign bloody dirt has been cooled and removed, the body will revert once more to the condition of health. The patient will thereafter cease excreting his/her own blood and resume excreting accumulated bloodless wastes, which will include the medicines as well: Outside body Inside body hot sweet medicine and water > hot sweet blood Abdomen Body inside-out cold sweet medicine and water -» cold wet bloodless dirt inside : outside :: inverted outside : everted inside (4) blood : sweet medicine :: unsweet medicine : bloodless dirt (10) To inflict illness on another person by the practice of mefu, the victim's soul is initially captured by the theft of a trace of his or her cold bloodless dirt, such as an article of worn clothing, discarded areca rind, cigarette stub, etc. These leavings, usually termed "skin dirt" (fa iofu), can be used to bring about illness only in the person they were obtained from. Also, bloodless skin dirt cannot be used as a poison on anyone, because it is cold. In these respects, a person's cold bloodless dirt is distinct from his or her hot bloody dirt. It will be worthwhile to pursue this issue in this and related contexts, for by doing so it is possible to establish fully the significance of the indigenous distinctions between dirty and clean, and hot and cold. Villagers do not eat the bloodless excreta of their own bodies, or for that matter of animals, because, as they explain it, these things are dirty. Lacking blood elements of sweet food, cold bloodless dirt cannot contribute to blood synthesis or sustain bodily health. However, neither can it alone cause illness when it is ingested or heated in isolation over a fire by a mefu practitioner. Bloodless dirt is thus also cold in the context of causing illness. Nonetheless, it can aggravate or complicate an illness that is already in progress when it is eaten, just as it can be mixed with hot bloody dirt as in mefu to the same effect (i.e., the victim's body will

56

Quadripartite structures

assimilate rather than excrete it). Cold bloodless dirt is effectual for causing illness, therefore, only when it is mixed with foreign hot dirty blood inside the victim's body, or outside the victim's body but inside a sealed bottle. If cold bloodless dirt is eaten by a person who is not already ill, it merely will pass out the body from the abdomen as do cold unsweet elements of food and water. But unlike the latter, cold bloodless dirt alone cannot even make the body wet with water. For these reasons, apparently, there is no risk to humans when they eat the flesh of village pigs and dogs that customarily do eat the feces of toddlers left on village grounds or of adults deposited in the bush. None of the cold bloodless dirt these animals eat is incorporated into their flesh. However, villagers take every precaution that their domesticated animals never have the opportunity to eat hot bloody dirt in any form, human or faifai in origin. This is, in fact, one native explanation for burial underground. Village animals10 are themselves immune to eating hot bloody dirt. But humans who eat the flesh of animals containing it are not. Although bloodless dirt is cold for causing illness, as are sweet and unsweet things, villagers say they do not eat the former because they can never be certain merely by looking that it does not contain traces of hot bloody dirt. In this respect, then, cold bloodless dirt is distinct from both categories of clean things - sweet and unsweet. Moreover, villagers never know for certain that they are not already in the initial stages of an illness. Here, cold bloodless dirt is not eaten so that fewer complications will arise, if such is the case. In this additional respect, cold bloodless dirt is distinct from sweet food and water but like unsweet things; that is, untransformed food and water and clean noningestibles can also aggravate an illness if they are eaten, though perhaps to a lesser extent. Turning away from this last point, it is now appropriate to compare the notion of cold bloodless dirt with that of "rubbish" (kamakama). Inedible village resources, as described above, are the products of transforming bush resources from unsweet into sweet by mediation of the hot of work and nonwork. These sweet objects are hot in their own right for use and transformation in other kinds of work and nonwork. However, just as the hot of sweet transformed food is only a temporary state, transformed noningestible objects are only temporarily sweet and hot for their intended uses. Things break, wear out, deteriorate, and so on. In this process, human artifacts do not merely revert to an unsweet condition. Through their use, these things accumulate deposits of dirt of either the hot bloody or bloodless kinds. Weapons of war and ritual charms of certain categories are dirtied by contact with human or faifai blood. Other things - tools, clothes, string bags, areca rinds, culinary

Body and cosmos

57

articles, etc. - accumulate an outer deposit of cold bloodless skin dirt. And it is these that are distinctly termed rubbish. In my example of house building earlier in the chapter, the old dilapidated house is not just unsweet to its occupants; it is dirty to them. Moreover, as village resources become dirty either way, they become dry. So, although noningestible village resources do not pass into and out of human bodies, in use they are transformed from clean to dirty. However, it is the kind of dirt they accumulate - hot blood or cold bloodless - that determines whether they are regarded as hot or cold for causing illness and death, and correspondingly whether they are to be removed from the village abdomen to the bush as rubbish or isolated within holes of the village. The total range of material objects that are not ingestible by humans is therefore categorized and ordered with relation to space and time as edible things are with respect to the human body. It is in these terms that I wish to pull together my conclusions for this chapter. Body homologies

I must first return to the paradoxical assertion that "dirt is very much the same sort of thing as food." On the one hand, hot sweet food and water and hot bloody dirt are temporal and final states, respectively, of one another. The former are transformed into blood in the state of bodily health. With the advent of illness or death, the blood is excreted as hot bloody dirt. Both, moreover, are hot, yet possess transformative capacities that are the reverse of one another in terms of health and illness causation when they are consumed. On the other hand, cold unsweet food and water and cold bloodless dirt are also temporal and final states of one another, respectively, but both, being cold, lack transformative capacities in the contexts of health and illness when they are ingested. In my comparison of these four categories, I have tried to show that each is associated with a particular region of the body in the circumstance of health and with a different part of the body in the condition of illness. Bodily health and illness, then, are the reverse of one another: inside body : outside body :: inverted outside : everted inside (4) Health blood : sweet food :: unsweet food : bloodless dirt Illness bloodless dirt : unsweet food :: sweet food : bloody dirt

(8) (9)

I have noted above that when humans ingest substances of these four categories, the relative wetness or dryness and hot or cold of the body are variously affected with the absorption or loss of blood or water. It is in

58

Quadripartite

structures

these terms that the four culinary processes are homologous with the categories sweet, unsweet, hot dirt, and cold dirt. The culinary skills can be characterized: Boiling food makes it hot with wet blood elements. Ripening food makes it cold with wet water. Roasting food makes it hot and dry with loss of blood. Smoking food makes it cold and dry with loss of water. By their effects upon the body, the four categories of ingestibles and noningestibles can be characterized: Sweet food and water make the body hot with wet blood. Unsweet food and water make the body cold with wet water Bloody dirt makes the body hot and dry with loss of blood. Bloodless dirt makes the body cold and dry without water. Therefore, culinary categories and categories of substances relative to the body are homologous with one another in terms of the oppositions wet versus dry and hot versus cold, and with the indigenous conceptualization of the body itself as a bisected duality. inside body roasting blood hot dry

: outside body : boiling : sweet : hot wet

:: inverted outside ripening :: :: unsweet :: cold wet

: everted inside : smoking : bloodless dirt : cold dry

(4) (6)

(8) (V)

By now it must be abundantly clear that Bush Mekeo views concerning the human body are also homologous with those concerning the world or cosmos. The duality of the body's inside and outside is bisected through eversion and inversion, respectively, as is the bush/village duality. Thus, the four categories of space and the things associated with them described at length in the previous chapter can be added to the above series: remote bush bush resources

peripheral village village ' resources

'

village " abdomen village " wastes

adjacent bush bush ' wastes

,,

'

,-,

The opposed states of human bodily health and illness can now also be shown to correspond with the ordinary and extraordinary spheres of village life. In the sphere of ordinary spatial and temporal relations, resources and wastes lacking human blood are passed between the inside bush and the outside village. As an aspect of those same daily transfers, humans in a state of health likewise pass edibles and excreta that lack human blood into and out of their bodies. On the other hand, the inside of the body is the reservoir and source of the one substance - human blood

Body and cosmos

59

- that, once it emerges during illness, is distinctly associated with holes of the extraordinary spatiotemporal sphere. Human blood outside one body and passed into another, or the mixing of bloodless human excreta with foreign human blood in holes, are extraordinary events no less than is the transferral of hot dirty human blood between holes. In any case, there are material crossovers between the inside of bodies and the inside of holes. Moreover, these extraordinary events or transfers are all similar in their irregularity as regards time. The conceived opposition of health and illness also corresponds to the opposition between the ordinary and the extraordinary in terms of one final distinction: the directionality of transformation or transfer. Substance transformation in the processes of healthy blood synthesis and bloodless excretion are unidirectional, as are village/bush transfers of the ordinary sphere of space and time: Everted Inverted inside outside Inside Outside bush resources —* village resources —» village wastes —» bush wastes unsweet food —» bloodless dirt sweet food blood <—

Conversely, transformations indicated by the indigenous theory of illness are ambidirectional like extraordinary transfers between holes: Inside bush underground <

i inside body

t

Outside village • aboveground

t outside body <

Inverted Everted outside inside village bush underground *—• aboveground

t > abdomen

bloodless excreta

I

From what would appear to be every significant dimension of contrast and opposition, indigenous Bush Mekeo ideas about the human body constitute a cultural representation of the cosmological ordering of space and time, and vice versa.

4 Sex, procreation, and menstruation

Bush Mekeo views of human sexuality and reproduction are closely tied to conceptualizations of the spatiotemporal order and the indigenous theories concerning food, blood synthesis, excretion, health, and illness. Conception, for example, involves transfers in and out of bodies and transformations between sweet and unsweet as well as the distinction between clean and dirty. Also, babies are conceived in the abdomens of their mothers. However, the processes of sexuality and reproduction as the Bush Mekeo know them seem initially to contradict the relations between the categories I have revealed in the contexts previously described. Oral ingestion of any hot bloody dirt is said to lead to illness and even death. Semen is one such poison and will produce the same undesired result if it is eaten. Yet, semen ingested by a woman in sexual intercourse may well have the exact opposite effect; that is, it can result in the conceiving of a child or new life, rather than illness or death. This is one further way dirt, at least in the form of male semen, may paradoxically sustain the life of a body, much as may food, even though the two are categorically opposed in the context of eating. Furthermore, the native understanding of menstruation is implicated in this particular contradiction. According to villager claims, women will not menstruate spontaneously but only as a result of sexual intercourse. This chapter attempts to clarify these issues and resolve the apparent contradictions among them by articulating the explicit ideological tenets of the indigenous theory of human procreation. Sexuality in the ordinary and extraordinary spheres

"Semen" (ilaila) contains, or is constituted of, "male blood" (ifa manguenga). Like other bloody substances of the human body, semen is regarded as wet, hot, and dirty. And consistent with categorical distinctions of space and time, semen is never ordinarily deposited inside the bush. This prohibition extends even to the performance of otherwise legitimate sexual intercourse between spouses in the bush away from the village. Villagers claim that men and women are most cold or vulnerable to the 60

Sex, procreation, and menstruation

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hot of sorcery at the moment of coitus. Certain kinds of peace sorcery involve capturing the victim's soul in a bottle; from the bottle, the blood and spirit of a dead human are ritually induced back into the victim's body.l During sexual intercourse, the bodies of the male and female are open, allowing the transfer between sorcerers charm or bottle and their own bodies. Supposedly, a sorcerer haunting the bush will not attack when his intended victim is in the company of even one other person, for then his efforts will be in vain. But the mating couple in the bush is easy prey. Married men and women need never take this risk in their gardens or elsewhere in the bush, for they may engage in sexual intercourse in their houses of the village where they are insulated from the approach of sorcerers. This does not mean all sexual unions outside marriage must occur in the bush, however. Single girls and their lovers (whether men married to other women, or bachelors) may also sexually open their bodies at the village. A man must sneak into a girl's mosquito net at night after others in her household have fallen asleep. Only the scandalous and socially disruptive adulterers (i.e., men and their lovers who are married to other men)2 lack an opportunity to unite sexually at the village. Therefore, adulterers have no choice but to "do like pigs and dogs" in the bush. But they do so at the risk of their lives. Except for adulterers, then, human sexuality does not violate the ordinary spatial relations that restrict bloody residues of the human body to the village. However, it seems that semen is transferred between holes and bodies of the extraordinary sphere. My data are incomplete on this score because much of the relevant information is secret, but it was suggested to me that semen is used in the ritual charms or bottles of some sorcerers and other practitioners (see Williamson 1913:274). One possibility is that peace sorcerers ritually acquire semen when they catch an adulterous couple mating in the bush, as described above. In any case, semen captured by sorcerers will be taken to their respective aboveground holes (fauapi bush houses or ialiali clubhouses at the village) for manipulation and storage before it can be ritually introduced into the bodies of other villagers as hot bloody poison.3 Thus, adulterous sex and the theft of men's semen by ritual specialists belong to the extraordinary sphere of object transfer. Ordinary sexuality, particularly between married persons, however, is symbolically tied with the ordinary daily activities surrounding food, eating, and excretion. A woman's vaginal secretion (ivi, or "water") is dirty, but it is neither hot nor bloody like semen. It is cold and bloodless. Still it is dirt, so villagers claim they practice no form of oral sex for fear of eating either kind of dirty thing. Nonetheless, villagers copulate in the same place they store, cook, and eat food - inside their domestic dwellings. Moreover, it is immediately adjacent to the household hearth that women give birth and endure the many months of the postpartum memengoa (see

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below and Chapter 5). It may seem curious that the Bush Mekeo, who are so particular as regards what they eat and do not eat, should so casually prepare and eat their food in the same place dirty sexual fluids of intercourse and parturition are released from their bodies. People prepare food and eat with their hands. During the periods of married life when a husband and wife are sexually active with one another,4 the wife is expected to cook food for her husband. So husband and wife, especially the latter, must take precautions that their hands are not contaminated with sexual dirt. Mates simply do not handle one another's genitals in the act of sex. Thus, sexual and food exchanges between husband and wife coincide spatially and temporally, but they are isolated from each other with respect to their bodies. Sexuality and bodily transformations

Although sexual fluids are dirty, sexuality in other respects involves categories of, and transformations (or the absence of transformations) between, sweet and unsweet. The act of adult coitus is sweet for both males and females, whereas abstinence is unsweet. Indeed, it is human adult heterosexuality only that is seen as sweet. Sex among children, between adults and children, among adults of the same gender, and between humans and animals is unsweet. However, among adult humans of opposite gender, intercourse is ideally sweet only with nonrelatives, that is, with persons who are actual or potential spouses. Conversely, sex is unsweet between men and women who are classified as kin or relatives and prevented from marrying by the rules of exogamy.5 My extended examination of the categories sweet and unsweet in contexts other than sex (e.g., cooking, eating, blood synthesis, excretion, work, nonwork) drew upon the conceptions of hot or transformability, and cold or nontransformability. Hot and cold are also involved in the distinction of sexual sweet and sexual unsweet. Adult humans of opposite gender are generally hot for transforming one another's unsweet condition (as a result of prior abstinence) to sweet. Children, persons of the same gender, and animals are sexually cold in this sense. Similarly, adult oppositegender nonrelatives are sexually hot to one another, and relatives are sexually cold. Later chapters dealing with kinship, clanship, marriage, and mortuary ritual will explore in depth the latter dimension of sexual transformability versus nontransformability with respect to relatives and nonrelatives. Here, I shall concentrate instead upon the indigenous conceptualizations of bodily sweet/unsweet transformations predicated by the act of heterosexual congress between adults who are assumed to be nonrelatives and married, and upon the implications these notions have for procreation. Villagers describe the physical sensations of sexual intercourse and

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abstinence according to the same category distinction - sweet versus unsweet - they use for food satiation and hunger, but with respect to a different part of the body - the "skin" (fanga). In the condition of sexual abstinence or quietude, the skins of men and women are unsweet. The act of sexual intercourse transforms their skins to sweet. Then, after a while, the sweet skins will revert to the unsweet condition of abstinence. With cooking, it is the hot (tsiabu) of fire (ltd) that transforms unsweet inedible food and water, or food alone, into sweet edible food. With sex, there is also a "fire"; that is, the term for "vagina" in the language of the Bush Mekeo is ito, also. In addition, as mentioned above, women's vaginal secretions are water. When a woman is not engaged in sex, her vagina is cold. But with the exertions of sexual penetration, her vagina becomes hot, transforming her skin and the skin of her mate from unsweet to sweet. Apparently, the bodily exertions of the sexual act (etsita) are not a "skill" (etsifa) of either the work or nonwork types, but linguistically at any rate "sex" and "skill" do appear to be related (see Chapter 3). The hot of sex possesses additional transformative capacities on the bodies of men and women that relate directly to procreation, and the same category distinctions can be seen again. However, sex is here the inverse transformation of eating. By eating hot cooked food, the body synthesizes sweet blood and flesh that remain inside the body. Conversely, the hot of sex transforms the sweet for the body's internal blood to unsweet, so male and female excrete semen and womb-blood, respectively, into the "womb" (imi afunga; literally, "child's place") of the latter's abdomen. In this sense, sex is homologous with illness. Sweet is transformed to unsweet so blood is excreted from, rather than retained by, the inside of the body of male and of female. Nevertheless, in certain other respects, sex is significantly distinct from illness, as it was defined in Chapter 3. It is in this context that the apparent contradiction of women ingesting hot bloody and dirty semen is partially resolved. First, the male's semen as well as the female's wombblood go from the inside of their respective bodies to the women's abdomen, which is outside (inverted outside) her body. Technically, then, semen and womb-blood are not excreted to the everted inside of either their bodies, as blood is during chronic illness. Second, the male's ejaculated semen is not strictly inside the female's body like poisons that have been orally ingested and cause illness; his semen, once more, is outside (inverted outside) her body. Lastly, the loss of male and female bloods from the inside of bodies in coitus is not in the initial case the result of either ingesting hot bloody dirt or of ritually manipulating it external to the body with personal bloodless leavings. The secretion of womb-blood to the woman's abdomen is not a direct consequence of insemination per se. Rather, both transfers are the joint consequence of body transformations activated by the hot of sexual exertions upon the woman's vagina.

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Quadripartite structures

My comments below concerning menstruation will add further clarity to this issue of the conceived relations between sex and illness. Procreation versus menstruation Although sex with respect to the bodies of the mating couple reverses the process of synthesizing blood from food yet is distinguished from illness, sex is nonetheless homologous with blood synthesis or body sustenance and the health of newly conceived infants. According to the indigenous theory of procreation, a human infant is "begun" or "conceived" (engatna) by the mixing of equal quantities of father's and mother's sexual bloods. As is fairly common elsewhere in Melanesia, the father's semen is understood to dry, solidify, or coagulate the mother's wet amorphous wombblood and to give form to the fetus (Chapter 5; Mosko 1983). It will be remembered that the hot sweet blood that sustains the human body after birth is synthesized from the proportionate mixing of two distinct categories of food - meat and plant food - containing elements of blood that have been transformed by fire. The transformation of plant food and meat when they are mixed together in water by boiling is a woman's skill. The transformation of food separately without water by roasting over fire is a man's skill, but, alone, roasting is cold for synthesizing the body's blood or transforming it from unsweet to sweet or from cold to hot. In procreation, equal proportions of drying male semen and amorphous female womb-blood are mixed together with water (vaginal secretion) and transformed together by the hot of sexual exertions of the woman's fire-vagina to create the blood and flesh of a human body - the newly conceived infant. Neither semen alone nor womb-blood alone is hot for procreation. Therefore, with respect to the body of a human fetus, sex is homologous with blood synthesis and life or health consequent to eating food. These ideas concerning procreation are closely connected to the indigenous theory of "menstruation" (ngaua eisa; literally "sees the moon"). Informants scoffed at my arguments that a single act of coitus, or even several acts performed sporadically, is sufficient to impregnate a human female. Instead, they claimed, a great many acts of sexual intercourse are necessary before the mixed sexual bloods are hot or "enough " (ekaina) for conception. Sex performed only intermittently is cold or "not enough" (aisekaina) for conception, and thus the sexual bloods will come out of the woman's abdomen as she menstruates. A couple must then reinitiate the process of accumulating enough hot semen and womb-blood in the woman's abdomen to make a child. When a couple engages in sex with enough intensity, the woman will not menstruate. The semen and womb-blood will remain in her abdomen, and, after three "moons" (months) of intense sexual activity have passed without menstruation, she will be acknowledged as "pregnant" (inaenga or inainga, or "in her abdomen").

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As bloody hot semen does not emerge from inside a man's body spontaneously, neither do babies nor menstrual blood from a woman's abdomen. On the one hand, some six months 6 after a woman is declared pregnant, she can expect to give birth. Sexual bloods accumulated in the woman's abdomen are hot for making a baby, and thus they are retained by her abdomen. While the fetus is being conceived and afterward during the woman's pregnancy, however, cold water (amniotic fluid) also collects in the amniotic sac. When the sac breaks, the cold water cools the hot of the baby and associated tissues so they leave the mother's abdomen. In addition, certain delivery and postpartum skills, termed memengoa, are applied to the same effect. Menstruation, on the other hand, which occurs when conception, pregnancy, and birth do not, seems to be conceptualized in similar terms. Although indigenous views preclude the notion of "Virgin Birth" (Leach 1966b), they also rule out the possibility of virgin menstruation. It is argued that women do not menstruate except as a consequence of sexual intercourse, which is cold, not enough, or insufficient to achieve conception and pregnancy. My informants stated that prepubescent girls do not menstruate because they have not yet initiated sexual relations. One man explained it to me this way: Before a girl's breasts enlarge, she does not menstruate. She is not sleeping with any lovers. When her breasts do enlarge, bachelors will begin courting and using their love charms on her. [With courting ritual] one bachelor will change her mind away from the words of her fathers and brothers, so she will secretly admit him to her mosquito net at night after the others are sleeping. Afterward the girl will menstruate. So when the people see a girl's breasts grow, they know the bachelors will court, and she will sometimes let one of them sleep with her. If she does not copulate too much, she will not become pregnant. She will only menstruate. Everyone knows single girls are having sex. It is also claimed that menstruation is "like illness but not 'true' [or real] illness," although menstruating women excrete blood. One way true illness originates is from the ingestion of foreign hot dirty blood that transforms both the victim's blood from sweet into unsweet, and cold bloodless residua of digestion from unsweet into sweet. Hot blood and dirty semen will cause true illness in precisely these terms if they are eaten. The transformation that generates menstrual blood, however, seems to be somewhat more complicated. As a woman participates in sexual intercourse, semen deposited in her abdomen is technically outside her body. The hot of intercourse itself - not the hot of semen - causes her to transfer her own womb-blood to her abdomen. Because semen and womb-blood are both hot, they remain together in the abdomen until they are cooled. Unfortunately, I did not ask my informants for detailed

66

Quadripartite structures

clarification on this point. I strongly suspect, however, that collected semen and womb-blood are cooled like the hot and fully developed fetus by cold water, but of another sort. Women generally are described by villagers (male and female alike) as cold and wet, whereas men are comparatively dry and hot (see Chapter 5). After participating in sex, assuming there is no conception, a woman will menstruate. As menstruation approaches, her body becomes increasingly wet with fluid; she bloats. This retained fluid ("cold water?") is lost approximately at the time she menstruates. Therefore, it seems as though cold water retained inside the woman's body may be eventually released to the abdomen, where it cools the accumulated hot sexual bloods. Thus, they become unsweet to her body and come out of her abdomen, just as amniotic water cools the hot fetus and placenta immediately before birth. If this bit of speculation does indeed correspond to the native view, then it can be understood why menstruation (and child-birth, for that matter) is not true illness: first, because semen and womb-blood contained by a woman's abdomen are outside, not inside, her body; second, because neither condition requires techniques of curing in order to evacuate the foreign blood or restore health; and third, because illness-causing blood that emerges from the body with the cooling water of urine is considered a sign of curing rather than continued illness. I should mention that the one question for which I have been unable to find a satisfactory cultural answer, based upon my data, is how villagers account for the temporal connection between the menstrual and lunar cycles. Otherwise, a number of additional observations are consistent with the above conceptual relations between menstruation and sexual intercourse. Aside from the pleasurable or sweet aspect of intercourse, married couples typically want many children7 and actively strive in this direction at the appropriate times. The quantity of semen that must be deposited in the wife's abdomen over three months to conceive and so avoid menstruation is considerable. Yet, husbands and wives are not sexually active with one another for most of their married lives. A woman must not have relations with her husband while she is pregnant, nursing, or menstruating. At these times, the husband may continue his sexual activity, but it must be with other women (particularly another wife, or single girls or widows who are not in any of the same conditions). Most men, however, have only one wife, and move to the chief's clubhouse at night to sleep upon their wives' pregnancies.8 Older, more conservative men of the village still maintain that a man and a woman who sleep together, yet claim they have no sex, are "lying" (bifonga). Supposedly, no one can resist this temptation (or transformation). Fathers of young husbands thus chase their sons away and force them to sleep at the clan clubhouse as

Sex, procreation, and menstruation

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soon as their daughters-in-law become pregnant. Once enough semen has been deposited for conception to be assured, no more must enter a woman's abdomen. And, of course, she will not menstruate. A woman's sexual abstinence continues long after parturition, and, again, according to Bush Mekeo culture, menstruation does not occur. Birth and postpartum techniques (memengoa) mentioned above help force the baby, placenta, and birth-blood out of the mothers abdomen. This process of evacuation, however, continues until the child is weaned. It is imperative that parents in the meantime refrain from sexual congress for several reasons. First, the semen of the husband can spoil the mother's milk and make the nursing infant ill. Second, birth-blood clinging to the skins of mother and infant can make the husband seriously ill if he accidentally ingests any of it following physical contact with them. Third, the husband would traditionally devote the postpartum period to ritual pursuits that typically involve the handling and manipulation of such other hot dirty and bloody substances as ingredients of charms. Traces of these potential poisons remain on his skin. In the act of sex, they could inadvertently enter his or his wife's open body and make either or both of them seriously ill. Or, even more dangerous to the health of wife and child, birth-blood on their skins could later be mixed with the other substances of the man's ritual charms. Should he then use these charms, his wife and child would also be attacked according to the principles of mefu ritual, as previously discussed. Still other observations are relevant to the prohibition of sexual intercourse during pregnancy and following birth. Over my stay in the village, I gathered the distinct impression that many women try to extend the nursing of their infants for as long as possible, or rather for as long as their husbands will permit them. Some women admit that they are reluctant to wean their babies because the experience is so painful to them (i.e., the mothers). Bush Mekeo mothers wean their babies "cold turkey," as we would say, by rubbing chili juice on the nipples. Chili is hot and quickly transforms the child's sweet regard for mother's milk9 to unsweet. Married men, by contrast, seem typically anxious to resume sexual relations with their wives. At least from what I was able to observe, it is at the husband's insistence that nursing is terminated and the reproductive cycle reinitiated. The couple now risks, of course, the chance that the woman will menstruate as a consequence of sexual intercourse. But if there is enough semen deposited in her abdomen, she will conceive instead. These aspects of the sexual prohibition lasting from conception through weaning will be described more systematically in the next chapter. For now, it is merely necessary to note that, while husband and wife do not have sexual relations, according to the culture there will be no menstrua-

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Quadripartite structures

tion and there will be no procreation. However, once sexual relations are resumed at other times, there are two possible results: (1) the conception of a human fetus, but no menstruation, or (2) menstruation, but no conception. Women must not menstruate It is implicit in these indigenous beliefs about sexuality and reproduction that village women can pass their entire lives without ever excreting menstrual blood, at least theoretically. This should not be altogether surprising, because menstruation among women of preindustrial societies is evidently quite rare (Harrell 1981). Indeed, it is of critical significance to all Bush Mekeo villagers that women do not. Women traditionally lack sop (soap) for washing hot dirty menstrual blood from their hands. This poses a potential threat to the women and to all others, particularly the men. As it was told to me, "We [the men] never know for sure what they [the women] have been touching." Men even insist that women serving food carry the bowls above waist height to ensure that none of the rubbish from their grass skirts, perhaps containing traces of menstrual blood, falls into their food. Disgruntled or adulterous wives are notorious for poisoning their husbands by putting menstrual blood into their food. For this reason, men who are suspicious of their wives will not eat the food they cook. Women themselves are caught in an additional and somewhat different dilemma. They must not handle or cook food while they menstruate, but they must at the same time keep the fact of their menstruations secret. A single girl conceals her sexual liaisons from her elder brothers and parents to avoid a beating upon discovery. Her declining to cook food for men, which she is expected to do each day, is tantamount to admitting menstruation and, therefore, recent sexual encounters. Married women along with single girls must also be very circumspect. From the time they were very young, they were warned by their mothers that men of the village are constantly on the alert to acquire menstrual blood for their courting charms. If a man includes a particular woman's menstrual blood in his charm and attempts to use it in courting, she will become gravely ill and die. Married women, like single girls, essentially announce to one and all that they are menstruating if they cease cooking and carrying food to the men for no other apparent reason (i.e., illness, pregnancy, postpartum seclusion). To make matters even more awkward for the women, there is no culturally prescribed place where they may safely dispose of menstrual blood. It might be predicted that menstrual blood should be buried underground at the village as other hot bloody and dirty human tissues are. But because even domestic dwellings are raised off the ground on posts,

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the woman who tries this may be easily discovered. Whenever I inquired of female informants what they did with their menstrual blood, I received evasive replies. Many village men say they do not know what women do with menstrual blood, except that they hide it. A few men ventured that women collect the blood in dry leaves and secretly bury it nearby in the bush.10 If so, the disposal of menstrual blood contradicts the category distinctions by which the ordinary and extraordinary spheres of village/bush transfer are ordered. Not only would bloody human excreta be thereby transported to the bush, they would be buried in an underground hole of the adjacent bush. Clearly, from the perspectives of men and women alike, the best cultural solution to the problem of what to do with menstrual blood is simply to ensure that women do not menstruate in the first place. Indigenous conceptualizations provide for this ideal. Unmarried sisters and daughters need only be prevented from sexually entertaining lovers at night. The situation with wives is more complicated, but to the same effect. They must abstain from sex at the inception of pregnancy until the child is born, nursed, and weaned. Then they must go the other way, indulging in sexual relations with their husbands with enough intensity to ensure conception and pregnancy once more. And this is precisely what we find, as discussed at length in Chapter 5. The story of Amaka Thus far, by examining villagers' explicit views and responses, I have tried to show that the apparent contradiction, whereby women's health is not threatened by sexual transfers of semen, is resolved in the culture of the Bush Mekeo by two alternate and opposed outcomes - reproduction or new human life, on the one hand, and menstruation, with its potentiality for generating illness and death, on the other - such that ideally the former and never the latter occurs. These relations are expressed rather explicitly in the mythical tale of Upstream Amaka (Amaka Kaenga) and Downstream Amaka (Amaka Tsibo). My analysis of this myth will conclude this chapter. One day long ago, upstream Amaka [AU] was fishing in his canoe for meat for his wife and child when, in the afternoon, he became tired. He tied his canoe to the shore and went to sleep. During the night, the river flooded and swept the canoe downstream. By morning, AU had drifted to where the river nears the coast and slows. Here, his canoe gently bumped along the shore. AU awoke and saw a garden planted there. He walked into the garden and he saw downstream Amaka [AD]. The two men asked each other their names, as they had never met before, and discovered that they were namesakes (wau). So the two men started calling each other, "Ah, my namesake" (a usage of endearment). AU explained that he lived "up there" and had drifted down in his canoe. AD

70

Quadripartite structures

called his wife and told her to prepare food for his namesake. She skinned and sliced a taro and laid it on the ground to be warmed by the sun. AD's wife did not cook the taro; she served it raw. AD told AU to go ahead and eat the food his wife had "cooked" [sic] for him. AU said to wait a moment, that he had to defecate first [he was lying]. He went to the bush and made a fire. Quickly the bush caught fire. When AD and his wife saw the fire, they were very afraid. AU returned and told them not to be afraid, for it was only fire (ito). They must put the taro into the fire to cook it. AU gave AD and his wife some of the cooked taro, and they ate it. Not having eaten cooked food before, the two of them vomited. Thereafter, when they ate cooked food, however, they did not vomit it up. Then AU told his namesake he wanted a chew. AD gave him areca nut and betel pepper, and then he inserted his limestick into his wife's vagina (ito) and passed it to AU. AU again excused himself to go to the bush, and secretly he used some lime powder (apu) hidden in his hair instead to chew with the areca and betel. When he came back to the garden, his mouth was bright red. AD saw the red spittle drip out of his mouth, and he screamed in fear, "Namesake, blood is coming out of your mouth." AU told him not to be afraid, it was not blood. Then AU explained how to use lime rather than his wife's vagina to chew. While the two men sat chewing, AD's wife, who was pregnant, went into labor. Her husband took a bamboo knife to cut open her abdomen and take out the baby. This was how babies were born according to the downstream custom. As he approached his wife, AD started to cry. AU asked him why he was crying, and AD explained what he was about to do. AU told him to stop and see what he could do. He brought a short stick and told the woman to sit on it while he squatted behind her, squeezing her abdomen to force the baby out of her vagina. Then AU boiled some water. He told AD he must not do any more than this, and he told AD's wife she must do all the memengoa things - wash her body and the baby's skin with the hot water, rub her abdomen with a heated bamboo tube to force out the remaining afterbirth, cut the umbilical cord with bamboo knives, etc.11 "Do all these things," AU told AD, "and you can keep your wife instead of killing her when she gives birth. And so this is how the people learned about fire, chewing, and birth. The two male characters in this story are in certain respects equated as one person. In others, however, they are systematically differentiated and contrasted as two. They are both named Amaka, and, upon meeting, reciprocally assume the egalitarian namesake relationship. But the two previously lived unaware of, and apart from, one another. Both AU and AD possess skills that employ hot or heat in contexts where men interact with their wives: transforming food, chewing, and delivering babies. Yet the respective skills of the two men differ. AD eats food warmed by his wife in the heat of the sun, chews areca and betel with secretions from his wife's vagina, and kills his wife in order to deliver her baby. AU, on the other hand, cooks food with the hot of fire, chews with lime, and assists in parturition without killing the mother. 12 Part of the meaning of the myth comes from the temporal contrast of its segments. The sequence of cooking and eating, chewing, and giving birth

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reveals a progression among categories of things from unsweet to sweet, and from cold bloodless dirt to hot bloody dirt. AD's transformative skills (or lack of them) not only contrast with AU's, they are inconsistent among themselves. AD fears fire (ito), but he is not afraid of putting dirty secretions from his wife's vagina (ito) into his mouth. He fears the bloodless spittle coming out of AU's mouth, but he does not fear the blood put on his hands from killing his wife when she gives birth. Inevitably, this blood on his hands would be put into his own mouth. As a result of his peculiar skills that use cold or inappropriate transforming agents rather than appropriate hot ones, AD risks putting inside his own body the things that ought to be kept outside (i.e., the three categories of inedible substances - unsweet, cold bloodless dirt, and hot bloody dirt) and does not put inside his body what ought to be there (i.e., the one category of edible substances - sweet). In AU's terms, that is, in terms of the proper ordered categories, AD is thoroughly confused. AU in opposition to AD employs the appropriate and ordered sources of transformative hot in each of the contexts where men interact with their wives, and so he attempts in instructing AD. With fire, AU transforms unsweet food to sweet for eating. Next, AU uses lime to mix with areca and betel to transform the chew from unsweet to sweet. Alone, areca and betel are unsweet for eating or chewing, but mixed with lime, which is hot, betel and areca are made sweet for chewing (Chapter 5). Lastly, by using the skills oimemengoa, AU enables AD's wife to remove the hot bloody and dirty infant, afterbirth, and birth-blood from her abdomen and yet live. Moreover, AU's memengoa skills allow AD's wife to retain her own blood inside her body, and, because she alone touches the bloody things of birth, AD neither gets them on his hands nor into his own body. In short, AU's set of skills allows ingestion of sweet ingestibles and systematically prevents ingestion of the three categories of noningestibles. AU's and AD's respective skills further contrast in their final results. AD's confusions, beginning with cooking (sic), eating, and chewing, lead to death simultaneous with birth. AU's ordered and enlightened consistency in cooking, eating, and chewing culminate in life without death at the moment of birth. The myth is thus a "charter" in the Malinowskian (1948) sense for proper orderings of things. Specifically, it demonstrates a systematic consistency between the contexts of cooking, eating, chewing, and parturition that otherwise might not be apparent. This consistency or homology is nothing other than the pervasiveness of the category distinctions sweet/unsweet/cold dirt/hot dirt, and of the transformations between them through application of the proper sources of hot with respect to the outside, inside, inverted outside, and everted inside of the body that I have revealed earlier in this and preceding chapters. Nonetheless, although the myth establishes that cooking food with fire,

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chewing with lime, and giving birth with memengoa techniques are homologous and proper transformations for humans, it also sets up an opposition between the third of these skills and the first two in terms of the reversibility of the bodily transfers involved. Incidentally, it brings us back to the specific problems posed at the beginning of this chapter concerning the native theories of human sexuality and menstruation, and it provides further elements to their resolution. When AD and his wife eat food cooked by fire for the first time, it comes back out as "vomit" (unga). On first observing AU chew with lime, AD sees blood [sic] coming out of his mouth. Both eating cooked food and chewing with lime for the first time here suggest one feature of the indigenous theory of menstruation; namely, semen from a single act of intercourse is not enough for conception. Similarly, food that is vomited contributes nothing toward blood synthesis and bodily health, just as chewing areca, betel, and lime is understood to contribute nothing to bodily sustenance.13 Vomiting, expectorating after chewing, and menstruation all involve ambidirectional transfers. Food goes into the mouth and then comes out of the mouth as vomit. Areca, betel, and lime go into the mouth and come out as red spittle. Semen goes into the abdomen and comes out of the abdomen as menstrual blood (or part of menstrual blood). The point is that childbirth also constitutes an ambidirectional reversal of this kind: Semen goes to the woman's abdomen and comes out of it as a baby. But here there has been a contribution to blood synthesis, bodily sustenance, and health. Indeed, although semen makes no bodily endowment to the mother, it does to the body of her and her mates baby. Thus, menstruation as a result of insemination is like vomiting and chewing. Although it contains hot dirty human blood and represents ambidirectional bodily transfer, it is not, as they are not, a sign of illness.

5 Male and female

The discursive examination of the indigenous theory of human sexuality and conception contained in the previous chapter revealed a number of significant distinctions between men and women that are relevant to the systematic conceptualization of gender differences and roles in Bush Mekeo culture. In other words, the relative contributions men and women are considered to make to reproduction correspond with certain other activities and transformative capacities that are likewise differentiated according to gender. The purpose of this chapter will be to describe more fully this indigenous division of labor in terms of the categorical oppositions and analogies that characterize male and female adulthood. My argument proceeds as follows. First, I outline the cyclic ritual alternation of adult females between procreative and contraceptive states according to the opening and closing, respectively, of their bodies. I then describe how adult males, like females, alternate between procreatively opening and contraceptively closing their bodies, except that the female pattern reverses the male pattern in certain critical respects. Next, I show that the bisection of the male/female duality is homologous with the distinctions previously elicited from other contexts of the indigenous culture: village versus bush, body-inside versus body-outside, hot versus cold, sweet versus unsweet, and so on. Finally, I demonstrate that the oscillations of men and women between ritual conditions in village life are given further meaningful expression by the counterposition of two myths taken from the Bush Mekeo corpus.1 The ritual cycle of the female Among the Bush Mekeo, human reproduction is ideally initiated and thereafter sustained within the bounds of "marriage" (amange). Sexual encounters between bachelors and unwed maidens are strongly discouraged by parents and elder siblings, but only in part for fear of conception and pregnancy out of wedlock. However, once males and females are married by either formal arrangement or elopement, sexual intercourse is vigorously encouraged. Indeed, the newlywed couple is expected to conceive their firstborn as soon as possible in a fashion consistent with the 73

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prevailing notions regarding procreation. This initial phase of marriage is termed "new marriage" (amange manga). Once a bride leaves her family to live with her groom and others of his household,2 her activities focus upon her sexual and reproductive capacity. In short, she is made hot for conceiving a child. On the day of her arrival and each day thereafter, the bride's new female in-laws, under the authority of the groom's own mother, attend to her toilet in every detail to make her sexually sweet to the groom. Her body hair (buibui)3 including her pubes is removed, and the hair on her head (fufu) is combed out and rubbed with coconut oil. She is bathed in hot water. Reddened coconut oil is applied to her skin. She is dressed in a leaf skirt colorfully decorated with the insignia of her husband's clan (cf. Seligmann 1910:320-30). She wears tortoiseshell earrings and a shell nose plug and fresh aromatic flowers are slipped into her woven arm- and legbands.4 For as long as she remains in a newlywed condition, the bride does no work. She may not leave the confines of her husband's house except for the purpose of bodily elimination. Even then, she must be accompanied by a female member of the household. During most of the daytime hours, the bride simply sits alone and motionless inside a mosquito net hung indoors awaiting the frequent visits of the groom. But late every afternoon, the bride, attended by her mother-in-law, emerges to sit on the veranda facing the central village abdomen in full view of villagers heading home from the bush. For several hours, she sits draped with the shell and dogs' teeth ornaments her own parents have reciprocated to the groom's relatives as part of the protracted marriage compensation (kaua) exchanges (see Chapter 6). As villagers express it, everyone, particularly the bride's own relatives, can see that she is being well cared for by her new in-laws, getting enough food to eat, and becoming fat. These three objectives relate directly to the brides newlywed diet, termed "engorging" (engoupa), and to the general expectation that she conceive as soon as possible. The primary responsibility for the bride's engorging falls, once more, on her mother-in-law. However, other married women living at the same village are also expected to assist. These other women include the kinswomen and clanswomen of the groom and the wives of his kinsmen and clansmen.5 After returning from their gardens in the afternoon, each of these women is expected to bring a bowl of boiled plant food for the bride to eat. The mother-in-law may cook food, too, but her main role is to see that her daughter-in-law eats the food all of them have prepared and brought. The bride is not allowed to eat raw or ripened plant food. Ordinary Bush Mekeo etiquette dictates that one need take only a single bite when food is offered so as not to offend the host and hostess. Not so for the bride! She must eat all the food, bowl after bowl, her

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mother-in-law places before her. When she feels satiated (i.e., when her abdomen is sweet, ina mitsia), her mother-in-law will massage her abdomen. This manual manipulation supposedly stretches the brides stomach and transforms her abdomen from sweet to unsweet so she will hunger for, and be able to eat, more food. The first time I actually observed bridal engorging, I was honestly amazed at the quantity of plant food the bride was required to consume. Despite the woman's courageous attempts to appear pleasant in the presence of her assembled in-laws, she was in obvious discomfort. I could only laugh when, after five or six bowls, she drew from her string bag a bottle of seltzer tablets purchased from a trade store. Small wonder that oncecomparatively-slim maidens in a matter of only two or three weeks following marriage dramatically show the anticipated results of engorging! They become visibly "fat" (efaka), with "plenty of skin" (fanga ealongai) and "plenty of blood" (ifa ealongai). The body of the bride is affected by engorging in other ways as well. Most of the food she eats is plant food, and all of it is boiled in water. In Chapter 3, I described how cooked plant food is considered hot for transforming the abdomen from unsweet to sweet, and similarly how hot water transforms the generalized inside of the body from unsweet to sweet. As a result of engorging, then, the bride's abdomen and the inside of her body become exceedingly sweet. And because she drinks the broth her food is cooked in, her body is rendered considerably wet. Engorging is understood in these terms to promote the conception of a fetus in the bride's abdomen in conjunction, of course, with the mixing of released womb-blood and semen. For her part, the engorged bride is hot for procreation. Because many acts of intercourse and the consequent deposition of much womb-blood and semen are required for conception, the bride is expected to perform sex with the groom several times each day - indeed, as often as possible for the minimum period of three months necessary to ensure pregnancy and avoid menstruation. Blood from the groom's semen and blood from the bride's engorging gather in the same part of the bride's body (her ina or abdomen), which is linguistically connected with the category "mother" (ina). The more frequently the newlyweds perform sex, the more hot the engorged bride becomes for procreation. Thus, each night and for most of each day the bride remains at the sexual disposal of the groom. As we shall see below, the groom does not wander too far nor too long from his bride. The frequent bathing of the bride in hot water is understood to increase the frequency of newlywed mating. The exertions of sexual intercourse transform the bride's skin from unsweet to sweet. Without interference, it would take some considerable time for the bride's skin to revert to an unsweet condition, that is, when sex would be again sweet and desirous to

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her. However, the hot water of her frequent baths reverses the sexual transformation of her skin back to unsweet, so she will be inclined to repeat the act of coitus with markedly increased frequency. The bride's procreative assimilation of large quantites of cooked plant food, water, and semen contrasts with the radical restriction in the quantity and variety of meat she may eat. This meat restriction also has definite cultural implications for the bride's fertility. While they are single, girls may consume moderate amounts of meat, but once they marry and becomes brides, it is said, "they eat no [sic] meat." Actually, this statement should be qualified to mean that brides should eat merely enough meat of particular categories to sustain their bodies minimally and avoid meat starvation. But a bride may eat no meat whatsoever of animals that are regarded either as faifai bush people or associated with them for fear of giving birth to a faifai baby. Staple "big" meats - pig, cassowary, barramundi, bush fowl, etc. - are strictly prohibited as well. Thus, only minimal quantities of "small" meats - smaller fish and birds, mostly - with one exception6 are deemed appropriate to the brides diet. The brides minimal consumption of small meat here hardly balances with her exaggerated engorging of cooked plant food. While she was still single and not yet a bride, her diet was balanced with meat proportionate to plant food. Therefore, upon marriage a girl's balanced diet is replaced with the imbalanced diet of little meat and much plant food. Moreover, the food she eats as a bride is provided to her by people of entirely different relationships as regards her sexuality and fertility. This is particularly evident as regards meat. Relatives of a single girl are especially concerned that she not conceive or give birth out of wedlock. Also, it is her male relatives who provide her with most of the meat she eats. They will give her moderate amounts of both big and small varieties, most often the former. Occasionally, her male relatives may even give her some meat from an animal of a species associated with faifai, but which was not taken from a bush hole and does not have an excess of blood.7 Upon her marriage, her own relatives cease supplying her with food of all kinds. The minimal amount of small meat she as a bride may eat is procured by her groom, and he alone. Every few days, the groom sets off to hunt or fish specifically for her. When he returns with a catch, his mother will cook and serve bits of it to his bride. By comparing these indigenous rules concerning meat and fertility, it seems a single girls male relatives hunt and fish so that blood-potent elements of meat and complementary blood-potent elements of plant food mix in balanced proportion to transform and sustain her throat, abdomen, and, therefore, her blood and flesh while guarding against the mixing of semen and womb-blood in her abdomen. By contrast, the mixing of the grooms semen with the bride's womb-blood initially derived from her

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engorging of cooked plant food is encouraged in the brides abdomen, such that the mixture of blood-potent elements from meat and plant food associated with both her throat and her abdomen is sharply discouraged. The intended results in each case are correspondingly opposed as well. On the one hand, a single girl's capacities for her own blood formation, bodily sustenance, and, thereby, her work are maintained while her fertility is minimized. On the other, the brides own blood formation, bodily sustenance, and work capacity are minimized while her capacity for procreation is maximized. Of particular interest here is the relation of meat and semen. By pursuing it in some detail, I hope to establish a homology between food categories and categories of sexually differentiated human bloods. Semen and bush meat generally are male-derived. Male relatives of a single girl give her moderate amounts of meat but no semen, and she is supposedly infertile. Thus, there are no excess blood-elements from plant food to form womb-blood and mix with semen contributed by nonrelated male lovers. This dietary balance of moderate meat and plant food that promotes and sustains work would seem to be procreatively cold, or contraceptive. A bride, however, ingests maximal amounts of semen and plant food and minimal meat to mix for procreation. The bride's meat food balances with only a part of her generous plant-food intake, enough to minimally sustain her throat and body but not to allow her to work. The excess or surplus blood-elements derived from plant food associated with her abdomen can mix instead in the form of womb-blood with the abundant semen of the groom. The two procreative bloods form and consolidate the body of an entirely new person in her abdomen. In this event, sexually hot semen replaces or substitutes for edible but procreatively cold or contraceptive meat. These observations finally allow the establishment of a number of connections between categorizations of food and distinctions relevant to sex. First, the opposition of meat and plant food corresponds to the distinction between male and female, respectively. A simple syllogism can illustrate this sufficiently. The data concerning newlywed ritual presented so far indicate: (a) meat : plant food :: semen : womb-blood And, of course: (b) semen : womb-blood :: male : female Therefore: (c) meat : plant food :: male : female Although these three statements might initially resemble the series of homologies displayed in Chapters 2 and 3, they must not be construed as

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belonging to the same set, at least as they stand. They are written out here merely to enable the deduction of statement (c). Nonetheless, by a further elaboration of the categories in statement (c) above, certain distinctions regarding food and sex are homologous with one another and with the series of bisected dualities analyzed in previous chapters. Secondly, then, the binary oppositions meat/plant food and male/female are each further bisected into four categories. On the one hand, there are contraceptive and procreative meats, and contraceptive and procreative plant foods; on the other, there are contraceptive and procreative male bloods, and contraceptive and procreative female bloods: male male female female . ., contraceptive ' procreative " procreative ' contraceptive Food categories !. „ cookable noncookable /ir . x big meat : small meat :: , , : , L c , (12) plantL rfood plant food Sexual blood male , female u ,, /1ON : i j ii j semen :: womb-blood : , , , , , (13) body blood body blood I shall be returning a number of times to these categories and relations as I trace out the remaining phases of the female ritual cycle and contrast it with the complementary male ritual cycle. Before proceeding, however, it should be noted that contraceptive foods and bloods correspond with inside and procreative foods and bloods with outside, in terms of the body-and-space homology: inside : outside :: inverted outside : everted inside

(4)

Newlywed activity continues until the couple conceives a child and the bride becomes "pregnant" (inainga). As previously mentioned in this section, the onset of pregnancy is indicated by the passage of three consecutive months with sex but without menstruation. The pregnant wife is no longer confined to her husbands house. She may bathe in cold water, her body is neither anointed nor ornamented as before, and she is not publicly displayed each afternoon. Very importantly, engorging also ceases abruptly. During her pregnancy, a wife eats less plant food (all of it is still cooked) and more meat, including big or contraceptive varieties that are hot for the synthesis and sustenance of her own blood and flesh. This more moderate and balanced pregnancy diet enables her to work. She can now cook and carry food and participate with other women in the daily clearing of the village abdomen. It is at this time also that she and her husband begin clearing their first new garden together or perhaps gather bush materials for a new house of their own. As pregnancy ap-

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proaches its end, it is critical that the wife devotes considerable work toward gathering and stockpiling a large supply of firewood underneath her house. This fuel will be burned at night during the postpartum vigil kept by her husband. The relations of a newlywed woman to her husband and to others also change significantly during the pregnancy phase. Sexual intercourse between husband and wife terminates as he begins sleeping on the chiefs clubhouse in the company of other men, and she in the family dwelling with other women and children of the husband's household. By not eating faifai meat and taking no additional semen into her abdomen, the pregnant woman prevents conception of a faifai baby as well as menstruation. The husband no longer exclusively supplies his wife with meat. She partakes of meat other men bring to the village and share among resident households, and her husband likewise distributes his quarry. And because she is now capable of, or hot for, work, the pregnant wife herself participates with other women in the daily reciprocation of cooked food between related households. In summary, the bride's procreative configuration of indulgent sex and maximal plant food and minimal meat intake, focusing upon exchanges between the bodies of bride and groom, is overthrown during pregnancy to resemble in some respects the contraceptive working regimen of the single girl. Only now, with a growing baby in her abdomen, it is ties to her husbands relatives, male and female, instead of to her husband exclusively or to her own relatives, that dominate her life. These numerous aspects of a woman's pregnancy phase are compatible with her bodily condition. By eating a variety of meats and plant foods in moderate amounts, her throat as well as her abdomen is regularly transformed and made sweet. Though sexually continent, her skin remains sweet by being bathed in cold water; the cold water cannot transform her sweet skin to unsweet. She still drinks the hot broth of her boiled food even after the end of the newlywed phase, but she may also drink cold water. Her body thus remains wet and sweet as it still retains much skin and blood. Simultaneously, however, the pregnant woman is regarded as particularly cold or vulnerable to illness caused by exposure to the hot of certain categories of male ritual: peace and war sorcery, mefu, bird of paradise sorcery, courting ritual, aggressive garden ritual. In this one critical respect, the bodies of pregnant women remain the same as the bodies of brides; namely, they are open. In both cases, some things are regularly ingested and other things are regularly excreted in moderate or excessive quantities. With their bodies open, the hot bloody and dirty substances used in the categories of male ritual mentioned above may easily enter.8 Moreover, because hot bloody and dirty substances (i.e., semen and

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womb-blood, or the developing fetus itself) are already contained by their abdomens, it is not necessary for male ritual practitioners to introduce the nefarious ingredients of their charms into the open bodies of their bridal or pregnant victims. For this reason, it was explained to me, husbands take special precautions that their unconfined pregnant wives are never even remotely exposed to the hot of ritual specialists. I suspect (but was never explicitly told) that the same reasoning figures in the seclusion of newlywed brides. The category open as opposed to closed, as we shall see, is critical to differentiating the cyclical ritual alternations of males as well as females. Husband and wife make certain special preparations as the time of delivery draws near. By then, the wife should have a great stock of firewood on hand. The husband must erect a fence of bamboo poles beneath their house to keep village animals away. Within this enclosure, he digs a hole. Inside the house and directly above this hole, his wife will give birth and remain throughout the entire postpartum period. Also, a pair of bamboo knives is fashioned in advance and kept at hand. The wife continues working all the way up to the day she gives birth. "Birth" (emauni) and the associated memengoa procedures mentioned in the Amaka myth (Chapter 4) follow the rupture of the amniotic sac and the release of its water. As upstream Amaka taught downstream Amaka, the husband participates up to the point the baby finally emerges. While his wife squats next to the fire of the household hearth that transforms her skin to unsweet, he positions himself behind her with his shins along her back. Reaching around in front, he forcefully works her abdomen with downward strokes of his hands. These exertions help transform her abdomen from sweet to unsweet with respect to the baby so it slides out. Once it does so, the new father must immediately depart, for he must have no contact with the infant or the birth-blood. Also, this is the last contact he will have with his wife for many months. Close female relatives of either the wife or the husband who possess the knowledge and experience assist from this point on. Careful not to touch the baby or any of the birth-blood, one of these women severs the umbilical cord with the bamboo knives and deposits the placenta inside the hole dug underneath the house. The umbilical cord is not tied. The mother rubs some of the birth-blood on the baby's skin. If it is a boy, she rubs blood on its shoulders. If it is a girl, she rubs it on the baby's head. This is said to strengthen and make hard the respective parts of the body people of different gender use for carrying loads later in life. Then the mother washes herself and the baby in hot water. After warming her hands over the fire, the mother gently manipulates the infant's head into the desired round shape.9 Only the mother herself may touch the baby or any of the other bloody

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things that come out of her abdomen in giving birth. Other women present take every precaution against soiling their hands with the dirty birthblood because they must continue to handle and cook food for their households and for the men gathered on the chief's clubhouse. The father's abrupt departure ensures that there is even less chance of him coming into contact with the blood of birth. Mother and infant, however, have this hot dirty blood on their skins. The mother must take certain steps so as not accidentally to eat any of this dangerous birth-blood. She will do no work. Especially, she cannot cook food for herself or for others, so other women must cook for her. Also, she must not touch the food she eats with her hands. Instead, she holds long narrow wooden sticks to pierce the pieces and place them in her mouth. It will be remembered from the last chapter that memengoa skills include the downward stroking of the mothers abdomen with a heated bamboo tube. This stroking facilitates the ejection of all traces of afterbirth and birth-blood. The same technique (also termed memengoa) is applied to the site of pain in the curing of illness to force the offending hot bloody dirt that is causing the pain out of the body. If, after childbirth, any of the procreative bloods remain in the mother's abdomen, she may subsequently die. Memengoa procedures, then, employ the hot of fire and physical exertion to make the mother's abdomen unsweet with respect to the afterbirth and birth-blood so they will come out. Memengoa sources of hot also contribute toward drying and closing the mother's body (see below). The father of the newborn infant maintains a nightly vigil outside the house to protect his wife and child from sorcerers or other ritual specialists stealing any of the afterbirth or birth-blood collected in the ground. He burns a large share of the accumulated firewood to illuminate the region immediately surrounding the house. The vigil, along with the mother's abdominal stroking, will be abandoned five or six weeks after parturition when no more blood flows from the mother's vagina and the afterbirth underground is believed to be dry and disintegrated. Memengoa procedures and the father's separation from his family continue afterward, however. Hot dirty substances still cling to the skins of mother and baby. As a consequence of nursing, the new baby excretes wet feces. These wet infant feces are said to be like those of sick people; that is, they are hot for causing illness in anyone who inadvertently eats any traces of them. Healthy weaned children and adults excrete dry feces that, alone, are cold for causing illness. Because nursing is not interrupted until the child is toilet-trained around the age of one-and-one-half or two, the mother constantly recontaminates her hands as she cleans up after the baby. Without sop (soap), this hot dirt remains on the mother's and infant's skin as long as the latter suckles.

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structures

Although the infant's feces are hot for causing illness, apparently, they are not regarded as bloody. Nonetheless, these wet bloodless feces are similar to the wet bloody feces of the chronically ill, for infants and the infirm have both previously ingested substances that are in a certain respect analogous with one another, that is, substances inside-out of other human bodies. However, unlike those bloody things that can cause illness when eaten, "milk" (kuku) is not dirty. Rather, milk is regarded as sweet to babies and unsweet to other people. Indeed, instead of fostering illness and death, milk nourishes human infants and promotes their growth, health, and life. Here there are a number of correspondences between nutritive milk and procreative semen. In their respective contexts, milk and semen emerge from one body and are deposited into another. Also, both milk and semen are hot for promoting or sustaining new life. In this respect, milk and semen are distinct from other dirty human effluvia. Although milk is not a form of human blood as is semen, it does possess foodlike elements for blood synthesis. And, of course, milk and semen are the same color - "white" (kelo) (cf. Turner 1967). During a woman's postpartum phase, meat relates to her milk in a way reminiscent of the connection between meat and semen for the newlywed bride. A nursing mother eats no contraceptive big meat. Instead, she eats moderate amounts of small meat - above the minimal sustenance level supplied by her husband or his relatives, balanced with moderate amounts of boiled plant food. Her body remains generally wet, cold, and open, yet she does no work. Excess blood-elements from food eaten by the nursing mother, it seems, mix in her body and are diverted into milk production. It is interesting to reflect that during their pregnancies women do not entirely suspend their diet of eating small meat. 10 If a nursing mother either eats phallic faifai meat or receives semen in sexual intercourse, her milk will be "spoiled" (ebalifua) and cause symptoms of illness in the baby. This suggests a connection between a woman's abdomen and her breasts. It will be remembered here that girls become fertile when their breasts enlarge. Seligmann also made similar observations among the culturally related Motu and Koita peoples of the Port Moresby region. He writes: The advent of catamenia and the development of the breasts occur together, and I gathered that this led to the belief that theflowconsisted of blood, which in some way had come from the breasts, and certainly the fetus was supposed to be formed of blood derived from the breasts. (1910:84) According to rules of postpartum memengoa, as long as a nursing mother remains sexually continent, her vagina leading to her abdomen will gradually close. Consequently, she will neither conceive nor menstruate.

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Moreover, by not eating contraceptive big meat that would dry her breasts, she postnatally nurtures her child with milk analogous to the way semen out of the father's body prenatally contributed to the child's conception. And just as the father's semen dries or coagulates the mother's womb-blood to form the child, over the course of nursing the infant's body is progressively dried on a diet of milk. Nonetheless, because the mother is exclusively dependent upon social ties through the father for what appears to be the critical ingredient of lactation (i.e., small meat), the father indirectly continues his previous procreative role (cf. A. Strathern 1972:13-14). Villagers claim that nursing infants are "not like other human beings" in several respects. For example, it is often remarked that they can neither talk nor walk, they are not toilet trained, and they know no rules. In these ways, babies are "like pigs." n After their first several months of nursing, Bush Mekeo babies' feces become progressively drier as an increasing variety and quantity of raw plant food and cooked vegetables and meat are eaten. Finally, once a child walks, is toilet trained, begins to produce and understand speech, and plays with the other children, it is time for it to be weaned. This is accomplished when the mother rubs hot chili juice on her nipples. From that moment onward, the child is expected to grasp, comprehend, and obey social rules appropriate to age, sex, and other considerations, just as other human beings do. Of critical importance in this regard, and emphasized by informants, weaned children must be prevented from ingesting dirty things. Parents often expressed to me their concern that their young children learn and obey the rules of dirt avoidance and safe handling. In the terms villagers use to conceptualize them, the gradual processes of postpartum memengoa, weaning, and dirt enlightenment are quite similar to upstream Amaka's systematic reordering of downstream Amaka's confused distinctions between outside, inside, inverted outside, and everted inside of the human body. Babies and downstream Amaka and his wife, we might say, are similarly "weaned" or "withdrawn" from ingesting improper substances (i.e., unsweet and dirty things) and introduced to proper cooked ingestibles by transformations according to various hot mediations. It is noteworthy in this context that just as downstream Amaka and his wife vomit cooked food the first time they eat it, human infants are typically understood to vomit on their first introduction to each new food. While protractedly nursing their young, village mothers are isolated from all adult males. The bodies of mothers and suckling infants are wet and open. Hence, they, like brides and pregnant women, are cold and vulnerable to the hot male influences of semen, faifai animals, and male ritual. But because hot and wet dirty feces are being continually re-

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deposited on their skins, mother and infant are reciprocally hot for causing illness in men who have not adequately protected themselves from this influence (see next section). As the suckling child has drunk more and more of its mother's milk and eats more and more solid food before it is weaned, the bodies of mother and infant gradually become drier, less sweet, less cold to male ritual, and more closed. With weaning and the end of memengoa ritual, these processes are complete. In addition, because dirt is being deposited on their skins no longer, mother and child become cold for causing illness in others. Mother and child may leave the house of their confinement, and the nuclear family may be reunited. Husband and wife may now sleep together at home and resume sexual relations with the possibility of later conceiving their next child. They can garden, otherwise work together, and so on. The wife, however, does not resume newlywed ritual with all its exaggerations. Having borne a child already, there is no pronounced anxiety that she conceive immediately to reaffirm and validate the marital relationship. Thus, she eats a moderate balanced diet of plant food and meat (both big and small) rather than engorging. Nonetheless, although she and her husband are not expected to perform sex nearly as often as they did as newlyweds, they indulge themselves at least enough so she eventually will conceive again and not menstruate. The woman's body becomes relatively wet, sweet, and open as opposed to dry, unsweet, and closed. Correspondingly, the wife is cold or vulnerable to male ritual attack but hot for procreation and work. When she does conceive a child, she will once more obey the rules of pregnancy just as she did for her firstborn, and so on. In conclusion, these ideal Bush Mekeo conceptions of the adult female reveal cyclic bodily alternations and transformations between open and closed, wet and dry, sweet and unsweet, and cold and hot as regards working or not working, vulnerability or immunity to aggressive male ritual, and procreation or contraception (Figure 5.1). The rules that accompany these fluctuations regulate also the flow or lack of flow of diverse categories of things into and out of her body. And doing so, women actively open and close the set of boundaries that differentiate the inside, the outside, the inverted outside, and the everted inside of their own bodies from the bodies of their husbands, developing fetuses, suckling and weaned offspring, and, indeed, all other villagers. The ritual cycle of the male We have seen that semen and meat particularly, but other male-related or male-associated things also, are critical elements in the progression of the female ritual cycle. Indeed, it has been implicit that married men are themselves intimately tied to the transformations of their wives in much

Male and female opening ^

85 ^

wetting ^ sweet ^

closing ^

^

drying unsweet

procreatively h o t ^

^ procreatively cold

contraceptively cold ^

^contraceptively hot

Figure 5.1. Female ritual cycle. the same terms, but with a temporal emphasis upon aggressive male ritual rather than on reproduction. I will now focus on this complementary adult-male ritual cycle. The newlywed groom eats a varied, moderate, and balanced diet of meat, big and small, and cooked plant food. He drinks the broth his food is cooked and served in. As a result of ingesting these things, his body regularly excretes alimentary by-products. The groom is therefore rendered generally sweet, wet, and open, like the bride, with a moderate excess of blood inside his body. But because the groom does no work,12 his excess blood in the form of semen is diverted into the abdomen of his bride during their frequent sexual encounters. Villagers summarily describe the groom as hot for sex, work, procreation, and nonwork hunting and fishing, but cold for categories of nonwork such as sorcery, mefu, courting, and aggressive garden ritual. These latter skills prohibited to the groom involve the manipulation of hot bloody and dirty things. Lacking these ingredients, hunting and fishing charms are not hot to the groom who uses them. The other dirty ritual charms, however, are hot to the groom with his ritually cold and open body, and they can make him ill or perhaps die. The skills of hunting and fishing, then, are compatible with the grooms bodily condition and sweet to him. With a wet, open, sweet body, the groom, or any other adult male engaged in regular sexual relations, is cold and easy victim to hot war sorcery worked upon him. Traditionally, war is the greatest threat to every adult-male villager, at least in the opinion of present-day villagers. According to the aboriginal system, attack can come at any moment, and enemies are ruthless in attempting to decimate entire Bush Mekeo villages. In the event of surprise attack, ritually cold grooms are rendered heavy and slow by the sorcery of the attackers. They are unable to dodge projectiles or escape, and they are totally unprepared to manipulate and wield war sorcery back upon the enemy forces for fear of it transforming their own bodies. Because the most effective weapons are already covered with the blood of previous victims, sexually active men cannot safely use them even in defense. Moreover, if a groom or sexually active man is

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successful in killing an enemy during a raid, homicidal blood will cover his skin and unavoidably enter his open body and kill him. As one war sorcerer remarked, "In the days long before, a man always eating and sleeping with his wife was a dead man." Because attacking forces usually have the strategic advantage of surprise and superiority in numbers, drawing their forces from several villages to attack just one village, it is imperative that as many adult men of a village as possible be on continual defensive alert. It was explained to me many times that this constant threat of war lies behind the anxiety that all married men impregnate their wives with all possible haste once sexual relations are initiated or resumed. After conception is affirmed, men ideally suspend sexual relations entirely and follow a contrasting and countervailing path enabling them to participate in warfare. This alternate adult-male course is termed ngope, or "tightening." Most ethnographers of the Mekeo have rendered ngope to mean "fasting" (Seligmann 1910:333; Guis 1936:35, 176; Williamson 1913:170; Stephen 1974:107). "Fasting" is the gloss English-speaking villagers give to the term ngope, and systematic restriction of food consumption is indeed an important element of ngope ritual among the Bush Mekeo. While men practice ngope, vegetable foods and meat are unsweet to them, so they "eat nothing" [sic] or, rather, "just one bite" at each sitting - the amount of food deemed necessary for absolutely minimal body sustenance. But fasting is neither the only nor the most significant element of ngope ritual. Hau'ofa has alternatively rendered the Mekeo term ngope as "sacred" or "set apart," while still emphasizing the element of self-denial (1981:58, 236-9). But among the Bush Mekeo, as I suspect among the Mekeo, ngope is more complicated than just fasting, and its "sacredness" is rather more precisely definable in the terms of the culture. The variety of foods consumed under ngope, for example, is markedly reduced to one kind of plant food and one kind of meat. And what little food is eaten is always roasted and dry, never boiled. Alternatively, ngope practitioners regularly consume considerable quanitites of raw chili and ginger. But chili and ginger are not plant food (fokama), they are purgative "medicines" (mulamula) - substances that ordinarily are cold and unsweet as food, but otherwise are hot and sweet for the elimination of lingering traces of dirty alimentary by-products.13 Married men practicing ngope ritual almost constantly chew areca and betel with lime for similar reasons (see the Amaka myth discussed in Chapter 4 and my comments below). According to other rules of ngope ritual, a man must not drink water from freeflowing sources. Only minimal quantities of hot fluid from roasted coconuts and roasted wild banana tree stalks may be sipped. The ngope practitioner may bathe only on hot water to keep his skin unsweet. To the

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87

same bodily effect, sexual intercourse is strictly prohibited to him, and he spends most of his time sitting next to a fire. As a result of these various factors, abdomen, throat, skin, and the body generally become unsweet. The body appears thin with little skin, little blood, and little flesh. Bodily excreta, with the exception of areca spittle, gradually diminish. Also, the body becomes dry. "With no sweat to give," a man is cold for work and does none (Guis 1936:176). His body is closed: "Nothing goes in, nothing comes out, nothing can go through." Therefore, he is hot for ritual nonwork skills. Elsewhere in the culture, however, the term ngope refers to "tightening," as when two poles or sticks are bound together with vine so as to close the space or opening between them. As part of his ngope regimen, a man wears a bark belt severely tightened around his midsection, giving him to European eyes a wasplike appearance. This notion of tightening, I think, comes closer to summarizing the several indigenous aspects of ngope ritual than do the more narrow gloss of "fasting" or the Western concept of "sacred." By rigorously tightening his body, a man prepares himself for practicing a number of nonwork skills: war, peace, or bird of paradise sorcery, and courting and aggressive garden ritual. The charms used in these male arts contain hot bloody and dirty substances. Tightening essentially prevents the contents of the charms from entering the practitioners own body while he prepares and manipulates them. Otherwise, they would enter and transform him as his own victim. Tightening, in other words, is a ritual prophylaxis against the effects of hot bloody and dirty things. To him who has tightened himself, the charms are cold or impotent. They cannot enter. But to others who have not tightened themselves - whose bodies are wet, sweet, open, and ritually cold - the charms are hot and potent. Moreover, by the very act of manipulating his charms, the practitioner deposits hot bloody dirt on the outside of his body, on his own skin and hands. In this way, his own person is hot to nontightened villagers. Therefore, he must not wander freely through the village or even the bush for fear of unintentionally making victims of others. He must remain secluded in the extraordinary aboveground holes or places of village or bush, or run and hide whenever the chance of accidental encounter arises. Let me now return to the predicament facing the groom once his wife is impregnated. Ever fearful of surprise enemy attack, he cannot immediately handle the charms, weapons, and other paraphernalia of war with his open body. Tightening is a gradual process. It requires approximately six months to make a man's body sufficiently dry, unsweet, and ritually hot so that its inside is closed from its outside. During the course of his

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Quadripartite structures

wife's pregnancy, the tightening groom becomes increasingly capable of performing the dangerous ritual male arts, but initially his body is still hot for work. Therefore, in a flurry of garden clearing immediately following the recognition of his wife's pregnancy, he can cut down the largest of forest trees before he becomes cold for work. Afterward, his wife, as her pregnancy progresses, can perform the tasks that remain to be done - the lighter clearing, planting, and tending. Because hunting and fishing are nonwork skills, the groom can continue to supply his wife and others with meat, at least as long as he does not contaminate his hands with hot bloody dirt. It is certainly no coincidence that, according to the culture, the moment hot bloody dirt emerges from his wife's body in parturition ideally coincides with the completed closing of the inside of the man's body from its outside. His abrupt departure from the scene and his ensuing avoidance of wife and child are motivated in part by considerations for their welfare. The husband can now safely handle hot ritual charms because they are cold to him. But if he does so with any birth-blood remaining on his hands, his wife and infant child will sicken and perhaps die when he later attempts to use the charms on other persons. Just as the tightened husband, without danger to himself, keeps vigil so that peace sorcerers do not steal any of the birth-blood or afterbirth to kill his wife and child, he ensures that he himself does not unintentionally do the same with their blood on his own hands. Incidentally, this consideration further illuminates the mythical imperative that downstream Amaka not handle bloody substances of birth and memengoa (see Chapter 4). Obviously, the entire adult-male population of a village cannot simultaneously and indefinitely tighten. Whereas bachelors and widowers are expected to tighten themselves continuously, married men possess another alternative geared to the ritual oscillations of their wives. During a woman's pregnancy, postpartum memengoa, and nursing phases, her husband tightens his body preparing for or engaging in exclusively maleoriented nonreproductive pursuits. Marital procreativity regularly interrupts the husband's male ritual, but only infrequently and for relatively brief periods. At any one time, most men of the village, married and unmarried, are in a more or less tightened condition of war-readiness. Unless an actual battle is planned, the advent of weaning each child corresponds with the return of its father to indulgent sexual relations with its mother. However, it is necessary that a man continue tightening himself one season - roughly six months - after he has last handled his ritual charms. Until then, traces of hot bloody and dirty substances remain on his skin. Sexual intercourse before that time would prematurely open the bodies of a man and his wife, and this could result in their deaths. Thus,

Male and female closing^

89 ^

opening

drying ^

^

unsweet ^

^ sweet

procreatively cold ^ contraceptively hot ^

wetting

^ procreatively hot ^

contraceptively cold

Figure 5.2. Male ritual cycle. the husband abandons his ritual activities but continues to tighten until his child is weaned. This achieved, he and his wife may now safely sleep together and resume regular sexual intercourse. He may drink moderately, eat food in greater quantity and variety, and so on. The husband's body thereby reverts to a comparatively wet, sweet, open, and ritually cold condition. However, for procreation and for working (particularly garden work), he is once more hot. After a theoretical minimum of three months, his wife may conceive again. Then he will begin to tighten himself once more and so repeat the male ritual cycle (Figure 5.2). For the Bush Mekeo, tightening ritual suggests more than a physical setting apart or isolation of husband from wife. In several respects, tightening represents a general withdrawal of men from the company of women and the corresponding symbolic accentuation of the opposition of male to female. This is illustrated most dramatically during the informal initiation of "boys" (imi) into "bachelorhood" (koaekongo) (cf. Seligmann 1910:256; Williamson 1913:273; Guis 1936:17-42; Hau'ofa 1981:130). Sometime between the ages of eight and twelve, boys leave their mothers, sisters, and other female relatives and begin tightening in the company of other men. A bachelor initially may not cast eyes upon a woman nor even children of either sex who are in daily contact with their mothers and female relatives. What little bachelors do eat and drink is prepared by men only and according to the strictly male culinary skill, roasting. At first, bachelors are confined to the rear compartment of their chiefs clubhouse where women may never enter. Moreover, the only males, married or unmarried, with whom bachelor novices may interact there are those who have also completely separated themselves from women by tightening. It is these men who teach the bachelors the hereditary secrets about sorcery and other ritual that only male members of the clan may share. Once their initial confinement is over, bachelors may emerge from the rear compartment of the clubhouse, at least at night, but they may never cross the village abdomen - a distinctly feminine part of the village.

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Quadripartite structures

Male tightening thus represents categorical opposition of male and female as much as it involves extinction of interaction between men and women. It must not be forgotten, however, that women, too, analogously distinguish and separate themselves from men during the closing phase of postpartum memengoa ritual. I shall return to this point below. Gender differentiation and areca nut chewing The contrasts between indigenous conceptualizations of male and female can be substantially sharpened by digressing briefly into the rules that involve the chewing of areca nut. Areca (mat) is unsweet for ordinary eating, as it is categorically not even a plant food. However, when it is mashed and boiled in water and drunk, areca is a medicine that is sweet and hot for the curing of some kinds of illness, particularly of the abdominal region. In illness, recall, what is ordinarily sweet to the body becomes unsweet, and what is unsweet becomes sweet. As a medicine, boiled areca, like chili and ginger, is hot for reversing the transformations of illness and returning the body to a state of health. Specifically, areca allows the body to retain the blood elements of food inside and to excrete the bloodless elements of food along with the invading foreign bloody dirt to the outside. When areca is chewed, it has similar connotations of purging substances from the body. Villagers assert that when they chew, they swallow (i.e., "eat") none of the pulp or juice; all is spit out of the mouth. Alone, areca is unsweet even for chewing. But when it is mixed with betel pepper and lime, it is transformed to sweet for chewing. Nonetheless, chewing is distinctively sweet to males and females only at particular points of the respective ritual cycles. Only men and women who are married may chew. Maidens and tightened bachelors may occasionally experiment with chewing, but they must keep this fact, along with their sexual exploits, secret from their elders. The rules that specify when married people may and may not chew indicate additional conceived gender differences in the culture and, further, that chewing is closely associated with adult sexuality whereas not chewing corresponds with sexual contraception. These relations are partly reflected by chewing's conceived effects upon the adult body. Chewing is said to be hot for making the abdomen feel sweet as though it were satiated or full with plant food, even when none has been eaten. Chewing will not similarly transform the throat to sweet in simulation of meat satiation. Rather, chewing dries the mouth and thereby closes the throat as if meat had been eaten. Moreover, chewing areca is said to transform the skin from sexually sweet to unsweet because it dries from the lack of water or sweat. A man and woman publicly chew for the first time when, as newlyweds,

Male and female

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they take up residence together as groom and bride. Thus, in the period they engage in intensive sexual relations, they chew. Indeed, for the rest of their married lives, chewing will be sweet for men and women whenever sex is also sweet for them. Married men who have been sleeping with their wives gather each evening on the exposed portion of their chiefs clubhouse and chew areca and betel with lime once they have finished eating the boiled food brought to them by their wives. At home, their wives eat and then chew as well. Because chewing transforms the skins of husbands and wives from sweet to unsweet immediately following the eating of food and just prior to retiring, it encourages sexual intercourse by making their skins unsweet and desirous of sex. Also, it will be remembered from the Amaka myth that downstream Amaka encouraged his namesake to chew improperly with the dirty secretions of his wife's vagina after they finished eating food. And when upstream Amaka correctly chewed with lime instead, downstream Amaka mistook the red spittle for blood. In my analysis of the myth, I argued that proper chewing with lime represents body category distinctions that are opposed to the improper and potentially dangerous ingestion of dirt that may accompany sexual encounters between males and females. Thus, in addition to making married partners desirous of sex after eating and before sleeping together, chewing enables men to avoid taking female sexual fluids into their bodies, and it enables women to receive semen in their abdomens but separate from the inside of their bodies. In more general terms, chewing promotes sex but preserves the conceived bodily boundaries separating procreative male and procreative female. The categories male and female differ further with respect to chewing during the periods of their married lives when they are sexually abstinent. When married men begin to tighten their bodies ritually, they radically intensify their chewing, as paradoxical as that might appear. From the time women become pregnant until they wean their infants, on the other hand, they abstain entirely from chewing. Intensified chewing for the tightened male accentuates or exaggerates the differences between himself and the sexual female. His body is drier and more closed, and his skin considerably more unsweet. He becomes, therefore, supermasculine - not for sexually inseminating a female, but for ritually depositing bloody dirt from his charms into his cold, wet, sweet, and open victims. In the sense that male ritual is an analogue or metaphor of male sexuality, the tightened male, although he chews and sexually abstains, actually becomes more intensely sexual. In the same way intensified chewing further accentuates males as distinct from females, abstaining from chewing differentiates females from males. Earlier I argued that sexually active women, by chewing, keep semen - a male substance - out of the inside of their bodies (i.e., re-

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Quadripartite structures

stricted to their abdomens). By not chewing, it would seem logical that some similar male substance is not kept from the inside of women's bodies. In this case, because I unfortunately lack precise ethnographic details, I will suggest that two such male substances are permitted inside a woman's body when she is pregnant and nursing. When she is pregnant, this would be contraceptive big meat. And when she is nursing, this would be lactative (or procreative) small meat. During pregnancy when she does not chew, a woman eats big contraceptive meat to prevent further impregnation and sustain her body and the body of her developing fetus, respectively. Following the birth, however, she eats small meat so there will be milk for lactation. To chew areca now would dry up her milk. Analogously, if she performed sex or ate faifai at this time, then semen or faifai blood could get into her milk, spoil it, and make the baby sick. Female inversion/eversion of male I have shown that in their married lives men, like women, cyclically alternate between two extremes characterized in terms of the same binary oppositions: dry versus wet, unsweet versus sweet, closed versus open. Generally speaking, however, it is clear that husbands and wives representing male and female "move" simultaneously in opposite directions. At the birth of his child, the tightened husband is at his most masculine, his body closed, dry, and unsweet. The wife at this time is at her most feminine, her body open, wet, and sweet. Later, when the wife weans her child in anticipation of resuming sexual relations, her body is relatively closed, dry, and unsweet. And at the moment her husband achieves sexual union with her, his body is relatively open, wet, and sweet. Thus, all four categories of gender differentiation are temporally as well as conceptually contrasted with one another with the cyclical alternations of the marital relationship. Viewed from another perspective, however, these four gender categories are all analogous to one another. In each case, there are interpersonal transmissions of bloody or blood-potent substances. Open and procreatively hot males transmit semen to open and procreatively hot females. Closed and procreatively cold males transmit dirty blood to their victims in aggressive male ritual. Open and procreatively hot females transmit womb-blood to their developing fetuses, and closed and procreatively cold women transmit milk to their nursing infants. There is, furthermore, a distinct sense in which the transmissions implicated for the two female categories are dependent upon male transmissions, that is, to provide either womb-blood or milk to their progeny, married women are dependent upon men for semen and small meat. By contrast, transmissions indicated for the two male categories are not predicated upon

r

male

hot male ritual cycle

r

>

male (in contact with female)

female

(separated from female)

(in contact with male)

cold fem
•

V female (separated from male)

closing

opening

opening

closing

drying

wetting

wetting

drying

unsweet

sweet

sweet

unsweet

procreatively cold

procreatively hot

procreatively hot

procreatively cold

contraceptively hot

contraceptively cold

contraceptively cold

contraceptively hot

f

11 1

^^ ^ ^

heterosexual reproduction

Figure 5.3. Alternating gender categories.

f

Quadripartite structures

94

prior and analogous transmissions to them from women. For Bush Mekeo, there is, in other words, a priority of the category male with respect to the category female. This priority of male over female relates, once again, to the opposition of hot to cold. To clarify this point and to relate the categorization of gender to other cultural contexts, it will be necessary to address the apparent context-sensitivity or context-relativity associated with each of the four gender categories. Closed male and closed female, as I have shown, are hot in the context of contraception and aggressive male magic, but cold in the context of procreation. Open male and open female, conversely, are cold for contraception and aggressive male ritual, but hot for procreation. Thus, each gender category is simultaneously both hot and cold with respect to the two opposed contexts. However, the terms hot and cold are often used in a somewhat different and context-insensitive manner to distinguish the category male and men generally from the category female and women generally. Irrespective of context, villagers sometimes flatly declare that men are hot and women cold. For example, although an open, sexually active man may be described as cold in the context of contraception or aggressive male ritual, and a closing sexually inactive woman as hot in this same context, the former as a male is unambiguously hot in opposition to the latter, who as a female is cold irrespective of context (Figure 5.3). This usage of hot and cold may indeed seem partially contradictory, but it nonetheless reveals the underlying homology between the indigenous classification of gender and gender roles, on the one hand, and categorizations of sexually distinguished bloods, food categories, spatial and body relations, and so on, on the other: closing male hot dry male blood male contraception big meat roasting blood remote bush inside

opening male : : opening female hot wet :: cold wet semen :: womb-blood male female procreation procreation cookable small meat : plant food boiling :: ripening sweet food : : unsweet food peripheral village village abdomen inverted outside : outside

closing female cold dry female blood female contraception noncookable plant food smoking bloodless dirt

(11)

adjacent bush

(3)

everted inside

(4)

(14)

(7) (13)

(12)

(6) (8)

The terms of the final analogy listed here - inside and outside - reveal perhaps more distinctly than elsewhere the systematic conceptual rever-

Male and female

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sal that specifies the opposition of female to male and, in particular, the cultural designation of the latter as prior to the former. The categories "procreative womb-blood" and "procreative opening female" are inversions, respectively, of "procreative semen" and "procreative opening male." Correspondingly, "contraceptive female blood" and "contraceptive closing female" are eversions of "contraceptive male blood" and "contraceptive closing male." In a strictly formal sense, of course, the reverse is also true, but in the culture of the Bush Mekeo one set of categories (those homologous with the female) are always defined subsequently to the other (those homologous with the male), and not vice versa. This is not to be simply interpreted, however, as a systematic "male bias" in the culture, such that males and male-associated things and categories are valued more than females and female-associated things and categories, although in certain contexts this may indeed be the case (cf. Weiner 1976; Ardener 1975; Rosaldo and Atkinson 1975). Rather, I am drawing attention here to the observation that things and categories homologous with maleness are viewed in the culture as logically prior to things and categories associated with femaleness. In the next two chapters dealing with categories of social interrelationship (e.g., kinship, clanship, affinity), I shall develop this point more fully. Before I conclude this chapter, however, it will be helpful to anticipate this extension or expression of the gender divisions into the realm of social relations by counterposing and analyzing the two myths that serve as "charters" at both levels simultaneously. It should be noted that the cultural priority of maleness just mentioned is explicit in these two myths. The first myth, dealing with the life of a man named Foikale, tells how men, who long ago lived in the bush, came to live in the village with women. The other myth purportedly explains how village women once left their menfolk and became flying foxes of the bush. Both myths are regarded as particularly "big" or "important" (apounga) by knowledgeable villagers. I have documented full versions of both as appendixes, including Guis's (1936:189-93, 220-6) accounts, which were current within a generation of contact with Europeans. The myth of Foikale In the earliest recorded rendition of the myth of Foikale (see Appendix 6), Fi5 a man named Foikale lives with other men in caves underneath the mountains (an underground hole of the remote bush). Foikale and his comrades utterly lack gardens, plant food of any kind, hunting and meat, fire, clay pottery, water, and women. Instead, they eat a kind of soil (pkimo) baked in the sun, and give birth themselves without women or even knowledge of women.14 Wandering through the bush one day, Foikale stumbles upon the garden of Oa Lope,15 of whom he was not previously aware. In each of their sequential encounters thereafter, Oa

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Quadripartite

structures

Lope imparts to Foikale knowledge of one of the things he has lacked in his bush existence - gardens and plant food, fire, clay pots, water for cooking, meat and hunting - and, each time, Foikale returns to his comrades of the cave to share the new discoveries with them. Whenever Foikale and the cave men eat a new food for the first time, they vomit it, as in the Amaka myth. When Foikale first sees a woman, Oa Lopes wife, he asks, "What is that?" At the end of the myth, Oa Lope gives Foikale his own daughter in marriage, his "last" and "great" gift, so that Foikale's children will be numerous and his village (sic) prosper. Thereafter, youths of Oa Lope's group marry daughters of Foikale's, and the men of Foikale's group take wives from Oa Lope's. Versions Fu and FUi of the Foikale myth closely follow the basic outline of F( but with some variation of detail worth mentioning. Fu begins with Foikale in a similarly deprived bush existence, except that he eats raw plant materials rather than soil or cooked plant food. Upon their meeting, Oa Lope bestows on Foikale knowledge of gardening, woman's vagina and heterosexuality, houses, villages, fire, cooked food, areca chewing, and clothes. Oa Lope does not explicitly give Foikale his daughter, but the story concludes with Foikale and his male companions moving to Oa Lope's village and enjoying all the new amenities, including women, given by Oa Lope. In version, FiU, the bushman Foikale acquires gardens, fire, roasted plant food, and, lastly, water out of the pierced ground from Oa Lope. Everything Oa Lope gives Foikale in all three versions is sweet, associated with village life, and, in F( and Fu, with women, sexuality, and procreativity explicitly. FiU makes no reference to women per se but otherwise duplicates elements of either Fiy Fu, or both. Foikale's initial remote bush existence, lacking proper cooked foods, fire, pottery, water, chewing, housing, clothes, villages, and women, is strictly unsweet and strictly male. The final village life he adopts, by contrast, has all these things, and it is overwhelmingly sweet and heterosexual. Several features in the three versions of this myth repeat elements of the Amaka myth. Foikale initially warms his food (sic) in the sun (F{). Foikale receives fire and cooked food from Oa Lope (Ft, Fu, FiU), and he vomits the first time he eats each new food category (Fit FiU). After Foikale becomes knowledgeable of woman's vagina and its possibilities for sexual intercourse, he misuses it, as downstream Amaka did, for chewing with areca and betel, and he is frightened, after properly chewing with lime, of blood (sic) coming out of his mouth (Fu). Foikale and his male bush companions acquire wives who will give birth to their children as a result of sexual intercourse, but here without the complication of killing the mother (Fit Fh). Finally, the Foikale myth like the Amaka myth systematically differentiates bloody and bloodless dirty things from unsweet and sweet clean things as they relate to the village/bush distinction.

Male and female

97

Although Foikale is still a man of the Bush, he twice distinguishes himself as nonetheless human from what he mistakes for "snakes" (bananas and rising smoke), that is, from nonhuman people that like faifai also live in holes of the bush (F{). Similarly, Foikale is at first frightened by fire (FJ, or asks if fire will bite him (Ff). Oa Lope also ensures that Foikale does not chew dirty vaginal secretions with betel and areca (F£i). In other words, Foikale abandons an unsweet bush life, free of bloody dirt, for sweet village amenities wherein bloodless dirt arising from association with women is prevalent. However, Oa Lope, like upstream Amaka, teaches Foikale how to distinguish significant categories of things in terms of ordering the relationships between men and women, and between groups of people related through males (Fi? Fu). Foikale's two life styles, first in the bush and then in the village, express certain features of the contrasting phases of the male ritual cycle described above. Foikale's strictly male, nonsexual or sexually cold, unsweet, dry, and closed bush existence corresponds symbolically with the tightened contraceptive condition. Foikale's life after receiving Oa Lope's gifts corresponds in turn to the sexually hot, wet, sweet, and open procreative phase of a man's married life. As Bush Mekeo males alternate between these two extremes in their adulthood, they express or portray the alternative life styles of the mythical figure Foikale. The story of afinama The other myth I will discuss here describes the origin of flying foxes (afinama; also known as fruit-bats) (see Appendix 7). It, too, deals with alternate conceptual modes of interrelationship parallel to the distinction of village and bush, but this time the focus is upon the female. It will be worth mentioning at the outset that flying foxes eat only raw plant food (breadfruit, banana, pawpaw) and migrate in enormous numbers each evening during the dry season (May through November) from swamps to the forest, gardens, and villages where their foods grow. The three recorded versions of this myth begin very much where the Foikale tale leaves off- men and women are living together at the village. Each day, men leave their women at the village and hunt pigs, cassowaries, and wallabies in the bush (Ai? Au, AiU). Rather than sharing their catch with the women, the men either roast and eat all the meat themselves before returning home and lie to the women that they caught nothing (A{, Au), or the men give the meat to the women to cook but still eat all of it themselves, leaving the women only the broth to drink (Aiit). As days go by like this, the women become meat-hungry, angry, and shamed by the men (Ai? Au, AUi). The women discuss their resentments at a meeting.16 Leaving behind their male children while the men are gone hunting (Af) and throwing everything (blankets, skirts, cooking pots, etc.) of theirs away (Aif), the women fashion wings of coconutflockand fly "like

98

Quadripartite structures

birds" to a tall tree (A{, Aip AiU) at the end of the village (AiU). Sitting right side up on the branches, their vaginas are visible from below, so they all hang upside down (Ai9 Au, AiU). The men return and try to get the women and girls to come back down, crying and offering them meat, but the women refuse (Af, Aii9 Aiit). The men cut the tree down, and the women, now flying foxes, fly away (Ai9 Au, AiU). At this point, the three versions end with conflicting results. On the one hand, because the meat of flying fox is "woman's flesh," it is declared dirty and inedible (A^). On the other, a pregnant women (Au) or a "weak" (apoke)17 woman (AiU) crashes to the ground and dies. Men discover that the meat of flying fox is not dirty by feeding it roasted to a boy who does not afterward sicken. It is then declared that men may eat this new kind of meat (Aw AiU). Meat figures prominently in this myth in more than one respect. By denying women big contraceptive meat, men of the village lose to the bush their females and any children they might otherwise bear in the future. It is significant that in one (Au) and perhaps a second (AUi) version, a pregnant woman, unbound with meat but still bound by semen to men at the moment of flight, is unable to leave, falls, and dies, and the men eat her flesh. These versions express once again the symbolic relations of sex to meat and semen, but also the novel proposition that women, unbound with meat and with semen to men, may escape. In turn, they become potentially edible small meat themselves. It is implicit that if men had supplied their women with meat, they would not have lost them or their progeny to the bush, and the question of eating woman's flesh would not be problematic, at least in this context.18 By contrast, in the Foikale myth, there was no suggestion that Foikale's male flesh was edible when Oa Lope first encountered him in the bush (F{, Fu, FiU). Yet the edibility of female flesh in the form of flying fox remains a possibility once women leave their men for the bush. The afinama myth, like the Foikale myth, places the two alternative ritual female conditions into the context of village in opposition to bush. Women hold their meetings on ground of the village abdomen, then flee to the uncultivated tree standing in the nearby or adjacent bush at the end of the village. The women who become exclusively female flying foxes of the adjacent bush, therefore, significantly compare with the exclusively male Foikale of the remote bush before he met Oa Lope. Also, the women, who at the beginning of the myth gather in the village abdomen and then at the end fly to the bush, invert and evert, respectively, the end and the beginning positions of the males in the Foikale myth. Women thus end up occupying the bush, and men are left residing alone at the village. In terms of village and bush, men and women have effectively exchanged positions. The categories village and bush are consequently bisected by the male/female distinction.

Male and female

99

The mythical focus upon meat here once again recalls the pivotal role of meat in the ritual of the female ritual cycle and suggests a relation between this myth and female ritual comparable to the relation between the Foikale myth and male ritual. When the women asflyingfoxes leave their possessions, their men, and their village for the adjacent bush, they replicate the contraceptive withdrawal of women from men during the postpartum and nursing phases. Women, like men, have two opposed conditions or states - one procreatively enjoined with men, sexually hot, sweet, open, and wet; and the other contraceptively separate from men, sexually cold, unsweet, closed, and dry. This digression into myth, I think, confirms the main points made throughout this chapter regarding the complex, complementary, and cyclic oscillations implicit in male and female ritual and the conceptualizations of gender difference. Married adult Bush Mekeo men and women ritually and symbolically "do much the same thing" as one another and roughly according to the same schedule. Nonetheless, women "do it" as a reversal of the male. With respect to the culturally ordained logical priority of male to female, Foikale and his comrades at the beginning of the first myth exist entirely separate from women and female-associated things and qualities. The flying foxes at the end of the second myth, however, do not absolutely escape the world of village males they leave behind. Nor do they take up the same underground place of residence occupied by Foikale initially. Moreover, the two myths suggest opposed conceptual affinities of opening and closing to ordinary and extraordinary spheres of village life for males and for females. In the Foikale myth, males open; in the afinama myth, females close. In terms of spatial transfers, the two myths together express unidirectional transfers of the ordinary sphere of village life. There is movement first from remote bush to peripheral village, and then from village abdomen to adjacent bush. In their respective ritual cycles, however, males and females also "move" the other way - men close and women open - and in these phases both males and females are compatible with bi- or ambidirectional spatial transfers between holes of the extraordinary sphere of village life. Apparently, then, the myths establish male opening and female closing as unidirectional processes compatible with the ordinary sphere, and their ambidirectional reversal (i.e., male closing and female opening) as compatible with the extraordinary sphere. And once more, the categories male and female are distinguished in precisely reversed terms.

6 Kin, clan, and connubium

Based upon his reading of Seligmann's Mekeo ethnography, Levi-Strauss observes: The plan of their social organization is a subtle and complex symmetry, and the historical vicissitudes to which its componenet elements have been exposed have never succeeded in abating its strictness. (1969b:77) Although there are differences between Bush and Central Mekeo social organization chiefly as a consequence of differences in scale, the "plan" in each case is, I think, virtually the same. The avowed purpose of this chapter is to elucidate as explicitly and simply as possible this subtle and complex symmetry that structures Bush Mekeo social relationships. To achieve this end, I relate the various categories of Bush Mekeo social classification to one another and to other contexts of the culture (Leach 1976; Schneider 1972, 1980; cf. Lounsbury 1965). I begin by describing and interrelating the set of kin categories in the indigenous language, the various idealized levels of unilineal clan fragmentation and residence, and the formalized interclan affinal relationships. Then I trace the logical interplay between these conceived cultural formations and the rules of marriage and marriage compensation. In anthropological jargon, the idealized system I describe is one that prohibits marriage between all first cousins while permitting (if not prescribing) marriage in alternate generations between children of first bilateral cross-cousins who belong to different patrimoieties (i.e., between classificatory second cross-cousins). In view of comparison, this formulation of the basic Bush Mekeo system in its overall structural properties resembles the classic "Aranda'-type systems of Australia except that it lacks named sections or subsections but possesses as alternatives both "Hawaiian"- and "Dravidian"-type kinterm classifications. Much more importantly for my purposes, however, I reveal a number of structural homologies between the categories of social relationship and the other contexts of category distinction in the culture I have already elucidated. The entire nexus of Bush Mekeo symbols regarding reproduction is of particular significance here. The indigenous theory of human 100

Kin, clan, and connubium

101

reproduction, recall, involves the resolution of a critical contradiction at the level of the mating couple, whereby hot dirty male blood (semen) assimilated by the woman's abdomen procreates new life rather than illness and death. A related contradiction is specifically implicated for human reproduction at the societal level. In spite of exogamous exchange of women and the incorporation through them of female blood, groups of purported agnates maintain an ideology of exclusively male or patrilineal blood relatedness. Alternately phrased, at the level of the mating couple, male blood (semen) challenges the blood-purity of the female body; at the societal level, correspondingly, female-derived cognatic blood challenges the integrity of social groups defined in terms of male blood and agnation. The societal-level contradiction, then, is between blood relationship conceptualized unilineally through males and blood relationship conceptualized bilaterally or cognatically through females as well (see Moore 1964; Leach 1966a; Douglas 1968, 1970; A. Strathern 1972; Denich 1974; Weiner 1980; Hage and Harary 1981). I shall outline the resolution of this contradiction in terms of the indigenous culture categories and their underlying quadripartite structure. Before moving on, it will prove helpful to indicate that the actual terms and form of this resolution have already been foreshadowed in the counterposing of the Foikale and afinama myths at the end of the previous chapter. Beyond chartering the conceptual bisection of the category adult male, the Foikale myth enjoins the creation of a society structured by the "restricted exchange" (Levi-Strauss 1969b; Needham 1962) of women between the two groups, the members of each being initially related exclusively through males. The afinama myth, aside from inversely bisecting the characteristics of the adult female, describes the severing or abrogation of ties between affinally related groups of agnates through the loss of the women previously exchanged. The reciprocal exchange of women between nonagnates, in other words, is negated by the loss of the women themselves from male society. How these complementary processes expressed even in these mythological terms resolve the contradiction of societal reproduction more precisely in Bush Mekeo culture will become evident when I turn specifically to the analysis of marriage exchange and compensation. Relationships of blood and nonblood

The evidence of preceding chapters testifies to the fundamental significance of the blood/bloodless opposition in virtually every context of Bush Mekeo culture. Indeed, it may well be said that several of these contexts are explicitly related to one another in the culture through successive and homologous bisections of the initial duality of blood and nonblood. All substances in the world, for example, are distinguished in terms of:

102

Quadripartite structures ii J blood

:

sweet j ,.

/i i

^

::

(blood-potent)

/ui

unsweet J • *

:

IA

(blood-impotent)

, U1 J1 bloodless dirt

/ON

(8)

And different kinds of human blood are subsequently and homologously categorized in terms of: male body-blood

female womb-blood

'

'

female body-blood

, ^

The realm of social relationships for the Bush Mekeo is likewise initially conceptualized in terms of blood and nonblood, and subsequently at less inclusive levels social relationships are systematically distinguished according to homologous bisections of the blood/nonblood opposition. Although the peoples now known as the Bush Mekeo were never politically unified in any fashion, there seems to have existed among them traditionally a self-awareness as a single cultural and linguistic community as distinct from their neighbors - the Central Mekeo, the coastal Roro and Toaripi, and the mountaineer Lapeka and Kuefa groups. Within the Bush Mekeo population, the highest level of political organization is the "tribe," of which there are two - the Amoamo and the Kuipa. In the days before colonial rule, the two tribes were hereditary and irreconcilable enemies. "Warfare" (aoao) is expressed in the language in terms of an exchange of blood between tribes. This ritualized intertribal reciprocity of blood, moreover, contrasts with the pattern of shifting alliances and hostilities between each of the Bush Mekeo tribes and the other n o n - B u s h Mekeo groups in the area. In other words, the two Bush Mekeo tribes were related to one another in war reciprocation of blood in a manner absent from the less formalized relations of the Bush Mekeo to their neighbors. Thus, in the context of war reciprocation, the two Bush Mekeo tribes are traditionally conceptualized as " o n e " or the "same blood" (ifa alakangamo) in contrast to the "different bloods" (ifa ikoina) of other groups: (a)

same, one blood

'

different, nonblood

"

Bush Mekeo peoples

'

non-Bush Mekeo peoples

The blood/nonblood opposition also corresponds to the distinction "own Bush Mekeo t r i b e " / " e n e m y Bush Mekeo tribe" in the context of reciprocating blood through marriage, sex, and procreation. With superiority in war nearly always on the side of the attacking forces, it was of utmost strategic importance that the location of villages b e kept secret from enemy tribesmen. For this reason, my informants argued, the two Bush Mekeo tribes never intermarried. W o m e n taken from the enemy group might reveal to their brothers the location of villages of their husbands' tribe. Thus, each tribal unit is traditionally an endogamous group and remains largely so even after a century of pacification. Moreover,

Kin, clan, and connubium

103

warfare as it was waged between the two tribes was never practiced within a tribe. In contradiction to Tylor's dictum, the Bush Mekeo do not marry whom they fight and do not fight whom they marry. l In recognition of many generations of endogamously transmitting blood cognatically among themselves, members of a tribe regard each other as one or the same blood as distinct from the different blood of the enemy Bush Mekeo tribe: (b)

same, one blood

different, ' nonblood

"

own Bush Mekeo tribe

'

enemy Bush Mekeo tribe

The boundary of own blood/nonblood for war, in the context of intermarriage, is bisected. I shall have more to say below regarding the conceptual relations of blood conceived in war exchange and blood conceived in peace and marriage exchange. Blood relatives or kin Blood shared among members of a tribe as a consequence of common reproductive ancestry is expressed in terms of bilateral kinship or, simply, "relatives" (atsi atsitsi).2 Relatives are said to be "born together" or "born in lines" (mauni panini) and to share blood by virtue of the mixing and transmission of procreative bloods from the parents to children consistent with the prevailing theory of reproduction described in Chapters 4 and 5. By extension, people who are connected with one another through consecutive bilateral parent-child links are one and the same blood. Moreover, just as ones own body blood is sweet to oneself, one's own relatives by blood are sweet. Relatives, in other words, "like" (kernitisa) one another, and ideally they should not fight. At the level of the tribal unit, blood and relatives or kin are conceptualized uniformly. However, within the endogamous tribe villagers recognize a number of additional discriminations or distinctive categories of blood and relatives that correspond with what the anthropologist customarily regards as a system of kinship nomenclature and classification. The major system of the Bush Mekeo qualifies as a variant of the generational or "Hawaiian" type (Lowie 1968; Kroeber 1909; Spier 1925). Beyond describing the main outlines of this system, I shall indicate a number of terminological alternatives for cousins suggestive of a "Dravidian" classification that also have profound sociological significance, particularly as regards the dimensions of blood relationship (cf. Scheffler 1971). In its most literal or narrowest extent, the indigenous term for relatives, atsi atsitsi, refers to full siblings born of the same mother and father: atsi or "their senior sibling(s)," and atsitsi or "their junior sibling^)." 3 Because all full members of a sibling set acquire their respective

104

Quadripartite structures

blood(s) from the same mother and father at conception, senior and junior siblings are one and the same blood. Half-siblings ("one father, different mothers," or vice versa) of both sexes are also terminologically senior or junior to one another. Here, "seniority" (fakania) and "juniority" (eke) are assigned, not on chronological birth order, but on the chronological sequence by which the parents not in common married the parent in common of the two sets of offspring. For example, all children of a mans second wife are junior in relation to their siblings born of the same man's first wife, even if (as often happens in polygynous unions) the former are born before the latter. Bilateral first cousins are also terminologically senior and junior siblings, but here seniority and juniority are assigned according to the relationship of their respective parents, who of course are siblings to one another. An elder sister's children, for example, are all senior siblings of her junior brother's children. It is in these ways that senior and junior sibling terms are extended and assigned to persons of the same generation who are still more distantly related. Second cousins are distinguished as senior and junior according to the seniority and juniority of their grandparents who are siblings, and so on. Although all siblings as relatives irrespective of genealogical distance are, like full siblings, considered one and the same blood in many contexts, villagers do recognize differences among them that correspond to the distinction of blood/nonblood. Full siblings are unambiguously one and the same blood. But when I questioned informants regarding other types of siblings, they readily conceded that, whereas half-siblings, for example, are one blood by virtue of sharing a parent in common, they are different or "half" (apie) blood by virtue of not sharing the other parent in common. Bilateral first cousins similarly share "some" (isa) blood, but they also possess more different blood than full or half-siblings. Corresponding discriminations in the quantity of blood shared by more remote siblings are made proportionate to genealogical distance. As I shall show below, certain of these discriminations bear directly on the regulation of marriage. As mentioned above, intergenerational relationships are classified in terms suggestive of the classic "Hawaiian" system (Figures 6.1 and 6.2). The terminology employed between Ego's own and adjacent generations is not reciprocal. Father, male collaterals, and the spouses of female collaterals in the first ascending generation are all "father" (ama). In the same generation, mother, female collaterals, and the spouses of male collaterals are "mother" (ina). In the first descending generation, own children along with the children of all siblings are "children" (ngau) undifferentiated for sex. For all remaining intergenerational relationships, lineal as well as collateral, terms are reciprocal and undifferentiated for

A = ama father I = ina mother a = a senior sibling

t = atsijunior sibling

ngotsingotsi

Figure 6.1. Atsi atsitsi terminology (patrilateral).

A = ama father 1 = ina mother a - a senior sibling t = atsi junior sibling

ngots ingot si

Figure 6.2. Atsi atsitsi terminology (matrilateral).

ngaua

ipa

ngotsingotsi

Figure 6.3. Ipa ngaua terminology (matrilateral).

ngaua

ngotsingotsi

Figure 6.4. Ipa ngaua terminology (patrilateral).

Kin, clan, and connubium

109

sex: "grandparent"/"grandchild" (ufu), "great grandparent"/"great grandchild" (apapa), and "great great grandparent"/"great great grandchild" (ngotsingotsi).

These several categories of intergenerational kin relationship also presume proportionate sharing of blood through bilateral extension along consecutive parent-child links. Although personal pedigrees articulated according to this terminological system are usually relatively shallow, most often extending no further than two or three generations back, it is presumed by everyone that, after many generations of tribal endogamy, all members of the tribe are relatives (atsi atsitsi) of one or another category to each other. The fact that many people do not know their precise genealogical relationships is simply explained by the presumption that the more remote ancestral connections have been "forgotten."4 Tribal endogamy then is viewed to place an outer limit or boundary upon the extension of bilateral-kin terminology, and it gives to the tribal unit the integrity of one or the same blood. Within the tribe, however, there exist other boundaries that separate blood from nonblood relationships. Although these boundaries correspond in part with the recognition of differences in genealogical proximity, they are expressed in the culture in the quite distinct terms of affinal relationship, intraclan and interclan relationship, marriage proscription and prescription, and an alternate classificatory sibling terminology. Affines (ipa ngaua)

Terminological affinal relationships (ipa ngaua) exist between persons of only the same or adjacent generations. According to the rules that regulate marriage (see next section below), affines should not be relatives or share blood of cognation. The reciprocal term for "husband" and for "wife" is akaua. All the spouse's siblings are termed ipa or "siblings-inlaw," and reciprocally all siblings' spouses are ipa siblings-in-law. The term ngaua is used with reference and address to "spouse's parent," reciprocally to "child's spouse," and between the parents of a married couple (Figures 6.3, 6.4, 6.5). In generations ±2, ±3 and ±4, however, Ego and Ego's spouse's relatives employ the reciprocal kin terms appropriate for generation that Ego uses for his/her own relatives of these generations. For the second generation descending and below, Ego's descendants and their spouses are both given the same reciprocal kin terms in relation to Ego; thus, here the categories "own relatives" and "spouse's relatives" converge. It is particularly important to note further that with respect to the second ascending generation and above, Ego and Ego's spouse stand in identical

u I u

$9

u I u

_9$9£3

N

EGO

K6b_K N

u

u

u

I

n

u

N = ngaua n = rnjet/

u = ufu

Figure 6.5. Ipa ngaua terminology (Ego's and descending generations).

Kin, clan, and connubium

111

terminological kin relations with the same persons. Classificatory relatives of Ego again coincide with those of Egos spouse. Because these remote genealogical affines are terminologically classified as relatives rather than as affines, it is categorically implicit that they share some degree of cognatically transmitted blood. By the same token, moreover, because Ego's spouse and affines in the same and adjacent generations are descended themselves from these cognates of Ego's ancestors, some of Ego's erstwhile relatives are terminologically classified as his/her affines or nonrelatives who share none of Ego's blood. The intersection of affinal with kin terms and categories, in other words, suggests that certain cognates who share blood become affines who share no blood. Thus, the cultural relations between blood and nonblood, on the one hand, and cognation and affinity, on the other, are reversed: (c) blood : nonblood

:: cognation

(d) blood

:: affinity

: affinity

and : nonblood

: cognation

Comparison of these relations suggests that the blood/nonblood distinction is bisected by, rather than strictly parallel to, the distinction between cognatic relationship and affinity. Such a structure is perfectly compatible with a system of restricted exchange whereby marriage is symmetrically prescribed or preferred between relatives of particular categories. I shall deal at length with this point below, for it is critical to the full characterization of the Bush Mekeo system of exogamic reciprocity of blood between agnatic groups. Moiety, clan, and lineage The categories blood and nonblood, and cognate and affine, are related to the indigenous notion of unilineal clanship as it is conceptualized at a number of levels of social organization. The word for "clan" is ikupu. Ikupu is also the nominative inflection of the verb "to close" (ekupu) discussed in the preceding chapter with reference to the ritual processes of male tightening and female postpartum ritual. Villagers say of clans what they also say of bodies during these male and female closing rituals: "Nothing goes in, nothing comes out, nothing goes through. ' Part of what is meant in this context is that a clan of whatever organizational level has an inside (aonga) and outside (afanga). Every person in Bush Mekeo society is considered to be inside the clan of his/her father, but outside his/her mother's and spouse's clans (with significant qualifications; see below). In terms of recruitment, then, Bush Mekeo clans are patrifilial (Barnes 1962). Because all persons inside the same clan are ideally considered to be

112

Quadripartite

structures

relatives (atsi atsitsi), they are terminologically classified according to the appropriate categories described above. Unlike certain cognates of different clans, however, persons of the same clan cannot use with one another the alternate sibling term (ekefaka) that is described later in the chapter. Clanspeople correspondingly are deemed to be one and the same blood, but through exclusively male rather than cognatic connections. In the sense of expressing group unity and solidarity, Bush Mekeo clans are therefore patrilineal (A. Strathern 1972). Villagers apply the notion of a clan to several distinct levels of segmentary (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Fortes 1953) or fragmentary (Groves 1963) organization and closure. The Foikale myth (Chapter 5) expresses clanship at its widest or most comprehensive range - the exogamous "moiety" (ngopu). Knowledgeable old men can remember hearing from their fathers that the tribe in the precontact past was bisected into moieties, but none of them can now recall the names (if any) by which they were known. This form of moiety organization seems also to have been characteristic of neighboring societies that are culturally related to the Bush Mekeo. Each of the two tribes of the Central Mekeo - the Biofa and Veke - is composed of two named moieties (ngopu) (Seligmann 1910:320-7; Guis 1936:39-40). According to Hau'ofa, moiety organization among the Biofa tribe has since been abandoned, but among the Veke it is still observed (1981:27-30). Levi-Strauss has pointed out a similar dual organization among the Motu and Koita villages of the Port Moresby area traditionally (1969b:76-8; cf. Seligmann 1910:46-58). From Seligmann's material, it could be argued that at least some of the Roro tribes along the coast of Hall Sound on the Papuan Coast traditionally had moieties (Seligmann 1910:196-204). The data, however, are not altogether complete (see the discussion of kofuapie and pisaua relationships later in the chapter). Because members of the same Bush Mekeo moiety are agnates with one another, regarded as "one clan" (ikupu alakangamo), and one and the same agnatic blood, members of different moieties of the same tribe are of "different clans" (ikupu ikoina) and different agnatic blood. In terms of the blood/bloodless distinction: (e) blood : nonblood :: own clan : different clan :: agnation : nonagnation This suggests, in turn, that the own clan /different clan and agnation/nonagnation distinctions are related to the own tribe/enemy tribe and cognation/affinity distinctions discussed above: (f) own clan : different clan :: own tribe : enemy tribe (g) agnation : nonagnation :: cognation : affinity (h) agnation : nonagnation :: affinity : cognation

Kin, clan, and connubium

113

These categories, moreover, are related in similar ways to the distinctions between intratribal peace and intertribal war, on the one hand, and exogamy and endogamy on the other. According to the rule of moiety exogamy, two moieties of the same tribe at peace reciprocate blood through the exchange of women in marriage. The reciprocation of blood through warfare and killing between moieties of the same tribe, however, is prohibited. These latter relations, therefore, are precisely the opposite of relations between different tribes who cannot intermarry but who are obliged to fight. Exogamy and endogamy, in other words, are analogous with peace and war: (i) exogamy : peace :: endogamy : war I shall have additional comments to make regarding these categories once I have finished tracing out the boundaries of the indigenous notion of clanship. Every moiety in Bush Mekeo society is comprised of numerous patrilineal subunits with varying ranges of social inclusiveness, yet all are uniformly termed ikupu. First, each moiety contains more than one "dispersed clan" distinguished by name. By "dispersed" I mean that all adultmale members do not necessarily or by rule live in the same village. And because postmarital residence is viripatrilocal, women of a dispersed clan who have married out do not reside with their clanspeople unless they have married into another clan of the same village. All members of a dispersed clan claim to be one clan and one and the same blood exclusively traced along agnatic connections, even if (as is very often the case) the precise genealogical links have been forgotten. Also, the members of a dispersed clan claim to be more closely related as agnates than they are to the members of another dispersed clan in the same moiety. In the tribe where I conducted most of my inquiries, there are four named dispersed clans. Below I shall argue that this number of dispersed clans in the tribe is not coincidental but contains important social-structural significance. Characteristically, each named dispersed clan contains more than one "subclan," likewise termed ikupu, distinguished one from another in terms of senior (fakania) or junior (eke) status (cf. Sahlins 1963). In most cases, senior and junior subclans of the same dispersed clan are said to have once been a single subclan without differentiation as to seniority, but through the process of fission and the public installation of a junior peace chief - ideally, a "younger brother" of the senior peace chief - the semiindependent status of the junior subclan has been established (Seligmann 1910:342-8; Hau'ofa 1981:184-214). In some cases, the events surrounding the separation are still recalled, evidently occurring within the lifetimes of surviving villagers. By similar means, incidentally, dispersed

114

Quadripartite structures

clans of the same moiety are said to have first become independent. The details of these occurrences, however, have usually been lost from the recollections of old people. Also, the relative seniority of agnatically related dispersed clans, as contrasted by that of subclans, seems to be neither asserted nor deemed socially significant. Each subclan, senior or junior, of any dispersed clan may be further subdivided into patrilineal units that are again termed ikupu, but which I shall call "lineages." Ideally, each subclan possesses at least one lineage of all four possible types: "peace chief" (lopia), "peace sorcery" (ungaunga), "war chief" (iso), and "war sorcery" (faika). Typically, the members of a single lineage can recite specific genealogical connections that unite them all together as agnates. Each lineage possesses its own hereditary office ideally passed from father to eldest son in formal public installation ceremonies of the appropriate type. The officeholder of a lineage at any one time, then, should be the most senior male of the lineage. Moreover, the specialized lineages of a subclan are themselves related to one another in terms of relative seniority. The peace chief and members of his lineage are senior to the other officeholders and members of their respective lineages. Apparently, relative status between the junior lineages corresponds only with actual or presumed genealogical seniority. Details regarding the ritual specializations of the four subclan and lineage officeholders among the Bush Mekeo are nearly identical to those of the Central Mekeo as described at length by Seligmann (1910:279-301, 342-8; cf. Hau'ofa 1971, 1981:215-88; Belshaw 1951:3; Stephen 1974:6). Very broadly, peace chiefs and peace sorcerers dominate relations within the tribe, and war chiefs and war sorcerers direct relations between tribes. More specifically, the main responsibility, indeed the prerogative, of the peace chief is to give and receive death-feast prestations on behalf of his subclan. The peace sorcerer assists the peace chief by "closing the eyes" (i.e., killing) of persons within the tribe who have shamed or angered the chief and thereby prevented him from properly fulfilling his feasting duties. Peace sorcerers will supposedly even attack a peace chief of another clan if the latter publicly shames or angers the sorcerers own chief. Also, as Hau'ofa has emphasized, the peace sorcerer is the custodian of traditions (1971:162). War sorcerers perform the ritual, on behalf of the warriors of the clans and subclans of their tribe, that weakens their enemies before they are attacked. Also, as the peace sorcerer is the custodian of traditions with respect to peace affairs, the war sorcerer is the guardian of war traditions. War chiefs lead the attacking forces of their subclan into battle and direct the actual killing. The four hereditary ritual specializations that distinguish the lineages of a subclan constitute a cultural and social totality. The clan group, which

Kin, clan, and connubium

115

includes specialists of all four kinds, is totally balanced, that is, it can participate in all contexts of intratribal and intertribal, or peace and war, communication. This official hereditary ritual specialization involves the bisecting of the peace/war duality along the dimension of chief/sorcerer. The resulting four types of officeholders and lineages are homologous with the categories resulting from the bisection of the inside/outside duality discussed in previous chapters. Peace chiefs and peace sorcerers are both "inside" insofar as their sphere of influence is restricted to their own bounded tribe. The relations "outside" the tribe are the special province of war chiefs and war sorcerers. Peace chiefs never kill within the tribe. Rather, they secretly appoint a peace sorcerer of their tribe to kill for them. If the intended victim is in the chief's own clan or moiety, he will most likely have to find a peace sorcerer of the opposite moiety to do the killing, as his own moiety sorcerers will be less inclined to kill their own agnate. If the intended victim is in the moiety opposite to the peace chief he has shamed or angered, the peace chief will supposedly appoint a peace sorcerer of his own moiety to do the killing. In either case, the peace sorcerer who does do the killing will typically be from the moiety opposite to that of the victim. In the context of war outside the tribe, these relations between chief and sorcerer and killing and not killing are reversed (Seligmann 1910:295-8). War sorcerers, unlike peace sercerers, do not kill their enemies. In fact, as soon as they finish pronouncing their spells in the bush at the edge of the enemy village, war sorcerers fall to the ground as if slain themselves. On the other hand, war chiefs in the lead of the attacking forces will direct all the actual killing and participate in it themselves, as distinct from peace chiefs. Although war sorcerers do not directly engage in battle, it is they who specify the plans for killing to the war chiefs, just as peace chiefs direct peace sorcerers to kill. Thus, the two war specialists reverse the relations of the peace specialists: inside : outside :: inverted outside : everted inside peace chief : war sorcerer :: war chief : peace sorcerer

(4) (15)

Clans, residence, and working together The description I have just presented of lineage and office differentiations of a subclan is an idealized conceptual ordering that does not represent the actual constituency of even a single actual subclan of the tribe I lived among and studied most intensively. Every identifiable Amoamo subclan unit lacks at least one of the supposedly necessary ritual specializations. Nonetheless, these conceptual distinctions and relations that define the fourfold division of the subclan are persistently represented in the local-

116

Quadripartite structures

level organization of "residential clans" or simply clans (ikupu) (cf. Groves 1963). The conceptualization of an independent, fully staffed, and ritually complete patrilineal clan overlaps with co-residence. Together, these ideas correspond with the relationship termed "working together" (kepinaunga kaitsialo) (cf. Hau'ofa 1971:155; A. Strathern 1972:217-18). Typically as well as according to rule, each Bush Mekeo village is occupied by two residential clans, each supposedly of opposite moieties. The kinds of social units that make up a local clan vary in some respects from village to village. A local clan may include, for example, two subclans sharing the same clan name but distinguished as senior and junior with their own respective peace chiefs. This is the ideal situation. Sometimes, however, senior and junior subclans reside in different villages. In a few instances, ritually specialized lineages of the same subclan live apart from one another. It is not uncommon to find that some members of a single lineage also reside in different villages. These deviations are evidently the result of clan, subclan, or lineage fission, migration, relocation, and, as we shall see, fusion. Usually villagers can provide stories that describe the supposed historical events that have led up to the current seemingly jumbled-up situation. Consequently, the composition of local clan groups in terms of adult married male personnel is characteristically heterogeneous. The local clans that result following numerous immigrations and emigrations typically consist of several heterogeneous units bound together as one clan through working together. Two considerations are commonly cited as relevant to the formation of this relationship. One has specifically to do with the requirement that each local clan have its own peace chief. The other concerns the necessity that each local clan be represented by a lineage of each of the other three ritual specializations. First, when a lineage of peace chiefs dies out, surviving members of the subclan are left unable to participate in the system of death-feast reciprocation. This is a most untenable situation for them. After one of their number dies, the survivors have no means of ending the restrictions of their mourning, because only an installed peace chief of their clan can give or receive mortuary-feast prestations (Chapters 7 and 8). Thus, a subclan without its peace chief must work together as one clan with another subclan whose peace chieftainship is still intact and functional. Usually, the two units will live together in the same village. Moreover, it is typically the case that the two subclans will not claim an agnatic ancestry in genealogical terms. Numerous local clans among the Bush Mekeo are, in fact, composed of such heterogeneous units who cooperate or work together explicitly for feasting purposes.5 The groups that have lost their own peace chieftainships, however, will frequently assume the clan names of the groups they join who still possess them.

Kin, clan, and connubium

117

Secondly, a number of local clans incorporate subclans that work together as one clan even while the constituent subclan units still possess their own installed peace chiefs. In these cases, one or both of the fused subclans lacks one or more of the other three ritually specialized authority positions. For example, one subclan may not have its own war chief and war-chief lineage, whereas another subclan, living in the same village or elsewhere, which has no known agnates, may have a war chief but lack a peace sorcerer. The two subclans might then settle in the same village and work together as one clan with the ideal and total complement of ritual and lineage specializations. Sometimes the two subclans will retain their previous clan names, other times they will both go by the clan name of only one of them. One means of establishing a ritually complete clan at the local level is simply to recruit a knowledgeable specialist of the missing type from outside the clan to found a new lineage within the clan. Sometimes specialists recruited in this way come from another subclan, local clan, or dispersed clan of the same moiety, particularly as regards peace chiefs. However, specialists of the other categories are in most instances initially recruited after first having married in. Not only do relationships of working together bind heterogeneous subclans and lineages at the local level, very often they are predicated by affinity and cognation rather than by agnation. These processes of subclan and lineage fusion and the recruitment of nonagnates and even affines describe in general terms how subclans and residential clans, by working together at the local level, preserve their ideal lineage structure with a complete fourfold complement of ritual specialization among their personnel. However, local clans consolidated in these ways might seem to contradict the fundamental idea of the purely agnatic closed social unit. But regardless of how they are initially related, once lineages and subclans begin working together, they are supposed to cease intermarrying among themselves. Different nonagnatic bloods thereby become one agnatic blood, and persons of different clans become one and the same clan. Because the local clan continues to marry exogamously, it remains closed vis-a-vis other clans. To illustrate the persistence of ideal clan structure as it is manifested at the level of local-clan organization, the ritual specializations of the lineages composing Nganga clan of Akabe village6 as it existed in 1976 are portrayed in Table 2. The abbreviations NM3, NF2, etc., refer to separate lineages of Nganga Manga, Nganga Angai, and Nganga Faka subclans (see Figure 6.6 and following text). No one of these three component subclans possesses all four types of lineage speciality. Wherein publicly espoused ties of agnation uniting these subclans in this case are not demonstrable and in many instances are known to be otherwise, the case of

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Table 2. Offices, lineages, and subclans of Nganga residential clan Iopia (peace chiefs)

Ungaunga (peace sorcerers)

Iso (war chiefs)

Faika (war sorcerers)

NM3, NF2, NF7, NA1, NA3

NM5, NF8

NM3, NF6

NA3, NA4

Subclans: NM = Nganga Manga; NF = Nganga Faka; NA = Nganga Angai.

Nganga clan is typical of other local clans in the Bush Mekeo. Notwithstanding, each local clan operates as though it were one agnatic blood. Despite all the vicissitudes of traditional warfare; pacification; colonialism; rampant epidemics and depopulation; migrations in and out; and intraclan disputes over endogamous marriages, sorcery suspicions, and official successions, Nganga clan has successfully achieved and maintained a fully functioning approximate ordering of the ideal fourfold balance of offices and lineage specialization through the processes of subclan and lineage fusion in terms of working together. The oral history of Nganga clan This fourfold balance is one dimension of the strictness Levi-Strauss mentions regarding Mekeo social organization, and an example of what he more generally discusses elsewhere as the primacy of structure over event (1969b:77, 1966a:66-74; see also Sahlins 1976). As such, and because I will discuss this specific theoretical issue at length in Chapter 10 in the light of my conclusions, it will be instructive to digress briefly and outline here the composite oral history of the internal relations of Nganga clan. This account is based upon interviews I conducted with numerous villagers, both in and out of Nganga clan, and upon certain critical genealogical details recorded by Father Egidi (n.d.) near the turn of the century. The temporal relations of the lineages and subclans discussed herein are diagramed in Figure 6.6. At the time of contact (1890, or thereabouts), Nganga clan was composed of Nganga Manga and Nganga Faka subclans working together. Villagers today claim, however, that several generations before Nganga Manga had joined with Nganga Faka, Nganga Manga was itself composed of two agnatically unrelated subclans - Nganga Manga (NM) and Nganga Angai (NA) - who had begun working together as one clan. NA is said to have first migrated into Bush Mekeo territory following the legendary breakup of Afai village (Seligmann 1910:315-16). When they arrived in the Bush Mekeo, NA included the lineages of senior and junior peace chiefs, senior war sorcerer, and senior war chief. They

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Figure 6.6. Composite lineage history (Nganga clan). L = lopia peace chief; / = iso war chief; U = unguanga peace sorcerer; F = faika war sorcerer; Ub = uibina assistant peace chief; x = lineage extinct; * = emigrant lineage; + = immigrant lineage; f = fakania senior; e = eke junior.

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lacked a peace sorcerer and peace sorcerer's lineage. Soon afterward, apparently, the war chief lineage died out. One of the lineages of the newcomers (NA2) exchanged sisters with a junior lineage of Nganga Manga (NM2) who was already living in the area. At some point, all of NA settled with NM. The two began working together as one clan and ceased intermarrying thereafter. Although this arrangement permitted NA and NM to approximate more closely the ideal fourfold complement of offices and lineages, the new Nganga clan still lacked a peace sorcerer. Subsequently, NM subclan lost both its senior and junior peace chief lineages. The last male senior peace chief (NM1) had only daughters and no sons. Whenever a peace chief lacks sons, he may pass the office to his daughter, but she may not in turn pass it to her own son, for it must stay inside the clan. In this instance, the last male senior peace chief of NM installed his eldest daughter, and she her younger sister. Upon the death of the latter, the senior peace chieftainship went unoccupied. The junior peace chief of Nganga Manga (NM2) eloped with a woman of Nganga Angai, violating the rules of local-clan exogamy and incest, resettled with an unrelated clan of a neighboring village, and became that clan's junior chief.7 For several generations thereafter, Nganga Manga subclan had no peace chiefs of its own, but it participated in feasting exchanges through Nganga Angai's peace chieftainships. Some generations previous to European contact, a large clan of Lapeka8 origin, now known as Nganga Faka (NF), had migrated to the Bush Mekeo, intermarried heavily within the tribe, and established itself as an independent local clan. Among its original settlers, Nganga Faka included lineages of senior (NF1) and junior (NF12) peace chiefs, five lineages of war sorcerers (NF2, NF7, NF8, NF10, NF11), two lineages of junior war chiefs (NF4, NF5), and seven additional lineages now unidentified as to hereditary ritual specialization. A group of Kunimaipa (nonAustronesian-speaking) mountain people happened upon the Nganga Faka village and attacked, mistaking them for a different enemy group. In this battle and the first epidemics of European disease to sweep through the area soon thereafter, twelve of Nganga Faka's sixteen recorded lineages were exterminated. The survivors included members of three Nganga Faka war sorcerer lineages (NF2, NF7, NF8) and one war chief lineage (NF5). Lacking a peace chief to make feasts for their own dead, lacking also a peace sorcerer, and in need of allies to help them avenge the many deaths, the NF survivors relocated near Nganga Manga's newly established village, Akabe, and soon became one clan, working together with NM and NA. As a result of a dispute over clan endogamy in another village, two brothers of the war chief lineage of a clan there left and settled with the

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Nganga Fakas. One of the brothers was already married to a NF woman. In the years sometime after European contact when the surviving Nganga Faka war chief lineage (NF5) produced daughters only and no sons, the descendants of these two brothers became the war chief lineage of Nganga Faka clan (NF6). Since then, some members of this war chief lineage have intermarried with people of their clan of origin. Up until pacification, Nganga local clan seems to have concentrated especially on recruiting lineages and individuals with hereditary war specializations. But after the colonial government put an end to war, the strategic emphasis shifted toward peace sorcery as a means to avenge outstanding war debts and the many postcontact deaths thought caused by peace sorcery, as wave after wave of foreign disease swept through the area (Mosko n.d.). Until this time, Nganga clan had no peace sorcerers of its own. In a series of complicated maneuvers over the next sixty years or so, the Ngangas have attempted to fill this lacuna. I mentioned earlier the case of Nganga Manga losing its junior peace chief (NM2) to another clan of the tribe. This other clan had two peace sorcery lineages, one senior and one junior. A bachelor of the junior peace sorcery lineage tried unsuccessfully to elope with the wife of a man of the senior peace sorcery lineage of his own clan. Although the adulterer and his elder brother were themselves competent sorcerers, they could not remain in the same village with the rest of their clan. Both men moved to live at Akabe village with the elder married brothers wife's people, Nganga Faka. Later, when the elder brother was formally installed as an official peace sorcerer, the three Nganga subclans (NM, NF, NA) sponsored the event staged at Akabe. Finally, Nganga clan had its own peace sorcerer and peace sorcery lineage. Although uninstalled, the younger brother was also competent to practice peace sorcery. And so for a time Nganga clan had at least one representative for each of the four offices, and all four categories of specialized lineage. Although the two brothers and their families lived among the Ngangas, they were known as the subclan Nganga Katsina,9 and they worked together with the rest of Nganga local clan. Unfortunately for the Ngangas, however, their new peace sorcerers died before they could turn their hereditary secrets over to their sons. Several years later, the sons' mothers also died, and they returned to the natal clan and village of their fathers. I happened to be working in the Bush Mekeo when the last of the sons departed. Nganga clan was not left without peace sorcerers for long, however. Over the last several years, the Ngangas had acquired two other peacesorcery lineages. The last possessors of war sorcery in NF8 were killed in battle shortly before pacification, and their hereditary secrets and knowledge died with them. But some of their descendants survived. Among them, one man, who is now quite old, is, in the opinion of people of

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neighboring villages, a "new peace sorcerer" (ungaunga mamanga). Although he publicly denies that he is a peace sorcerer, he certainly plays the role. Periodically, he goes "on patrol," and it is rumored he visits practicing peace sorcerers all over the Mekeo region. It has been widely circulated that a few peace sorcerers from the Biofa and Veke tribes of the Central Mekeo have unsuccessfully tried to kill him and that he has allegedly shot more than one of them with his shotgun. 10 These are indications to villagers that he too is a peace sorcerer. The people of Akabe village, however, know that he is not a "true" or "real" peace sorcerer. They suspect that he only knows the use of poisons. In any case, this old man has created a measure of renown in the area as a peace sorcerer. Nganga local clan has seemingly generated a new peace-sorcery lineage from within. Yet another peace-sorcery lineage (NM5) is in the process of establishing itself in Nganga local clan, this time from without, through intermarriage. An old peace sorcerer and uninstalled heir to a peace chieftainship from a Central Mekeo village had taken a wife from one of the other Bush Mekeo clans in the early 1920s. When other peace sorcerers of his own clan coveted his claim to the peace chieftainship and supposedly killed several of his young children, he moved to live with his wife's people among the Bush Mekeo. Later, his eldest daughter married the war chief of Nganga Manga (NM3), and her father eventually moved to Akabe village to live with her. The old mans only surviving son left the village for several years to work in the Papuan Gulf on oil-exploration crews. When the son returned to the Bush Mekeo, he stayed at Akabe village with his father and sister, then married a woman of NA and settled with Nganga clan. It is said by some villagers that the old man passed on much of his sorcery knowledge and paraphernalia to his son before he died. Through his Bush Mekeo mother, the son is a categorical junior sibling to three of the adult men of Nganga Angai subclan, and sister's daughter's husband of the senior male of NA3 through his second wife. Moreover, Nganga clan paid the marriage compensation for this second marriage. Thus, the son of the old peace sorcerer has numerous and distinct ties to both Nganga Manga and Nganga Angai subclans of Nganga local clan. He has come to identify himself and his children with Nganga Manga (NM5), and they in turn have been so identified by the rest of the village. Most significantly, this man consistently and energetically participates in mortuary-feasting exchanges as a Nganga clansman. Now that he is reaching the peak of his active maturity, the rest of Nganga clan depends more and more on him to perform the services of resident peace sorcerer - thwarting the attacks of foreign peace sorcerers and "rascals," curing and divining, providing counsel to peace chiefs in the minutiae of feast perfor-

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mance, and so on. Indeed, it was he who buried the python faifai that had trespassed the village (see Chapter 2). There have been a few other recent personnel modifications to fully round out the representation of lineage specializations in Nganga clan. The last official war sorcerers of NA4 died after leaving their knowledge in trust with a man of NA3 to pass on to their sons once they became old enough to understand. That the trustee has failed to do so for nearly thirty years now and is suspected of passing this knowledge to his own sons instead - thus founding a new war-sorcery lineage - lays at the root of many troubles in Nganga Angai subclan and in Nganga clan generally. Also, the extinct senior peace chieftainship of Nganga Manga (NM1) (see above) has been revived in the war chief lineage of that subclan (NM3). The son and heir to the war chieftainship received the subclan peace chieftainship, and his father's younger brother assumed the title of war chief, which has since passed to that man's eldest son. Clanship and women's children The Bush Mekeo employ the idea of clanship in yet another and somewhat paradoxical context where the connecting relatives are female rather than male. Thus, in addition to full membership and entitlement in the clan estate of his/her father, each Bush Mekeo villager retains certain reciprocal auxiliary rights and obligations toward members of his/her mothers clan and the children born of female members of his/her own clan. In the terms of the indigenous culture, these relationships constitute the category papie ngaunga or "woman's children. "11 When you ask villagers the name of their clan, almost invariably they respond with the name of their own or father's clan. But if you also ask them if they are members of a particular clan that happens to be that of their mothers, they will consistently respond in the affirmative. In apparent deviation from the rules of patrifilial and patrilineal clanship, a woman's children are papie ngaunga but nonetheless regarded as one clan with her supposed agnates and clanspeople. The term papie ngaunga is used reciprocally between agnatic members of a clan and children born of the clan's women. Villagers' articulations of the rights and obligations inhering in relationships of papie ngaunga are very similar to those between presumed agnates and members of the same clan, except for the transmission of secret male ritual knowledge, succession to subclan and lineage office, and rights to certain kinds of property (land, dancing ornaments and insignia, etc.). In this and the next two chapters, I shall discuss the more important and significant contexts of papie ngaunga interrelationship vis-a-vis agnation: marriage regulation and compensation, and the reciprocation of mortuary feasts.

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Quadripartite structures

The history of Nganga clan recorded above illustrates how subclan and lineage fusion and the recruitment of nonagnates are typically initiated along lines of affinal connection. Marriage and affinity, of course, generate papie ngaunga relationships. Villagers claim that usually in cases of nonagnate recruitment, men do not join or "go inside" the clans of their wives; rather, their children become new full members by papie ngaunga through their mothers. In any case, a man signals his intention of joining his wife's, mother's, or any other clan in his own lifetime by participating in that clan's marriage and death-feast exchanges and not those of his natal clan (see below in this chapter and Chapter 7). I shall argue that cases of recruitment and subclan fusion among nonagnates along papie ngaunga lines are common because papie ngaunga are already conceptualized in the culture as one clan and one blood but traced through females. This, of course, seriously qualifies the notion of a clan at every level of fragmentary and segmentary organization as closed. Ideally, a clan is closed by virtue of shared descent through males exclusively. But a clan is also simultaneously open by tracing papie ngaunga auxiliary clanship and shared blood through women; that is, the ideally closed clan requires the intrusion and extrusion of blood from and to other closed units, making it thereby open as well. By means of heterosexual reproduction, the bloods of clans of the tribe flow into and out of each other. Women of one's own clan give birth to agnatic members of other clans, and women of other clans give birth to all members of one's own clan. Thus, clanspeople similarly trace agnatic blood only through their fathers, and, excepting full siblings, trace nonagnatic or cognatic blood differently through their mothers. Clanship in terms of papie ngaunga, however, is not traced as far genealogically as clanship in terms of agnation. Ideally, the notion of one clan is traced through father to incorporate all members of father's moiety. Papie ngaunga traced through mother, on the other hand, is restricted to the membership of her dispersed clan and not to the rest of her moiety. Reciprocally, children of women of a dispersed clan are papie ngaunga, but not women's children's children. An alternate sibling term - ekefaka All persons who regard themselves as one clan whether by known or presumed agnation, by co-residency and working together, or by papie ngaunga relationship also regard themselves as kin or relatives and accordingly may use the appropriate kin terms in addressing and referring to one another as described above. It is curious, however, that classificatory siblings who consider themselves one clan may not use a certain alternative sibling term, ekefaka, which other genealogically known relatives of the same generation, who are not one clan, may use. Inasmuch as

Kin, clan, and connubium

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I shall in the following section define the term ekefaka when used between persons of opposite sex as "potential spouse," it will be useful to characterize it first in its cognatic applications (A. Strathern 1972:16-17). The term ekafaka is said by some villagers to be a compound of the two terms eke or junior and fakania or senior, perhaps implying equality between siblings of this category as opposed to the inequality of siblings who may not also be classified as ekefaka (see above; cf. Hau'ofa 1981:158). Only siblings who are neither members of the same patrilineal clan or moiety nor papie ngaunga to one another may reciprocally use the term ekefaka. Although all first cousins and the children of parallel cousins are never ekefaka, the children of bilateral first cross-cousins who are members of clans in opposite moieties may consider each other ekefaka. The ekefaka sibling category, in other words, is consistent with a "Dravidian'-type terminology. The rules that bound and distinguish the ekefaka category from siblings who must always use the senior and junior sibling terms (a-and atsi-, respectively) suggest that Bush Mekeo considerations of clan, moiety, and papie ngaunga override or contradict the notions of known genealogical relationship and of one blood cognatically defined (cf. Lounsbury 1965; Scheffler and Lounsbury 1971). A- and atsi- include many people of one blood and the same generation among whom genealogical relationship is at best presumed and often known to be otherwise. Members of the category ekefaka, on the other hand, include persons who are cognatically one blood according to known genealogical connection, but who are nonetheless tentatively excluded from that class. Viewed from the perspective of the progression of generations through time, genealogically defined nonrelatives along with descendants of certain genealogically known relatives obligatorily remain one blood and siblings distinguished according to seniority. Others, oftentimes tied closer genealogically by cognatic blood, become ekefaka and potentially nonrelatives sharing no blood. The rules of marriage This paradox or contradiction involving the category ekefaka is directly related to, and resolved in part by, the Bush Mekeo system of marriage exchange. Marriage exchanges are ordered according to positive and negative rules that circumscribe a system structurally similar to the "Aranda"-type (see Egidi 1912; Radcliffe-Brown 1930; Levi-Strauss 1969b; R. Fox 1967:195-9; Sahlins 1976:29). Two persons of opposite sex and opposite moiety may marry if neither of them is of the same clan as the other's mother, that is, if they are not papie ngaunga. The category of permissible spouses thus includes all persons of opposite gender who are or may be considered ekefaka siblings to one another.

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Quadripartite structures

Villagers themselves do not articulate their marriage preferences in these terms, for marriage is also allowed between persons who are not relatives to one another and not therefore ekefaka except as members of the same endogamous tribe. Also, in contrast to "Aranda -type systems in Australia, there are no named sections or subsections among the Bush Mekeo. Rather, idealized rules of marriage are phrased in terms of a series of rules - some proscriptive, some prescriptive - with considerable redundancy among them. To demonstrate the overall character of the system as well as its homology with other dimensions of Bush Mekeo culture, it will be necessary to summarize each of these rules and compare them to one another in terms of the indigenous categories. Before proceeding, I should mention that the rules as expressed here and by the Bush Mekeo apply without distinction as to the gender of Ego. Marriage rule I: cognatic proscription Perhaps the most frequently repeated regulation prohibits intermarriage among bilateral kin and blood relatives: "Our relatives are one blood; we human beings do not marry our relatives" (Aika atsika ifa alakangamo, ika bapiau aika atsika aekamange). On a number of occasions, I remarked to my acquaintances that many villagers are married to known relatives and that it is generally understood that ultimately everyone of the traditionally endogamous tribe is a relative to everyone else. To this I was told that marriage is prohibited between relatives with "one grandparent" (ufu alakangamo) in common, i.e., between all siblings as far as first cousins, and between parents, on the one hand, and between their own children, children of their full and half-siblings, and children of spouses full and half-siblings, on the other. Second cousins and other siblings of the same generation beyond this genealogical distance of one grandparent, however, unless otherwise excluded (see next section), are marriageable. Marriage rule II: agnatic proscription Overlapping in part this bilateral exclusion, villagers also expressly prohibit marriage between persons who are agnatically one clan. Members of the same named lineage, subclan, dispersed clan, and moiety, or who are working together as members of the same local clan, may not marry. According to this restriction, although cognatic blood is exchanged exogamously between opposite moieties and clans, presumably shared agnatic blood stays inside the clan. As an agnatic entity, the clan at all levels is thus closed vis-a-vis parallel-clan units of the opposite moiety. Marriage rule III: papie ngaunga proscription Marriage is also prohibited among papie ngaunga who belong to different moieties. Villagers say that when their clanswomen marry into other

Kin, clan, and connubium

127

clans, the skin (fanga) of the clan "goes outside" (ebualai) (Chapter 2). The children of these women become papie ngaunga to members of their mothers' clan, and vice versa. Although papie ngaunga belong to clans of opposite moieties agnatically defined, they are one clan and one blood either through their mothers or through their clan sisters and clan daughters. Thus, papie ngaunga are also prohibited from intermarrying according to the rules of clan exogamy. Again, it should be emphasized that papie ngaunga relationship in one generation is not transmitted to the next, that is, neither to the children of the daughter of a clanswoman nor to members of mother's mother's clan. These people, it is acknowledged, have their own mothers and clanswomen's children, respectively, relating them as papie ngaunga to people in still other clans. The rule regarding papie ngaunga, then, excludes for members of each sibling set a particular clan of the opposite moiety (i.e., their mothers) and the collection of children born of all their clanswomen. Although each clan is agnatically closed with respect to clans of the opposite moiety, it is cognatically open in relation to them by virtue of blood relationship through women for the length of one generation. Viewed simultaneously, marriage rules I, II, and III proscribe a range of blood relatives that corresponds precisely in the category of siblings who cannot use the alternate ekefaka term. All persons of the same generation who must use the asymmetrical a- or atsi- forms of address and reference12 cannot marry. Siblings beyond this range who may employ the ekefaka alternative reciprocally are thereby not prohibited and may marry. To this extent, Bush Mekeo kinship nomenclature and the boundaries of clan and papie ngaunga categories are isomorphic with marriage proscription. Marriage rule IV: kofuapie prescription In contrast to these forms, villagers also express their rules of marriage in prescriptive terms: "We marry people of different blood, we marry our kofuapie"13 (Ika ifa ikoina kamange, ika kofuapiemai kamange). It is on this point that a minor controversy in the literature of the Mekeo area generally has turned. Virtually all observers of the Central Mekeo have reported that villagers claim they ideally or preferably marry their ufuapie, but there seems to be confusion among the ethnographers as to just who the ufuapie are. Moreover, it has been empirically discovered that villagers marry ufuapie (however they are defined) only to a numerically limited extent. This has caused trouble for some observers, and each has interpreted the discrepancy somewhat differently. Father Guis, the earliest ethnographer in the area, reports that ufuapie are regarded as "part of our blood. " He infers also that ufuapie is an

128

Quadripartite structures

enduring relationship between neighboring villages, not among social units within a single village. However, Guis also asserts that clans of a single village form an "ufuapie group.' Excepting marriages by elopement everyone must marry ufuapie, Guis says. Additionally, he observes that ufuapie raise pigs and dogs for one another and exchange them at death feasts (1936:39). Based on his visit to the area at the turn of the century, Seligmann (1910:349-58) challenges Guis on several points. He suggests that ufuapie is a relationship between ikupu or "clans," or between what I have termed dispersed clans. But he unnecessarily complicates the issue by incorrectly using the indigenous term pangua for dispersed clan. According to all subsequent investigators of the Central Mekeo, the word pangua, like the cognate Bush Mekeo term paunga, means "village," and each village is ideally composed of two agnatically unrelated clans (see Chapter 2; Belshaw 1951:2; Stephen 1974:3; Hau'ofa 1981:30). As regards marriage regulation, Seligmann reports that it is merely considered better for ufuapie to marry one another; it is neither necessary nor obligatory. Seligmann also notes that preferred ufuapie marriages do not numerically predominate. However, his confusion over the meaning of the term pangua, and thereby of ufuapie, would partly account for this discrepancy as well as his argument with Guis. Moreover, although he concedes that ufuapie reciprocate death-feast prestations, Seligmann denies that ufuapie raise pigs and dogs for one another as Guis reports (Seligmann 1910:364). Visiting the area nearly fifty years later, Belshaw agrees that traditionally only ufuapie were permissible spouses, but he argues against Seligmann, claiming that the term ufuapie refers rather to "people who are in close patrilineal relationship" than to special relationships between patrilineal clans or villages (1951:2-4). More recently, Stephen clarifies pangua to mean village rather than any unit of an ikupu or clan, and she describes ufuapie as a ceremonial or feasting relationship between one ikupu and one or more ikupu (1974:3, 22). Lastly, Hauofa concurs with Stephen as regards the designation of a pangua as village, but he goes on to differentiate ufuapie from another interclan relationship known as auai or "soulmates" (Hauofa 1981:1623). Ufuapie, according to Hau'ofa, refers to special relationships between co-residential clan groups for reciprocal political, ceremonial, and feasting purposes, and only between groups who can marry. Auai, on the other hand, is a personal relationship between individual adult men of localized clans tied together by ufuapie group relationship. Over four generations in Beipa'a village, observes Hauofa, between 30 and 37 percent of all marriages (considering only patrilineal clan affiliations of grooms' and

Kin, clan, and connubium

129

brides' fathers) are between ufuapie. But if the ufuapie oipapie ngaunga are also included, then 67 percent of villagers marry their ufuapie. Hau'ofa concludes that Biofa villagers in the present and in the past have married ufuapie with greater frequency than other investigators have suspected (Hau ofa 1971:157, 1981:160-83). By a comparison with Bush Mekeo conceptualizations, I think it likely that these several problems and inconsistencies in the literature of the Central Mekeo have arisen, first, from a failure to characterize accurately the notions ufuapie and auai, and second, from not appreciating the relation of this distinction to the two institutionalized alternate means of initiating marriage, that is, by "betrothal" (onge apua) as opposed to "elopement" (kepiau). Briefly, among the Bush Mekeo traditionally, people who are pisaua (cognate with Central Mekeo auai) to one another must marry only by betrothal. Members of kofuapie related groups who are not also pisaua are permitted to marry by elopement. In any case, in each generation there should be at least one betrothed marriage intact between subclans whose peace chiefs are bound as friends. My treatment of these issues with respect to the Bush Mekeo should help illuminate also the systems of marriage exchange among their neighbors, including the Central Mekeo. In the Foikale myth (Chapter 5), it will be remembered, the existence of clanship, indeed the creation of Bush Mekeo society in its present form, is coincident upon the reciprocal exchange of women between two otherwise unrelated agnatic groups. Just as the notion ikupu or clan may imply any of several levels of fragmental organization and segmental conceptualization, the term kofuapie is used in reference to "other" or "opposite clan" categories and entities of correspondingly varying scale. At its widest extent, kofuapie may refer to any and all clan units that are not claimed to be agnatically related to ones own clan. In this sense, kofuapie means "clan (at any level) of the opposite moiety," or the opposite moiety as a unit. From the viewpoint of the members of each residential clan seeking spouses, all others of the tribal unit are either one clan, one agnatic blood, and unsuitable for marriage; or they are kofuapie other clans, different agnatic blood, and permissible for marriage irrespective of living in the same or different villages. Clearly, papie ngaunga are kofuapie according to this definition, but they are an exceptional case, for they are simultaneously one clan and one cognatic blood traced through females. When villagers refer to kofuapie in certain contexts, however, it is also clear that they mean a particular clan of the opposite moiety, usually the other clan that resides in the same village. Bush Mekeo villages, as I have already mentioned, ideally contain two local clans, each comprising either one subclan or more than one subclan working together with the com-

130

Quadripartite structures

plete assortment of specialized lineages. Kofuapie describes the relationship between these two local clans and in this context excludes the other clans of the opposite moiety. The notion of pisaua or "friends," as I prefer to gloss it, is related to, and often coincides with, the notion of kofuapie or other clan, but it is not synonymous. Nor, I think, is Hau'ofa's construal above quite right. Members of each subclan distinguish certain other subclans among their kofuapie (in any of the above senses) as pisaua or aua friends. Only peace chiefs may initiate these friend relationships with one another. "Ordinary men" (ulalu) and officeholders of the other types neither initiate nor possess friends independent of those of their subclan peace chiefs. Rather, members of a subclan are friends through their peace chief to the subclanspeople of his friend (cf. Hau'ofa 1981:162-3). Friendships between peace chiefs and between subclans are hereditary along agnatic lines. Any one peace chief may be the friend of one or several other subclan peace chiefs. Two friends and their respective subclans may reside in different villages, but ideally "first friends" (pisaua manga) live in the same village. Thus, within a residential clan composed of heterogeneous subclans and lineages working together, the friend(s) of one peace chief and his subclan may well be different from those of another allied peace chief and his subclan. Indeed, a senior and a junior peace chief of the same clan should not both be friends to the same other peace chief. Nonetheless, it is expected that their respective friends will be peace chiefs and subclans of the same clan, and that the senior chief of the one clan will be friend with the senior peace chief of the other, and likewise for the junior peace chiefs of their respective subclans. Pisaua friendship as distinct from kofuapie relationship ties senior peace chiefs and senior subclans with one another, and junior peace chiefs and junior subclans with one another. Thus, no one peace chief or subclan can be friends with all kofuapie peace chiefs and subclans in the tribe. The network of friend relationships of the Amoamo tribe as of 1974-6 is represented in Figure 6.7. Close examination of this network reveals a number of important organizational features inherent in interclan relations. First, all friends are kofuapie, but not all kofuapie are friends. Second, some friend relationships involve a subclan that has become extinct. Nonetheless, these ties are maintained in perpetuity by the peace chief of another subclan of the same local or dispersed clan at feasts and other ceremonies in the name of the last officeholder. Third, there are several instances whereby one subclan is friend to two subclans that are working together in the same local clan. The peace chiefs and subclans involved in these particular relationships, however, are of the same seniority status. Fourth, in only one case is a senior peace chief (Nganga

Kin, clan, and connubium

131

KUIPA @
INEUCLAN ^Ineu (f) N lneu(e) \lnemay

NGANGA CLAN \

/

Initsi village

N. Angai (f) ( N. Angai (e) # ( Akabe village ) Olapu

\

N. Manga(

) Inafufu (f)

N. Faka(f)(

) Inafufu (e) \

N. Faka (e) (

OLAPU CLAN )Olapu (f> \Olapu (e)

\

/

AMOAMO TRIBE

Etsetse (f)

^Ngongofobina #

Etsetse (e) \\

X

ETSETSE CLAN

s \

VEKE @ (C. Mekeo) Iko village

Figure 6.7. Pisaua friendship network (Amoamo tribe), (f) = senior fakania subclan; (e) = junior eke subclan; @ = intertribal friend; 0 = extinct friend; # = extinct subclan.

Angai) friend to a junior chief (Etsetse). Here, however, members of the two Etsetse subclans and their peace chiefs periodically dispute their relative seniority. Fifth, first friends do not always live in the same village. Informants clarified these discrepancies by claiming that long ago first friends did live in the same village, but during the ensuing years of war and migration they separated and resettled apart from one another.

132

Quadripartite structures

At mortuary feasts, hereditary first friends still take ceremonial precedence regardless of co-residence. But otherwise friends who live in the same village "really do make like first friends" to one another. Sixth, it is apparent that the traditional dual organization of the society into discrete moieties has broken down, if indeed it ever existed (Levi-Strauss 1963a: 132-63). That subclans of two local clans are friends to each other and to the same other subclans makes the existence of actual exogamous moieties now impossible. I shall presently show, however, that the fact that there remain four discrete, named dispersed clans in the tribe is significant and compatible with dual structuring at another level. As Guis (1936:40) observes for the Central Mekeo, marriage among the Bush Mekeo is initiated in either of two ways: (1) by "betrothal" (onge apua) in advance of cohabitation, or (2) by "elopement" (kepiau) (see Seligmann 1910:363n, where he acknowledges this same distinction). Ideally, everyone should marry by betrothal with friends, but if people do marry kofuapie who are not friends, then elopement with a nonfriend is appropriate. In the old days, my acquaintances told me, a young man could acquire a wife through betrothal only if his father and other close relatives had plenty of valuables (kefu) and surrendered them in advance, that is, by betrothal. Failing this, bachelors had to employ courting ritual on a girl of their own choosing who was not a friend and elope with her to the bush. Usually, the quantity and quality of shell, dogs teeth, and other valuables exchanged in marriage compensation differ considerably in the two cases. Elopement among friends is considered very bad form and, until relatively recently, often results in the girls return to her parents until betrothal is arranged with the transfer of marriage compensation. The parents and relatives of a girl "stolen" by a kofuapie youth who is not a friend may still try to take her back, but it is not the same as if she had been taken by a friend; they may allow her to stay with her paramour. Betrothal is inappropriate between people who are not friends but only kofuapie. They will exchange marriage compensation some time after the elopement and establishment of a married household. The percentages of intratribal marriages contracted before 1965 in these terms among living adults are represented in Table 3. Based on my village census of 45 total marriages, 9 (20%) are by betrothal and 36 (80%) by elopement. Of the betrothals, 7 (78%) are between friends, and 2 (22%) are between nonfriend kofuapie. Correspondingly, 6 (16.6%) elopements involve friends, and 30 (83.4%) involve nonfriend kofuapie.14 It should be noted that 2 of the 6 elopements between friends involve the remarriage of widows, and 2 more involve the taking of polygynous second wives. Neither type of these marriages usually results in the public exchange of marriage compensation. Also, of the 16 marriages in the same

Kin, clan, and connubium

133

Table 3. Friend and nonfriend kofuapie betrothals and elopements

Friends Nonfriend kofuapie

Betrothals

Elopements

7 (78%) 2 (22%)

6 (16.6%) 30 (83.4%)

period with people from other tribes and ethnic groups, none were between friends, and all were by elopement.15 Between 1965 and 1976, nearly all marriages (28 of 31) were initiated by elopement.16 Among these, there is one elopement between friends, two friendship betrothals (one of these involving a new intertribal friend), and one betrothal between persons who were nonfriend kofuapie. Catholic missionaries and teachers nowadays successfully encourage young people to choose their new spouses. Marriages, it is hoped, will then have a greater chance of proving amicable and stable. Additional factors, especially moneys increasing availability and its entry into marriage transactions along with the postcontact escalation of sorcery and courting ritual, have contributed to this recent change. Also, since approximately 1965, the percentage of marriages with persons outside the tribe has increased (16 of 31 total, or 51.6%). These figures suggest that until recently the Bush Mekeo have been marrying in much closer conformity to the rules of kofuapie and friend prescription than some earlier investigators had suspected. The problem until now has involved, again, a failure to portray accurately the indigenous categories kofuapie and pisaua and how they articulate with expressed marriage rules and the alternate means of contracting marriages within the single rubric of marrying kofuapie. Marriage rule V: sister exchange With this issue now clarified, I will make note of the one remaining rule by which villagers claim they regulate marriage in their society. According to this rule, "sister exchange" (pitonge kaua, kengami kaua) is prohibited; that is, two men of different clans should not marry one another's full sisters at the same time, and even if they are contemplating marriage at different times, the second must not be initiated until compensation has been paid in full for the first. Villagers frown upon sister exchange, they say, because there is no public marriage compensation or exchange accompanying it. With sister exchange, each of the groups would be both "hanger" or wife-receiver and "eater" or wife-giver to the other. They would be the "same" (ikopoangaimo), and "compensation" (kaua) would thereby be already finished. These assertions will acquire more meaning

134

Quadripartite structures

below when I discuss the exchanges involved in marriage compensation, and it will be shown that the prohibition of sister exchange in these terms has unexpected structural significance. I should add here, however, that ideally sister exchange whenever it does occur is never the result of the betrothing of friends in marriage; that is, it may only result from elopement. Marriage in alternating generations Consistent with other systems that have been likened to the "Aranda'type, marriages between friends and kofuapie among the Bush Mekeo may be repeated in alternating but not in adjacent "generations' (with one qualification; see the concluding section of this chapter). Here I shall discuss the implications this feature of the Bush Mekeo system has for the public exchange (akaila) of valuables in marriage compensation. For Ego, the rules of kin classification and the rules of marriage coincide such that persons of the same generation who are not reciprocally ekefaka are excluded from the marriageable category. Beyond this radius, opposite-sex relatives of the same generation within the tribe are or may use the term ekefaka, and they are potential spouses. Furthermore, this boundary is isomorphic with the line separating own moiety, clan, and papie ngaunga, on the one hand, from marriageable kofuapie and friends on the other. From either perspective, Ego (male or female) may not marry a person of mother's clan (i.e., where father married) but may marry into a different clan of mother's moiety, particularly where father's father married.17 Figuring strictly along a single patriline, then, the rules and categories of the Bush Mekeo system enjoin (or at least allow) marriage between persons of two clans of opposite moieties in alternating generations. Although papie ngaunga may not themselves marry one another, the children of same-sex papie ngaunga may marry. Or, stated in somewhat different terms that structurally mean the same thing for the sake of comparison, first bilateral cross-cousins may not marry, but the children of first cross-cousins in different moieties may marry (Figure 6.8) (see also Williamson 1913:275).18 As the members of each generation mature, marry, and reproduce, prohibited papie ngaunga relatives are succeeded by offspring who are not papie ngaunga but ekefaka and marriageable. Conversely, ekefaka who do marry in one generation are succeeded in the next by papie ngaunga who cannot marry. Clans of opposite moieties correspondingly and alternately open and close their boundaries with respect to one another. Stated in more familiar anthropological terms, certain cognates in one generation are transformed into potential affines in the next. And conversely, affinity in one generation is transformed into cognation the

A1

i

i

I Figure 6.8. Children-of-"first cross-cousin," or "second-cousin," marriage.

spouse's mother's clan eaters *from perspective of groom

Figure 6.9. Akaila public marriage compensation exchange.

Kin, clan, and connubium

137

next. Consequently, affines in that generation are transformed back into cognates in the succeeding generation.19

Marriage compensation These complementary processes are represented most graphically in the exchanges by which members of different clans publicly give and receive "marriage compensation" (kaua).20 Every occasion of public marriage compensation must involve the participation of four parties ideally exemplified21 by father's elder brother and mothers elder brother of the groom, and the fathers' elder brother and mother's elder brother of the bride. The two fathers' brothers and their respective clans are termed the "owners of the mother" (ina ngome). The mothers' brothers of the bride and groom and their clanspeople are called "women's children" (papie ngaunga). Together, the two clans allied with the groom are known as "compensation hangers" (kaua kopa). Hangers give, in two separate prestations, valuables22 to the "compensation eaters " (kaua ani) allied with the bride. The two payments from the hangers to the eaters cannot be made on different occasions, and every effort is usually taken to ensure that both prestations include equal proportions of the same categories of valuables. Groom's father's brother gives to the bride's father's brother, and the groom's mother's brother gives to the bride's mother's brother. The eaters usually reciprocate prestations to the hangers, but only in token amounts and qualities compared with those they receive. Wife-giving eaters, in other words, are "above' or superior to wife-receiving hangers (Figure 6.9). From the perspective of the groom, the clan identities of the four exchanging exemplars and clans are as follows: own clan —> spouse's clan *

mother's clan —>

Y > i mother s clan

And from t h e perspective of the bride: own clan <— spouse's clan

, , , mother s clan Furthermore, both perspectives can b e summarized as follows: (a) At t h e level of interclan relations: own clan

:

spouse's clan

mother's clan <—

:: mother's clan

:

V > 1 mother s clan

(16)

spouse's mother's brother

. _,

(b) in terms of the compensation exemplars: father's brother

'

spouse's father's brother

"

mother's brother

and (c) in terms of relational blood categories:

'

138

Quadripartite

cognatic nonblood . . /1OX (same moiety, (18) v , . ' other clan) Consistent with the rules of clan, moiety, and papie ngaunga exogamy, no two of the four exemplars' roles may be held by one person or even by agnatically defined members of the same clan. Also, two distinct clans from each moiety should be represented. Thus, proscriptive rules of marriage and the pattern of marriage compensation exchanges presume that the two moieties of a tribe are bisected minimally into two dispersed clans each. One clan of a moiety will hang or give while the other will eat or receive at the same gathering: agnatic ui J blood

:

,, , nonblood / a> \ (afhnes)

structures

::

. cognatic ui J blood

:

clan A1 - * clan B1, clan B2 -+

clan A2

(Here, as elsewhere in this work, upper-case letters refer to moieties, and numbers refer to named clans of those moieties.) Homologous with the relations depicted above, clan A1

:

clan B1

own clan

:

spouse's clan

father's brother

'

spouse's father's brother

:

ii i nonblood / rr- \

agnatic ii j

blood

(affines)

::

clan B2

:: mother's clan "

mother's brother

'•'-

. cognatic ui J

blood

:

clan A2

(19)

:

V > i mother s clan spouse's mother's brother

(16)

" :

cognatic nonblood , . (same moiety, v

. . / other clan)

. ^

,,_.,. (18) v

;

For several reasons, I have hesitated glossing these public transactions as "brideprice " or even "bridewealth." Villagers insist they do not transfer valuables on the occasion of marriage for the purpose of buying or paying for the bride. Rather, the hangers compensate the eaters for the loss of certain rights in the children to be born of the bride that will be transferred to the hangers. More to the point, the occasion on which compensation is made is referred to as "doing/making/manipulating blood" (ifa kekapaisa). I mention these ethnographic details because they shift the focus and scope of the Bush Mekeo marriage system to incorporate the blood identities of the prospective offspring, the exchanging exemplars, and their clans, along with the blood identities of the bride and groom. The expression "manipulating blood" refers to any social encounter where relatives or affines violate or contradict the rules by which they should interact with one another, particularly when quarreling or disputing is involved. The term for "quarrel" or "dispute" is kelele or kengenge - literally, reciprocal "loss" or "crossing over" (enge),23 as on a bridge. Marriage-compensation exchange as one kind of manipulating blood typ-

Kin, clan, and connubium

139

ically involves a fair degree of quarreling. Villagers explicitly emphasize that cognates, agnates, and affines should never openly quarrel or dispute with one another, nor should they do things that they know might lead to quarrels. When they do deviate from the ideal in these respects, it amounts to denying the fact of their relationship. Brothers, for example, should never quarrel; they should help one another with house building, cooperate in gardening, share food cooked by their wives, never commit adultery with one another's wives, and so on. When one brother fails in any of these things, he virtually says to the other, "You, my brother, are not my brother. We are different, not the same, blood." When villagers manipulate blood in quarreling, as in this example of brothers, the implicit or explicit denial of blood between them is acknowledged as a "fiction" or "lie" (pifonge); the two men are still one blood even though they act as if they are different bloods. Marriage compensation, as one context of manipulating blood, also has this element or quality of fiction making about it. The cognatic blood relationships of bride and groom to the clans of their fathers' mothers and their mothers' mothers are not flatly negated in marriage compensation; they are manipulated so as to publicly create the impression that they have been negated. Bride and groom are thus each considered to proceed the rest of their lives with all four of their overlapping ancestral cognatic bloods traced to their grandparents, but, in the context of marrying one another and reproducing together, a fiction is created such that each has only two bloods - those of their respective father's and mother's clans (Figure 6.10). This point will assume considerable significance when in the next two chapters I describe the indigenous meanings of funerary ritual. In these terms, marriage compensation resolves the contradiction of human reproduction whereby purportedly closed agnatic clans, circumscribed by one blood traced exclusively through males, are open to other clans by virtue of the exogamous exchange and transmission of different blood through women. For a couple to cohabit as husband and wife, their respective relatives should ideally have first betrothed them and completed the compensation exchanges. Also, cohabiting husband and wife should be of non- or different bloods in relationship to one another. Thus, the parents and compensation exemplars of a groom and his bride ideally belong to four distinct named dispersed clans representing distinct agnatic bloods, that is, two bloods for each of the two moieties. Children born of this marriage will possess cognatic blood of all four of these clans represented in the persons of the exemplars of the marriage compensation. However, when the children grow up and themselves marry, only two of the four blood identities will continue to be deemed relevant; the other two will be manipulated so as to be irrelevant. With reference to

Figure 6.10. Agnatic, cognatic, and affinal bloods, x = children of bride and groom; Y ~ potential spouses.

Kin, clan, and connubium

141

Figure 6.10, if the exemplars for the marriage of the bride and groom were members of clan A1 (groom's fathers brother), B2 (grooms mothers brother), B1 (bride's father's brother), and A2 (bride's mother's brother), then exemplars for the marriages of the children (X) of this marriage will be of clans and bloods A1 (father's brother) and B1 (mother's brother). The other two clan and blood identities that were represented in the marriage of their parents are not represented among the exemplars of the children's own marriages. According to the rules of marriage prescribing someone of different blood(s), the two lost bloods of the children will be those of their ekefaka and potential spouses (Y), or persons with B2 and A2 bloods from father and mother, respectively. Relations of shared blood and cognation, in other words, are being manipulated for the sake of marriage into relationships of different blood and affinity (Mosko 1983). Significantly, any kin nomenclature employed between a man and woman before they marry is abandoned on appropriate occasions after paying compensation and is replaced by the terminology of affines who are implicitly not related by blood.24 Still with reference to Figure 6.10, the two public compensation exchanges should be understood in the following terms. By the transfer of valuables from the groom's father's brother to the bride's father's brother, the groom is affirmed to possess agnatic blood of his father's clan (A1) but not the cognatic blood of his father's mother's clan (B1). Conversely, it is simultaneously affirmed that the bride possesses agnatic blood of her father's clan (B1) but not her father's mother's clan (A1). The exchange of valuables between mothers' brothers works similarly. The groom is affirmed to possess the cognatic blood of his mother's clan (B2) but not the cognatic blood of his mother's mother's clan (A2), and the bride is affirmed to possess the cognatic blood of her mother's clan (A2) but not the cognatic blood of her mother's mother's clan (B2). The bloods acknowledged for the groom are those denied for the bride, and vice versa. After the exchanges are completed, bride and groom can be regarded as persons of different blood and, therefore, legitimately potential spouses. By giving and receiving marriage compensation, patrilines of clans of opposite moieties alternate between affirming and denying cognation consonant with intermarriage in alternating generations. Thus, patrilines of clans in opposite moieties that open to one another in one generation by mixing and sharing cognatic blood in relations of papie ngaunga close in the next to permit reciprocal intermarriage. Moreover, although one patriline of a clan is closed to the patriline of another clan in the opposite moiety, other patrilines of the same two clans may be open to one another. I shall return to this point in the concluding section of this chapter. On the occasion of exchanging marriage compensation, two clans of each moiety are present, but they do not exchange valuables directly.

142

Quadripartite structures

Rather, they participate in separate exchanges. Nevertheless, while each party denies or negates cognatic ties with different clans of the opposite moiety, cognatic ties between clans of the same moiety (i.e., between own and mother's mother's clans for both bride and groom) are extinguished. Clans of the same moiety, in other words, can maintain the ideological claim of purely agnatic relationship and closure without contradiction. Finally, although each clan as a unit is open to all other clans in the society through procreation and the relations of cognation it generates, by participating in all four roles of marriage compensation, each clan eventually reasserts its distinctiveness and closure vis-a-vis the other clans both in and out of the same moiety. Before I move on to other implications specific to the Bush Mekeo system, it is important to note that structurally, according to Figure 6.10, paired giving and receiving compensation exemplars are alternatively bound to one another in reciprocal cognatic relationships of papie ngaunga. Groom's father's brother is papie ngaunga to bride's father's brother, and groom's mother's brother is papie ngaunga to bride's mother's brother. The persons who manipulate blood and suspend cognatic blood relationships between bride and groom are, in other words, themselves exemplary of those categories of cognatic blood relationship. Because they are cognatically open in their mutual relationships, they are the appropriate persons to close them fictively for members of the next generation. Homologies of the system I would now like to complete my description of the Bush Mekeo relationship system by articulating some of the more obvious homologies between its categories and those of other contexts in the culture that have been discussed at length in previous chapters. First, let me mention again that there are four actual named, dispersed clans (each including one or more local clans) in Amoamo tribe - precisely the number of exogamous social units required for the system to work according to its rules. It is curious that none of my informants ever explicitly declared that there should be just four clans in the tribe. Nonetheless, I think it is clear that the fact that there are four clans demonstrates once more the Levi-Straussian tenet concerning the priority of structure over event. The structure, here in its minimal or simplest form, involves some of the implications that have been drawn for the Australian "Aranda'-type systems; namely, that all first cousins are prohibited from marrying while classificatory second cross-cousins are permitted to marry, and that the relevant named categories are four patrilineal clans with papie ngaunga ties between them instead of either bilateral kin terms

s PT3

CD

144

Quadripartite

structures

only or eight matrilaterally transmitted marriage classes or subsections (Figure 6.11). As noted in the previous section, these relations between clans of a tribe can be expressed as: own clan : spouse's clan :: mother's clan : spouse's mother's clan (16) All members of own clan are one strictly agnatic blood and unequivocally inside the same clan together. Their respective mothers and spouses, however, are both in these terms outside own clan and not one agnatic blood. Members of mother's clan, however, are one cognatic blood with their papie ngaunga in own clan. Their blood has come from the outside; that is, the blood of mother's clan is outside blood inverted with respect to own clan. In contrast, members of spouse's clan are unambiguously outside own clan, for as affines their blood is neither agnatic nor cognatic; it is different blood. Members of spouse's mother's clan, finally, are one agnatic blood, and therefore inside the same clan qua moiety as own clan. But their blood is also everted from inside the moiety outside (i.e., into spouse's clan). The agnatic blood of spouse's mother is, therefore, everted inside blood in relation to own clan. In this context, it is significant also that each clan opens its boundaries vis-a-vis other clans through their skins (women), whose procreative womb-blood goes from inside their own clans and bodies outside and then inside other clans. Moreover, in terms of the hot/cold opposition, own and spouse's clans are hot for sex and reproduction where mother's and spouse's mother's clans are cold (in relation to own and spouse's clans). In precisely these terms, interclan relations are homologous with the category distinctions that pervade the other contexts of the culture I have described. This is most obvious perhaps in the comparison with spatial relations, the categorizations of substances, culinary techniques, sexually distinguished bloods, and the division of adult labor according to gender: inside remote bush blood roasting male body-blood closing male clan A1 UWI1 LI till

:

outside

: :

peripheral village sweet boiling

:: ::

inverted outside village abdomen unsweet ripening

semen

::

womb-blood

::

opening female clan B 2 mother's clan

:

opening male clan B 1 spouse's clan

everted inside adjacent bush bloodless dirt smoking female body-blood closing female clan A2 spouse's mother's clan

(4) (3)

(13) (14) (19) (16)

Kin, clan, and connubium father's brother agnatic ui J blood

'

:

spouse's father's brother i! , nonblood / £c> \ (affines)

"

::

mother's brother .. cognatic ui J blood

145 '

:

spouse's . -, mother's brother cognatic nonblood , . , x (same moiety, (18) v

. . ;' other clan)

v

'

Several dimensions of the total relationship system I have already described have yet to be fully articulated with this general pattern: senior/junior differentiations among subclans; the double bisection of each subclan into four ritually specialized lineages; and marriage rule V, which forbids sister exchange of a narrowly defined sort. The Bush Mekeo system as depicted in its most elementary or essential form does not as yet actually represent a complete model of the total society. As elaborated thus far in Figure 6.11, the model presumes: (1) no division of clans into senior and junior subclans; (2) that each clan intermarries with the clans in the opposite moiety only in alternating, and not in every succeeding, generation; and (3) that every marriage is an apparent case of sister exchange. The model must therefore be elaborated further to accommodate these formal requirements, with the result that each clan is divided into senior and junior subclans, and each subclan is doubly bisected into four lineages. Beginning with the marriage rule for friend prescription in every generation, members of a patriline in one clan may not marry into a certain clan of the opposite moiety because they are papie ngaunga, but samegeneration members of a parallel patriline of the same clan who are not papie ngaunga to that opposite moiety clan may marry there. Thus, the rules of friend prescription and papie ngaunga proscription combine to bisect each clan into two groups (Figure 6.12). The rule forbidding simultaneous sister exchange similarly requires the bisection of the clan, but along another dimension. If a man marries a certain woman of a clan in the opposite moiety, his wife's brother and his sister may not also marry until after there has been compensation for the first marriage. Because the mans sister cannot marry into her mother's clan of the opposite moiety, she must marry a man of her brother's wife's clan but not her brother's wife's full brother, and likewise for him. Thus, each of the two patrilines of every clan represented in Figure 6.12 must be further bisected so that full sibling brother and sister do not marry a full sister and brother. This results in a total of four patrilines or lineages per clan (Figure 6.13). In each generation, members of two lineages of a clan will marry into one clan of the opposite moiety when the two other lineages of the former clan marry into the remaining clan of the opposite moiety. Of any two same-clan lineages intermarrying in the same generation with the same clan of the opposite moiety, each of the former will

K

b—

S

tj

u

k>-|

TO l<^

-r

kM

I CD 0) bC

Kin, clan, and connubium

147

Figure 6.13. Bush Mekeo marriage system (iii). marry into distinct patrilineages of the latter. Each of the four clans then would ideally possess four lineages. It might be initially proposed that either one or the other of these bisections of the clan unit corresponds with the division of each clan into senior and junior subclans. This could not be the case, however, for the model just elaborated is premised upon marriages contracted according to the expressed ideal, that is, according to betrothal between friends who must be of the same status level. Friends in opposite moieties should be both senior, or both junior. Moreover, the entire network of friend relationships at each status level should be duplicated in the nonoverlapping friend network of the other status level. Each clan is thus ideally bisected into senior and junior subclans, and then both of the latter are doubly bisected as described above. Altogether, the model specifies that each tribe has two moieties, each moiety has two clans, each clan has two

148

Quadripartite

structures

subclans, and each subclan has four patrilines or lineages. I am arguing, of course, that the four patrilines or lineages here correspond with the fourfold ritual specialization of lineages and offices within the subclan: peace chiefs, peace sorcerers, war chiefs, war sorcerers. The distinctions between different categories of official male ritual and specialized lineages, in other words, are predicated in part upon the category distinctions also underlying the system of marriage regulation just elaborated. Moreover, in these same terms, specialized lineages and offices are homologous with the differentiations among clans comprising the entire tribe: own clan

: spouses clan :: mother's clan : spouse's mother's clan inside : outside :: inverted outside : everted inside peace chief : war sorcerer :: war chief : peace sorcerer

(16) (4) (15)

The latter of these can now be added to the other homologies of the culture listed previously. To me, this is a surprising discovery, for this specific relation has not been suggested as far as I am aware in the ethnographic literature for the immediate area of Austronesian-speaking Papua where very similar categories are prevalent. The internal composition of the Bush Mekeo subclan as a unit and the corresponding divisions of ritual specialization within it are representations of the total society and of the world. The derivation of a model for Bush Mekeo society in these terms indicates a certain unexpected additional correspondence with the prevailing generational kin and affinal terminologies. According to the Bush Mekeo marriage system as I have just elaborated it above and in Figure 6.13, lineages considered as units may reciprocally intermarry in alternate generations. However, the full completion of every marriage cycle such that a marriage can be repeated exactly between the same two lineages ideally takes four generations. Exogamous-lineage intermarriage in one generation might seem to be repeated in the next alternate generation, except that the sex identities of each participant are reversed rather than repeated. Thus, a total of four, not two, generations of reciprocal intermarriage defines each marriage cycle. A classificatory scheme that, with respect to Ego, locates bilateral kin of exactly four generations in both ascending and descending generations is perfectly consistent with this stipulation. And this is precisely what I described earlier in this chapter for the indigenous Bush Mekeo kin and affinal nomenclatures. The system of cyclical marriage and fourfold lineage ritual specialization is, in other words, structurally isomorphic with the classificatory nomenclature of the language. Moreover, that this latter terminology specifies precisely four reciprocal generational categories suggests an added ramification of the more general and pervasive quadripartite cultural pattern. Apparently, the Bush

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Mekeo identify four major categories of intergenerational relationships according to the same "plan" by which they recognize four of virtually everything else in their world. These last several findings, oddly enough perhaps, bring me back to consider the relation of the person to the total society as conceptualized in the culture. The integrity or completeness of the tribe as a unit is constituted by four systematically differentiated agnatic bloods representative of the tribe's four discrete named, dispersed clans. Although every person in the tribe is identified with only one clan of the tribe by strict agnation, it is implicit in the rules of kin, papie ngaunga, and cognatic blood classification and in the rules of marriage prescription and proscription that every person is a complete personification of the tribe and, indeed, the whole social universe. From his or her four grandparents, every person inherits at conception and birth all four bloods of all four tribal clans. The person then is not just a discrete element of larger social wholes. By blood, the person is a total representation of those social wholes. In other words, the person is a social persona tied in systematically differentiated relationships of shared blood with all other similarly constituted social personae in the society. We have seen in this chapter that villagers reach a critical point in their lives when compensatory exchanges are made on their behalf to create the fiction of disavowing two of four ancestral bloods provisional to marriage and reproduction. With death, each person reaches another critical point in his or her life. In the next chapter, I shall show that similarly significant disavowals of ancestral blood are finally expressed in the rituals of mourning with the periodic reciprocation of elaborately staged mortuary feasts between the different clans of the tribe.

7 Feasts of death (i): de-conception and re-conception

To this day, the most authoritative anthropological treatments of the symbolism and ritual of death remain Hertz's essay "The Collective Representation of Death" (1960:27-85) and Van Gennep's study The Rites of Passage (1960). Although these classic interpretations differ widely, in one sense the two are very similar. Hertz and Van Gennep each convincingly claims to unearth a particular structure or pattern of cross-cultural if not universal validity from among the diversity of mortuary ritual in the societies they study. Where they differ is in the exact constitution of their respective structures. Although I cannot but agree that it is possible to identify some elements of both Hertz's and Van Gennep's formulations in the ethnographic elements of Bush Mekeo mortuary ritual and feasting, my principal interest and intentions in this chapter lie elsewhere. Throughout this work, I have tried to reveal a number of structural homologies pervading all contexts of the indigenous culture, and I shall continue to do so as consistently as possible here regarding Bush Mekeo conceptualizations of death and mourning. Therefore, I shall not be explictly concerned with establishing relations between corpse, soul, and survivors, or with portraying relations between funerary and other rites of passage, except insofar as they contribute toward eliciting the structure of category distinctions found generally throughout the culture and specifically in mortuary ceremony and feasting.1 In particular, I shall show that in the process of performing their funerary rituals, Bush Mekeo villagers finally affect what is only fictively and tentatively accomplished with marriage compensation, as discussed in the previous chapter; that is, villagers resolve the contradiction of blood versus nonblood relationship at the collective level, thereby conceptually providing for the structural continuity and coherence2 of their society and the distinctiveness of its component social units (Mosko 1983). The agents and methods of bodily death As villagers view it, the world offers many (if not too many) ways for them to die. The Bush Mekeo term for "death" and "dying" is mae. People can 150

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die from the bite of poisonous snakes, chronic illness and starvation, infection from wounds, violent homicide, maiming by wild boar and cassowary, falling trees, and faifai and crocodile attack. There is, however, no cultural recognition of "natural death" or even "death from old age," as we view it. All deaths are understood to be rather the consequence of manipulations of hot bloody and dirty substances by certain agents upon their victims. The agents of death may be human or nonhuman, or spirit or nonspirit. Peace sorcerers in league with ancestral spirits of the dead are accorded the blame for death by snakebite and for many fatal illnesses. Certain other symptoms of disease that may lead to death are caused by faifai animals or their humanlike spirits, the ongokapu bush people. Death in battle or from self-inflicted wounds, falling trees, and wild boar and cassowary attack, however, are deemed the handiwork of war sorcerers and war chiefs in control of ancestral spirits. Crocodile specialists (oala)3 are blamed for all cases of crocodile attack. The different kinds of poisoning require one or another category of human or spirit poisoner: peace sorcerers, disgruntled wives, adulterers, war chiefs, war sorcerers, and spirits of homicide victims. The substances that agents of death manipulate with respect to their victims include the flesh or blood of dead human beings, menstrual blood, afterbirth and birth-blood, the flesh of faifai animals, and "poisons" (ipani). Indeed, all these substances are categorically defined as poisons if they are physically ingested; all of them are hot, bloody, and dirty. This is even true of the class of the nonhuman and non-faifai traditional poisons, which include inanimate mineral and plant substances. Although the ingredients of these particular poisons are secret, two I know of - a certain red ochre called "Akaisa's lost blood" (Akaisa enge ifa) and an orange mushroom called "Akaisa's penis" (Akaisa lako) are deemed the blood and flesh of the mythical culture hero Akaisa (see Chapter 8). The substances manipulated by agents of death upon their victims, then, include hot bloody dirty things from various human or humanlike bodily sources. The ritual or manual insertion of hot bloody dirty substances into the victim's body reverses the state of health and life and so produces illness and death. In these terms, death is the opposite of life. With the processes of cooking, eating, digestion, work, reproduction, nursing, male tightening ritual, and female postpartum memengoa, I have shown that forms of hot such as fire, cooked food and water, work, sexual exertion, and so on are understood to transform people's bodily conditions from unsweet into sweet (or vice versa, depending upon the specific context) toward sustaining life:

152

Quadripartite structures inside : outside :: inverted outside : everted inside blood : sweet :: unsweet : bloodless dirt

(4) (8)

Agents of death similarly transform the sweet and unsweet states of their victims with their hot dirty substances, but to the precisely opposite effect, that is, to illness and death: inside : outside :: inverted outside : everted inside (4) bloodless dirt : unsweet :: sweet : blood (9) Victims of these latter transformations are regarded by other villagers as "crazy" (kafoko). What is sweet and unsweet to the chronically ill, for example, is opposite to the sweet and unsweet of the healthy. Cooked food becomes unsweet and the lack of food sweet, so sick people do not eat. Or if they do eat, either they vomit, or the bloodless wastes of food they have consumed accumulate in their bodies while the blood-potent elements of food are excreted. Also, their own blood becomes unsweet rather than sweet, and it too is excreted rather than remaining inside the body. Moreover, the victim's "soul" (laulau) is attacked by the "spirit" (tsiange) of the offending hot bloody dirty substances. It too becomes unsweet for keeping inside the body, and it leaves. At this point, the victim will die. Death then occurs according to the same relations that sustain life, but in reverse. Death to villagers, however, is much more than a physiological phenomenon pertaining to the individual. If death were merely an aspect of the individual, villagers might simply discard the corpse or, at best, bury and keep vigil over it until the flesh had dried and decomposed, and then be done with it. That villagers do not do this, and that each death is attributed to the actions of an agent, indicates that death in Bush Mekeo culture is a preeminently social fact. Indeed, when news of a death is first spread from village to village within the tribe, people characteristically express it in terms of an entire clan dying - "Nganga [clan] is dead" (Nganga kemae), or "Ineu [clan] is dead" (Ineu kemae) - rather than stating the name of the deceased individual. Throughout most of this chapter, I shall be examining Bush Mekeo mourning and feasting ritual as predicated upon this fundamental indigenous conceptualization of death as a social, and not just an individual event. As such, the culture categories relevant to death will be elucidated in their relations to other contexts of village social life. The aftermath of death: village hot and village cold While its resident clans are free of death and mourning, the village and village life are described as hot (tsiabu). When the village is hot, resources and wastes are regularly passed between the village and bush. People work, so there is plenty of food to eat. Children play unin-

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hibitedly. Individuals, households, and clans reap the maximum enjoyment their world generally has to offer. Each evening while the village is hot, the air is filled with singing, chanting, and drumming as bachelors dressed in all their finery court and woo their loves. Occasionally, a young couple will be betrothed or elope and marry, and afterward their respective clans will gather and exchange marriage compensation in animated proceedings. When the village is hot, life in general is sweet; it is lived to the fullest, and the people are "happy" (engama). The event of a death in any one of the resident village clans, however, changes all this, for death4 too is hot, but of another variety. As such, it systematically transforms the sweet lives of all villagers into ones unsweet and full of "sadness" or "pain" (etsetse) instead of happiness. Activities representative of life in general are suspended. Ordinary household and village occupations cease immediately. In particular, the singing, drumming, and colorful dress of courting are replaced by mourning and other activities connected with death. In short, the village, once hot and full of life, has become cold by the transformative hot of death, and it will remain so until death is completely removed at the final death feast. The initial reaction to death at the village provides several important clues for interpreting the complicated events that are to follow. Upon the discovery of death in their midst, men and women of the village, both young and old, rush crying and shrieking in near pandemonium to the scene of death and gather around the body of the deceased. As the deceased's many relatives arrive, they push their way through the throng and embrace the body. Amid the tears, conventionalized "dirges" (angopa) are sung. Before too long, the grief-stricken begin to differentiate themselves around the corpse roughly according to their relationships with the deceased. Female relatives - agnates and cognates - and the surviving spouse visibly assume the most prominent and active parts, which they will play throughout the proceedings. They crowd closest to the dirty corpse and remain in contact with it, touching and stroking it, while the men (except perhaps the sons of the deceased and the widower, if the deceased was female) fall back. This is one context where villagers overcome their fear of hot and dirty substances and willingly allow them onto their skins. That it is women more than men who come into contact with the dirty corpse is significant. When I observed these events on a number of occasions, bereaved women forcefully struck their arms and breasts with their fists in time with the beats of the dirges they sang. Father Guis with undisguised horror reports that traditionally the female relatives, holding sharpened pieces of shell, would lacerate their heads and bodies with these motions and roll frenzied on the ground (1936:121). Under the mission's influence, these more extreme acts of bereavement have been

154

Quadripartite structures

curtailed, except that women still shave their heads and go through the motions of drawing blood. Women, it will be remembered, are likened to the skin of the clan, both their own and mothers' clans. At death, hot dirt from the skin of the corpse, which is assumed to be bloody, and hot bloody dirt from inside the clan are symbolically placed on the outside of the clan - onto its skin or women. Such is the hot of death. It makes women and clans do as sweet what otherwise would be unsweet to them, namely, excrete blood from the inside to the everted outside. These women and those male relatives of the deceased who have either touched the corpse or touched the bloody skins of the grief-stricken women must take special precautions thereafter not to allow unwittingly any of the hot bloody and dirty substances into their own bodies, or they might sicken and die. Also, they must take care not to endanger others with their dirty persons. Among the Central Mekeo at Beipa'a, at one point, contaminated mourners had to live in the bush, as the feasting ceremonies that remove the dirt had been banned by the mission (Hau'ofa 1981:22). As preparations are made for burial an hour or so after the initial outpouring of grief, blood relatives of the deceased differentiate themselves from other villagers who are not related by blood. Clanspeople, papie ngaunga, other resident close cognates, and the surviving spouse remain gathered together close to the body. Because all these relatives,5 male and female, are reckoned one or the same blood as the deceased and/or the clan of the deceased, they too "die." In other words, when they mourn for the loss of their blood relative, they grieve for the loss of their blood, for the loss of part of themselves. Collectively, these blood relatives are the "owners" (ngome) of the death. The living spouses of the owners of death are not themselves one blood with the deceased,6 and they in contrast do not collectively die. These people are therefore not owners of the death; they are collectively termed "in-laws" (ipa ngaua) or, nowadays, in English, "laborers." Very generally, male and female laborers perform the work that their mourning spouses and spouses' blood relatives cannot, but that is nonetheless necessary to alleviate their sorrowful and dirty condition. For example, if the deceased happens to die away from his/her natal village, the male laborers carry or canoe the body back to the owners' village. Laborer males prepare the corpse for burial, dig the grave, and finally bury the body there. Laborer women perform other work on behalf of the mourning women. They wipe tears away from their faces, prevent them from wounding themselves too severely, and assist with shaving their heads. Also, female laborers will henceforth bring food from the gardens, cook and serve it to all the people assembled in the village, and each morning clear the village abdomen of rubbish.

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In the performance of these tasks, laborers also contract dirty substances from the corpse and mourners on their own skins. As soon as their tasks are completed, laborers, unlike mourners, wash their skins with hot water and solvents (mulamula) of dirt. This dirt is not their blood; it is not part of themselves. Soon after the initial outpouring of grief, bachelors are sent to neighboring villages of the tribe to inform other blood relatives living or visiting there of the death and to summon them to the village of the owners. These blood relatives typically include female members of the deceased's clan, papie ngaunga, and other cognates of the deceased. The spouses of these persons accompany them to the village of death and assume the role of laborers. Thus, by the time all have arrived, there are basically two categories of people: owners tied by blood relationship to the deceased, and laborers who are not tied by blood to the deceased or deceased's clan. This division corresponds precisely with the distinction of blood versus nonblood discussed at length in the previous chapter. Moreover, here, as in the context of agnation, cognation, and affinity, the blood/nonblood distinction crosscuts the line differentiating the two moieties from one another. Some of the deceaseds blood relatives are members of his or her own clan and moiety; others through papie ngaunga relationships are members of clans in the opposite moiety. Correspondingly, whereas the laboring spouses of the former are ideally members of the opposite moiety, spouses of the latter who serve as laborers will belong to the other clan of the same moiety as the deceased (or the clan of owners' spouses' mothers). There are, then, four categories of participants gathered immediately after death: mourners or owners in the same and opposite moiety, and laborers in the same and opposite moiety with respect to the deceased. Indeed, these four categories at the time of death are isomorphic with the four categories of persons who gather to give and receive marriage compensation and to fictively rearrange cognatic and agnatic blood identities for brides and grooms: samemoiety owners agnatic ui

j

:

:

blood , own clan

oppositemoiety laborers ,, , non-blood / a>

\

::

::

(afhnes) :

spouse's , clan

oppositemoiety owners L. cognatic

ui

J

cognatic non-blood , .

:

(same moiety, v

blood ::

mother's . clan

samemoiety laborers

:

:

. , ' other clan) spouse's A. > i mother s clan

(20)

/1OX

(18)

,,„, (1")

As we shall see, the exchanges undertaken among the participants at death ceremonies, particularly at feasts, have very nearly the same pur-

156

Quadripartite structures

pose as marriage-compensation exchanges - the relinquishment of certain blood ties and the affirmation of certain others. The surviving spouse of the deceased plays a unique role in mourning proceedings. Villagers claim that a husband and wife become one blood once they have produced children. Assuming they did produce offspring before the spouse died, the widow or widower, like any blood relative, is expected to show signs of being sad or pained at the loss of her or his blood and to observe mourning. But the surviving spouse is also an in-law and not related by agnatic or cognatic blood traced through the deceased to the owners. For this reason, apparently, many suspicions are focused upon the widow or widower, and they typically undergo the harshest of treatment at the hands of the owners. In the first few days following death, the widow or widower may be beaten or otherwise physically abused by the owners. The widow or widower must not diplay the slightest resistance. Also, they are given only minimal quantites of inferior food. Thereafter, the roles of widow and widower diverge somewhat. A widow must sit nearly motionless hidden inside the house she shared with her husband (underneath or in front of which his body is buried). She cannot speak above a whisper nor receive visits from her own relatives except at the permission of the owners. And she may leave only for the purpose of bodily elimination under cover of blackened barkcloth blanket that hides her dirty skin. Widowers are similarly confined during the day in a bachelor's house (kofu) walled up for the occasion, but at night they may emerge to assist in the grave-site vigil. Villagers explain that widowers and widows must suffer these abuses because of their profound sadness and pain now that death has made life unsweet for them. But also, it seems, the surviving spouse is in some respect held accountable for the death. This does not mean that the surviving spouse is blamed for actually killing the deceased, however. Instead, widows and widowers might be accused of not giving food to, or generally not caring for, the deceased in his or her lifetime, of lying when they cry, of intending to marry someone else, or of having committed adultery. Only very rarely is the surviving spouse indicted of having conspired to kill the deceased. Widows, in particular, might be suspected of having put menstrual blood in their husbands food; widowers, of carelessly exposing their wives to their hot ritual charms or their own persons when it was unsafe to do so. Even if the other mourners are firm in their belief that sorcery, for example, was the cause of death, they may accuse the widow or widower of having allowed the sorcerer access to the deceased. The widow or widower then suffers at the hands of the mourning owners in most cases, not because they are thought to have poisoned or killed their spouses, but because they did not keep the vigilance necessary to prevent others from doing so.

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A further differentiation in the roles of widow and widower relates directly to their sexual identifies. Inside the walled bachelors quarters, a widower ritually tightens himself. Upon emerging at night, he is fully armed. He assists in the grave-site vigil by patrolling the outskirts of the village ready to kill or chase away any peace sorcerers attempting to rob the grave or claim additional victims. As his body closes, the widower becomes more and more immune to the hot of the sorcerer's charms and spells, and he is increasingly capable of committing homicide without allowing his victims blood into his own body. When the vigil is suspended a few months later, the widower continues to tighten in anticipation of avenging his wife's death by secretly killing with peace sorcery or poison the wife or close relative of the suspected murderer or the person who hired the murderer. Often, it is said, a widower will kill a woman of an enemy tribe so her relatives will feel the sadness and pain he does. Because only relatively few men know the secrets of peace sorcery, poison, and other forms of ritual killing, most men once they become widowers must enlist the aid of a practicing peace sorcerer or other specialist. In return for this service, widowers must apprentice themselves to the specialist for a considerable time; or at least this is what others in the village suspect. Some people go so far as to say that all widowers become peace sorcerers for a time before they are freed from mourning and remarry. Being a woman, a widow cannot tighten, but she does close her body, as do postpartum mothers, peace sorcerers, and widowers. It is significant in this comparison that the roles of widow and widower correspond with the homologous categories of postpartum mother and father, respectively (see Chapters 4 and 5). Assisted by the male laborers and the widower, the male blood relatives of the deceased keep a nightly vigil over the grave until the blood and flesh of the corpse have rotted away, dried, and dissipated. This may take as long as two or three months. The vigil is maintained to prevent peace sorcerers from robbing the grave, for it is in this way that peace sorcerers are said to acquire the nefarious hot dirty bloody things essential to their arts. However, the deceased's male relatives and in-laws are not simply concerned with thwarting the practice of peace sorcery generally. Rather, they are protecting all blood relations of the deceased, including themselves, from collectively becoming the victims of a particular category of peace sorcery that, in its techniques, is similar to mefu described in Chapter 3 (cf. Hau'ofa 1981:221-5). To work mefu upon his intended victim, it will be recalled, the peace sorcerer need only obtain a specimen of the victim's bloodless dirty leavings (an article of clothing, areca spittle, feces, cigarette stub, hair, etc.) to control his or her soul. The peace sorcerer can kill the soul of his victim whose leavings he has by mixing them with hot bloody residues of corpses. But because his victim's

158

Quadripartite structures

own leavings are bloodless, they are not hot for killing anyone else. It is only when the sorcerer acquires the bloody remains of a dead human that others are threatened, particularly the persons related by blood to that dead human. Thus, with comparative speed and ease, a peace sorcerer can decimate an entire clan or network of blood relations if he can obtain some blood from the dead body of one of them. With the blood of my dead brother, for example, a peace sorcerer has the capacity to kill me. My blood and my brother's blood are one. Under the peace sorcerer's direction, the spirit of the deceased forces his/her survivors to mistakenly ingest some of the hot blood on their skins that has not been washed off since the death, and one by one they will die. Whenever many people of a clan or village die within a short period of time, as apparently happened during the early contact era when villagers were exposed to many newly introduced European diseases, this is among the prevalent explanations (Mosko n.d.). The rationale of the grave-site vigil, then, illustrates that blood out of the body of the deceased, unlike cold bloodless excreta of the living, is conceptualized as blood out of the collectivity formed by the bodies of the surviving relatives of the deceased. Therefore, it is essential that this shared blood be protected from theft or manipulation that could generate further death. The grave-site vigil, as already mentioned, is abandoned when the flesh and blood of the corpse are thought to have dried and disintegrated. Afterward, nothing is left of the deceased's body that can be used by peace sorcerers to exterminate the deceased's blood relatives. Only the bloodless bones remain. Ideally, the abandonment of the vigil should also coincide with the staging of the first of two death feasts - the katsiamore, or 'burial feast. "7 Performance of the burial feast follows very closely the general outlines of the subsequent final mortuary feast (kumau or umupua). In both cases, the peace chief of the deceased's subclan gives a prescribed variety of raw plant foods and meat to his friend or friends. The peace chief who receives these foods distributes them for consumption among the people affiliated with his subclan. To the feast givers or owners of the death, the food represents the blood or flesh of the deceased. At both the burial feast and the final death feast, the giving away of the deceased's blood in the form of food releases some of the survivors from mourning. Moreover, death feasts of both kinds are reciprocal between friends. When the feast receivers subsequently have deaths themselves, they are obligated to return identical quantities of the same categories of food to their friends who gave them a feast earlier. In short, the final mortuary feast, which puts an end to mourning for those who have died, replicates the overall design of the initial burial feast. Therefore, it is unnecessary for me to describe them both in equal detail. Inasmuch as the ritual and symbolism of the

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final death feast are more elaborate than the burial feast, I shall concentrate on interpreting it at length, keeping in mind that my comments, unless otherwise indicated, are also applicable to both. In this way, I hope to avoid undue repetition. Nevertheless, it will be worthwhile to briefly mention those features that are unique to the burial feast and differentiate it from the final death feast discussed below. Planning and preparation for the burial feast begin as soon as the body has been set in its grave beneath the village abdomen or under the house of the deceased. None of the deceased's blood relatives may exert themselves to provision the feast. Under the authority of the deceased's subclan peace chief, the female laborers are sent to the gardens to work and thereby provide enough plant food for the owners' burial feast. The male laborers are sent hunting and fishing each day. The meat they bring back from the bush is butchered and smoke-dried on a stick platform over a low fire to preserve it for the burial-feast exchanges. The male laborers are also charged with bringing the necessary firewood to fuel this fire, and a few of them watch over it at night with some of the male mourners as part of the grave-site vigil. Laborers explain that they work, hunt, and fish to provision the burial feast in order to make the mourners or owners of the death happy (engama), to release them from the sadness and pain of death. Recall that the term engama is used also for the notions "to begin" or "start' as well as "to conceive" (see Chapter 5). However, only some of the owners are relieved at the end of the burial feast. After release, these ex-mourners may resume work and other activities preparatory to the final death feast, at which time the remaining mourners will be similarly absolved of their funerary observances and made happy. The determination of who leaves and who remains in mourning after the burial feast will be discussed later in the chapter. Prior to the scheduled day of the burial feast, the officiating peace chief does not send invitations to his friends as he will do at the final death feast. Thus, unless a friend of the owner lives in the same village or is present in the role of laborer or owner himself (through papie ngaunga relationship to the clan of the deceased), the principal feast-receivers will not be present. In any case, because the friends of the feast-giving peace chief are not formally invited, the burial feast is marked by the absence of the extravagant and colorful singing, dancing, drumming, and courting that characterize the final mortuary feast. Thus, the prohibitions upon singing, dancing, colorful dress, and courting that were immediately imposed on the village with the discovery of death continue after the burial feast is over up to the performance of the final death feast. The village, in other words, remains cold. Just in terms of sheer numbers, the large majority of the deceaseds

160

Quadripartite structures

surviving blood relatives are released from the more rigorous mourning observances once they carry the burial-feast prestations to their friends at their friends' villages. These owners and all the laborers may now pick up their lives pretty much where they left them before being transformed by death. If they came from other villages, they are allowed to return home. They may work, hunt, fish, and engage in other activities for the sake of their own households, but the released owners particularly must begin also to prepare for the final death feast by planting extra gardens, perhaps, or breeding pigs and dogs. If the same clan experiences another death in the meantime, its members and papie ngaunga affiliates and all their spouses must gather once more as owners and laborers and stage another burial feast. This points to one of the main features that distinguishes the burial feast from the final death feast. A burial feast should be given for each death, but a single final death feast may be given with respect to several deaths in the same clan or subclan. A series of deaths and burial feasts typically precedes the exchange of one final death feast. The final death feast: village cold and village hot It should be clear already that peace chiefs play a prominent role in all the activities associated with death, mourning, and release of mourning through reciprocal feasting. Turning now to the final death feast, it will be useful to begin with a brief account of the peace chief's focal position in this context, for indeed peace chiefs are described as the "owners of death" (mae ngome aunga). At feasts, peace chiefs are assisted in their work by a number of functionaries: "string-giver" or "assistant chief" (uibina); "knife" or "food server" (atsiua); "bossman, ' who relays orders from the chief to the laborers; and the peace sorcerer, who advises the peace chief regarding feasting traditions and punishes those individuals who disobey the chief's legitimate wishes. All these functionaries derive their authority from that of the peace chief (Hau'ofa 1971:162-4). But peace chiefs are not merely the owners of death as regards mourning and feasting. According to the culture of the Bush Mekeo, all deaths are ultimately traceable to the authority of peace chiefs, and through them to the culture hero Akaisa. Peace sorcerers, war chiefs, and war sorcerers must ideally obtain the sanction of peace chiefs to do their killing. As the nominal owners of clan lands, peace chiefs serve as the intermediaries between ordinary human villagers and extraordinary beings of the bush - the ongokapu bush people. And when the latter threaten any of the former with illness or death, it is left to the peace chief to intervene. Thus, although peace chiefs should never themselves kill other human beings, the agents of death perform their tasks with the explicit or tacit approval of peace chiefs.

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Therefore, the right and responsibility to perform death feasts on behalf of his subclan is only a part of the peace chiefs role as an owner of death. As the exchange of the burial feast draws near, the peace chief must decide who among the deceaseds blood relatives will be released from mourning and who will continue to mourn as either oaifa or akemoku official mourners until the final mortuary feast is completed. For every death, one or more persons must be appointed oaifa. Oaifa must be married, or at least have been married. The peace chief may select any of the deceased's blood relatives, and he need not restrict his choice to within the clan. For example, if the deceased is a woman, her son or daughter belonging to a different clan may be chosen to serve as oaifa. Ideally, the chief should choose from among the closest surviving relatives (e.g., parents, sons, daughters, full siblings, half-siblings, first cousins). Oaifa can be of either sex, but it is my distinct impression that women are chosen more often than men. Villagers themselves often speak of oaifa in the generic as women, and, although there is no rule preventing men from becoming oaifa, the other category of official mourner, akemoku, is reserved exclusively for male blood relatives of the deceased. The distinguishing mark of an akemoku mourner is that he is released from mourning along with the others at the burial feast except that he must allow his beard (buibui) to grow. Men who are akemoku must keep their beards long until the final death feast, at which they contribute one pig each to the officiating peace chief for him to give away. The feast-receiving peace chief will then remove the injunction against depilation. Therefore, one way that feast-giving peace chiefs guarantee there will be enough village pigs for their feasts is by appointing enough men to serve as akemoku. Because women cannot grow beards, and their pigs (or portions of the pigs they jointly own with their husbands) cannot be used in their own clans' feasts, women cannot become akemoku but oaifa only. Oaifa mourners, by contrast, are not required to donate a pig for their own release at the final death feast. In addition, akemoku men, like exmourners after the burial feast, may regularly wash their bodies and hunt, fish, and work in preparation for the final death feast, which releases the predominantly female oaifa. Thus, men as akemoku contribute significantly toward provisioning the final death feast, which they could not do if they instead were appointed oaifa. This gender bias implicated by the selection of akemoku and oaifa will have some relevance to the interpretation below of the final death-feast exchanges. The mourning ordeal of oaifa deserves special comment. Although oaifa are neither characteristically blamed for the death of their relative nor beaten, their experience is much the same as that of the widow or widower. They must speak only in whispers; eat so as not to touch their

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food with their dirty hands; smear charcoal over their bodies; refrain from washing; shave their heads; wear black, woven arm-, leg-, and waistbands; wrap themselves in black barkcloth blankets; remain hidden in the dwelling of the deceased near the grave; do no work; abstain from sex; and wear skin dirt (fa iofu) relics about the neck. These relics (not worn by akemoku after the burial feast) contain cold bloodless bodily residues taken from the corpse before burial (e.g., loincloth, fibers of grass skirt, string bag, limepot, hair, nail parings, teeth). Finally, the one feature that distinguishes oaifa mourners from widows, widowers, and akemoku concerns the practice of bafu, "food abstention." Bafu is distinct from ritual male tightening ngope and from postpartum memengoa procedures. Oaifa mourners practicing bafu eat moderately in most respects. Bafu involves the strict prohibition of just one type of food, e.g., banana, coconut, sweet potato, wild pig, cassowary, wallaby, and so on. 8 At the time of appointment, each oaifa mourner chooses as his or her bafu one food customarily shared with the deceased during the latter's lifetime. If, for instance, I as a good spearsman always gave my brother mullet to eat, when I become oaifa upon my brothers death I will not eat mullet. Mullet will by my bafu. Ideally, no two oaifa mourners will choose the same bafu with respect to the same deceased. What the deceased lacks in death the oaifa collectively lack as well. As they abandon all other signs of mourning upon their release at the final mortuary feast, oaifa may resume eating the food that had been bafu. Therefore, along with the wearing of the skin dirt bundles and the prohibition against washing, bafu serves to identify each of the oaifa mourners personally with the death of their blood relative. In some respects, final death-feast preparations are begun with the performance of the burial feast. The majority of blood-related survivors are released from mourning at the burial feast with the explicit objective of allowing them to work toward completion of the final death feast, thereby ridding the clan of death entirely. Before he gives them leave to return home, the officiating peace chief will approach the relatives of the deceased who came from other villages and who are known to own pigs and dogs, and he will ask them to raise an animal specifically for the final mortuary feast he is planning. Those persons who remain at the subclan's natal village must also take steps to increase their herd. Because the burial feast has significantly depleted their garden resources, old gardens must be enlarged and new gardens planted so there will be enough plant food to feed themselves, their pigs, and their many anticipated guests. Thus, a great deal more plant food is cultivated following a burial feast than would be required merely for subsistence. The subclan peace chief possesses the authority to impose "markers" (onge apua)9 on extra gardens planted at his direction and on the coconut

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and areca palms owned by members of his subclan, preventing their exploitation until the feast is ready. If the subclan suffers another death during this interim period, yet another burial feast must be performed and additional oaifa and akemoku mourners appointed. The extra provisions of garden food, pigs, and dogs set aside for the final death feast may be thereby exhausted, so final-death-feast preparations must be reinitiated. A clan or subclan often experiences such a setback between the time one burial feast is completed and resources accumulate sufficiently to hold the final death feast. When the feast gardens have reached maturity and there are enough fully grown village pigs and dogs, the peace chief will send for women of his subclan living in other villages and the subclan's papie ngaunga affiliates. These people will return with their spouses - the laborers or in-laws - to the village of the owners. As the peace chief and his functionaries dictate, the laborers will work for the feast owners. Now, however, the owners, excepting the oaifa mourners still in confinement, can join with the laborers in some of the preparatory activities. This is particularly evident as regards men and the provision of meat from the bush. As the most senior member of his subclan and nominal owner of the land, the peace chief organizes his clanspeople, the papie ngaunga, and the laborers into large cooperative hunting and fishing expeditions into the bush (Seligmann 1910:292-3; Williamson 1913). At the appointed spot, the chief begins the drive by ritually appealing to the ancestral clan spirits including the recently deceased, the culture hero Akaisa, and Akaisa's son, Tsabini, to chase many animals into their nets. Several such hunting and fishing forays are usually necessary to procure enough bush meat for a final death feast. Otherwise, male and female laborers are called upon to perform the same tasks they did for the burial feast. The women clear the village grounds, procure garden food, cook and serve food to the men, and, along with the men, pound sago. The men for their part construct new sitting platforms to house the guests, make needed repairs on the chief's clubhouse and other structures, gather coconuts and areca nut, supply firewood, and attend to the smoking of the accumulated bush meat. While so engaged, the laborers are fed several times each day some of the food they have procured from the bush. By Bush Mekeo standards, they eat exceedingly well.10 Also, they are regularly given areca and betel to chew. These observations bear upon the conceptualizations of the relations between the owners and the laborers. The laborers must never complain or hesitate in their work, nor may they violate the rules of eating on the chief's clubhouse (no smoking or chewing while others are eating, no throwing rubbish over the railings, etc.). If a laborer does do one of these things, he or she and all the others

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of the same sex will have to compensate (kaua) the officiating peace chief or his functionaries by paying a fine. The work laborers do on behalf of the owners is also termed compensation (kaua), and both work and fines are likened specifically to marriage compensation (kaua). This suggests that the laborers, who are the owners' affines, are of different ancestral bloods from them. Although the work and fines contributed by laborers are privately viewed by them as burdensome, an atmosphere of "play" or "fun" (bakau) tends to prevail publicly. Linguistically, the root for compensation (kaua) and play (bakau) is the same: kau. Villages have a proverb that reads, "When they compensate (or pay), they play" (isa kekaua aisama isa kebakau). Laborers' paying and playing, once more, make the owners happy. When all the laborers are gathered prior to feasts, a special form of paying and playing is staged. It begins when, absentmindedly or otherwise, one of the laborers casually expresses a desire for some particular kind of food. The owners take this to imply the laborers think they have not been entirely well fed. The next day is set aside for all the laborers to "eat mullet" (or whatever food had been mentioned). In the morning, the laborers set off to collect and bring back enormous quantities of the indicated food. Either seated on the village abdomen or on their platforms, the laborers are ordered to eat all the food piled before them after it has been cooked. Collectively failing to do so or vomiting in the attempt, the laborers will have to pay substantial fines of shell, feather, or dogs' teeth valuables to the owners. By means of this and other play diversions, it is argued, the laborers offer the owners occasion to forget their sorrows temporarily and be happy. In this particular kind of playing and paying, the laborers of both sexes assume a role reminiscent of the newlywed, engorging bride. They are obliged to eat all the food they are given, and it seems that they are only given procreative varieties and never contraceptive ones. Because the laborers are all married, ideally their own relatives have exchanged marriage compensation with the owners to express the lack of shared ancestral blood, just as brides are different blood from their grooms. Moreover, the laborers make the owners happy (engama), just as brides partly through engorging food conceive (engama) members of husband's clan (i.e., their offspring). Quite clearly, I think, this playing between owners and laborers symbolically expresses the relation between own clan and groom, on the one hand, and spouse's clan and bride, on the other. As the date for the feast approaches, the laborers are directed to make the last touches on constructing and repairing platforms for the visitors and generally getting the village in order for their arrival. Collective hunting especially intensifies so there will be enough bush meat. The bossman will dispatch small parties of male laborers to neighboring vil-

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lages to retrieve the pigs and dogs that will be contributed by owners resident there. Ideally, in the case of a male deceased, the village pigs to be slaughtered are those that were raised by him or by his full brothers and sons. Because these are usually exhausted at the burial feast, the pigs of akemoku and other male relatives (parents, first cousins, etc.) of the deceased are substituted. The peace chief should provide the dogs himself, but he can also request a pig or dog from any other married adult male related to the deceased or to the subclan or local clan of the deceased. In any case, it is up to the owners of the animals to decide whether the latter will be killed and given away on any particular occasion. Usually, the peace chief has negotiated for rights to pig and dog meat well in advance of the death feast, when the animals are still immature. When all is ready for the final mortuary feast, the peace chief invites his friends (pisaua) by sending his assistant peace chief to each of them with the carcass of one of his dogs11 and a branch of areca nut. After his wife has cooked the meat, the invited peace chief serves it to the men of his residential clan on the clubhouse and distributes the areca nut among them afterward. He does not himself consume either, however. The areca nut and dog are both symbolic of the office of peace chief; the areca nut has the added significance of sexuality and procreation (see Chapter 5). Kofuapie peace chiefs in the moiety opposite that of the feast-giving peace chief who are not friends of the latter will not be formally invited to come to the feast, but they will come nonetheless as part of the feast-receiving retinue led by the peace chief(s) who have been formally invited. When the appointed day arrives, separate parties of friends and kofuapie guests from the rest of the tribe led by their peace chiefs gather in the bush along the paths leading to the cold village of mourning.12 The men and women who are to dance at the feast richly adorn their bodies with reddened oil, face paint, flowers, feathers, boldly colored barkcloth and grass-skirt garments, and valuables. In addition, the men carry drums and hide their courting charms underneath their tightening belts. Once fully adorned, though, the guests do not immediately enter the village where the feast is to be held. The first friend of the senior feast-giving peace chief must be the first to enter with his people, and he must be given compensation (onge kau) for his effort. If there is more than one senior chief of the same residential clan making a feast together, their respective first friends may both await payment of onge kau. Onge kau can only be paid in the form of smoked or dried bush meat. When the host peace chief hears that his friend is in the bush, he sends him one or more joints of meat, admonishing him to come and make his village hot again. Singing, drumming, and dancing, the first friend advances several yards until his clanspeople go no farther. The peace chief must listen to his people, for it is they who will eat the compensation meat and have to

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provide it again to their chief when it is their turn to make their own final death feast. With each payment, the party of the first friend advances closer and closer to the village until the people do not hinder the advance of their peace chief. Eventually, the first friend arrives at the end of the village opposite that of the feast-giving chief's clubhouse. If the first friend happens to live in the same village, he enters from his own end, and his party explosively passes into the central village abdomen. They sing, dance, and drum at highest pitch, proceeding slowly to the opposite end of the village and back again. Those who do not dance - children, the elderly, and others who do not choose to - make for the homes of their relatives resident in the village or for the platforms constructed to house them. There they watch the spectacle. Other friends and kofuapie groups now begin to arrive and join the resplendent mass. Each time the moving crowd in the abdomen swells, a new crescendo is reached. As Seligmann observes, the widows, widowers, and oaifa still in mourning are saddened by the noise (1910:360). Nonetheless, the boisterous singing, dancing, and drumming continue throughout the remainder of the day, all night, and into the next day until such time as the feast-giving peace chief begins to make his feast prestations. The arrival of the guests renders the village of the mourning clan hot, where before, immediately following death, it was made cold. This deserves some additional comment, for dancing, singing, and drumming at final death feasts entail important meanings that have not been reported by other observers. Married and single people of both genders participate. The designs for colorful dress and ornamentation of the men and women are hereditary. Men of the same clan (or subclan) are said to appear indistinguishable from one another, but men of different clans are visibly distinct. Single girls and married women also adorn themselves with the hereditary insignia of their clansmen or husbands, respectively, but their personal identities are not visibly concealed from the men. The hereditary and visible accoutrements, not to mention the skills of singing and dancing, are regarded as sexually sweet to people of opposite genders in clans of different moieties. Hereditary clan emblems or insignia (kangakanga and auafangai; see Seligmann 1910:320-34) and styles of ornamentation provide clues to the participants as to who is and who is not a potential sex partner or mate. The themes of the songs (pike) deal with love and courtship. Indeed, some of the songs are love spells that have entered the public domain. Other love or courting spells are secret and are uttered silently by the men as they dance and stare into the eyes of their paramours. All that distinguishes fellow clansmen from one another to the women, aside from their individual skills in singing and dancing, are the

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hot love charms and spells that are not visible but are nonetheless at play. Furthermore, each man's face is marked by a black line drawn across the bridge of his nose or down his cheeks. This is the only black detail of dress on either men or women. This black paint is mixed from the fluid of the man's love charm. Thus, a man's glance transforms or "changes the mind " of his prospective lover and makes him sexually sweet to her rather than unsweet. Another technique to the same effect involves putting a trace of charm fluid on a woman's grass skirt as she brushes by. All the while this goes on, lines of women and men from different clans weave in and out of one another as the whole assemblage moves back and forth along the village abdomen in an apparent simulation, I shall argue, of the sexual act, and particularly the mixing of procreative bloods (Williamson 1913:281-5). The Bush Mekeo themselves regard this dancing and singing at final death feasts as the most sublime expression of collective happiness there is in village life. Once again, the term for happiness, engama, is used also for the notion of procreating new life in sexual reproduction. By their presence and explicit ritualized reenactment of the sexual act, the friends and other guests represent societal procreative hot, happiness, new life, and reproduction in contrast to the procreative cold (i.e., contraception), sadness, and death of the feastgiving owners. As the dancing continues, more subdued and highly formalized activities are underway on the clubhouses of the resident peace chiefs. The kofuapie peace chief resident in the same village as the owners entertains the other peace chiefs and men of their moiety who are not dancing or serving as laborers. At the order of the feast-giving peace chief, the female laborers take them bowls of cooked food to eat. On the clubhouse of the feast-giving peace chief, peace chiefs and peace sorcerers, together with knowledgeable old men of the same residential and dispersed clan, gather to advise him on how he should proceed. These men are collectively known by the honorific title au akaisa ("Akaisa Men"; Chapter 8). "Ordinary" or "poor men " (ulalu) of the feastgiving clan are not entitled to participate in these important deliberations. Sometimes at feasts, the Akaisa Men are called upon to adjudicate grievances and trouble cases to which the occasion of the feast has given rise, especially, it seems, when a new peace chief is to be installed and conflicting claims of legitimacy are expressed. The presence of the peace sorcerers in the village during the feast, moreover, contributes toward making the village of the mourning clan hot. The final death feast actually consists of two ceremonies. The first to be performed is termed "body" (kumau). Body exchanges are followed by "charcoal" or "black carrying/wearing" (umupua). The body ceremony replicates most of the details of the burial feast, but charcoal carrying is

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unique to the final mortuary feast (cf. Hau'ofa 1981:169-83; Seligmann 1910:359-62). The officiating peace chief signals his intent to begin the body proceedings by sending to his first friend at the other end of the village additional joints of smoked bush meat (onge kau) with the request that he club to death the village pigs and dogs that are to be given away. When his own clanspeople are satisfied that he has received enough bush meat, the first friend passes through the abdomen of the village to the front of the feastgiving chief's clubhouse, where the animals are staked to the ground.13 The dogs are passed onto the clubhouse, and the pigs are carried behind or beside it. Laborers carry the largest of the slain pigs, called the "dirty pig" (iofu kuma), to the steps. The owning peace chief now performs the body ritual proper. He rubs blood from out of the dirty pigs mouth onto the skin-dirt relics of each of his subclan's deceased, which have been worn by the oaifa, widows, and widowers. This identifies the blood and flesh of the dirty pig with the bodily dirt of the deceased and similarly with the persons of the mourners who have kept these things and refrained from washing their skins. Afterward, the bloodied skin-dirt articles can be either burned or merely cast away in the bush;14 they are rubbish now. The dirty pig, however, is taken behind the clubhouse and set next to the other pigs. Here the male laborers singe off the hair of each animal, cut out the anus and colon for the female laborers to wash in the river, wash the skin, and begin butchering. First, and very importantly, a large square or patch of skin and fat is cut away from the back of each village pig, and only then is the rest of the body dismembered. The head, backbone, and patch of tailskin of the dirty pig are left attached as one piece. This will be given specifically to the peace chief's first friend. Each of the other friends of the feast-giving chief will also receive a similar compound joint from another pig (head, backbone, tailskin). Remaining village pigs are fully dismembered. Only some joints from each pig will be used by the peace chief to make his feast. A husband and wife share ownership of their pigs. The ventral or "lower" half of each pig (comprised of lower jaw, chest, one foreleg, and one hindleg) belongs to the wife. These parts cannot be given away for her husband's feasts. When one of their pigs is killed for a feast, she gives her half to her own brothers, and they share it among themselves and members of her clan. The dorsal or "upper" half (head, backskin, hindskin, one foreleg, and one hindleg) belongs to the husband. He negotiates with his peace chief over which parts he wishes to keep for his own personal exchanges15 and which parts the peace chief will give away on behalf of the entire subclan. When a man gives his peace chief a particular piece or pieces of village pig meat for the subclan's death feast, his peace chief is

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obliged to give back to him an identical piece or pieces of meat once their friends reciprocate with a feast of their own. However, if the man is akemoku at a particular final death feast, his peace chief is entitled to take all the upper half of his pig and is not obliged to return it later. The backskin, liver, stomach, and small intestine of each village pig unquestionably belong to the peace chief. When the laborers have finished butchering the pigs, these portions with all the others intended for the peace chiefs exchanges are taken onto his clubhouse. Laborers also carry to the peace chief the accumulated garden produce and smokedried bush meat. With all the food now piled on the floor, the peace chief begins to do his work under the watchful eyes of the peace sorcerers and other Akaisa Men who must observe that all proceeds without mistake or disturbance. This is the most solemn part of the body ceremony. Festivities in the village abdomen are curtailed, and no one may scream out or distract the peace chief from what he is doing. First, he slices the patches of backskin from the village pigs into wide strips. Assisted by his string-giver assistant, the peace chief binds with vine a piece of small intestine, liver, and stomach to each strip of backskin. These tied bundles are termed iunge fanga. Only publicly installed peace chiefs and, in somewhat different circumstances, peace sorcerers, war chiefs, and war sorcerers may cut iunge fanga backskin and organs. Indeed, it is by publicly grasping the hand of his chosen heir and directing him in the cutting oiiunga fanga at feasts that a peace chief relinquishes his office in favor of his successor. The other three types of Akaisa Men similarly transfer their hereditary positions to their heirs, but not at mortuary feasts. Next, to each iunge fanga bundle the peace chief ties the carcass of one dog,16 and this unit is termed ikufuka. Each of the peace chiefs and peace sorcerers in the opposite moiety (i.e., both friends and nonfriend kofuapie) will be given one bundle of ikufuka meat. Once the ikufuka bundles are tied and sorted, the officiating peace chief begins to assemble the complete prestations he will give to his friends. The male laborers by now have planted bamboo poles in pairs on the village abdomen. Each pair of poles, termed kou17 according to Seligmann (1910:361), is joined at the top. 18 The peace chief steps down from his clubhouse into the abdomen and, as the string-giver passes him the food, he hangs it from the branch stubs left on the shafts of the bamboo. Laborers encircle the area with sticks to keep village pigs and dogs away. First, the string-giver hands the chief a bunch of each kind of plant food (coconuts, sweet potatoes, sago, bananas, sugarcane, taro, etc.). Next, he passes along dried joints of bush meat (preferably pig, but cassowary, wallaby, and mullet may be included). Then the head-backbone-tailskin piece of the dirty pig is hung from the apex of the kou, and to it, finally, the ikufuka is tied. All this food is termed pange. It includes essentially

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the same categories of plant food and meat as are given away at burial feasts. I shall delve deeper into the meaning of pange foods below. The entire tribal population waits, looking on in silence until all is ready with the kou. Then the feast-giving peace chief walks up and strikes the kou with the knotted end of a coconut leaf as he calls out, "Kaiva, yours." Next, he steps to another kou and repeats the act, calling the name of his second friend, and so on for each of his remaining friends. If two or more peace chiefs of the same residential clan are working together and giving their feasts at the same time, each separately prepares and gives food to his own friends in this way. Then nonfriend kofuapie peace chiefs and all peace sorcerers are given their food. As the string-giver hands his peace chief the remaining bundles of ikufuka meat from the clubouse, the peace chief calls out the names of the intended receivers. These peace chiefs and peace sorcerers come forward and claim their ikufuka meat. They do not receive plant food or extra outer meat, but their food, ikufuka, is nonetheless categorically pange. If both senior and junior peace chiefs of the same clan are making their feasts together, the senior peace chief gives ikufuka to senior kofuapie peace chiefs and sorcerers, and the junior peace chief to junior kofuapie peace chiefs and sorcerers. Thus, the peace chiefs of each feast-giving clan send one or the other category of body prestation, or pange, to all their friends, kofuapie peace chiefs, and peace sorcerers in the tribe. The first friend of the feast-giving peace chief now performs the second segment of the final mortuary feast, the umupua charcoal or black carrying/wearing ceremony. Owners who were released from mourning at previous burial feasts (including the bearded akemoku) escort the official oaifa mourners and the widows and widowers out of hiding and into the circle of laborers standing on the village abdomen. The mourners appear with charcoal smeared on their skin; hence, the name of the ceremony. Each oaifa mourner carries a bit of the hafu food that heretofore had been prohibited. The first friend of the feast-giving peace chief stands in front of the kou structure facing the assembled mourners, his own clanspeople standing behind him with the pange foods emerging from their midst. Of the oaifa mourners, he remarks that each man or woman has avoided one food since the death of his or her relative. Admonishing the onlookers not to shame19 this person when they see him/her subsequently eating this food, the first friend takes the bafu food from the oaifa s hand, waves it over his/her head, and places it inside the oaifa s mouth. The assembled friends of the owners burst forth, shouting "Ahhhhhhhhhh." According to this formula, the first friend lifts the barkcloth blankets away from the oaifa, severs the woven mourning bands, dabs on red or yellow facial

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paint, and adorns them with flowers and aromatic leaves worn in courting. With the replacement of each sign of sadness with one of happiness, the gathering repeats the cry, "Ahhhhhhhhhh.''20 In identical fashion (excepting the removal oibafu), the feast-receiving first friend relieves the widows and widowers of their mourning burdens and announces that they may let their hair grow and remarry. Also, the first friend cuts away the tuft of beard from the face of every akemoku mourner so that henceforth they may depilate their bodies. Lastly, widows, widowers, and akemoku are given colorful signs (cf. Seligmann 1910:362-3). And so the long mourning ordeal ends for the owners. Dirty relics of the deceased of the feast-giving clan have been discarded, along with the last traces of blood and other dirt from the skins of the survivors. Those who were sad are now made happy, those who had died are now returned to life. As the friends and other kofuapie on the village abdomen resume their singing, dancing, drumming, and courting, the ex-mourners join in. They celebrate with their friends and kofuapie through the night and into the next day. The village, once made cold by death, is hot and full of life again. As soon as the charcoal-carrying ceremony is concluded, clanspeople of the feast-receiving peace chief(s) take their food from the kou to their own clubhouse. Clansmen's wives are apportioned meat, which they immediately cook. The wife of the receiving peace chief will herself cook the ikufuka meat. Wives of other peace chiefs and peace sorcerers cook the ikufuka meat their husbands received. The next day, after the festivities are over and everyone has gone home to their own village, the various peace chiefs and peace sorcerers distribute all the food among the members and affiliates of their respective residential clans. The principal feast-receivers - that is, the friends of the feast-givers give some meat and plant food to every adult married member of the residential clan and to their married papie ngaunga, excepting those who were also among the owners of the feast. These people will share this pange feast food out among the members of their respective households. Ikufuka meat, comprised of iunge fanga village-pig backskin and organs and dog, will not be consumed by villagers in their houses. Every peace chief and peace sorcerer who received ikufuka will serve it to the married male members of his own residential clan and their married male papie ngaunga on the clubhouse. But peace chiefs and peace sorcerers will not themselves eat any ikufuka (see Chapter 8). In general, then, just as feastgivers include clanspeople of the deceased and their papie ngaunga, feast-receivers include the clanspeople of the friends and nonfriend kofuapie of the feast-giving chief and their respective papie ngaunga (Figure 7.1).

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papie ngaunga of feastreceiving friends

papie ngaunga of clan of deceased

feast-givers (ngome owners)

feast-recievers [pange eaters)

i

Figure 7.1. Mortuary feast-givers and -receivers.

Feast foods, bloods, relations, and de-conception I have already mentioned that pange feast foods exchanged among friends at burial and final death feasts are said to be the blood and flesh of the deceased and, thereby, of all the owners of the death. In other contexts, the word pange means "losing" or "lost." As the blood of the deceased, then, pange foods represent the "lost blood" of the feast-giving clan and their papie ngaunga. Being such, pange foods are dirty (iofu) to the owners and must not be eaten by them. Adult villagers informed me that they had to keep a close watch on their young children who are among the owners at feasts to make sure that they did not eat pange, for it could kill them just as dirty things can kill anyone who eats them. And inasmuch as the owners collectively are one blood with the deceased, pange represents their own flesh and blood. Moreover, in keeping with the comments above, pange would seem to represent specifically female as distinct from male blood or flesh. At the announcement of death, it is predominantly women who contaminate their skins with blood and dirt and who recapitulate in mourning observance the features of the postpartum memengoa. It is women also who are characteristically selected to serve as oaifa. During the final mortuary feast, it is inside the female part of the village - the abdomen - that the feast animals are killed, that blood of the dirty pig is merged with the skin dirt of the deceased and the survivors, that pange foods are transferred, and that dirt and other signs of death are removed from the mourners' bodies. Also, as I have shown in numerous contexts, the abdomen is systematically associated with the specifically female notion of mother. One of the curious features of Bush Mekeo death feasting is that, to the feast-receivers who actually eat the food, pange is not considered dirty. Rather, to them it is not pange; it is clean and edible food once it has been cooked. This evaluation of pange foods recalls in a general sense the contradictions whereby semen can generate both death and new life and

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certain cognatic blood relatives can marry and reproduce as nonrelatives (Chapters 4-6). Specifically, persons in friend and kofuapie relationships who may exchange blood through intermarriage and heterosexual reproduction also reciprocate one another's blood over death. The similarities here between feasting, reproduction, and marriage are, I think, not superficial or coincidental but representative of homologous category distinctions I have described throughout Bush Mekeo culture. It is worth noting first that there is a total of four categories represented among the givers and receivers of each death-feast exchange. Also, the givers and receivers at any one death feast include members of all four clans within the tribe. Although some members of each patrilineal moiety are givers, other members of the same moiety will be receivers. Moreover, it is not always the case when some members of a particular clan (or subclan) can eat pange food that all members of the same clan (or subclan) may do so at the same time. The rules concerning who may and who may not eat a particular pange prestation, then, do not always coincide with the divisions separating moieties and clans. Nonetheless, the relations between the four feast-giving and feast-receiving categories are homologous with the relations between clans as represented in marriage-compensation exchanges. The clan of the deceased and their papie nguanga belonging to the clans of the opposite moiety are owners or feast-givers together. Persons belonging to neither of these categories may eat the pange feast food. The feast-giving papie ngaunga may not eat the food their own peace chiefs receive for their clans. Moreover, it is precisely among the two categories of feast-giver that marriage is prohibited. The two kinds of feast-giver, then, are comparable to the relation of own clan : mother's clan. Relations between the two categories of feast-receiver are analogous with those between the two categories of feast-giver. There are, first, members of clans in the moiety opposite to that of the deceased (i.e., friends) who are not papie ngaunga of deceased's clan, and, second, their papie ngaunga who are not among the clan of the deceased. The two categories of pange feast food eater are also prohibited from marrying among themselves. Indeed, according to the rules of marriage, feastgivers and feast-receivers who belong to opposite moieties are the prescribed or preferred spouses of one another. Feast-receivers, then, or the eaters of pange feast food, are the spouses and laborers of the two categories of feast-giver. They eat pange food that they receive through the peace chiefs of their own or mother's clans comparable with the two clans of marriage-compensation eaters. Therefore, from the perspective of the clan of the deceased, the relations between all categories of feast-giver and feast-receiver are homologous with distinctions between intermarrying clans:

174

Quadripartite structures papie-ngaunga

i r clan oi j j deceased

:

feast-receiving r i i i mends; laborers r i r tor clan oi j , deceased

own clan

:

spouse's clan

::

mother's clan

:

clan A1

:

clan B 1

::

clan B 2

:

::

. papie ngaunga c ^ r oi clan oi , , deceased

of feast-receiving , , r . T mends; laborers /r,nX : r . (21) lor papie ngaunga r * C of clan oi deceased , , , mother s clan clan A2.

(16) (19)

Each category of feast-giver contributes food that is presented both to members of the moiety opposite to it and to members of the same moiety. In terms of the above homology, feast-givers jointly give food to their respective spouse's clan and spouse's mothers clan. Feast reciprocation, in other words, is isomorphic with the structure of marriage-compensation exchange. To specify more precisely the meaning of feasting among the Bush Mekeo and its relation to marriage compensation, it will be necessary to delve deeper into the symbolism of pange feast food itself. How exactly does pange represent the blood or flesh of the deceased and/or the survivors? What is the relation of these notions to the indigenous theory of conception and reproduction at both the individual and societal levels? Namely, how does the blood of death in pange prestations relate to the bloods of procreation, kinship, clanship, and marriage exchange? During burial feasts and the body ceremony of final mortuary feasts, the plant foods included in pange are ideally taken from gardens planted by the deceased before his or her death. These vegetables are the product of the deceased's work and gardening nonwork in life. Had death not intervened, these foods would have sustained the deceased's blood, flesh, and body through further life. The plant foods in death feast pange, then, represent the blood-elements of the deceased's "unlived life," that portion of living the deceased had provided for him/herself before death occurred. Except for ikufuka backskin, organs, and dog, the remainder of pange includes outer raw meat from village pigs and bush animals. Village pig meat in pange is wet; the smoked bush meat is dry. 21 Village pig meat is taken from the upper half of the animal, and bush meat is taken from the lower half. Together, these joints of outer pange comprise the outer body of a dead creature, half village and half bush. To each half, however, attaches a slightly different meaning. At a burial feast, this outer body of pange is that of the recently deceased. At a final death feast, one such outer body represents the composite blood and flesh of all the people in a subclan who have died since the clan performed its last final death feast.

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175

In either case, the giving away of this outer body releases from mourning persons belonging to both categories of blood-related survivors. The upper half of the pange meat must be taken from a village pig. Ideally, meat of the lower half is composed of bush pig, but meat of other large bush animals is sometimes substituted when there are not enough bush pigs caught. Pig (kuma) is ideally suited for both purposes. The term for pig (kuma) is also the term for body (kuma). Also, the set of categories descriptive of pig bodies is the same for human bodies; that is, every part of pig anatomy is assigned the same term for the homologous part of a human being. This is not entirely so in all details for marsupials, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Nevertheless, although some pigs inhabit the village alongside human beings, other pigs forage wild in the bush and lead dramatically different lives. Pigs of the village are fed cooked food. Pigs of the bush eat their food raw. Villagers regard their own pigs "like children." They require considerable care, attention, and affection. Villagers correspondingly liken themselves to "fathers" and "mothers" of their pigs. Village pigs have personal names. Traditionally, Bush Mekeo women suckled their baby pigs (Guis 1936:62). Even nowadays villagers are extremely sad when the time comes to kill one of their own pigs, and they cry. Village pigs even have their own clans (ikupu) auxiliary to those of their human fathers. Bush pigs killed for feasts, on the other hand, although they are taken from the land of the feast-giving clan and belong to that clan, are not regarded as adoptive children. They are not suckled, individually named, or mourned for; nor do they possess clans. Thus, the two kinds of pigs approximate human beings to different degrees. These and other contrasts between village and bush pigs correspond to sexually assigned human attributes. The feeding and daily care of village pigs is largely the responsibility of women. Only men hunt bush pigs. Male village pigs are castrated at weaning, and as a result they become like village sows in their maturity: Courting (bakai) and mating are unsweet to them, but eating is sweet. Thus, all village pigs, male and female, become fat and "femaleish." Although eating is sweet to bush boars, so also are courting and sex with female pigs. Thus, the bodies of bush pigs, even bush sows, are comparatively much leaner than village pigs and more "maleish." At death feasts, the two kinds of sexually differentiated meat - femaleish village pig and maleish bush pig - are exchanged between categories of persons whose relationships traced through the ancestral bloods of the deceased are correspondingly differentiated according to sexually distinct bloods. Feast-givers give female meat to people related to them through female blood (cognates, of spouse's clan), and they give male meat to people related to them through male blood (agnates, of spouse's mother's clan). With reference to Figure 7.2, group A1 (clan of the deceased) gives

own clan

spouse's clan

papie ngaunga of clan of deceased

papie ngaunga of feast-receiving friends

mother's clan

spouse s mother's clan

I Figure 7.2. Mortuary-feast categories and clan identities.

Feasts of death (i)

177

female village meat to B1 of the opposite moiety (spouse's clan), and bush meat to A2 of the same moiety (spouse's mother's clan). Group B2 gives bush meat to B1 (their spouse's mother's clan), and village meat to A2 (their spouse's clan). According to the indigenous theory of conception, each individual is born with the four bloods of his/her grandparents, or their respective clans. Marriage compensation creates the public fiction whereby two of these cognatic bloods for the individual (i.e., father's mother's or spouse's clan blood, and mother's mother's or spouse's mother's clan blood) are acknowledged, but for the purpose of exogamous marriage and reproduction are abrogated. At death feasts, symbolic equivalents of these cognatic bloods of the deceased are returned to the clans of their origin - back to spouse's clan and spouse's mother's clan (Figure 7.3). What was provisionally done with marriage compensation is finally done at death feasts. The ancestral cognatic bloods of the deceased are separated, and the deceased as a human being is "de-conceived." For the survivors and especially the descendants, the deceased's de-conception at feasts effectively permits the severing of their cognatic blood relationships with the feast-receivers and pange eaters as traced through the deceased. In short, as death feasts de-conceive the deceased, they "reconceive" the deceased's blood relatives. The giving and receiving of feast food redistributes blood among clans of the same and opposite moieties that had earlier exchanged it in the conception of the deceased. Blood transmitted through feasting reverses blood transmitted through sex and reproduction (Mosko 1983). Returning to my observations stated at the end of the last chapter regarding the conflict of blood relationship viewed agnatically as well as cognatically, the reciprocation of the two outer portions of pange feast food has the most profound and significant of sociological implications. Following from the rules of exogamy and the indigenous theory of procreation, agnatic blood will be dissipated through the skin (women) of a clan into other clans, including the other clan of the same moiety; and the nonagnatic bloods of other clans will be correspondingly assimilated into one's own clan unless there is some countervailing process of returning and recapturing lost bloods. Through intermarriage, ideally closed clans are cognatically open to one another's blood. This is true even of clans belonging to the same patrilineal moiety. The purely agnatic constitution of the clan and moiety is thereby compromised. Reciprocal feasting provides the appropriate, final, and lasting resolution. Once a person dies, the survivors can send back his or her cognatic bloods whence they came, thereby contributing to the closing of the boundaries between the clans of both feast-givers and feast-receivers consistent with the ideology of agnatic purity within the clan and moiety.

Quadripartite

178

structures

A1

the deceased

Figure 7.3. De-conception and re-conception of grandmothers' clan bloods. Happiness, conception, de-conception, and re-conception This interpretation of the two outer portions of pange meat as bloods of de-conception and re-conception sheds considerable new light on numerous associated aspects of burial and final death feasts (cf. Hertz 1960; Goody 1962; Hicks 1976; Weiner 1976; Huntington and Metcalf 1979; Bloch and Parry 1982; Bloch 1982).

Feasts of death (i)

179

The single term engama is used to convey the essentially similar ideas of conceiving human fetuses with blood, de-conceiving the deceased, and re-conceiving the blood relationships and blood-identities of the survivors and the feast-receivers. It is significant in this context that all categories of ex-mourners join the courting festivities immediately upon their re-conception at the end of the final death feast. The nonsexual, nonreproductive, symbolically dead mourners have been transformed back into the sexual, reproductive, living, and happy. Needless to say, this transformation occurs inside the village abdomen. There, it might be said, the entire tribe is symbolically re-conceived in its essence, as an endogamous unit or totality. In a similar respect, constituent units of each exogamous clan within the tribe simultaneously establish or reaffirm their integrity as one agnatic blood vis-a-vis other clans through feasting re-conception. Individuals and patrilines, it will be remembered, can be recruited to clans as a result of either sexual reproduction and conception or reciprocal feasting reconception. Through food exchange and feasting, an adult-male nonagnate may join a clan by participating at feasts as though he were an agnate. Villagers, in fact, justify or explain the presence of genealogical nonagnates among their clan members in just this way. Similarly, ancestrally unrelated clan units (subclans, lineages) can fuse and become agnatically one blood and one clan by working together in feast performance. By the same token, residential clan unity and cooperation for feasting is destroyed when clanspeople violate the rules of clan exogamy and intermarry. In fact, the standard complaint against such marriages is that they "spoil the feast." Clans, in other words, can recruit their members by reconceiving them at feasts with food just as they can by conceiving them in heterosexual reproduction. There is still the question of the appropriateness and meaning of using raw meat in the two outer pange prestations. The feast-receivers themselves must cook their feast food before they may eat. In Bush Mekeo culture, cooked food is symbolic of blood relationship. Agnates and cognates should reciprocate and together consume cooked food on a daily basis. They should never exchange raw food. Even the notion of "adoptive kinship" (ibafaka; literally, "made fat") implies blood relationship through cooked food. At the final death feast itself, feast-givers feed their non-yet-re-conceived feast friends and kofuapie guests with cooked food before they give them raw pange. By contrast, when feast-givers give to feast-receivers raw pange at the end of the feast, they are expressing the re-conceived absence of blood relationship between them. And when the feast-receivers eat the cooked pange foods among themselves, they of course express their blood relationships to one another. The raw outer meats that friends exchange at feasts are among the contraceptive varieties prohibited to brides strenuously seeking concep-

180

Quadripartite structures

tion with their husbands. At death feasts, clans that have strenuously reciprocated procreative blood to create cognatic relationships through their female members exchange contraceptive blood in the form of meat to negate these same cognatic relationships through women. Viewed in this light, there is a certain appropriateness to the female qualities associated with mourners, whether they are men or women (Bloch 1982; Weiner 1976). Women, for example, tend to predominate as oaifa. Women are the outer skin of the clan. Oaifa, widows, and widowers alike allow their own blood and the bloody dirt of the corpse to remain on their skins until they are re-conceived. In the meantime, these bloods are on the outside or skin of the clan. It will be remembered that, according to legend, the ancestors of present clans did not die, they just shed their old skins and grew new ones. Just as female blood (i.e., wombblood) of a clan goes outside and into other clans through its skin or women in sexual reproduction, female blood of death and mourning goes back outside a clan and into other clans through its skin or women. Feasting homologies The terms I used at the end of the last chapter in the context of marriage compensation are relevant here. At feasts, the members of the clan of the deceased become one strictly agnatic blood to one another, and unequivocally inside the same clan. In relation to them, their feast-receiving friends and spouses and feast-giving papie ngaunga are both outside the clan of the deceased. But the latter are nonetheless one cognatic blood with the clan of the deceased and, therefore, outside inverted in relation to them; whereas the former are unambiguously outside and entirely different blood in relation to the clan of the deceased. Lastly, the feastreceiving papie ngaunga of the feast-giver's friends are one agnatic blood inside the same moiety of the clan of the deceased, but this relationship is everted through clans of the opposite moiety. In these terms and the others I have noted above, the four categories of feast-giver and feast-receiver are not only homologous with category distinctions among clans; they are also homologous with the other fourfold conceptual discriminations that pervade the indigenous culture. I shall list several of the more directly pertinent of these here: . .,

_,

inverted

inside

:

outside

::

., outside

clan of j j deceased

:

feast-receiving T r . friends

::

n aun a Z Z of clan of , , deceased

own clan

:

spouse's clan

::

mother's clan

:

agnatic blood

'

non-blood (affines)

"

cognatic blood

'

papie

:

everted . •i inside

,.,

(4)

PaPie : of feast-receiving (21) i r. mends , , , mother s clan cognatic non-blood

(16) . „,

181

Feasts of death (i) closing male male body blood roasting blood bush resources remote bush

opening male

opening female

semen

:

womb-blood

:

boiling sweet village resources peripheral village

: :

ripening unsweet village wastes village abdomen

: :

closing female female body blood smoking bloodless dirt bush wastes adjacent bush.

(14) (13) (6) (8) (2) (3)

It is also significant that the ordered articulation of marriage and mortuary exchanges in these terms parallels the processes of ritually opening and closing the bodies of adult males and females. When men and women procreatively open their bodies together, just as when clans simultaneously open their boundaries, there is life. When men and women ritually close their bodies and clans feast, however, there is an absence of life, or death; but death with the potential for creating new life. One additional point follows along this vein. If the exchanges of blood in feasting reverse earlier transmissions of blood between clans through sex and reproduction in marriage, then these two spheres of interclan relationship can be distinguished from one another in terms of extraordinary and ordinary, respectively. With the conception and birth of its members, a clan unidirectionally assimilates the bloods of other clans. And with the death and de-conception or re-conception of its members, a clan ambidirectionally returns the bloods of other clans. Although separated in time, death feasting reverses conception and reproduction. It is, furthermore, consistent with this reasoning that the exemplars of the unidirectional marriage compensation (as the preliminary to reproductive exchanges of blood) are ordinary villagers or poor men where peace chiefs and other hereditary officials have no formal role, and that the exemplars of ambidirectional feasting exchanges are extraordinary villagers, that is, peace chiefs. The following chapter will be expressly devoted to this and related extraordinary aspects of death feasting among the Bush Mekeo.

8 Feasts of death (ii): the sons of Akaisa

It has taken me this long in my interpreting of Bush Mekeo death and mourning ritual to address the significance of the roles played by peace chiefs specifically at death feasts and by Akaisa Men generally in the total culture. Also, I have not as yet closely examined the definitive element of the complete death-feast pange prestation - the ikufuka meat. This chapter will be devoted to analyzing these issues, for, as I will presently show, they are not only intimately connected with one another, but they relate directly to the culture hero Akaisa and thus involve the most central mythical symbols of all Bush Mekeo culture. Furthermore, the characteristic structure of bisected dualities will become evident in this context as in the others I have discussed. It will be remembered that ikufuka consists of the intact carcass of a dog and iungefanga (a strip of backskin and pieces of liver, stomach, and small intestine from a village pig). At final mortuary feasts, owning peace chiefs give ikufuka to each of the kofuapie peace chiefs (including their friends) and peace sorcerers of the tribe. Because senior and junior peace chiefs of the same clan ideally make their feasts together, the senior peace chief gives ikufuka meat to senior kofuapie peace chiefs and peace sorcerers, and the junior peace chief to junior kofuapie peace chiefs and peace sorcerers. Kofuapie peace chiefs of the same status level, whether they are friend or nonfriend, should return identical quantities of ikufuka meat when they make their own feasts. Ikufuka is thus precisely reciprocal between kofuapie peace chiefs and, through them, their peace sorcerers. Without belaboring this point, these reciprocities replicate the idealized structure of marriage exchange. Peace sorcerers and the other two kinds of hereditary subclan official war chiefs and war sorcerers - also exchange ikufuka among themselves, but in different contexts - at their respective public installation ceremonies. The installations of peace sorcerers, war chiefs, and war sorcerers are not mortuary feasts. Only peace chiefs use the occasion of their subclans' or clans' death feasts to install their heirs to office. In the same respect that the three other officials do not make death feasts, they do not have friends in their own right like peace chiefs do, and so only ikufuka is reciprocated between them when they install their heirs. 182

Feasts of death (ii)

183

It is noteworthy also that whereas peace chiefs may give ikufuka many times during their tenure in office (i.e., as often as their clans give death feasts), peace sorcerers, war chiefs, and war sorcerers each give ikufuka independently only twice - once when they assume their offices from their fathers, and later when they install their sons. Ikufuka meat and the blood of Akaisa Men Knowledgeable villagers claim that iunge fanga, the backskin and internal organs of ikufuka, is the blood or flesh of forebearers of the clan official who gives it away. He may never eat the iunge fanga or ikufuka1 he gives, nor indeed may he eat any he receives or that comes his way otherwise from one of the other officials of his clan or his mother's clan. Incumbents to office informally designate their intended successors (ideally eldest sons) by preventing them from eating ikufuka while they are small boys and before they have been formally installed. To eat ikufuka even once, irrespective of its source, forever disqualifies a man from being of au akaisa, or Akaisa Man, status. Men who have eaten ikufuka are doomed to be "poor" or "ordinary men" (ulalu) for life. The prohibition for Akaisa Men against eating ikufuka extends to their wives. If either one eats ikufuka even mistakenly, the officeholder automatically relinquishes his position. The ritual specializations of Akaisa Men have been described in Chapter 6. Akaisa is the name of the principal culture hero of the Bush Mekeo who originally ordained the fourfold division of clan authority and gave the people the institution of the death feast. Present-day Akaisa Men are regarded as the descendants of the first officials personally appointed by Akaisa in the mythical past. In the field where I inquired of many details concerning traditional death feasting, peace sorcery, warfare, and so on, my informants often referred me to one or another event described in the Akaisa saga. Therefore, to appreciate fully the significance of ikufuka at mortuary feasts, I, too, shall have to refer to certain features of the myth of Akaisa. With villagers themselves pointing the way, I shall regard the Akaisa myth in part as a "charter" (Malinowski 1948) for many of the elements of the death feast of concern here. Seligmann published a few versions of this myth current among the Roro and Central Mekeo at the turn of the century (Seligmann 1910:304-9). Here I shall translate the version I collected myself among the Bush Mekeo in 1975, interspersed at points with commentary provided by my informants. The complete myth is composed of two segments or sequences. Akaisa myth 1: inauguration of hereditary offices Long ago, an old woman lived in the village. She had neither husband nor sons to give her meat. Whenever the men came back with game, she was only given

184

Quadripartite

structures

bones, or nothing at all. Akaisa was a spirit (tsiange). He heard her cries of sadness and assumed the form of a young boy. The woman adopted him as her son. The spirit, Akaisa, was not born of human beings, but he was adopted by a woman. Even in adoption, Akaisa only had a mother and no living father or siblings. Akaisa went hunting with the men the next day, pitching his "father's" [deceased husband of Akaisa's mother] torn net away from the conjoined nets of the other men. When all the animals came into Akaisas net but none went into the nets of the other men, they beat Akaisa and took the mature animals, leaving him only with the babies. On the way back to the village, Akaisa breathed (eunge) spells into the anuses of the baby animals, and they grew to full size. Then Akaisa carried his meat to the village and gave it to his mother. Akaisa's "breath" (iunge) accompanied by "spells" (menga) whispered into the animals' lower abdominal tracts (ina) made the small animal bodies grow large. [Note that iunge or breath is linguistically identical with the part of ikufuka that includes internal organs of the abdomen iunge fanga.] The next day, Akaisa went hunting again, and the same thing happened. The men beat Akaisa and stole his big animals. Akaisa blew into the baby ones to make them grow, and he gave them to his mother. On the third day, Akaisa stayed home and rested, and the men returned from hunting with nothing. When his mother expressed her curiosity, Akaisa explained what the men had done to him: "It would have been alright to take the meat, but not to beat me," he said. To convince her, the next day he went hunting again; the men beat him, stole his meat, and so on. Then, on the following day when Akaisa rested, they came back with nothing again. Men get bush meat only by taking it from Akaisa. All bush meat comes from Akaisa; it is Akaisas. Without him there is no meat. So why beat Akaisa? [Note also that the meat in question is contraceptive meat: pig, cassowary, wallaby.] The next morning, Akaisa told his mother he was tired of forest meat and wanted to eat fish. He went fishing alone and returned that night, not only with enough fish (angai mullet) for his mother but enough for all the people of the village. When the people told his mother they wanted more fish, Akaisa said that the next day, when the men rested from hunting, the women would go with him fishing. Some would come back in the evening with fresh fish, and others would stay over at the river, smoke the remaining fish, and return the following day with Akaisa and his mother. In the morning, Akaisa poled the women across to the opposite bank of the river, and there the women fished with their nets. Akaisa went upstream out of sight, changed himself into a large fish (boku barramundi), swam between the legs of the wading women, and examined the vaginas of each. When he came back to

Feasts of death (ii)

185

them in the form of a human boy, the women told him of the large fish that had molested them. Akaisa said they should have caught it so their husbands could eat it that night. When the women were ready to go burdened with their fish in the afternoon, Akaisa made them stand in two groups. First, he carried the women with large vaginas to the village bank; then he returned for the women with small vaginas. On crossing the river with them on board the canoe, the river flooded and they were swept downstream. Akaisa called back to the women with large vaginas that the women with him were his wives now. Barramundi is contraceptive meat. Women with small vaginas have not yet given birth. The firstborn of a woman is typically smaller than subsequent children. Husbands of the women with small vaginas thus as yet have no children. [Note that if the women had caught Akaisa in the form of a fish, their husbands could have eaten his flesh.] The women with large vaginas returned home and report that Akaisa has stolen some of the wives of the men. After traveling some distance and running aground, Akaisa and his wives make a camp to spend the night. Akaisa makes a fire for them to cook the fish, telling them that, because they will never see their husbands again, they had better eat the fish. But the women do not eat. During the night, the camp rises to form a mountain high above the coastal plain. In the morning, the women can see their husbands coming to take them back from Akaisa. When the men try to cross the river, Akaisa makes them fall unconscious. "Unconscious" (mae kafu) is one form of death (mae), as when a peace sorcerer "hits," "kills," or renders "unconscious" his victim. [Note that Akaisa's wives do not eat the fish, but they do cook it, just as the wives of Akaisa Men cook but do not eat ikufuka.] After a while, Akaisa brings the men back to life and dares them to try to kill him. They try and again fall unconscious. After they are revived again, Akaisa tells them that, if they want to kill him, they must stand in two groups. So he separates them and they fight each other, friend (pisaua) against friend. Akaisa made them do this with his hot powers. The men speared and clubbed one another, and many were slain with arrows. Blood was everywhere. Akaisa called down to them, saying they were relatives (atsi atsitsi) and one blood, so he bid them get up, and he asked them if it was good for them to fight each other. They replied, "no, it is bad. We came to take our wives away from you, but you make us angry and fight each other." Akaisa then informs them that whenever they want tofighthim, they instead will fight each other. Long ago, our ancestors did not die. Nowadays whenever people become angry and shamed with the killers of their relatives or wives, or with the people who hired them to kill, really it is Akaisa [who killed them]. Affirming that they now understand, Akaisa has the men stand in one group (ngopu). Akaisa gives them some customs (kangakanga). He throws down the things [charms and other paraphernalia] for men who want to be war chiefs, peace sorcerers, war sorcerers, or peace chiefs.

186

Quadripartite structures

Akaisa proclaims that peace chiefs must decide if the war chief and war sorcerer will go to fight, and they must obey their peace chief. The peace chief, Akaisa says, is very kind to his people and to anybody else. Sometimes he must keep the people from fighting, other times he allows them to fight. When people make trouble for the peace chief, then he calls them to fight and be killed. Then Akaisa tells the peace chiefs what they must do when their people are killed [i.e., how to make death feasts]. To the "last men" Akaisa gives peace sorcery things. He tells the peace sorcerers they must listen to their peace chiefs, do their work only when the peace chiefs tell them, when the peace chiefs are shamed or angered. Peace sorcerers must look after the peace chiefs. These men were the first Akaisa Men. The peace chief is the most senior (fakania), and the other three are junior (eke) and must listen to their "elder brother/' The hereditary customs they are given include the ritual paraphernalia each is to use. Once more, Akaisa tells the Akaisa Men to stand in two groups and to fight. This time none of them gets hit because Akaisa has told them how to dodge the arrows and spears, that they must fight this way to avoid being killed. They keep on fighting, and Akaisa tells them to stop, but they do not listen. Akaisa tells the peace chiefs to spread their lime on the ground to make the people stop fighting, and they do. It is by tightening that men are light and nimble enough to dodge projectiles in war. By spreading lime powder on the ground, peace chiefs stop (intratribal) fights. If fighting still continues, warriors of any clan involved must pay a fine to the peace chief, or his sorcerer will be sent to kill them (cf. Hau'ofa 1981:215-88). Now Akaisa says that if the people are strong enough to catch the things of death he throws down to them, they can live again after they die. First, he throws the light [dry] skins of snakes and prawns, and these the people catch. They say "Ahhhhhhhh." Then Akaisa throws the heavy [wet] bones of dead animals and humans. If they catch these, their spirits (tsiange) after death will go to Akaisa, and he will send them back to their bodies. But if the men do not catch them, they will die forever. As the bones fall, the people are frightened by the noise and let them drop to the ground, but they pick them up as though they had caught them and call out, "Ahhhhhhh." When the people say "Ahhhhhhh" the second time, they are lying (pifonge) to Akaisa, but he knows. This is why snakes and prawns are born with new skins after they die, but other animals and humans are not born again after they die. Spirits of the dead stay with Akaisa. [Note that the Akaisa Men, by catching the skins, are given some form of rebirth, but by dropping the bones they are also denied rebirth in some other form.] Akaisa then enjoins all the people to return to their village and live with these new customs, each man doing his own way as peace chief, peace sorcerer, war chief, or war sorcerer. Akaisa says he does not like that the people will die, and he talks

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about the old woman, his mother, staying alone, poor, and sad. That was why he came out of the bush, stayed with her, and went hunting with the men. But the men were greedy. It was alright that they took his meat, but they beat him and shamed him. That is why Akaisa will stay away from the people, and the people will stay away from him. Akaisa says that when people die, they will die forever. If they had not beaten him, he would stay with them so that when any of them die, he would make them live again. So ends the first segment of the myth. Akaisa appoints as au akaisa the men who come to him for their wives. All four types of Akaisa Men are designed to help resolve the issues of life, death, and new life. In this and other significant respects, Akaisa calls to mind the mythical figures Amaka and Oa Lope. But because I am primarily concerned with peace chiefs and the interpretation of mortuary feasts, I shall restrict my comments here to points most critical to these purposes. At the beginning of the sequence, the men of the village take Akaisa's big contraceptive meat and leave him with small animals. Akaisa's breath and spells are blown into the anuses of the small animals, making them grow into large contraceptive meat. After Akaisa demonstrates that meat the men steal comes only through him, he steals the women with small vaginas to become his wives, leaving the men to keep only the women with large vaginas. The women Akaisa steals, as well as their husbands, have no children. The women Akaisa does not steal have already given birth. Significantly, Akaisa's own adoptive mother is among the childless village women he takes away. The women with large vaginas return home with their fish for their families. Akaisa's wives cook, but he and they do not eat their fish, and neither do the husbands of Akaisa's stolen women. When the angry husbands come to kill Akaisa and take back their wives, Akaisa kills them three times and revives them three times. Akaisa then bestows upon these men his own powers concerning life, death, and, in part, new life. This sequence of killing and reviving parallels the earlier sequence involving the hunting of game animals. Akaisa kills game animals three times, and, after the big ones are forcefully taken from him, he grows the smaller ones with his breath. Then, after resting a day, he kills and grows the small animals a fourth time. In other words, Akaisa's final bestowing of au akaisa status upon the men, signaling their new social responsibilities and prerogatives, is a comparable fourth life or rebirth. The husbands of childless women become Akaisa Men, or Akaisa's human representatives and successors. In this version of the myth, Akaisa sleeps on the mountain with the childless wives. But it is uncertain if these women return to their husbands and implictly bear children afterward as a result of conception with Akaisa's semen, or not. If so, then all Akaisa Men and the firstborn male

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descendants of Akaisa Men share some of Akaisa's blood and would be, in a sense, "fathers/brothers/sons-in-Akaisa" to one another. Otherwise, as in the three versions Seligmann cites, the human skin and human body (or bones) Akaisa throws down are those of the women he has stolen (Seligmann 1910:306-8). This would leave the au akaisa husbands entirely without wives, suggesting that they are to reproduce their heirs without women. Such au akaisa heirs would thus be sons of their mothers only by adoption, like Akaisa himself. In this sense, the relations of all Akaisa Men, the heirs of Akaisa Men, their wives and mothers, and Akaisa and his adoptive mother are comparable to the notion of "Virgin Birth" (Chapter 4; Leach 1966b). This divergence in the myth as regards the fate of the wives with small vaginas and their husbands' progeny recalls the conflicting conclusions of the afinama myth (Chapter 5) whereby men either eat or do not eat the flesh of women who, as flying foxes, have left their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons for a high place in the bush. 2 In the first Akaisa myth segment, on the one hand, Akaisa Men sexually reproduce their heirs through their wives whom Akaisa has inseminated. On the other, Akaisa Men who Akaisa has likewise appointed heirs, but without wives and sexual reproduction. As we shall see later in the chapter, these two interpretations are not entirely irreconcilable. In either case, all ancestral Akaisa Men are linked or likened to one another and to Akaisa, but in contrast with ordinary men; that is, men who are the husbands of women with large vaginas who have born children by sexual means only, who have eaten their wives' cooked fish, and who did not receive any of Akaisa's powers. Thus, Akaisa Men share or trace a quasiagnatic ritual relationship originating in Akaisa along lines of father to eldest son that transcend or crosscut the distinctions between clans and moieties. At one point in the myth, after making the men stand in two groups, Akaisa reminds the Akaisa Men that they are all relatives and one blood to one another. In other words, Akaisa Men, irrespective of kin, clan, and moiety affiliation, are all quasiagnates of Akaisa defined by not eating a certain meat (fish cooked by wives); by dying and being given new life by Akaisa; by reproducing in this way without wives or with women already inseminated by Akaisa; by having mothers through adoption only; and by mediating in some fashion the death, de-conception, and limited regeneration or re-conception of ordinary human beings. A significant element of this last-mentioned Akaisa Man attribute, namely, mortuary de-conception and re-conception, in light of my earlier interpretation and analysis of the outer pange feast prestation, surrounds the contrast of skin and bones that Akaisa throws to the men below. They catch the skin and say "Ahhhhhhh," as do the friends at final death feasts, but they receive only qualified or incomplete new life. The bones fall to

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the ground, and the people get permanent bodily death. Again paralleling the afinama myth, the men both catch and do not catch female flesh falling from above. For the moment, I simply draw attention to these perhaps confusing mythical features of de-conception and regeneration or re-conception and proceed to the second and final sequence of the Akaisa saga, which focuses upon the interactions between Akaisa and his younger brother, Tsabini. The relations of the first segment just outlined, along with several others dealing with death, de-conception, and re-conception, are again highly prominent. Akaisa myth 2: Akaisa and Tsabini Tsabini was Akaisa's younger brother. Tsabini was not very skillful or clever (etsifa) like Akaisa. One day, Tsabini told his wives they must go visit Akaisa. When Tsabini's wives entered Akaisa's village, they just saw a young boy chewing areca and betel on Akaisa's clubhouse, and they told him he must go get Akaisa. They did not recognize him because he had taken this youthful shape. Young Akaisa went to the garden and informed his wives that they must bring back plenty of food for his younger brother's wives. In adult form, Akaisa returned to the village awaiting his wives' return. When Akaisa's wives came back, they told Tsabinis wives that Akaisa was always playing (bakau) tricks like that, sometimes looking like a boy, other times like a man. Tsabinis wives apologized for shaming him. When he asked why Tsabini had not come himself, the women said that Tsabini did not want to. The next day, Akaisa went hunting and returned with many dead pigs, cassowaries, and wallabies. After the meat was cooked and the wives of Tsabini ate some, they vomited it up. They agreed the meat was good, however. They had never eaten meat before, 3 as Tsabini and his people ate instead the skins of raw almond fruit (kamai) for meat. When Akaisa brought back meat the subsequent day, Tsabinis wives ate some and did not vomit this time. Because Tsabini did not come with them, Akaisa told them they would go back the next day. Before they left, he asked if Tsabini had a son. One woman said yes, so Akaisa told her Tsabini must name him after him, Akaisa. Akaisa killed some of his village pigs to carry back to Tsabini, and because there was more meat than they could carry, Akaisa's wives went along to help. When the women arrived at Tsabinis village, they cooked and ate some of Akaisa's meat. When Tsabini saw the village meat, he asked what it was, and his wives explained to him that they grew it at Akaisa's village. They said that they had been eating bad meat [skins of kamai] while Akaisa's people had been eating good meat. When Tsabini ate some of the good meat, he too vomited. In the morning, Tsabini went "hunting" and brought back many almond fruit. His wives cooked some and served it to Akaisa's wives, who ate some and vomited. The remainder they placed on a smoking rack because they did not like it [it was unsweet to them]. When Tsabini saw that they were not eating his meat, he explained that he had no animals for meat. When Akaisa's wives left for home burdened with skins of almond fruit, Tsabini told them Akaisa must name his son Tsabini, after him.

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Akaisa saw the almond fruit and asked what they were. His wives said they were Tsabini's "meat," but Akaisa said they were rubbish and threw them away. When Tsabini heard of this, he was shamed by his brother's rejection of his gift. He sent some of his people to spy on Akaisa to learn how Akaisa acquired his good meat. They reported that Akaisa had a fence or place in the bush. He merely opened the way inside, and as the animals come out, he shot them, then closed the way when he left. Now Tsabini understood why he had no good meat, so he released all Akaisa's wild pigs, cassowaries, and wallabies in the forest. When Akaisa learned of this, he was angered and claimed he would have shown Tsabini how to hunt meat if he would have come, visited his brother instead of sending his wives, and asked him. Akaisa decided to play a trick (bakau) on Tsabini and pay (kaua) him back. Akaisa told his people to clear a garden for him. For their work, he gave them a feast of village pig meat. He told everyone they must pass it on to Tsabini that Akaisa gave the people his own mother to eat. Later, when Tsabini asked how Akaisa helped his people, he was told about the garden and Akaisa's giving the people his mother's flesh to eat. So Tsabini had a garden made and really did kill and cook his own mother to feed the people who worked for him. When Tsabini afterward learned that Akaisa had played this trick on him, he was shamed and angered, and he wanted to kill Akaisa's son, Tsabini, his own namesake. Because Tsabini had no sorcery of his own, he stole young Tsabinis loincloth and gave it to Afupa [a large burrowing lizard of the coastal plain; a/ai/ai species] to make mefu sorcery. Akaisa's son, Tsabini, sickened and died. Then Akaisa killed Tsabinis son, young Akaisa, with peace sorcery. At one level, and I think a superficial one, this portion of the myth relates to the origin and escalatory nature of "jealousy" or "quarrelsomeness" (pikupa) arising from the conflict between "equality" and "inequality" intrinsic to the sibling relationship (cf. Hau'ofa 1981). I would like to focus here on other elements. Tsabini shames and angers Akaisa when he sends his wives without him. When Tsabini steals Akaisa's meat, Akaisa is shamed and angered. Tsabini and Akaisa, apparently, have different mothers, and for stealing his meat Akaisa tricks Tsabini into killing his own mother and feeding her flesh to his people, so that Tsabini is also shamed and angered. Finally, the two brothers kill one another's sons, their own namesakes, and, implicitly, themselves. In this sequence, it seems, food, especially meat, is equated with mother, with son, with brother, and, through the namesake relationship, with oneself. These relations repeat those expressed in the first segment of the Akaisa myth, except in reverse. There, meat is associated with Akaisa's mother, Akaisa's installed sons or successors, and, through the samename relationship between him (Akaisa) and them (the Akaisa Men), with himself. Here, rather than giving meat to his mother to eat, Akaisa kills his "mother" in the form of a village pig for other people of his group to

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eat. Rather than creating sons, Akaisa's son is killed. And rather than creating namesakes, namesakes are killed. In the first segment of the myth, there is a recurrent theme of death followed by regeneration. So far in the second sequence, we have seen only death. In its conclusion, to which I now turn, however, the issues of de-conception and re-conception are addressed once more. After Tsabini killed his son, Akaisa did not immediately bury the body. Carrying his son in his arms, Akaisa wandered to a mountaintop from which he could not see the places where he lived with his son and where his son died. Sight of these places made him sad. En route to the mountain, Akaisa cried in mourning as his sons flesh rotted from the bones and the juices dripped onto Akaisa's skin. Atop the mountain, Akaisa placed the bones on a rack and dried them over a fire. At night, the bones turned into wallabies,4 jumped down from the rack, and ate the grass growing nearby. At dawn, the wallabies jumped back onto the rack and turned into bones once more. After several nights, Akaisa noticed that the bones of his son were eating the grass, and he cried. Two boys playing with grass spears came upon Akaisa at the mountaintop. Akaisa asked them if there was plenty of these two kinds of grass, and they said yes. They brought some to him, and thereafter Akaisa ate only this as his food, just as the bones ate grass. The two boys stayed with Akaisa, and he asked them if their father was still alive. They said he was. Akaisa told them to bring the father to him. When he came, Akaisa told him the story of how his son died, and he asked him to make a garden for him there on the mountain so he, Akaisa, could make a feast. When the plants started to grow, the bones turned into wallabies and ate the fruit. The man informed Akaisa of this, and Akaisa told him to put up his hunting net at night to catch the bones. The man did this, and some of the wallabies got into the net while others jumped over it and escaped. In the morning, Akaisa saw the wallabies, which he had never seen before. Also, he noticed that some of the bones on the rack were missing; therefore, he knew that the wallabies were his son's bones. The hair was burnt off the dead wallabies, the meat cooked, and some was fed to the two boys. Because they did not sicken and die, Akaisa knew it was good meat and told the man he would use it for his feast. Akaisa sent word to all the peoples that he would make a feast, and he told the Mekeo and Roro they must come and sing and dance. When they arrived, Akaisa made the first mortuary feast, and to the peace chiefs he gave pange from the flesh and blood of wallaby. Thereafter, Akaisa was released from mourning, and he left the people forever; but he did not die himself. When young Tsabini is killed, Akaisa carries the body until it rots and drips his son's bloody dirt onto his skin. Akaisa cries and mourns over his son as oaifa. The sight of the places of his sons life and death makes him sad. Ordinary food his son ate before his death becomes Akaisa's bafu prohibited food, so Akaisa only eats the grasses that his son (as wallabies) eats in death. Akaisa does no work and does not hunt, but he gets others to work and hunt for him so he can make the final death feast. This is why,

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villagers argue, some of the relatives of the deceased are released from mourning at the preliminary burial feast - to work and hunt so that the oaifa mourners can eventually be released at the final mortuary feast. At Akaisa's feast, part of his sons body (the bones) represented by wallabies is given to the peace chiefs for distribution among the ordinary people of their clans. Present-day villagers keep and bury the bones of dead clanspeople. Thus, when Akaisa gives away the bones of his son as wallabies, he dissociates from himself that which, upon the death of ordinary villagers today, is not given away or dissociated from clanspeople through de-conception at feasts. So at the end of the myth, Akaisa is left with no sons born of his own wives, and he does not even have his son's bones. This result is comparable to that of the first segment of the myth when, according to one variant of the story, Akaisa Men lose their wives in death and thereby lose the prospect of producing sons and heirs of their own through sexual reproduction. In other words, Akaisa gives the blood and flesh of his sexually conceived son to his appointed or asexually conceived sons or heirs who, themselves, lack sexually conceived sons of their own. They, in turn, give Akaisa's son's blood and flesh (and that of their own sons as well) for eating to ordinary people who do have sexually conceived offspring. I argued in the previous chapter that the outer portion of pange given at mortuary feasts represents the cognatic bloods of the deceased derived from both of his or her grandmothers (father's mother and mother's mother), or, alternately viewed, the bloods of spouse's clan and spouse's mother's clan. Akaisa's giving of wallaby meat - his own son's blood and flesh is also connected in the myth with the giving of a grandmother's blood and flesh. Just before Tsabini, Akaisa's bother, kills Akaisa's son, young Tsabini, Akaisa makes a feast with the flesh of his mother's body, or young Tsabini's grandmother. Moreover, it was in retaliation or compensation (kaua) for Akaisa's tricking him into killing his own mother that the brother, Tsabini, kills his own namesake. The myth in effect equates the flesh or blood of Akaisa's sexually conceived son with that of Akaisa's mother and, from the first segment of the myth, with the blood and flesh of Akaisa's wives. In sum, the myth portrays Akaisa giving away in initiatory feasts to his successors the blood and flesh of his mother, son, and wives. Might Akaisa's extraordinary asexually reproduced heirs, the Akaisa Men (peace chiefs, peace sorcerers, war chiefs, and war sorcerers), likewise reciprocate among themselves the blood and flesh of their respective mothers, sons, and wives when they feast or install their chosen successors? If so, how does this relate to the issues of death and de-conception, on the one hand, and of regeneration or re-conception, on the other?

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Ikufuka meat Answers to these questions can be provided by returning to the issue of the meanings attributed to the separate parts of ikufuka prestations that peace chiefs and other Akaisa Men reciprocate at death feasts and official installations. Ikufuka meat, it will be remembered, consists of iunge fanga organs and backskin strips taken from femaleish village pigs, and of the meat of dogs. The internal organs of iunge fange - liver, small intestine, and stomach - are all part of the pig's ina or abdomen. As in the contexts of spatial relations and the human body, the ina or abdomen of a pig is not just simply an inside part of the body, but rather an inverted outside of the body. As I have shown in Chapters 2 through 5 as well, the ina or abdomen is conceptually associated with sex, conception, birth, assimilation of blood-elements of plant food, and the female physiognomy generally. Most significantly in the present context, perhaps, the word ina is also the relationship term for the category "mother." Because ordinary villagers never officiate at death feasts or installations, they never themselves have the opportunity to give away the blood or flesh of mothers clan, and upon their own deaths the blood of their mothers and mother's clans will not be represented in the outer portion of pange or in ikufuka meat. Peace chiefs and other Akaisa Men, however, do give away the flesh of ina (i.e., abdomen, mother, or mother's clan) in the form of iunge fanga abdominal organs during their own lifetimes. In the act of being installed by cutting and giving away iunge fanga, successors to au akaisa office ritually de-conceive themselves from the cognatic blood of their mothers and/or mother's clans. At the same time, of course, they are re-conceived as quasiagnatic descendants of Akaisa. Here it is worth recalling from the first segment of the Akaisa myth that Akaisa blows iunge or breath into the abdomen of each animal he later gives to his mother. At first, the animals are immature, but Akaisa's breath causes the bodies of the animals to grow to full size, or, closer to the indigenous understanding, Akaisa's iunge is hot for bodily growth and sustenance. That Akaisa appears repeatedly in the myth as a boy is certainly significant here also. Specifically, Akaisa's youth symbolizes the tremendous capacity of the young to grow and mature, but not (as contrasted with the fertile female) to reproduce and bear offspring. Akaisa's mother eats the flesh of the animals grown by Akaisa's hot iunge, and this growth capacity is incorporated into her own blood and flesh. Still, it is growth capacity neither for giving and producing new life, that is, for sexual fertility and procreation, nor for eternal life without death. Although Akaisa's mother is female, she is stated to be old and thereby presumed to be reproduc-

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tively sterile. The meat Akaisa gives her - the meat she eats to sustain her life, the meat she incorporates into her own flesh - is contraceptive meat. Consequently, the iunge fanga meat ordinary men receive from Akaisa Men at feasts and installations - the meat they eat and incorporate into their bodies - is likewise contraceptive meat. It gives them life, or the temporary life-sustaining capacity of bodily growth, but it does not give them immortality, that is, neither eternal life for the individual nor the capacity to reproduce. Moreover, the eating of iunge fanga abdominal organs denies to ordinary men one kind of reproductive immortality that is the specific prerogative of Akaisa Men, namely, the capacity to reproduce themselves in the persons of their publicly installed successors, generation after generation, without the sexual contributions of women. Taken together, these several points add new interpretive insight to Akaisa's feast occurring in the second segment of the myth. Akaisa gives to the ordinary people the flesh of his mother to eat in the form of village pig. It is through this mythical feast of his mother's body, I suggest, that Akaisa gives to the people his own iunge breath possessing the contraceptive capacity for bodily growth. In this context, it is logical that Akaisas mother is understood as adoptive. When peace chiefs or other Akaisa Men give iunge fanga to the ordinary men of their respective clans, they "give iunge' (iunge ebia or iunge ehinia). Thus, as the blood and flesh of Akaisa Men's forebearers, iunge fanga abdominal meat is at least in part Akaisa Men's mothers' blood and flesh, and by giving it away Akaisa Men de-conceive themselves as distinct from mothers' clans. The strips of pig backskin that are tied to these pieces of iunge fanga abdominal organs had bothered me for a very long time. Particularly in the early stages of analyzing the culture, I found it difficult to reconcile the binding together of outside flesh (the skin) with internal flesh (the organs). This puzzle tended to throw off my whole analysis as I had developed it so far. The pig's backskin, I was long convinced, simply did not belong with the internal organs of iunge fanga. The problem here stems initially, of course, from viewing the abdominal region as a principally inside place in complete opposition to the skin, an outside place. The ina or abdomen, it will be remembered, is conceptualized in the culture rather as an inverted outside, or, as I tried to describe it in Chapter 3, as an inversion of outside space into the body. Thus, although something contained by the abdomen might appear to be inside or internal, in the categories of Bush Mekeo culture it is something technically outside the body. In this respect, then, the abdominal cavity consists of outside skin pushed in upon itself. The inconsistency of binding outside skin with inside (sic) organs is thus revealed to be merely apparent and misconceived. Peculiar as it might seem to a Westerner's

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intuitions, for the Bush Mekeo skin and abdomen are both fundamentally or categorically outside parts of the body and thereby compatible ingredients of iunge fanga feast prestations. Moreover, skin no less than abdomen is consistently associated with femaleish qualities elsewhere in the culture. As a result of newlywed procreative engorging, women acquire an abundance of skin. Female members are described also as the skin of a clan. Death-feast village pigs from which iunge fanga is taken are viewed as femaleish in contrast to maleish wild pigs, whether they are biologically male or female. Homologies of these categories in the context of social relationships are also revealing. Ina or mother's clan and cognatic blood correspond with ina or abdomen and inverted outside; and spouse's clan and affinal blood correspond with outside. The definitive linking relation in each case is female, and the clan and blood identities correspond respectively with opposite moiety and with blood relations consequent upon exogmaous exchange: inside

:

outside

:: inverted outside : everted inside

peripheral village

remote bush own clan clan A1

: :

agnatic blood

:

village abdomen

spouse's clan :: clan B 1 :: nonblood (affines)

::

mother's clan clan B 2

: :

cognatic blood

:

(4)

adjacent bush spouse's mother's clan clan A2

(16) (19)

cognatic nonblood

(18)

(3)

Therefore, employing the same logic that represents mothers clan and cognatic blood with the giving of iunge fanga abdominal organs, iunge fanga backskin of village pigs given by Akaisa Men represents the giving back or de-conception of spouses clan and affinal blood. Further support for this contention is provided later in this section where I discuss the dog portion of ikufuka meat that is joined with iunge fanga. Before I turn to consider this remaining portion of feast food, it will be informative to draw attention to a separate additional symbolic value attached specifically to the backskin strips of iunge fanga. Based solely on my own impressions of villagers' attitudes, statements, and actual feast performances, the ritualized cutting, care, and disposition of backskin strips are the most intense and focused events of village life. It is backskin more than abdominal organs, for example, that most villagers are likely to mention or discuss. It is backskin ritual that is the most solemn of all the proceedings. Finally, it is backskin with its thick layer of fat that the commoner old men and ancestors had always found the most sweet.5 These observations concerning the special regard for iunge fanga back-

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skin strips, along with the principal question they give rise to - namely, why is backskin so emphasized in the context of death feasts and installations? - are issues of an order different from that which has concerned me elsewhere in this and the previous chapter. Hence, they will lead to a slightly different sort of answer, as follows. I remember an instance where one of the clans of my village received some iungefanga as part of ikufuka meat from the peace chief of another village. After their friends had departed for home, the men had a lively discussion over whether the iunge fanga backskin and organs their chief had just received were in fact originally derived from a village pig and legitimate, or taken from the back of a wild pig of the bush. No one present had seen the pig killed. The whole question arose simply because the backskin part of the iungefanga bundle had no thick layer of fat, as is purposefully cultivated in village pigs. Typically, wild pigs are very lean by comparison. On the basis of the backskin, then, most men of the clan claimed these iungefanga organs as well as backskin came from a bush pig and not a village pig. And, furthermore, they planned on ignoring the obligation to repay this counterfeit iunge fanga and the rest of the pig it came from to their friends at their own upcoming feast. When you think about it, and probably when the Bush Mekeo think about it too, the internal organs of village pigs and bush pigs are visibly indistinguishable. Some external indicator or sign is needed to differentiate them. The pig's backskin is the only visible and uniform part of its body that can definitely lay this question aside. And for this reason, I am arguing, iunge fanga backskin has assumed its provocative role in the culture. With the dog portion of the ikufuka prestation, the analogous case is never an issue. All dogs (auke), unlike some pigs, reside only at the village. Bush Mekeo dogs are unique in this respect among all the local animal species, and, consequently, they live in closest proximity to human beings. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the incorporation of dog meat into ikufuka at feasts and installations has other special meanings. I have already mentioned that peace chiefs and other Akaisa Men ideally provide their own dogs at feasts and installations. All village men own their own dogs outright, rather than sharing ownership with their wives as they do with regard to pigs. Also, men tend to their dogs by themselves. Dogs are not given cooked food of their own; they eat the rubbish and leftovers that human villagers do not eat. Unlike femaleish village boars, male dogs are not castrated. Like men, but unlike women and pigs, dogs hunt for meat in the bush. Generally, then, even the fertile bitch of the village is as humanly maleish as the castrated village boar is humanly femaleish. Indigenous conceptualizations of the bush wallabies, matsi and mani,

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closely parallel those of the village dog. The two local species of wallaby are said to be brothers - matsi, the smaller, is senior, and mani, the larger, is junior. Wallabies, like dogs, of course, are not castrated. They also eat rubbish (grasses) and do not live in both village and bush like pigs. Whenever a hunter kills a wallaby in the bush, he breaks its hind legs and leaves the body on the trail to pick up and carry home on his return trip. One of the first Europeans to penetrate the Mekeo area in the late nineteenth century recorded that when a peace chief killed two village dogs to honor him, its legs were first broken (Chalmers 1887:12). As far as I am aware, of all animal species only wallabies' and dogs' legs are broken in this manner.6 Villagers add that wallabies are "Akaisa's dogs" (Akaisa nga auke). Therefore, just as Akaisa mythically gave his dogs as his son's bones, Akaisa Men give away their dogs at death feasts and installations to represent their wives' bloods, which were sexually incorporated at conception into the bodies of their sons. With the dog portion of ikufuka, then, Akaisa Men de-conceive and re-conceive their sons and themselves with respect to their sons' mothers' bloods (i.e., their own wives' bloods). Indeed, villagers say that at their own installations, "au akaisa kengama" or "Akaisa men are begun/de-conceived/re-conceived/happy." This condition where Akaisa Men have lost cognatically derived and transmitted female blood is reminiscent of the original mythically appointed Akaisa Men who lost their wives, and with them the prospect of sexually produced offspring. According to the two alternate interpretations of the myth's first segment, it will be remembered, appointed Akaisa Men implicitly must either produce their au akaisa heirs asexually (because they lack wives) or obtain their heirs as a result of Akaisa's, and not their own, inseminating of their wives. In either case, it works out to the same result. The giving away of de-conceptive or re-conceptive bloods represented in ikufuka meat leaves peace chiefs and other Akaisa Men without the blood of their mothers and without the blood of their wives through the persons of their offspring. So, in effect, all categories of blood relationship through females and all female blood in the persons of Akaisa Men and their hereditary patrilines are negated; strictly quasiagnatic blood- and relationship-in-Akaisa remains. For this latter reason, Akaisa Men cannot ever eat ikufuka regardless of who gives and who receives it. This, moreover, allows Akaisa Men as such to reproduce themselves asexually without women, by de-conception and re-conception rather than by sexual conception, and along strictly male lines of succession. To the extent that the giving of ikufuka meat by Akaisa Men is viewed in the culture in these terms, it relates back to marriage compensation; specifically, to a third personal exchange of valuables from groom's father to bride's father mentioned briefly in Chapter 6. In opposition to the two public marriage-compensation payments, this third marriage transaction

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is done privately (onge oake) by the two fathers in hiding. Similarly, although the whole tribe looks on during feasts and installations, the giving of ikufuka by one Akaisa Man to another is a private and personal act by comparison with the collective exchanges of the remainder of pange foods at mortuary feasts. Moreover, to the extent that the giving of ikufuka meat legitimates the titles of heirs to Akaisa Man status through de-conception and re-conception, it is very much like a marriage compensation. Thus, with pange feast prestations there are three transactions that are isomorphic with the three transactions of marriage-compensation exchange. The various parts of pange food lost or given at mortuary feasts symbolically represent different categories of blood, within the membership of a clan, that have been acquired cognatically from other clans through women by marriages contracted in preceding generations, or, in the case of Akaisa Men, in the same generation. Akaisa Men unambiguously represent in their re-conceived persons the pure agnatic blood of their respective clans. They are closed to female bloods of other clans by de-conceptive and re-conceptive feasting in their own lifetimes. Ordinary clanspeople must wait until they die for final de-conception, or their relatives die for re-conception, but then it is only partial because their mothers' bloods are not then lost. Paradoxically, however, Akaisa Men share a pure quasiagnatic blood connection among themselves, even though they may belong to otherwise agnatically unrelated moieties. The mythical Akaisa To the extent that peace chiefs and the other three categories of Akaisa Men are males lacking female blood and cognatic relationships, they call to mind the strictly male characters of the Foikale and afinama myths (Chapter 5). Foikale and his comrades initially had no females, yet reproduced themselves asexually by shedding their skins. Later, they acquired women and all other aspects of sweet village life, including sexual reproduction, from Oa Lope. In the afinama myth, when women became flying foxes and left their husbands and sons alone in the village, males were symbolically de-conceived and re-conceived to their original Foikale-like condition. Unquestionably, these two myths are transformations of the Akaisa tale. All three stories deal with the relations of village and bush, male and female, male relationship and female relationship, and agnation as opposed to cognation and affinity in the context of clan exogamy and sexual reproduction. Among the neighboring Roro peoples described by Seligmann (1910:304-9), Akaisa is named Oa Lope. This confirms that the character, Oa Lope, in the Foikale myth, who gave to purely agnatic bush males village life and women, is the same character, Akaisa, who gave villagers both the Akaisa Men, including peace chiefs,

Feasts of death (ii)

199

and death. In other words, Akaisa-Oa Lope mythically bestowed upon groups of agnatically related men both women, by which the men could sexually conceive or reproduce themselves and their clans, and Akaisa Men, by which they could inversely de-conceive themselves of female derived bloods and re-conceive or reclaim agnatic purity in distinction from other clans. It was mentioned previously that men and patrilines of various male ritual specializations may change their clan affiliations by means of participation in feasting obligations with a clan they are not agnatically related to and thus become one clan with them. There would not then necessarily be any temporal stability to intraclan relations without identifiable and hereditary relations between different clans at each status level (LeviStrauss 1969b:77-8), and vice versa. Certain relations within and between clans, therefore, must be held constant across generations. And this is what I have tried to show in this and the preceding chapter as regards the formalized hereditary friend relationships between peace chiefs and their subclans in the contexts of both exogamic intermarriage and reciprocal mortuary feasting, and as regards the homologous distinctions between subclan peace chief, peace sorcerer, war chief, and war sorcerer: clan of , j deceased

:

feast receiving r• i mends

::

peace chief

:

war sorcerer

::

n aun a Z Z of clan of , , deceased war chief

own clan

:

spouse's clan * opening male ., outside

::

mother's clan

closing male . ., inside

:

papie

::

opening female inverted ., outside

VaVie : of feast-receiving (21) , r. friends : peace sorcerer (15) : ' :

V » i mothers clan closing female everted . j inside.

(16) . , ,, (4)x

From the perspective of ordinary villagers, their moieties, clans, subclans, and lineages are both open and closed at any one moment as regards the intermingling of cognatic and female-related bloods through conception and the heterosexual recruitment of agnates. But from the perspectives of the four categories of hereditary Akaisa Men, the moieties, clans, subclans, and lineages are perpetually closed, and their boundaries do not overlap. In this dynamic balance, the continuity of the society and its distinctive quadripartite plan or structure through time are assured.

9 Tikopia and the Trobriands

The foregoing chapters have been devoted to interpreting diverse contexts of Bush Mekeo social life and to building in the process a model of the total culture. With the ethnographic treatment of the indigenous conceptualizations of death and mortuary feasting, that goal is now rendered virtually complete. The structure that characterizes Bush Mekeo culture overall, as I have shown, is consistently quadripartite in form. However, the implications for comparison and culture theory that arise from this derivation have yet to be considered. It is to these complementary issues that this and the concluding chapter are respectively addressed. For the present purpose of comparison, I have chosen the cultures of Tikopia and the Trobriand Islands. These two unquestionably represent the most extensively documented and well-known ethnographic cases in the Oceanic sphere, if not in the entire anthropological record. Firth and Malinowski, the original ethnographers, are both regarded even today as among the most meticulous observers and recorders to have ever lived. Their classic functionalist descriptions have been supplemented by more modern and diverse interpretations, some but not all of them sympathetic with a general structuralist perspective like my own. And particularly in the case of the Trobriands, the original ethnographic corpus has been substantially augmented and clarified with more recent firsthand fieldwork.1 For these several reasons, then, Tikopia and the Trobriands each represents a preeminent challenge for structuralist interpretation along the lines of my analysis of Bush Mekeo culture. Most importantly, however, I have selected these two cultures for comparison because they are linguistically and historically related to that of the Bush Mekeo. Bush Mekeo, Tikopians, and Trobrianders are alike Austronesian speakers, and in many respects their cultures embody cognate conceptualizations of many domains. Therefore, by these comparisons I do not need necessarily to make assumptions about the character of the Human Mind. Although these could well be made, many more exhaustive studies of total cultural and social systems such as I am suggesting here would first have to be completed. And in the meantime, 200

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there remain several compelling epistemological reasons concerning the analytical validity of indigenous categories and cultural wholes that grant a relative autonomy to cultural structures separate from mental configurations due to the unique involvement of the former with history and social process. These will be discussed at some length in Chapter 10. Therefore, I disavow any charges of "mentalism" that might arise from misunderstanding the fundamentally cultural basis of these explorations. By the same token, I do not restrict my comparisons to principally one context or domain of these cultures - say, male initiation ritual (Allen 1967), sex roles (Meggitt 1964), or leadership types (Sahlins 1963). Nor do I assume one context of any culture to be necessarily dominant, as, for example, structures of exchange (Rubel and Rosman 1978). Both these other strategies tend to involve essentially the same problems characteristic of many historicist efforts discussed in the concluding chapter; namely, it is oftentimes falsely assumed a priori that certain specific sectors of different cultures are either uniformly real isolates, or, alternatively, more significant and determining than the others. Rather, as I have consistently tried to show for the Bush Mekeo, it is the structure of each total cultural system that is itself dominant over the content of any one of its own constituent domains. Also in the cases of Tikopia and the Trobriands, these specific structures again appear to be systematically quadripartite. Lastly, I must emphasize that these comparative exercises must be seen as provisional or suggestive "sketches" only and as strictly exploratory. They are not at all intended to serve as definitive surrogates for fuller, more detailed, and exhaustive analyses on the scale of my own handling of Bush Mekeo culture. A more thorough treatment of these classic systems understandably lies well beyond the limitations of this work. Tikopia

A fair amount of interest has recently developed in the structuralist interpretation of Tikopian culture (Levi-Strauss 1963b; Leach 1962b; Eyde 1969; Park 1973; Hooper 1981). From his own functionalist perspective, Firth (1969, 1981) has of course resisted these efforts, so that the situation here, as with the Trobriands corpus, has become quite complicated. Nevertheless, the careful juxtapositioning of indigenous categories and relations pertinent to many diverse but interconnected contexts of the culture - for example, conception theory, rites of passage, clan and political organization, and ritual authority and activity - reveals a pervasive quadripartite ordering consistent with a structure of bisected dualities. Tikopian views on conception seem partially to invert those of the Bush Mekeo. In Tikopia, the father supplies the substance or material incorporated into the fetus. The Female Deity, the apotheosis of womanhood

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Quadripartite structures

inside the mother's womb, "shapes" or gives "form" to the father's semen to make the fetus. Thus, the male component of conception can be seen as "matter," the female component as "form." Additionally, Firth in his own rendering states that the fetus is so formed into four categories of body parts: limbs, head, body, and genitals (Firth 1981:51-2, 1936:479-81). The same bodily distinctions seem also to be preserved upon the recreation of Tikopian souls, following their mythical annihilation, as they are transformed from amorphous blood again into atua spirits by the Female Deity after death (Firth 1967a:338). The pairings of male with female and matter with form are represented in other distinctly social contexts of the culture. The most salient social units - clans, lineages, and households - are essentially constituted of shared patrilineal connections to common male ancestors. But clans, lineages, and households are also articulated to one another according to female-based or matrilateral ties. These I shall describe in more detail momentarily. Thus, it would appear that although the dominant groups of Tikopian society consist of identities of shared male substance (semen), the integration of those units into a total, ordered, and integral body or system (namely, all of Tikopian society) with four broad members or parts (the clans) is accomplished by the conceptualization of structured relations along female ties. The indigenous theory of conception that counterposes matter and form, in other words, is metaphorically represented in the intra- and interclan arrangements, respectively, that mark the society as a whole (cf. Firth 1936:575). In traditional times, the four clans (kainanga) were nonlocalized, nonexogamous, and ranked in the order of Kafika, Tafua, Taumako, and Fangarere. Fangarere, although the lowest in rank, is nonetheless closely associated with Kafika, the highest. Tafua and Taumako, both of intermediate rank, are correspondingly associated with one another (Firth 1936; Leach 1962b:275). Hooper has assembled the various mythico-genealogical "charters" of these interclan relations with the discovery that Kafika stands as "mothers brother" (tuatina) to the significant ancestors of the other three clans. The ancestor of Tafua clan is sister's son of the chief of Kafika and the son of Kafika "female chief." The Taumako ancestor is sister's son of a subsequent Kafika chief, but not also the son of a chiefly Kafika woman. And the ancestor of Fangarere is son of a Kafika woman, but his own father and others of his clan had been decimated through misfortune; therefore, he was adopted by Kafika (Hooper 1981:17-22). Again, relations between patrilineal units of Tikopian society are formed or shaped by mythical matrilateral ties to the ranking clan. Although these myths do not deal in all respects with the founding of the modern clans nor with the clans themselves and all their separate subdivisions, they do serve as a "charter" for interclan relations, and in particular for

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the spiritual and ritual predominance of Kafika over the other clans (cf. Firth 1981:61-2). Each of the four clans possesses its own hereditary "chief" (ariki) responsible for performing ritual and political activities on behalf of members of their respective clans and, to varying degrees, the wider community. In this latter respect, the clans and chiefs are associated with a somewhat pronounced specialization of function. The chief of Kafika dominates the religious ritual performed on behalf of the entire society. More secular or civic activities are regulated by the chief of Tafua. Taumako clan and its chief are associated with fierceness and aggression and have specialized in warfare. Finally, the chief of Fangarere clan, consistent with mythical heritage, is connected with public misfortunes - epidemics, hurricanes, canoes lost at sea, etc. (sorcery?) (Firth 1936, 1961:28-31, 1967b, 1970; cf. Hooper 1981:28-38). There are, again, four essential administrative tasks, each predominantly managed by the chief of one clan. It could be argued that there is here a distinct complementarity of function in terms of homologously bisected dualities: religious administration of peace Kafika

: :

religious administration of misfortune Fangarere

:: ::

secular administration of peace Tafua

: :

secular administration of misfortune Taumako

In the traditional Tikopian social order, there are groupings and politico-religious statuses other than clans and chiefs that also appear to be significant. Overall, the total society exhibits four distinct levels or scales of segmental integration. First, and most comprehensively, all of Tikopia is bound into a single community of kin, based on the ideology of shared cognatic ancestors. Second, Tikopia is segmented into the four nonlocalized patrilineal clans, each with its own chief to perform the various ritual, political, and economic functions discussed above. Third, each clan is segmented into patrilineages (paito), each headed by its own elder. Members of a lineage, however, do not typically reside under a single roof, but rather live in scattered households consisting of a fraternally based joint family. The household represents the smallest-scale segmental unit of Tikopian society, for a total of four such levels of integration (Goldman 1970:372-5). One further, somewhat different, realm where a similar ordering seems also to be clearly evident in the culture is in the division of the island into districts. Leach first called attention to the issue of the four districts Uta, Namo, Faea, and Ravenga - which, he claimed, are related, but not directly so, to the four clans (Leach 1962b:275). Firth has responded that the distinctions among districts vary with context and are a historical coincidence, unrelated to the number of clans. However, his explanation

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structures

encompasses a complex and unexpected, but nonetheless quadripartite, ordering among district units: For social purposes generally, only two districts, Faea and Ravenga, are spoken of, in constant relations of cooperation and competition. In the most inclusive sense, Ravenga is a broad name for a unit of this name plus Uta, Namo and Tai, all of which can be treated separately for land holding and economic purposes, while for ritual purposes Uta and Namo may have separate status and be ranked with Faea and Ravenga in complex contrasts. (Firth 1981:48; emphasis added) Although Faea and Ravenga are, therefore, seen in social contexts as binarily opposed, there are in others - economics, land tenure, and ritual - clear signs of quadripartite district totalities: Ravenga plus Uta, Namo, and Tai, on the one hand, and Uta plus Namo, Faea, and Ravenga on the other. Moreover, Firth notes that although the simpler dual-district structure "fits ritual clan pairings in contexts other than local group reference" (Firth 1981:48), in contexts of dart matches, dance festivals, ritual foods, head and body symbolism, relations of restraint and freedom in kinship, and alternation in human and spirit worlds, the pairing of clans referred to here is double, meaning therefore a total of four clans. There does seem to be, then, a structural convergence of four districts, variously defined according to different contexts, with the existence of four clans and the quadripartite or double-paired patterning of other domains of the culture. However, this does not necessitate a substantive convergence such that any one district corresponds exactly in personnel with a particular clan. It is this that Firth appears to insist upon, but it is nonetheless an altogether different issue. Rather, it is the structure ramifying across contexts that seems to be significant. As mentioned in an earlier paragraph, chiefs are not the only culturally important functionaries. Again, we find a complete fourfold division of politico-religious authority. Patrilineages are first distinguished in terms of ariki (chiefly) and non-ariki (nonchiefly). Each of these two categories is subsequently bisected again to produce a total of four types of official. In chiefly lineages, there are the ariki chiefs themselves, and the maru "executive officers" of the chiefs who are their agnates and held responsible for social control (Firth 1976:289, 1970:36). Among the non-ariki lineages, there is a corresponding distinction between purefai kava "ritual elders" who are entitled to perform the kava ceremony, and those pure elders who perform the same secular functions as the others but who are not entitled to serve kava (Firth 1970:57-8). Other religious rituals performed by chiefs and elders on various occasions on behalf of their respective groups embody strikingly similar configurations. The kava ceremony, being fundamental to them all, is thereby most instructive on several counts. Tikopians divide the kava rite wheresoever it is performed into four elements:

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1. Laying out pieces of bark-cloth (te mano e fora). 2. Recital of a formula, using root and stem of a kava plant as ritual apparatus (te kava e tar6). 3. Libations of cups of kava liquid (te kava e ringi). 4. Throwing away portions of food and betel materials from specially prepared packages or bunches (te kai e pe). (Firth 1970:200) There are also four categories of participants - officiant, kava maker, cupbearer, and audience or assembly, present or not, on whose behalf the ritual is being performed (Firth 1970:202, 223). Moreover, the officiant recites the formulas and offers the libations in a definite order to four categories of god and ancestral spirit - to the officiant's principal god, to other gods prominently involved in the rite, to the officiant's predecessors, and to the matrilateral tutelaries (Firth 1970:222). Food offerings are frequently made in conjunction with kava ritual, and again the pattern of four is apparent. For the banana-ripening kava ceremony and the ritual of the sacred canoes, for example, offerings of fourfold portions of food are systematically displayed before the gods and ancestors and then consumed (Firth 1970:227-8; 1967b:105, 115-16, 132-3). Numerous other instances of quadripartite orderings of things and sequences are manifested throughout Tikopian ritual (see Firth 1967a, 1967b, 1970). Elsewhere, Firth provides evidence that intergroup relations at the level of lineages are also fourfold. Each Tikopian man is principally connected with four such patrilineages: A man 'belongs' to his father's group, is closely linked with his mother's group, cooperates with his wife's brother's group, and owes other obligations to his sister's husband's group, that is, his sister's son's group. Here the man is enmeshed in a web of which the strands are four independent patrilineal kinship groups. (Firth 1936:372; cf. Eyde 1969:48) I suggest that the fact that there are four such groups so linked in every man's personal network is not coincidental. Even before a Tikopian reaches maturity and marries, and then also after his or her death, the same quadripartite social network is evident, although somewhat different groups are involved on separate occasions. Postnatal ceremonies for a firstborn child mark "the creation [formation?] of new kinship groups' with respect to the child. The four significant parties in this instance include the fare nana (female cognates of the child's father), the fare masikitanga (female cognates of the child's father), the child's tuatina (mother's brothers), and men of the child's own or father's patrilineage (Firth 1967a:46-59; see also Eyde 1969:50). At male initiation, four groups or categories are distinguished for each initiate. There are two groups of "those who perform " the ceremony -fax matua people of the initiate's father's group, and fax tuatina people of the

206

Quadripartite structures

initiate's mother's brother's group - and two groups of "cooks" (fai soko) - the husbands of female members of the initiate's group, on the one hand, and their sons, the sister's son's of the initiate's group, on the other (Firth 1936:433, 551; cf. Hooper 1981:3). It is noteworthy also that during the initiation ceremony, mother's brother performs the superincision operation upon the initiate's penis, thereby qualifying him for sexual relations and eventually marriage. Homologous with the Female Deity's procreatively forming the body of a fetus into four members, the mother's brother forms the social identity of his nephews vis-a-vis his own and other groups prerequisite to manhood and marriage (cf. Hooper 1981:213). At the marriage ceremony, there are again four clearly distinguished categories of persons between whom there are a complex series of transactions. Here, however, the points of reference for the various parties are the husband and wife as a unit together and, presumably, their childrento-be. There are (1) the kinship group of the husband, (2) the "cooks" (men married to women of the husband's group, and men married to daughters of women of the husband's group), (3) the kinship group of the wife, and (4) the kinship group of the wife's mother's brother (Firth 1936:544-63, 1939:322-4; cf. Eyde 1969:56-61). In mortuary ritual as well, the same sort of general pattern of exchange seems to obtain, but not as distinctly as in the other contexts, due in part to the sheer complexity of the proceedings and to the admitted incompleteness of Firth's data in this case. The formal presentation essentially involves reciprocities between the various participants as mother's brother and sister's son. A classification of the entire mortuary body into four categories oipaito lineage or family does nonetheless emerge. There are, first, tau pariki, "mourners" (the family of the father of the deceased, and more distant kin); second, tama tapu, "sacred children" (children of the women of the mourners' group and their fathers, the "cooks"); third, tukunga tanata, "burial party " (family of the mother of the deceased); and fourth, tangi soa, "spouse-lament wailing group" (family of the wife of the deceased) (Firth 1939:324-31, 1936:213). In these several pronounced life crises of Tikopians, then, the patterning of four social groupings to constitute in each case a complete set underscores the pervasiveness of quadripartite categorical structuring. In following with classic formulations of rites of passage in terms of death and rebirth, as suggested by Hooper (1981:11), these Tikopian life crises would be perhaps better understood as a series of ritual reformulations of the fourfold social identities of the respective initiates (see also Chapter 1; Van Gennep 1960; Turner 1967; Bloch and Parry 1982). Eyde has revealed other instances of quadripartite ordering in Tikopian culture principally dealing with social space. The plan for a typical Tiko-

Tikopia and the Trobriands

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pian house, he notes, consists of a rectangle divided into a "left," "female," "profane" half and a "right," "male," "sacred" half. Each of these halves furthermore possesses two corners and two ranked posts. The world to Tikopians, like their houses, is also divided into quarters marked by four major wind directions, each the home of an important clan god and source of a seasonal wind. These winds are further associated with male and female deities as they receive their devotions in the seasonal ritual cycle of the Work of the Gods. Marae, the ritual dance place at the center of Tikopia, is laid out in quadrilateral form like houses and like the world. At the corners, backrests or seats are positioned for the principal gods of the four respective clans. On most occasions, they serve as the stationing points for the chiefs and their clansmen. On others, when women participate, people of the same sex gather on opposed sides women on the side of Kafika and Fangarere, and men on the side of Tafua and Taumako (Eyde 1969; cf. Firth 1969). In Eyde's handling, these instances of patterned spatial ordering are shown to be isomorphic with social arrangements - household, lineage, and, most suggestively, for the society as a whole. For example, at the rebuilding of Kafika temple, the two clans paired together on Marae as "female" (Kafika and Fangarere) serve as "cooks" to the "worker" clans of the "male" side on Marae (Tafua and Taumako). From these contrasts and other evidence, Eyde draws the outlines of a model of restricted marriage alliance between the mythical and legendary figures of the chiefly lineages of the four clans consistent with the prevailing ranking of Kafika first, Tafua second, Taumako third, and Fangarere last2 (Eyde 1969; cf. Firth 1969:68-9). Levi-Strauss (1963b:24-9) has suggested that other dimensions of Tikopian culture are similarly classified in a quadripartite, "totemic" manner. The four principal edible plant species - yam, coconut, taro, and breadfruit - are each associated with one of the four clans in order of rank. So, too, are particular species offish or eel (Firth 1970:175-8; Hooper 1980:30). These foods are representative of the respective clan deities (atua), especially those of the chiefs. Their classification, moreover, exhibits both an additional extension of the body metaphor and the specific structure of bisected dualities. Yam and taro, for example, are the "bodies" of the deities of Kafika and Tafua, and breadfruit and coconut are the "heads" of the Taumako and Fangarere deities, respectively. Also, whenever a dolphin is stranded, it is divided into four parts and appropriately allotted; Kafika and Tafua are entitled to the two middle sections of meat, and Taumako and Fangarere to the two extremities (see also Firth 1930). Firth, of course, has tried to refute the various suggestions such as these that Leach, Eyde, Levi-Strauss, and others have forwarded, arguing, for

208

Quadripartite

structures

example, that the existence of four clans and other "fours" in the culture is not symbolically necessary or significant. He cites the case whereby the chief of Tafua clan converted to Christianity in the mid-1920s (Firth 1981:48-9). Previous to 1925, or thereabouts, there existed a "double pairing" in the ritual exchanges of Marae between Kafika and Taumako, on the one hand, and Tafua and Fangarere, on the other. But after the chief of Tafua clan converted, Firth argues, the others resisted the possibility of hiving-offsome major lineage segment to form a fourth clan. Moreover, he points out, the ritual double pairing was preserved without such correspondence to clan numbers or boundaries. Essentially, Fangarere continued as one clan for social purposes, but split to perform ritual reciprocities within itself so that the critical Kafika-Taumako pair could remain intact. So while the dual pairing concept remained of prime importance for ritual exchange in this religious context, it was four major transactional units that were needed, not necessarily four clans. For a quarter of a century, while the four clan structure operated in general social, economic and political contexts over the whole community, in this particular ritual context the pagan Tikopia got along very effectively with only three clans. (Firth 1981:48-9) However, the pagan Tikopians still got along only with a total of four ritual categories of participants. Furthermore, I think it significant, contrary to Firths perspective on this fact, that Tikopians did not create a new clan, for a total then of five clans. Whether or not Tafua participates in the pagan ritual with the others, it still constitutes the fourth clan of Tikopian society for social, economic, and political purposes. This quadripartite form or structure of social classification is in each context the same, and essentially so, evidently, even if the exact content of the resulting substantive or categorical divisions are not always perfectly coincident. Here, as elsewhere, Firth would seem to be insisting upon too strict a series of convergences of content before he will grant any of these quadripartite formations analytical validity. Nonetheless, Firth himself at one point concludes, "Leach's view of the significance of this number four can be supported to some extent if it he looked at as a double pairing' (Firth 1981:48; emphasis added), or, in my terms, a fourfold structure of bisected dualities. In any case, I suggest that it is focusing upon the homology of form in the interrelations among the categories of different contexts rather than the literal coincidence of the categories themselves that consistently provides the most effective way of conceptualizing the total integration of the culture. This issue, of course, goes well beyond the interpretation of any one culture, and I will return to consider it again at length in Chapter 10.

Tikopia and the Trobriands

209

The Trobriands

The ethnographic situation for the Trobriand Islands has become considerably more complex than with Tikopia. On the one hand, several ethnographers have gone back to the Trobriands and collected additional firsthand information expanding on Malinowski's corpus (Powell 1960, 1969a, 1969b; Uberoi 1962; Montague 1971, 1973, 1983; Weiner 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980; Hutchins 1980). On the other, a considerably larger body of commentary and reinterpretation has been generated by a substantial community of anthropologists, including many who have not themselves done Trobriand fieldwork (Mauss 1967; Leach 1958a, 1961, 1966b; Robinson 1962; Levi-Stauss 1963a; Sider 1967; Tambiah 1968b, 1983; Eyde 1976; Brunton 1975; Tooker 1979; MacDougall 1975; Keesing 1981). We are left with an embarrassment of riches, but also in many instances a multiplicity of conflicting ethnographic facts and interpretations. In my own efforts to reveal the quadripartite conceptual classifications of Trobriand culture that seem to be significant, I hope to make a step toward clarifying at least some of the complicating issues that seem to mark the literature so dramatically in this case. Again, this analysis is to be understood as neither exhaustive nor definitive, but instead as exploratory and suggestive. I shall examine the following contexts of Trobriand culture: the indigenous notions of the person, procreation, alimentation, the category father, clan organization and interclan relations, rank and chieftainship, marriage and mortuary exchange, kula and wasi exchange, and gender symbolism. The Trobriand conception of the person is elaborated in several interconnected ways. These all exhibit, however, a consistent scheme of classification according to logical structures of bisected dualities. In Malinowski's original rendering, the age distinction of child and adult crosscuts that of male and female to produce a fourfold division of any village population into "male child" (monagwadi), "female child' (inagwadi), "man" (tau), and "woman" (vivila). Each of these statuses, however, is further subdivided into four developmental stages, underscoring the Trobriand cultural concern for growth (Weiner 1976:20-2). A male child begins life as a "fetus" (waywaya) and then progressively develops into an "infant" (pwapwawa), "child" (gwadi), and "male child" (monagwadi). For a man, his "youth" (toulatile) is followed by his being a "mature man" (tobubowa'u), a "married man" (tovavaygile), and an "old man" (tomwaya). Female children similarly progress from being fetus, infant, and child to female child; and women from "girl" (nakapugula or nakubukwabuya) to "ripe woman" (nabubowa'u), "married woman" (navavaygile), and "old woman" (numwaya). Thus, there are four major age-gender categories, and within each of these four, assuming the per-

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son lives long enough, four subdivisions of age and growth correlated with gender (Malinowski 1929:60; cf. Leach 1958a; Powell 1969b). According to Montague's recent inquiries, Trobrianders in the process of growing into complete adult men and women are understood to develop powers or capacities that relate them to their respective spheres of activity in life, both productive and reproductive. The adult male is constituted of a solid or hard bodily strength with an internal power or "noise force' (miegava). The qualities of a complete adult woman, by contrast, consist of a "quasiliquid" or "squishy' body with an external store of power (doba fiber skirts and banana-leaf bundles). The strength of a man's body allows him to perform the substantial tasks of gardening, and his noise force enables him to control nonsubstantial gardening activities such as weather and garden "magic" (see Eyde 1983). Alternatively, with her soft body a woman can substantively give birth, and with her store of doba wealth she can give nonsubstantial birth or rebirth to living people in mourning (Montague 1983). Thus, among adults of both genders, Trobriand villagers seem to exhibit four powers or capacities - male substantial and nonsubstantial, and female substantial and nonsubstantial. Viewed in this way, adults of opposite sex are inverted or reversed analogues of one another. Structurally similar formulations of Trobriand gender ideas have been proposed by Tooker (1979) and Tambiah (1983; see below; cf. Weiner 1976, 1977, 1978). Therefore, in these terms the Trobriand system of adult gender roles is structured much like that of Bush Mekeo villagers, according to a bisected duality. The Trobriand view of procreation has, of course, generated one of the most colorful controversies in all of anthropology. It will be necessary for me to touch on only the more salient points here to reveal a heretofore unrecognized quadripartite dimension to the indigenous theory of conception. Malinowski's original report was that a subclan ancestor of a woman transformed into a spirit-child (waywaya) enters the woman's body and animates her menstrual blood (agu buyavi), which in turn constitutes the bodily substance of the child (Malinowski 1929:173-95). As Leach (1966b) points out, Malinowski subsequently qualified this declaration of the ignorance of physiological paternity with the recognition of a rather more "complicated attitude towards the facts of maternity and paternity. Into this attitude there enter certain elements of positive knowledge, certain gaps in embryological information. These cognitive ingredients again are overlaid by beliefs of an animistic nature, and influenced by the moral and legal principles of the community . . . " (Malinowski 1932:31). Subsequent inquiries by Austen (1934), Powell (1968), and Weiner (1976, 1978) have also revealed complementary paternal as well as maternal contribu-

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tions: that through sexual intercourse with a man, a woman's vagina is "opened"; that a mans semen (momona) "checks" or "stops-up" a woman's menstrualflow;that a man's sexual activity or semen "forms," "coagulates," "shapes," or "moulds" the mother's menstrual blood into the fetus (see Leach 1966b; cf. Spiro 1968). These data suggest that a father's procreative influence as "co-contributor" involves two components that parallel the two maternal components. Each parent, in other words, contributes a material and a nonmaterial element. A child receives substantive menstrual blood and a nonsubstantive spirit by virtue of its mother. And from its father a child receives substantive semen in sexual intercourse that, although not itself incorporated into the body of the fetus, does seemingly help give it its nonsubstantial form and appearance (see Weiner 1976:122-3, 1978; cf. Eyde 1983; Tooker 1979). It should come as no surprise, then, that completely formed persons, whether male or female, in the Trobriand view possess both substantive and nonsubstantive bodily components, as described above. Also, Powell's report - that the complementary emphases upon mother's blood and spirit-child, on the one hand, and father's semen and appearance or form, on the other, are contrasted respectively as "men's talk" by one's matrilineal relatives and "women's talk" by patrilateral relatives - suggests that the disputed issues of maternity and paternity are seen by Trobrianders themselves according to the interests of the parties involved (Powell 1968; see also Austen 1934:107, 153). It is not unreasonable to assume maternal kin would emphasize their own interests in a child, perhaps to the exclusion of the interests of the child's paternal kin (and vice versa). Why the maternal perspective is paradoxically described by Powell as "men's talk" and the paternal as "woman's talk," I cannot now explain (Powell 1968). However, as I move to consider other areas of Trobriand culture, additional male /female dimensions of contrast will be shown to correspond similarly with distinctions of substance and nonsubstance, form and spirit, as well as temporary and permanent. It should be noted here with this quadripartite Trobriand theory of conception that the male and female components of structure or form and amorphous matter, respectively, parallel the cultural associations of gender in conception for the Bush Mekeo and invert those of the Tikopia, although these latter two cases are both generally identifiable as patrilineal in terms of social organization. Moreover, it seems in this view, following Leach (1966b), that Trobriand conception theory is not the sort of ethnographic anomaly it has been for so long perceived to be. Rather, it is a clear and systematic transformation of other seemingly less exotic and less incredible views of gender complementarity, reproduction, and social organization in other traditions. Specifically, in this context, the

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quadripartite Trobriand view of procreation has been shown to be structurally isomorphic with the analogous views of related Pacific cultures. What would seem to be equally anomalous to Westerners, but, curiously, has not created the same sensation, is the reported Trobriand assertion that "eating is not regarded as indispensable to life" (Malinowski 1929:441). I suggest this item of belief is related to, and can illuminate further, the indigenous notions of procreation as just discussed. As Malinowski notes, in part they have no idea that there is such a thing as physiological need for alimentation, or that the body is built up on food. According to them, one eats because one has appetite, because one is hungry or greedy. The act of eating is very pleasant, and it is a suitable expression of a joyful mood. Large accumulations of food, their formal distribution (sagali) and, at times, their immediate, though not public, consumption form the core of all native festivities and ceremonies . . . Yet meals are never taken in public, and eating is altogether regarded as a rather dangerous and delicate act. (1929:441) For Trobrianders, food has definite associations with the role of father. A father nurses his infant children by giving them mashed food during the time they are suckled by their mothers (Malinowski 1929:20, 207-8; Weiner 1976:123-30, 1978:178). The food a father gives then and later is taken from the subsistence gardens of his own labor (Weiner 1976:125). The child's outward physical appearance or shape continues to be moulded by the fathers food as well as by the names and decorations the father gives it and the beauty magic that its father's sisters bestow (Weiner 1976:127-9, 133, 1978:182). Ideally, also, the land upon which adult men grow food is acquired for use through the father (see below). Clearly, the reported ambivalence Trobrianders have for food and eating recalls contrasting perspectives of the fathers role in conception. Food, associated with the father, is like semen. It, too, moulds, forms, or structures the physical appearance of his children, but it is not necessarily taken up into the blood or flesh of their bodies. And neither would food seem to communicate eternal baloma or spirit. Indeed, as I discuss below, when the body dies and loses its shape, the structuring paternal influences of semen, sexual intercourse, food, magic, and so on are negated. The construction of a satisfactory model of Trobriand social organization has proven to be nearly as elusive as a convincing rendering of the indigenous theories of conception and alimentation. The question of the four "clans" (kumila), first seriously raised by Leach (1958a), persists as particularly puzzling. According to the most recent authoritative source, "in fact, why four clans, instead of two or three or even eight, remains problematic" (Weiner 1976:60). In trying to solve this riddle, I shall

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generally follow Leach in arguing that "Trobrianders need four categories to display the workings of their society, and that the four matriclans fulfill this purpose" (Leach 1958a: 141). I would qualify this, however, to the effect that it is not only four clans that fulfill this purpose, but rather the structure of bisected dualities that homologously divides many other contexts of the culture as well. Trobriand Islanders classify themselves and all of humanity into four named, ranked, exogamous, and nonresidential categories or matrilineal clans. All members of a clan apparently never assemble for corporate activity. Indeed, all that seems to bind them together is the shared identity of a name and certain totemic prohibitions (Malinowski 1929:496-503, 1948:112-3). The mythological "charter" for the relations between the clans concerns the emergence of their respective totemic animals from the hole, Obukula. First, iguana, representing Lukulabuta clan, scratched the ground from underneath and surfaced. The next to emerge were dog (Lukuba clan), pig (Malasi clan), and finally the animal of Lukwasisiga clan, variously identified in different versions of the myth as crocodile, snake, or opossum. Initially, dog was the "chief," or animal of high rank (guyau). But although pig and dog played together, dog smelled, licked, and ate a bush fruit likened to excrement. Malasi thereby became chiefly and higher ranking than Lukuba and the other clans (Malinowski 1929:498-9; Weiner 1976:52). In spite of its wide currency in anthropological circles, until now it has remained an unremarked ethnographic fact that this myth embodies a number of categorical bisected dualities. There are, for example, two animals - pig and dog - that are both mammals of the aboveground associated with high, chiefly status, and two others - iguana and snake or crocodile - that are subterranean reptiles associated with low, "commoner" status (tokay). Mythically speaking, there are thus two chiefly and two commoner clans. Also, the two commoner animal species and reptiles (excepting opossum) are associated in Trobriand culture with immortal spirits (baloma) of the nonsubstantial underworld and with women, whereas the chiefly mammalian species are associated with mortal human ancestors that emerged to the substantial world aboveground and with men (Tambiah 1983). Moreover, despite Malinowski's own perplexity (1948:113), the logic of the exact sequence of emergence seems to be significant. Of the first pair, it is the second animal (dog) rather than the first (iguana) that initially assumes the rank of chief. Subsequently, however, the first animal (pig) of the second pair is associated with high rank and takes the status of chief from dog. In other words, the opposition of the /irs£-to-emerge - commoner versus second-to-emerge-chief for the first animal pair is resolved through its inversion in the second pair -

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first-to emerge-chief versus second-to-emerge-commoner. The formula of bisected dualities thus sheds new light on an old problem. Montague (1971) has examined further the articulation or intersection of the clan principle in Trobriand society with the principle of rank. She notes Malinowski's observation of three 3 ranked classes - guya'u, "chiefs"; gumguyau, "nobles"; and tokay, "commoners" - as well as a fourth category, the "pariahs" of Bwaytalu, Ba'u, and Suviyagila villages (Montague 1971:355; Malinowski 1929:30, 499-500, 1922:67; see also Malinowski 1966:385; Powell 1960:129). There are here obviously two high-ranked and two low-ranked classes; and they crosscut distinctions between clans. Although the data are still fragmentary, it appears that different subclans of the same clan are ranked in different classes, and that subclans of different clans are, or can be, ranked in the same status. These four rank divisions evidently play a role in marriage regulation. Although marriage is ideally exogamous for clans, excepting chiefly officeholders, it is preferentially endogamous as regards rank (Malinowski 1929:80, 83, 457-8). Chiefs and village cluster leaders (see discussion below), however, by virtue of polygynous unions may marry both exogamously and endogamously as regards rank class. Thus, in the traditional society, there appear to be four ranked classes with at least some significance for marriage regulation, just as in the same respect there are four clans. The quadripartite division of Trobriand society is also reflected in Leach's classification of localized subclan hamlets (katuposula). He argues that the kinship nomenclature consists of categories reflecting nongenealogical criteria of residence rules, age and generation status, and yam-exchange obligations.4 Earlier in the chapter, I noted the significance the child/adult distinction has in Trobriand culture, and it is implicit also here. From the viewpoint of the male child, the social world is divided up into two categories: "outsiders" and "people like us." The former includes the males of two subclan hamlets related to Ego as are father's father and father's sister's husband; the latter includes members of Ego's own (father's) hamlet of domicile and mother's brother's hamlet. There are as a result four types of hamlet managers or landowners where Ego has and has not rights to land, and four types of landowners' daughters, both marriageable and nonmarriageable. Upon his becoming an adult, marrying, and assuming his own yam-exchange obligations, a man's social universe contains again four distinct types of subclan hamlets: (1) tama hamlets, and (2) kada, tuwa, and bwada hamlets ("people like us"); and (3) affines' hamlets and (4) tabu hamlets ("others") (Leach 1958a; cf. Lounsbury 1964, 1965; Sider 1967). Focusing particularly upon the potentials for hierarchical relations in obligatory yam exchanges, Powell also reveals a somewhat different but nonetheless structurally similar quadripartite portrayal of the relations

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between groups, which he claims is symbolized instead in the four clans. He takes for his social units corporate but not necessarily co-residential subclans (dala). The spectrum of relations between subclans, whether they be of the same or different clans, is "equality, super-ordination, subordination, and non-interrelation" (Powell 1969b:596-7). These distinctions, moreover, have their counterparts in the indigenous scheme of social classification. Thus, similar again to Leach, Powell elsewhere reports a quadripartite distinction between (1) tomakava, the hostile "unrelated"; (2) veivai, affinal competitors "on the other side"; (3) veyo, competitive matrilineal kin "on the same side"; and (4) tabu, matrilineal and affinal nonrivals through whom ritual rivalries are established (Powell 1969a: 199). According to somewhat different criteria still, Weiner has isolated a subtle and multiple taxonomy of relational categories that embodies additional significant quadripartite social divisions. In one perspective, the Trobriand universe is first bisected into tomakava, nonclanspeople or "people different from us," and veyola, clanspeople or "people like us." Among the former, some are lubela or lugebu, "origin nonclanspeople" (i.e., people of other clans whose founders mythically emerged from the same hole); the remainder are simply tomakava, nonclanspeople whose ancestors did not emerge together. Among clanspeople, on the other hand, there is a parallel distinction between veyola, origin kin whose founders emerged together, and kakaveyola, nonkin whose ancestors emerged separately (Weiner 1976:53-4). From the perspective of Ego, however, relationships are classified into four categories according to mutually inclusive and exclusive criteria. First, Ego is identified by blood and spirit with a particular subclan (veyola tatola or veyola mokita). Second, Ego possesses a larger circle of clanspeople corresponding with origin kin. Third, all other clanspeople are designated as kakaveyola, nonkin. And fourth, all members of the other three clans are identified as nonclanspeople (tomakava) (Weiner 1976:53-5). Alternately informed by the intersection of the same /different clan and class distinctions discussed above, Montague has presented the Trobriand social universe as divided in terms of the kinds of interrelations that can exist between subclans, and, again, "there are four clear possibilities: 1, two dala [subclans] share clan identity but not class rank; 2, they share rank class but not clan identity; 3, they share neither; and 4, they share both" (Montague 1971:362-3). In Powells and Weiner's terms discussed above, these distinctions have their terminological counterparts in the language: kakaveyola, veivai, tomakava, and veyola, respectively (Powell 1969a: 199; Weiner 1976:53-5). Weiners recent data contain still another indigenous quadripartite social division of exchange relationships within the Trobriand clan as a unit.

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Each clan includes true blood kin, origin kin, and nonkin (with whom there is no exchange relationship) as above, and a fourth category of clanspeople, keyawa, who are linked by the same affinal relationships to members of other clans (Weiner 1976:55-63). It might be added that Weiner explicitly recognizes the potential structural significance of the congruence here between the four Trobriand clans and these four kinds of clanspeople, but she hesitates in carrying it further (Weiner 1976:59-60). Nevertheless, although Leach, Powell, Weiner, and Montague have each produced a somewhat different view of the Trobriand social universe, they have in trying to follow indigenous distinctions all found it cut up in roughly the same way, that is, consistently into four parts. The pattern of bisected dualities thus appears to be systematically employed in sorting out and differentiating important social relationships. That any one of these particular constructions deviates from or distorts native taxonomies or fails to represent them accurately is, of course, an empirical possibility. My own suspicion is that if the ethnography has been correct, then each of these realms as described does capture a significant but particular slice of the total meaning of Trobriand culture. Again, further direct empirical investigation should help answer this question. Powell's and Weiner's studies have also helped clarify the pattern of residence and local organization. In most contexts of exchange, as indicated above, the prominent social units are matrilineal dala subclans or lineages (Malinowski 1929; Leach 1958a; Powell 1969a, 1969b; Weiner 1976). Members of dala possess a common identity based upon shared descent from the same named ancestral beings (tabu) associated with the same place of origin, blood, ritual paraphernalia, and lands. Women as girls grow up in their fathers' dala. Upon marrying, they move to their husbands'. As boys, men live with their fathers. But in adolescence or adulthood they may change their residence, depending principally on whether they are in line to succeed an elder brother or maternal uncle as subclan hamlet manager. If this is not the case, the proper place for a man to live is at the home of his father (Powell 1960, 1969a, 1969b; Weiner 1976:154-5). Trobriand villages (valu) consist of one or more than one section or subclan hamlet. Members of a subclan are recognized as "owners" at the village of their subclan hamlet, whether they individually reside there or not. The corporate affairs of a subclan are directed by the subclan "manager. ' When there are two or more owning subclans in a village, one is always recognized as senior in status, and its manager is headman for the whole village (see my qualifications discussed later in the chapter). Demographically as well as politically, two or more villages are congregated into "compound village communities " or "clusters." Evidently, all four clans are represented in the populations of separate clusters. This is, I

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think, significant because marriages tend to be endogamous to the cluster both in frequency and in explicit preference. Of all the subclans within a village cluster, some are of high or chiefly rank (guyau), and others are of low or commoner status (tokay). Among the owning subclans of the cluster villages, the highest ranking (always of guyau status) is recognized as chiefly and ascendant over all the others. The successful manager of the highest ranking of these chiefly subclans serves as acknowledged leader for the entire village cluster. Finally, traditional Trobriand society is divided into eight named "districts." At least in the northern districts of Kiriwina and Tilataula, it seems, certain chiefly subclans that rank highest within their own clusters enjoy a certain ascendancy over other clusters of their respective districts. Their leaders are also recognized as district chiefs (Malinowski 1922:49-62, 1929:7-20, 1965:3-12, 345-69; Powell 1960; Weiner 1976:141-67. Overall, then, it appears there are a total of four recognized hierarchical levels of territorial and political integration: subclan hamlet, village, village cluster, and district. And each level has a corresponding category of political authority: hamlet manager, village headman, cluster leader, and district chief.5 This particular hierarchical classification embodies a number of features that would appear to be homologous with critical distinctions of the myth of clan emergence discussed earlier in the chapter. According to Powell, district chiefs and village-cluster leaders and their subclans are always of chiefly or guyau rank, but otherwise for villages and subclan hamlets their headmen and managers might just as likely be of tokay commoner rank. Thus, as among the clans in the myth of origin, there are two categories of high or chiefly rank and two categories of low or commoner rank. The myth then serves as a "charter" not only for the existence of clan and rank distinctions; it "charters" also the overall political integration of Trobriand society. Moreover, according to legend, there were originally eight chiefly subclans, each having subclan segments residing elsewhere in the islands (Weiner 1976:44). And it seems also there were originally eight chiefs (Weiner 1976:45). Powell's report that the Trobriands are divided into eight native districts thus takes on a new significance (Powell 1960:221). As mentioned previously, the important social units for marriage are exogamous subclans and the largely endogamous village clusters. Weiner's refinements of the interconnected rules of marriage and yam harvest and mortuary exchanges reveal additional evidence of heretofore unrecognized, but nonetheless highly significant, quadripartite patterning in these contexts. First, Weiner clarifies the much-discussed stipulation of "patrilateral cross-cousin marriage" as rather a strategic preference between persons and their tabu, that is, with a person of a different

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subclan but the same clan as Ego's father. Marriages that conform to this rule (for either a male or female Ego), and a preponderance do, stablize or renew important keyawa exchange relationships between subclans of the same clan. As Weiner observes, neither she, Malinowski, nor Powell recorded a single instance of marriage with "own fathers sisters daughter," and in the figures she gives there is apparently no noteworthy incidence of, or advantage to, marrying into father's own subclan. Therefore, if Ego's spouse is of a different subclan but same clan as Ego's father, fundamentally four subclans, two in either of two clans, complete the necessary affinal set (Weiner 1976:187). The relevant social universe of each Ego in Trobriand society as deduced by the rules of marrage as stipulated so far necessitates the existence of clans, as Weiner points out, but also involves the pairing of clans, each of which is bisected again to produce four subclans in all (Weiner 1976:52-60, 174-87, 1979:343-5). A related quadripartite classification of subclans is identifiable in the distribution and juxtapositioning of keyawa and non-keyawa relationships between members of both the same and different clans, as a result of marriage to a person of father's clan (tabu), consistent with the rule or preference cited above. On the basis of Weiner's material, these distinctions play a critical role in the organization of mortuary distributions and the consequent regulation of overall social continuity. Among one's own clanspeople, there are some who are related as keyawa and others who are not. Similarly, among nonclanspeople, there are keyawa and non-keyawa. The same-clan/different-clan contrast, in other words, is bisected by that of keyawa/non-keyawa (Weiner 1976:55). As a result of marrying tabu, another quadripartite social division is generated. A degree of uncertainty still remains in the marriage rules, however, that might well have profound implications for overall societal integration. It remains unclear, for example, whether a brother and sister can both simultaneously marry tabu and into the same other subclan or clan. Indeed, if every adult, male and female, did so marry, then the system (excepting the polygynous marriages of chiefs and cluster leaders) of patrilateral second-cousin marriage, as it has been depicted, would in actuality be one of symmetrical instead of asymmetrical exchange (cf. Weiner 1976, 1979). As I turn to the examination of marriage exchanges and mortuary rituals, I shall focus upon additional ethnographic data that partially aid in resolving the implicit contradictions here with the rules of marriage in a way still consistent with the overall structure of the culture in quadripartite terms. By her efforts to demonstrate that the relation of "father" (tama) to "child" (latu) is one of patrifiliation as well as affinity, Robinson (1962:127-37) shows that in the complicated series of exchanges following marriage there are four principal parties - two representing the groom, two representing the bride. For the groom, there are the father and

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mother's brother supported by their respective subclan members, and similarly for the bride (see also Weiner 1976:177-8). Malinowski discusses eight named marriage gifts between the bride's "family" and the groom's "family." The first three of these he lists (katuvila, pepei, and kaykaboma) are given by the bride's family to the groom's family. These latter people reciprocate with two more gifts (mapula kaykaboma and takwalela pepei). Then the bride's family contributes the first harvest of yam food (vilakuria) to the groom's family. Finally, the groom's family gives fish (saykwala) and valuables (takwalela vilakuria) to the bride's family (Malinowski 1929:89-94). There are altogether, then, four groupings of marriage gifts. The bride's family gives two, and the groom's family returns two (Malinowski 1929:89-94). Moreover, of the eight named exchange categories, there appear to be four that are essential - (1) pepei or kaykaboma, (2) vilakuria, (3) saykwala, and (4) takwalela pepei or takwalela vilakuria (Robinson 1962:136; cf. Eyde 1976:244) - two of which are either given or received by either of the exchanging parties. From Malinowski's and Robinson's discussions of these transactions, it is clear that some of them are understood as directly reciprocal for one another. However, Robinson observes that there are long-term obligations implicated outside this immediate exchange nexus that serve to link up the various kinship groupings across generations. And it appears to be the case that there are four of these to the set. First, the bride's family gift of vilakuria yams constitutes the initial annual yam exchanges. Second, the groom's father gives valuables in takwalela to his son's wife's family in indirect reciprocation, third, to his own wife's family for having sent him annual yam prestations throughout the course of his own marriage. And in the process, too, the groom's father ensures on behalf of his son that, fourth, he will also receive yam gifts from his wife's relatives, thereby obligating his son to contribute valuables at the marriage of the son's son (1962:153-5). These particular long-term reciprocities are entirely consistent with the way marriages between tabu are ordered among subclans of the same and different clans, as portrayed above in light of Weiner's material. Through his own and his sister's marriages, a man plays complementary exchange roles with respect to yams and valuables in relation to members of two different affinal groups. To his "own' sister's husband's subclan he will be (1) a giver of yams and (2) a receiver of valuables. Correspondingly, to his wife's subclan he will be (3) a receiver of yams and (4) a giver of valuables. The same roles would be replicated in form for other annual marriage exchanges of yams and valuables (Malinowski 1929:121-9, 1966; Weiner 1976:146-53). As a result of the asymmetry of these transactions, there are a total of four categories of marital exchange role. I shall show below how this particular quadripartite structure of reciprocity is also evident in other contexts of Trobriand exchange, notably kula and wasi.

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The annual yam payments themselves constitute a major and dramatic part of the native horticultural economy. Upon closer examination, yet another fourfold distinction is evident. For any particular exchange of yams, there are two categories of giver and two of ultimate receiver. Generally, the annual yam exchanges are corporate subclan affairs (Powell 1969b: 184-7). However, particular men are recognized as the principal givers to particular women on behalf of their whole group. A woman and her husband receive two major gifts of yam, from (1) her "own" brother and his wife, on the one hand, and (2) her father and mother, on the other. The couple given this food (3) shares several baskets of it (kovisi) among the husband's classificatory subclan sisters prior to having the remainder stored in his own yam house (Weiner 1976:149, 199; Malinowski 1966:189). Finally, the husband will (4) contribute the yams he has stored to help support hamlet and village collective activities (e.g., leaders' "feasts of merit, " canoe building, mortuary distributions) (Powell 1969b:584). The yams for these particular transactions are taken from only one type of food garden, kaymwila. Trobrianders plant three other types as well. First, a man will plant kaymata, the larger main garden, for the hamlet manager who grants him rights to land at the village of his residence. Second, a man cultivates a number of taro gardens, gubwauli, the plants of which he will give to his kinswomen. And third, a man produces the principal foods for his family's subsistence in gubakaueki gardens (Weiner 1976:137, 140, 146, 199-202, 1978:178; cf. Malinowski 1966:58). Thus, there are four categories of garden: two kinds for exchange yams, and two kinds for other produce and subsistence. The same pattern appears in still other dimensions of gardening. Regardless of whether the separate types of plant food are for exchange or for subsistence, yams at least are additionally distinguished in terms of four stages of growth: "garden plots, " "ownership, " "at yam house," and "baskets of yams" (Weiner 1976:140-5). Yam storehouses (bwayma) in the village, of course, have four sides (Malinowski 1966). And Eyde has commented upon the significance of the quadrilateral structure of poles (kamkokola) erected in gardens as well as the rectangular layout of the gardens themselves (Eyde 1983; Malinowski 1966). Altogether, there are several separate sets of indigenous quadripartite categorical distinctions in the context of food production, exchange, and consumption. I now turn to the examination of Trobriand mortuary ritual. For here I believe the inner dynamic of the culture's pervasive structure is most evident. In the course of this examination, I shall propose a somewhat novel interpretation of the rites that is nonetheless not inconsistent with the several instances of quadripartite ordering I have already discussed with respect to indigenous notions of the person, procreation, marriage rules, and yam exchange.

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For Malinowski, "the whole mortuary ritual [was], in fact, perhaps the most difficult and bewildering aspect of Trobriand culture" (1929:148). He thus left only the barest outline of the customary proceedings. Quite fortunately, Weiner (1976, 1979) has supplied a recent and full account based on her own fieldwork in Kiriwina. Her fundamental argument6 is that a villager's death suddenly disrupts interrelations among the relatives of the deceased. Trobriand mortuary ritual and exchange therefore serve to restore and regenerate those ties that death had so abruptly severed (Weiner 1976:21-2, 219). My own interpretation is rather the inverse of this: Although death does represent a rupture of social ties among the living, it is only the beginning of a process of social dislocation. The involved series of mortuary rites serves not to restore those relationships but instead to complete their total dissolution. Eventually, however, those ties should be renewed, but with the creation of new marriages among the survivors rather than with mortuary exchanges. I shall show, then, that Trobriand mortuary ritual predicates an undoing of social relationships initially created by exogamous intermarriage that is analogous to Bush Mekeo mortuary de-conception. A close reading of the ethnographic material will bear this interpretation out. According to Weiner, the critical mortuary exchange is the woman's ceremony, termed lisalabadu. This is one of several types of sagali distribution. The word sagali means "to divide," "to settle accounts," or "to reclaim ownership" (Weiner 1976:62, 1979, 1980). At the women's ceremony, there are two main social categories: givers and receivers. Ideally, each of these two categories is broken down into two subcategories. Givers thus include "owners" (toliuli, women of the deceased's subclan) and their clan keyawa, and receivers include "workers' (toliyouwa, spouse of the deceased and spouse's subclan kin, and deceased's fathers subclan kin) and their respective clan keyawa (Weiner 1976:74). Consistent with the preference for marrying someone of father's own clan, the women's mortuary ceremony is characterized as an exchange between members of two distinct clans, each minimally represented by two subclans (Weiner 1976:63, 1978:180, 1979:343). However, as it turns out, the personnel who give and receive overlap considerably. Owners' brothers' wives, brothers' children, and kin of the owners' fathers may help in the giving, and spouses and children of the male owners and workers may well receive (Weiner 1976:63, 74, 104-15). Again, consistent with the avowed preference for patrilateral second-cousin marriage, at least two clans will thereby be represented. Nevertheless, other data suggest that the number of distinct clans is necessarily or ideally more than two. As part of the tadabali distribution that precedes the women's mortuary ceremony, women's wealth in the form of bundles of banana leaves is given to the male subclan kin of the deceased's spouse and their married and unmarried children. Persons of

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these two categories will continue to observe the signs of mourning until the women's mortuary ceremony. They are, of course, members of different clans. They receive their bundles from two other categories of persons who are also of different clans from one another - clanswomen of the deceased, and daughters of the deceased's subclansmen. According to Weiner, both kinds of person who receive bundles on this occasion are also nonclanspeople of the deceased's clanswomen (1976:74). Thus, it is certain that there are at least three clans represented. And although the details are not complete, there is some implication that the daughters of the deceaseds clansmen who give bundles represent members of another, fourth, clan, assuming they did not themselves marry a man of their father's clan (1976:75; cf. Weiner 1979:343-5). What is needed to resolve this issue, as well as several others, as I noted earlier, is further clarification of the idealized rules of marriage with patrilateral second cousins and of the manner by which the resultant social categories enter into mortuary ceremonial. In the meantime, however, it appears that there is some evidence for a full complement of members from all four clans in Trobriand mortuary rituals. Indeed, this seems to be the case at Omarakana traditionally. During major public ceremonials - including mortuary rituals whereby the obligations incurred by several deaths are fulfilled - the members of the representative clans pair off into two dyads: The clan most numerous in the local population would be teamed with the least, and the remaining two would be teamed together also. In the Omarakana cluster the Malasi were grouped in this way with the Lukulabuta as the most and least numerous, and the Lukuba with the Lukwasisiga, giving a fairly even division of the population into "moieties." I was assured however that the clans would line up differently elsewhere, and I have no other evidence of any moiety organization. (Powell 1969b:603n) His final comment notwithstanding, this double pairing of clans at mortuary ceremonials cannot but be of significance, given the added evidence of bisected dualities in this and other contexts of the culture. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that at Omarakana, at any rate, Malasi (pig) and Lukulabuta (iguana) represent the first-to-emerge of both the first and second pairs of animals in the myth of clan origin, and Lukuba (dog) and Lukwasisiga (snake/opposum/crocodile) represent the secondto-emerge of the two origin pairs. Moreover, the Malasi-Lukulabuta and Lukuba-Lukwasisiga pairs each mythically includes one chiefly and one commoner clan. And further, in terms of the corporate status of the residential groups, each of these "moieties" at Omarakana contains one high-ranking or chiefly subclan - the Tabalu of Malasi clan, and the Bwaydaga of Lukwasisiga clan. Members of the other thirty-seven sub-

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clans are of commoner status (Powell 1960:124; Malinowski 1929:30-4, 1965:86). At their lisalabadu mortuary exchanges, the owners with their helpers "reclaim" elements or artifacts (blood, identity, personal names, coconut and betel palms, decorations, rights to land) that had gone from their subclan to members of other subclans through the deceaseds relations with those other persons - the workers and those who receive with them. On the day of the women's mortuary ceremony, some sixteen7 different kinds of transactions are accomplished (Weiner 1976:105-15). The first twelve are marked off as a set in that bundles of dried banana leaves are given, but no colorful fiber skirts. The receivers of the bundles in all these exchanges are being compensated for various contributions and services they have bestowed upon the deceased and owners, and for the relinquishment of subclan rights the deceased had invested in them before death. The exchanges of bundles appear to culminate in kaymelu, which is the most "important" of the lisalabadu transactions. Here, the female owners give bundles to the wives of all their kinsmen who have ever given them raw yams and taro.8 Men's sisters thereby reexpress the prior rights of the subclan to the property or artifacts of their brothers that they had loaned (mapula) to their children by virtue of working and living with them and their wives. This is entirely consistent with Weiner's specification of the meaning of sagali as "to reclaim," based upon a second trip to the Trobriands (1976:246, 1979). The three remaining "important" ceremonial exchanges (for a total of four such) in the concluding set of the women's mortuary ceremony involve men's wealth (axe blades, shells, and clay pots) and colorful women's skirts that have been made from old and dirty leaf bundles. In kalilakuvili, the women, who had played the role of giver at some point in the proceedings but who belong to different clans and thereby also played receiver, have the signs of mourning removed from their persons. These are replaced by the colorful skirts that signify release from mourning (Weiner 1976:112). Next, in kalakeyala kakau, clanspeople of the deceased carry wealth to the deceased's spouse. Women carry colorful skirts again, and men carry male wealth. The skirts are distributed to the spouse's kinswomen, and the male valuables are taken by the hamlet manager of the spouse's subclan. And last, in kalakeyala kapu, women's skirts and male wealth are given to the kinswomen and hamlet manager of the deceased's father (Weiner 1976:113-14). The quadripartite ordering of these most important mortuary rituals is revealed even more clearly when the cultural and social contexts are examined more closely. Of these four transactions, the separateness and integrity of the clan of the deceased vis-a-vis other collectivities are graphically enacted four distinct times, but in different ways. First, in

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kaymelu, the wives of men who have previously contributed plant food are distinguished from those men's sisters and kinswomen. In kalilakuvili, second, women who gave bundles in kaymelu who are not of the clan of the deceased are now given colorful skirts by women who are of that clan and thereby so distinguished also. Third, in kalakeyala kakau, the deceased's clan is differentiated from the clan of the deceased's spouse. And finally, the clan of the deceased is contrasted with that of the deceased's father in kalakeyala kapu. Overall, as well, the clan identities of villagers who still have viable ties, either patrilaterally or affinally to the clan of the deceased in spite of the deceased's death, are emphasized in the first two major exchanges, and the clans of villagers who, because of the death of the deceased, no longer have viable relations with the deceased's clan, are demonstrated in the latter two major exchanges. And finally, in the first pair of important transactions (kaymelu and kalilakuvili), the giving and receiving parties begin with mixed clan membership and then culminate in the latter pair (kalakeyala kakau and kalakeyala kapu) with parties of unmixed clan membership. Incidentally, it is probably significant here that the women's wealth given for unmixed villagers is colorful skirts made anew from old and dirty leaf bundles. Moreover, the women's mortuary ceremony is held some six or eight months after the death - roughly the same amount of (reverse?) time that Trobriand pregnancies last (Weiner 1976:62; Austen 1934:108-10). Although I have differed with Weiner as regards some of the details in certain contexts, she is generally correct insofar as the men and women of the subclan of the deceased "reclaim" their dala identity and property in mortuary ceremony, as far as it goes. Those elements or artifacts that had been temporarily lost or loaned to the subclans of other clans over the lifetime of the deceased by virtue of marriage and patrifiliation are returned or claimed upon the deceased's death in mortuary exchange (Weiner 1976:21-2, 55-7; cf. Weiner 1976:81-90, 116-20, 163, 246, 1978:175, 180-3, 1979:334-5, 345, 1980:81). But those members and hamlet managers of other subclans who had been so blessed by the deceased simultaneously surrender or "de-claim" those same rights. The unambiguous and systematic boundaries and divisions of all the various subclans and clans represented are thus publicly expressed. Indeed, the very integrity of the society's major component units is in this way reaffirmed. Far from bridging across or mending the ruptures created by death, mourning ritual completes the process. Trobriand society thereby appears to be structured in a manner analogous to the patrilineal Bush Mekeo. And in that ordering, mortuary ritual evidently plays a similar role, that is, of de-conception. In the Trobriands, exogamous matrilineal clans and subclans create ties with others and, indirectly through these, with subclans of their own clan. These ties are initially

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contracted as marriage relationships, but ultimately they produce viable intergenerational patrilateral, male, or cognatic connections across clan and subclan boundaries. In a persons procreation and growth and in the contribution to these that a person makes in other persons, personalized elements of subclan essence and property are distributed along both matrilineal and patrilateral lines. When a person dies, the members of his/her subclan and clan retake possession of that which, although it was corporately theirs, they had lost in the life of the deceased. The mourners and other relatives of the deceased in other subclans and clans correspondingly relinquish that which they had acquired rights to in the life of the deceased but was not corporately theirs. In death and the performance of mortuary ritual, the components of a person that had been mixed in relationships to persons of other subclans and clans are unmixed and returned to the subclan and clan of their origin. The overall result, of course, is to give the total society and its constituent social units a profound and distinct symbolic sense of continuity, or, as Weiner has chosen to describe it with a somewhat different meaning, a sense of social reproduction (cf. Weiner 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980). Trobriand mortuary ritual, then, undoes what was done in earlier marriage exchanges. As with the Bush Mekeo, marriage and affinity translate nonrelatives into affines and cognates, and death and mortuary rites translate kin back into nonrelatives. But for those intraclan keyawa and interclan relations to be perpetuated beyond this, the cycle must be repeated from the start. New marriages must be negotiated. In this respect, my interpretation differs substantially from Weiner's. However, she herself observes that, even if the full series of mortuary transactions is properly concluded, a collective relationship between the ceremonial givers and receivers (i.e., beyond the bounds of merely personal ties) can be maintained only if those ties are entirely recreated with altogether new marriages generative of new relationships of cognation (Weiner 1976:57, 81, 119, 163, 1978:182-3, 1979:345, 1980:81; see also Tambiah 1983:173). Hence the rule or preference for marrying tabu, or persons of fathers clan. And in this same vein, Powell has observed that, with a death of a chief, the affinal and political relations between groups are abolished unless they can be successfully reestablished through the contending heir's individual marriages (Powell 1980:131). In this view of Trobriand social continuity, the interrelationship of kinship, marriage, and mortuary institutions involves a balance of subtractive as well as additive processes. This follows from the underlying fourfold structure of bisected dualities. But for the "long run" (Sahlins 1981), a more consistent balance of factors is envisioned and maintained, that is, consistent logically and with the data at hand. Indeed, numerous other ethnographic imponderabilia can now be

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made intelligible. First, in mortuary ritual, there are two kinds of article for persons of each gender given by owners to workers. Women give raw unmanufactured leaf bundles, and from them processed or manufactured fiber skirts are made and given again. Men by comparison give raw yams, and, from the obligations that arise from these, manufactured veygua valuables are given. The raw bundles of banana leaves are themselves further classified in terms of a separate fourfold ordering. There are old and new, and clean and dirty, bundles. For men's manufactured wealth, there seem also to be four main varieties: shell armbands, shell necklaces, clay pots, and axe blades (Weiner 1976:91-5, 104-15). But it is more significant, I think, that the logic of four clans appears to be directly tied in with the doings and undoings of marriage and mortuary exchanges. However, until the ethnographic details of the marriage rules are clarified, this cannot be concretely demonstrated. Still, the recognition that mortuary ceremonies undo what is done in marriage and procreation helps to solve further the riddle of supposed "Virgin Birth." Although males may make contributions of semen and form to their offspring, these are of mere short-run significance. Given that the bodies of their children eventually die, the contributions of fathers over the long run are negated. The matrilineal spiritual and substantive essences of mothers, subclans, and clans can be thereby claimed without contradiction as the only lasting and persistent or real contributions. Again, similar to the Bush Mekeo case of a seeming conflict of same versus different blood relationship, Trobrianders can assert that in life there is a continuity of form and appearance of fathers and children ("women's talk") along with that of blood and spirit between mother and child ("men's talk"). With death, it is only the latter that persists (Weiner 1978:182; cf. Weiner 1976:122, 193). The treatment accorded a deceased male's yam house and his bones now also become intelligible. Upon his death, a man's yam house symbolic of his position in life - is disassembled, signifying the dissolution of his personal network of relationships to members of other subclans and clans (i.e., father's, wife's, and sister's husband's relatives; hamlet manager; village headman; etc.) (Weiner 1976:179, 215). Even more curiously, the sons of a male deceased suck the fluids from the bones of their father's exhumed corpse in the process of its decay. Before distributing them to their own relations, including the widow, and also to the deceased's father's relatives, the sons clean the bones of flesh in the sea - a place associated with maternal baloma spirits (Tambiah 1983). From here, the spirit of the deceased is understood to travel across the water to Tuma, the land of the dead. Then the deceased's clanswomen wash the sons' mouths and purify their hands (Malinowski 1929:155-7; Weiner 1976:814), perhaps symbolically "reclaimirig" the deceased's blood and flesh on

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behalf of his subclan (Malinowski 1929:155-7; Weiner 1976:81-4). By their acts, the sons seemingly help "dry" the bones and separate the wet, formless, bloody parts from the dried, formed parts. Quite explicitly, Trobrianders reason that the deceased's sons perform these disagreeable operations because their father fed them mashed foods and cleaned away their feces and urine when they were infants (Malinowski 1929:20-1, 156-7). These latter paternal tasks contribute to the child's formation that had begun in procreation. In their father's death, the sons would appear to be inversely reciprocating the service. Fathers control the formation of their children, and the children control the deforming of the father. In either case, the paternal or male relationship is concerned with the dimension of form as distinct from spirit or blood. In the months or years of mourning, the relatives of the deceased who are bound by relations other than shared subclan identity (i.e., through males as opposed to through females) wear the dissembled bones. That the body of the deceased is indeed understood to be undergoing a process of deformation (along with the collectivity of survivors) is partially expressed in the bones being frequently passed from one relative to another (Malinowski 1929:149; Weiner 1976:81-4). After the concluding sagali exchange, the fully dried bones are entombed in a cave or grotto associated with the deceased's subclan, and particularly its ancestral baloma spirits (Weiner 1976:84; Tambiah 1983). Just as the deceased's bones are given a final rest, relations between the deceased's subclan kin and nonsubclan relatives are thereafter abrogated, unless, of course, they are renewed by the creation of new social ties through males. Incidentally, this precise interpretation of the rites of the bones as well as my general perspective on Trobriand mourning ritual receives additional and powerful theoretical support in light of Hertz's classic formulation (1960). The soul, the body, and the society of survivors experience parallel journeys after death - in this case, a fate of separation, disintegration, de-conception, and reclamation or return to the sources of origin. In mortuary ceremonial and in the several other relevant contexts of the culture I have examined so far, ties through males have systematically complemented ties through females. Although the constituent descentbased units of the society - subclans and clans - are conceptualized in terms of matrilineally transmitted blood and spirit essences, the relationships that link those diverse units are structured according to shared cognatic and affinal interconnections, that is, through males (Montague 1971:357). A symbolic dimension of Trobriand political organization, heretofore unrecognized, linking fathers, hamlet managers, cluster leaders, and chiefs, thereby suggests itself. I outlined earlier in the chapter the organization of hamlets, villages, village clusters, and districts, largely on the basis of Powell's material. He viewed the village (valu) as the

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principal residential unit (Powell 1960, 1969b). On the basis of her more recent data, however, Weiner has convincingly argued that the significant co-residential collectivity in most contexts is rather the subclan hamlet (katuposula), of which there may be one or more than one in any particular village (1976:38; Leach 1958a). I wish to suggest that, in relation to their respective followings, hamlet managers along with village-cluster leaders and district chiefs (but not village headmen) constitute metaphorical representations of the Trobriand notion of "father." There would be then a total of four such types of " father" in Trobriand social organization. This is particularly evident in the various food-exchange contexts of the society. I have already described how food is central to the conceptualization of the relationship of the father to his children. The relation of a man to the manager of the hamlet where he resides is similar. Unless he is the likely heir to the manager of his own subclan hamlet, a mans proper place of domicile is at his fathers hamlet. There he would be entitled to plant his first yam-exchange garden (kaymata). The produce of this first garden is consequently given to a mans own father.9 In this way, a man initially establishes rights to use that land. Annually thereafter, however, he validates his rights to garden and house land by making a yam-exchange garden (kaymata) for the hamlet manager who controls that land, or for his own father as intermediary. Of course, it is the hamlet manager who performs the gardening ritual throughout the growing cycle on behalf of all the resident males. The hamlet manager thus stands in the relationship of "father" to the resident males who make gardens for him (Malinowski 1966; Powell 1960, 1969b; Weiner 1976:42-3, 140-56). Cluster leaders and district chiefs are also given yams by the members of subclans of other clans. Because of their chiefly guyau status, leaders and chiefs are entitled to marry polygynously. Leaders tend to select their wives from the subclan hamlets of other clans represented in their own clusters. Chiefs acquire the majority of their wives from subclans outside their own cluster. Just as in the case of ordinary marriages, the leaders' and chiefs' wives' relatives are expected to plant special yam-exchange gardens annually. At least four of each wife's male relatives - her father, her mother's brother, her brother, and some other relative (unspecified) - are expected to plant one garden each and to give the produce to the leader or chief (Malinowski 1929:24-31; Powell 1960:132-6, 1969b:58792; Weiner 1976:201-2, 1978:178). These particular prestations to leaders and chiefs, however, are not classified in the language the same as other annual yam exchanges (kaymwila) are between nonchiefly affines. Rather, these are termed kaymata, as are the gardens and produce given to father and to the manager of one's hamlet (Weiner 1976:42, 140-6, 201-2, 1978:178).

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There is, therefore, a fourfold category of men who receive produce from kaymata yam-exchange gardens in Trobriand society: tama fathers, hamlet managers, cluster leaders, and district chiefs. In this view, a chief or a cluster leader, like a hamlet manager, is not exactly a "glorified brother-in-law of the whole community" as Malinowski (1966:192) supposed, but a metaphorical father.10 In indigenous terms, the significance of the societal relations between subclans and hamlets of a cluster and district is restricted to neither affinity, politics, nor the individual life cycle, but expressly indicates patrilateral filiation at the collective level (Fortes 1959; Robinson 1962; cf. Levi-Strauss 1969b; Weiner 1976:20-1). As with fathers in the contexts of procreation, gender distinction, and mortuary ritual, the relations of hamlet managers, cluster leaders, and district chiefs appear to mould, form, or structure the otherwise amorphous or unconnected clan bloods of the local populations. Moreover, these political ties must be regularly maintained and renewed, as must paternal ties at a number of levels. In sexual intercourse, fathers give shape or form to the bodies of their children; hamlet managers similarly organize and coordinate the relations of the co-resident males (these latter being of other matrilineal subclans or bloods) as fathers to sons, just as leaders and chiefs shape or form the relations between the various subclans and bloods of their children. A father continues to form or shape his children's physical appearances after they are born by giving them food; managers, leaders, and chiefs are responsible for sharing food they have stored with their supporters, particularly on ceremonial occasions. A man's father is his principal source of magic, especially for beauty (form and appearance); managers, leaders, and chiefs are the sources of magic that affect all their respective communities (McDougall 1975:612). Following a father's death, ties to his subclan or hamlet manager can be maintained only if they are renewed by another marriage; with the death of a leader or chief, relations among subclans of a cluster or district are maintained only if an heir successfully replicates the marriages of his predecessor, selecting his wives from the same appropriate subclans. The structural ties of Trobriand society predicated by hamlet managers, cluster leaders, and district chiefs as metaphorical fathers of their followings, in other words, are transitory. This is distinctly similar to the impermanence of bodily form or appearance that each child acquires in its conception and lifetime from its father, as contrasted by the permanent qualities inherited from the mother (blood and spirit). Overall, then, for Trobrianders as for the Bush Mekeo, the configuration of society is homologous with indigenous quadripartite ideas about the human body. Finally, I think it must be significant that two of these kinds of father cluster leader and district chief- are always identified with chiefly guyau rank as distinct from commoner tokay status, whereas the other two -

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hamlet manager and tama father - are not (see above; Powell 1960; Weiner 1976:44-6). There exists in this classificatory scheme of metaphorical fathers another instance of bisected duality. Brunton (1975) has proposed that the character of the Trobriand rank and political system, rare if not unique for Melanesia, is tied to the kula trade in valuables (vaygua). Although I disagree as to the basis of this relation, surely it is significant that for every kula participant there are four temporally and contexually separate roles he must play vis-a-vis his partners in order to participate effectively at all. With regard to the exchanges of the shell valuables that have been most extensively described (Malinowski 1922), a man will play all the roles of (1) giver of armshells (mwali), (2) receiver of necklaces (soulava), (3) receiver of armshells, and (4) giver of necklaces. There are, in other words, four different kinds of kula exchange occasion for each participant. A man will play the appropriate type of giver or receiver depending upon which of his partners he is exchanging with, and where (i.e., at his or his partners place). Moreover, it seems that aboriginally there were four kinds of vaygua valuable: the two types of shell valuable, along with axe blades (beku) and clay pots (kuliya). The role these latter played in kula unfortunately remains obscure (Malinowski 1922; Weiner 1976:179-83). Of course, veygua are used also in contexts of marriage payment, reciprocation for annual yam harvests, and mortuary rituals. It is thus not surprising that the organization of kula transactions reflects these others. Furthermore, Powell reports that, in addition to classifying the armshells as female and the necklaces as males, there may be a subdivision of armshells (if not necklaces too) into subcategories "male" and "female" (Powell, quoted in Eyde 1976:245n). The ethnographic details of kula have not yet been satisfactorily worked out (Leach and Leach 1983), but quadripartite distinctions in it are clearly prevalent. Nonetheless, one additional implication of Trobriand kula exchange in the sense of metaphorical fatherhood seems almost irresistible. MacDougall (1975) and Tooker (1979) have revealed that kula exchange represents a metaphorical or quasisexual relationship between men (see Malinowski 1922:81-104; Tambiah 1983). However, high-ranking district chiefs and village-cluster leaders have tended to dominate Trobriand kula exchange (Malinowski 1922; Powell 1960, 1969b; Uberoi 1962; Brunton 1975). Indeed, their personal successes partially legitimate their titles to office. Thus, in their quasisexual kula intercourse specifically, chiefs and leaders give form to their respective district and cluster followings; that is, in kula they mould together the blood of different subclans and clans much as tama fathers in their literal sexual exertions give form to the blood of their children of different clans.

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Culturally, there is more to the Trobriand chiefly participation in kula than just politics as such in response to the physical and social environment (cf. Brunton 1975). In the same respect, too, I would suggest that hamlet managers' quasisexual actions as garden magicians are critical in their role of forming or shaping cohesive local followings of men of bloods of other clans and subclans (Malinowski 1966; Eyde 1983). These metaphorical connections of sexual intercourse, kula, and garden activity, then, broaden the distinctly paternal symbolism of the four types of Trobriand "father" proposed above - tama father, hamlet manager, cluster leader, and district chief. Another Trobriand exchange institution that also exhibits a quadripartite ordering is the ceremonial reciprocation between inland and lagoon villagers of garden produce for fish,11 termed wasi. At harvest time, inland villagers bring garden produce to their lagoon partners. Sometime thereafter, the lagoon dwellers go fishing on behalf of the former, who carry the catch home. Trobrianders wasi in this way only for major sagali distributions. Thus, the direct recipients of the vegetables or fish do not consume them themselves, but use the foods they receive to feed others. There would then seem to be four parties involved in wasi exchanges the initial givers and receivers of the fish and vegetables, and those to whom they are finally presented for consumption (Malinowski 1922:42-3; see Eyde 1976:243-4). Virtually all the domains of Trobriand culture I have considered so far have involved in one way or another the distinction of male versus female. Even the contrast of wasi fish and vegetable exchanges just discussed parallels this gender distinction (Eyde 1976). However, these isomorphisms rarely appear to be simply binary. Indeed, most of them suggest more complicated quadripartite orderings. For literal males and females, as we have seen, the body is bisected differently. Men possess externally manifested, substantial hardness or strength and an internal, nonsubstantial noise force, whereas women possess comparatively nonsubstantial or squishy bodies and external stores of substantial wealth and power (Montague 1983). It is the fourfold pattern implicit here that appears to link together several otherwise disconnected domains of the culture that have been carefully examined quite recently by others. Because these contemporary analyses have tended to be extremely involved, I can only refer here to their most salient features. First, with respect to the plan of Trobriand village organization, Malinowski contrasted the central area with the peripheral street as male to female (1929:10). Levi-Strauss, however, has pointed out a more "complex [i.e., double] system of oppositions." The outer ring of domestic houses for commoners is conjoined with the peripheral street, and these two spaces together are associated with the female, marriage, and cooked

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food. By contrast, the inner ring of yam houses and the enclosed central area are jointly associated with the male, bachelorhood, and uncooked food (1963a:136-7). Keesing has suggested further that at the milamala harvest festival when the baloma spirits return to the village, these and parallel relations (regulated sex/unregulated sex, moon/sun, dark/light, above/below, and so on) are systematically reversed (1981:359-61; Boon 1972:127). A similar ceremonial inversion of categories in fact seems to be involved in the women's mortuary ceremony (Weiner 1976:104-5). Investigating the attributions of male and female mythical beings with malevolent powers, Tambiah (1983) isolates a set of four significant categories: male sorcerers (bwaga'u), female witches (mulukwausi and yoyova), nonhuman malignant spirits (tauva'u), and human ancestral spirits (baloma). The nonhuman malignant spirits have exchange relationships with male sorcerers, and baloma spirits are reincarnated through human females. These parallels are crosscut by space, however, as male sorcerers and female witches are associated with "aboveground," and nonhuman and human spirits with "belowground." Tooker's (1979) efforts to reveal the links between Trobriand views of kula exchange with sexual symbolism have yielded a very similar fourfold classification, such that male sorcery is to kula as female witchcraft is to procreation. And focusing upon the complementation of the sexes in the context of principal subsistence occupations, Eyde derives yet another but convergent set of distinctions: "The ritual of gardening (male) is to the earth (female) as the ritual of fishing (female) is to the sea (male)" (1976:246). I cannot here explore further these very abstract semantic and structural interconnections. However, as the data and analytic techniques have improved, the more clearly has the pervasiveness of homologous quadripartite classification in Trobriand culture become evident. This comparative digression beyond Bush Mekeo culture into the related traditions of Tikopia and the Trobriands is merely a first step, but nonetheless a productive one. In spite of the ethnographic differences among the three, analogous institutions - many of them clearly cognate - have been shown to be systematically arranged according to essentially the same quadripartite plan. Moreover, this structuralist perspective on each culture as a total system of indigenous meanings has shed new light on many old ethnographic problems. For Tikopia, conception theory; clan and district organization; ritual specializations and roles of chiefs and elders; and life-crisis rites are the most noteworthy. And for the Trobriands, conception theory again; gender distinctions; clan and subclan organization; marriage regulation; mortuary ritual; rank and political integration and the roles of fathers, managers, leaders, and chiefs; and yam, kula, and wasi exchange deserve mention.

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Using this approach, it is conceivable that similar results could be obtained by examining yet other cultures, Oceanic and beyond. Sahlins's recent reanalysis of his original Fijian material, for example, clearly represents a fourth case from the Austronesian sphere where significant and diverse contexts of the culture are ordered according to bisected dualities (1976:24-46). The cultures of Palau and the Motuans appear also as likely candidates (Mosko 1980:325-30). And in a study of a different sort based on linguistic materials, Blust has even generated a model for early Austronesian social organization that strikingly conforms with the exact quadripartite formula at issue (1980a, 1980b; Goodenough 1955; Fox 1980b). Finally, outside this range, Hage and Harary (1981) have revealed quadripartite conceptual structures in the culture of the Melpa of the New Guinea Highlands that are compatible with group theory in mathematics, as described in Chapter 1 (see also Hage 1976; cf. Rubel and Rosman 1978). Clearly, that such structural convergences may exist between different cultures, either related or unrelated, could well have implications beyond just Oceanic ethnography. And it is to this possibility that I turn in the next and final chapter.

10 Conclusions: indigenous categories, cultural wholes, and historical process

Two kinds of interconnections have been shown in the preceding pages to ramify throughout Bush Mekeo culture, giving it both meaning and form. First, categories articulated together in one context (the body, for example) are invoked also in others (space and time, adult-male and -female ritual, social organization, death and mortuary ritual, etc.). Second, the sets of relations by which the categories of the culture are juxtaposed uniformly exhibit a structure of bisected dualities. These diverse contexts thus constitute semantic metaphors and structural homologies of one another (Levi-Strauss 1963a:83). The same may well also be ventured, on the basis of my comparative sketches, of Tikopia and the Trobriands. The purpose of this chapter is largely to explicate these findings. However, in the process of doing so, a number of collaterally important implications for cultural and social theory arise. These involve the analytical efficacy of indigenous culture categories, the nature of cultural systems as integrated, meaningfully structured totalities, and the relation of these structures to historical process. As I summarize my conclusions regarding Bush Mekeo culture, I shall directly address these issues as well. Many of the significant semantic relations upon which this analysis is based have consisted of both kinds of "motivation" described by Gell (1975) and discussed in Chapter 1; that is, certain critical indigenous categories are either polysemous, or they are constituted of words compounded of other words. Examples of polysemy would include the systematic employment of spatial metaphors in body, waste/resource, village/bush, and clan-relationship classifications. In an identical way, the concept engama variously means procreative conception and mortuary de-conception and re-conception, as well as beginning in general. So also does ina refer to the ideas of mother, bodily abdomen, and village abdomen; ito to vagina and fire; ikupu to clan and closed; etc. The analysis of compound words has been especially revealing in the analysis of highly specialized contexts of the culture. To give a few examples, oa, "law," plus if a, "blood," make "law of blood," or official mourner; pa or fa, "skin," plus nge, "lost," make "lost skin," or feast food; kofu, "clubhouse," plus apie, "half" or "other half," make "other clan"; ina, "moth234

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er," plus ngome, "owner," make "owners of the mother," or father's relatives; eke, "junior," plus/afca, "senior," make sibling of symmetrical status; if a, "blood," plus kekapaisa, "making" or "manipulating," makes "manipulating blood," or quarreling. In addition to these, numerous nonmotivated metaphors have been described: semen/male/closing/meat/dry/ unsweet/bush, womb-blood/female/opening/plant food/wet/sweet/village, and so on. Altogether, these relations among indigenous categories exemplify the semantic interconnections of the cultural system. The structural relations of the culture, alternatively, consist of quadripartite conceptual contexts systematically arranged in dual and crosscutting oppositions. In each context, one binary pair is bisected by its own inversion. I have expressed these formal homologies of the culture in terms of a structure of bisected dualties: X' : Y" :: Y' : X" These semantic and structural sorts of interrelationships together give rise to a pair of considerations at once empirical and theoretical; namely, the analytical validity of the indigenous categories, on the one hand, and the nature of the cultural system as a whole, on the other. Although these two are very much interdependent issues, I shall attempt to consider the critical aspects of each separately. By virtue of the many instances of semantic interrelation I have isolated, the enormous number of disconnected meanings in the culture are substantially reduced. The model of the total culture remains at this stage, of course, an extremely complex functionalist system, with an impressive number of categories and meanings. However, the number of these is smaller than if there were no polysemy, word compounding, or metaphor, or, rather, if these various kinds of sign relationships were not regarded as significant. Where all this leads is to the observation that for Bush Mekeo culture, as for others, there appear to be a relatively few key or central symbols that crosscut diverse contexts or domains and establish the dominant themes of the culture. In a famous quotation, Evans-Pritchard has said, "As every fieldworker knows, the most difficult task in social anthropology field work is to determine the meanings of a few key words, upon an understanding of which the success of the whole investigation depends" (Evans-Pritchard 1962:80). It is through the ethnographic decipherment of the semantic interconnections of the cultures key categories that the culture as a whole and its various elements then become intelligible. The possibility of viewing a culture in this general way has been variously proposed by others in terms of "key" or "core symbols" (Ortner 1973), "epitomizing symbols" (Schneider 1980:135-6), "dominant symbols" (Turner 1967), and "root metaphors" (Pepper 1942; see also Leach

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1958b; Hallpike 1969; Douglas 1966; 1970; Firth 1973:262-98; Sahlins 1976:210-21; Bourdieu 1977:114-24; Piaget 1970:44-5). All these viewpoints suggest that certain domains or sectors from all of a culture are in one or another way dominant or privileged; that is, they go a considerable distance toward semantically bringing the diverse and otherwise disparate cultural contexts together. For the Bush Mekeo, these dominant symbols might initially seem to be those that deal with the body: inside, outside, and their inversions; blood, nonblood, and analogous substances; sweet, unsweet, and dirty; male and female; open and closed; etc. These metaphors of the body could also be seen as extended into contexts of classifying social relations, (e.g., kinship, gender, ritual) and space and time. Moreover, these metaphors do not involve merely piecemeal transfer, but instead, as I have emphasized throughout, they are systematic and logical. Although the body metaphor notion frankly does reflect my own earlier intuitions about the culture, methodological and theoretical considerations have led me to be more cautious of this and other alternatives. At the juncture of isolating a set of dominant symbols for a particular culture, Ortner (1973) proposes two possible procedures; I shall suggest a third. First, as implied above, one context - the body, in this case - is identified by the analyst as containing the key or dominant symbols, and the other contexts of the culture as possessing extensions of them. The standard indicators by which key symbols can be isolated are, following this procedure: 1. The natives tell us that X is culturally important. 2. The natives seem positively or negatively aroused about X, rather than indifferent. 3. X comes up in many different contexts. These contexts may be behavioral or systemic: X comes up in many different kinds of action situation or conversation; or X comes up in many different symbolic domains (myth, ritual, art, formal rhetoric, etc.). 4. There is greater cultural elaboration surrounding X, e.g., elaboration of vocabulary, or elaboration of details of X's nature, compared with similar phenomena in the culture. 5. There are greater cultural restrictions surrounding X, either in sheer number of rules, or severity of sanctions regarding its misuse. (Ortner 1973:1339) All these indicators apply to some degree to the Bush Mekeo case. However, the third one listed is perhaps closest and most consistent with my own perspective of the nature of cultural systems and indigenous categories. The second procedure, best exemplified by Schneiders (1980) treatment of American kinship, begins by analyzing the whole system of cate-

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gories and searching it for the context or domain wherein the various symbolic relations and distinctions are most clearly represented. The analyst then selects one as epitomizing all the rest. In somewhat different ways for each of these two procedures, one context is selected as dominant or epitomizing, and the others identified as metaphoric extensions of it. My hesitation and suspicion here, despite my intuitions, is that both involve some degree or element of analytic caprice. In the first case, nonmetaphoric and metaphoric usages are initially isolated on the basis of their frequency of occurrence in the culture, and then these quantitative observations are given the qualitative distinction as "key," "core," "dominant," etc.; there is, in other words, a methodological and epistemological leap of sorts from quantitative measures to qualitative significance. According to the second procedure, the selection of the epitomizing symbol(s) is neither an issue explicitly pertinent to constructing a model of the culture solely from the data as presented nor necessarily a salient attribute of the culture itself. Rather, epitomizing symbols are convenient but nonetheless potentially arbitrary literary or expository devices, which may well empirically lack the broad significances attributed to them (see Ortner 1973). A third procedural possibility, which I am proposing here, is at once more modest and more ambitious. The signs or symbols of Bush Mekeo culture are semantically ordered in part through their replication across cultural contexts, but there is no single symbol or context that can necessarily be identified as dominant over the others. For Bush Mekeo culture, one could propose, as I did quite tentatively above in a sort of modified Marxian perspective on the labor theory of value, that it is the experience of ones own body that is the first and foremost reality. All others would be secondary refractions of it according to how the body is exerted upon them (or vice versa) (cf. Bourdieu 1977:114-24). Quite the opposite is involved, of course, from a conventional Durkheimian viewpoint, whereby social forms are the primary roots of experience, and others, such as those of the body, are derivative of them (cf. Douglas 1970). Based upon other Bush Mekeo evidence, there is perhaps yet another alternative that the experience of living in bounded, consolidated villages surrounded by the bush shapes conceptualizations of all space and time, in the first instance, and subsequent to that, conceptions of the body and society (M. Strathern, personal communication). Long-standing, conflicting theoretical propositions could no doubt be advanced in support of all three of these views. My own considered thinking, however, is that no one of these either empirically or theoretically eliminates the value absolutely of the others. Notwithstanding, a telling feature they all share is that they implicitly assume relations that give deterministic qualities to the culture-as-lived over the culture-as-

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constituted (Sahlins 1976). The one overridingly inescapable ethnographic conclusion in the Bush Mekeo case, however, is that there are consistent, pervasive, structural homologies across the contexts of the culture, and, furthermore, that these are prior to any specific manifestation or content. "Matter and form, neither with any independent existence, are realized as structures, that is as entities which are both empirical and intelligible" (Levi-Strauss 1966a: 130). Therefore, of the two kinds of interrelations I have focused upon in building a model of Bush Mekeo culture, it is structural as distinct from semantic ordering that is preeminent. Otherwise stated, although the culture consists of semantic interrelations among its various categories, these latter are ultimately shaped by their structural counterpositioning dictated by the dimensions of the total system as an integrated whole. The structural whole is greater than the semantic parts. This seems the appropriate point to return to Brunton's (1980) disclaimers, introduced in Chapter 1, to the effect that order perceived in Melanesian religions and cultures by Western anthropologists is oftentimes an extraneous misconception. First, it is essential to differentiate methodologically the phenomenological "reality" of cultural and social life (the culture-as-lived, in Sahlins's terms) from models the anthropologist makes up after it in order to comprehend it (the culture-as-constituted) (Sahlins 1976; see also Levi-Strauss 1963a:277-345). Regarding models, there are, of course, better and worse ones. The standard test of the adequacy of any particular model in social anthropology depends upon how well it satisfies four requirements: First, the structure exhibits the characteristics of a system. It is made up of several elements, none of which can undergo a change without effecting changes in all the other elements. Second, for any given model there should be a possibility of ordering a series of transformations resulting in a group of models of the same type. Third, the above properties make it possible to predict how the model will react if one or more of its elements are submitted to certain modifications. Finally, the model should be constituted so as to make immediately intelligible all the observed facts. (Levi-Strauss 1963a:279-80; see also Piaget 1970:3-17 These four requirements are variously implicit in Brunton's reservations pertaining to the plausibility of Gell's (1975) analysis of ida ritual among the Umeda; namely, that there is an absence of both native exegesis and analyses of other rituals from the same cultural tradition for the sake of comparison and support. I am confident, however, that my treatment of Bush Mekeo culture adequately answers Brunton's charges by showing that the order conveyed is not exclusively the product of my own manipulations upon data from selected spheres of the cultural whole, given my own presumed inclination to "oversystemize. ' On the one

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hand, I have at numerous points established and reinforced my interpretations by juxtapositioning empirical observations with statements of native exegesis. Of course, in the field on many more occasions, it was just such kinds of statements villagers made that initially led me along the directions I have followed here. Only limitations of length have prohibited including more than a minor proportion of them in the preceding chapters.x On the other, I have not restricted the scope of my inquiries to any one ritual nor to rituals of any one sort. Indeed, I have revealed a structure of bisected dualities in many diverse contexts of the culture, ritual and otherwise. On both scores, then, the adequacy of my overall model in accurately reflecting significant systematic features of Bush Mekeo culture-as-constituted is thereby reaffirmed and strengthened. Brunton's contention, however, goes considerably farther. He argues, "Anthropologists have tended to ignore differences in the degree of coherence and elaboration in Melanesian religions" (1980:112) partly as a result of underestimating the degree to which indigenous political competitiveness encourages individualized and inconsistent statements of symbolic construction. Quite regularly, for example, Bush Mekeo villagers offered inconsistent and seemingly individualistic responses to my queries, and their own interactions just as often exhibited considerable variation. However, as I have tried to show, it is just these sorts of discrepancies - but seen as conventionalized rather than individualized that involve systematic and significant contradictions of the culture as a whole. The various bundles of conflicting data regarding blood and nonblood in contexts of consumption and reproduction; of gender roles; of classifying kin, clan, and affinal relations; and of marriage and mortuary feasting exchange are essential to portraying the very nature of the order that characterizes the culture. It is upon these hardly "individualistic" divergences that the whole system appears to turn and constitute itself as an ordered system, albeit fraught with contradiction. Although it is undeniable that villagers do fall upon opposing sides of conceptual issues in the unfolding of the political process, this observation does not alter the validity of the conceptual relations I have established. To suggest otherwise, as Brunton would seem to, is, I think, to confuse what Levi-Strauss has distinguished as a mechanical model (and a very simple one at that) for a statistical model; or, at the very least, to apply inappropriately the standards of evaluation of the latter to the former (1963a:283-9). In other words, whatever actions they might take to "maximize" their individual or political advantage, Bush Mekeo villagers (and I suspect other Melanesians too) have very little recourse but to the system of signs and meanings that comprise the public cultural domain. The seemingly "individualistic" interpretations proffered before anthropologists may well be anything but that - they may have meaning only in relation to other elements of the wider cultural whole.

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An even more serious problem underlies Brunton's attack, that is, the attempt to link varying and discrepant indigenous statements of a religious nature through reified categorical distinctions of extraneous origin (e.g., degree of orderliness, supernatural vs. political, sexual "conflict" vs. interclan "warfare'). In such areas, of course, native exegesis is by definition impossible because the latter, foreign notions are brought to the data by the observer. Nevertheless, this is the inherent risk of anthropological approaches that employ conceptual elements other than indigenous culture categories in their analyses. In the process of utilizing such analytical tools, the very sorts of relations that give the system meaning are either extracted out of context and distorted or ignored. And, of course, any eventual characterization of properties pertaining to the whole system is likely to be deceptive. A recent ethnographic study possessing the greatest ethnological bearing upon the understanding of Bush Mekeo culture illustrates most clearly the dangers of this kind of approach compared with the sort I have attempted here. I am referring to Hau'ofa's (1981) study of the neighboring Central Mekeo, which I have had numerous opportunities to cite. In the course of his analysis of Mekeo society, Hau'ofa investigates and elaborates upon several semantic domains of the culture, many of which I have also discussed at considerable length (e.g., inside vs. outside, senior vs. junior agnate, senior vs. junior clan branches, single vs. married, inlaw relationships, ufuapie and aua relationships [analogous to Bush Mekeo kofuapie and pisaua], chiefs and sorcerers vs. commoners) as well as others (e.g., visible vs. invisible, good vs. evil). However, in trying to make these distinctions intelligible, Hau'ofa chooses to relate them not solely or systematically to one another, as dictated by the categories themselves, but to extraneous Western notions. Following Bateson (1958), he employs the contrast of complementary and symmetrical dualism. Because he sees both evident to some degree in Mekeo society, Hau'ofa claims Mekeo villagers are fundamentally ambivalent about social life. Nevertheless, in contrast to Iatmul society, it is the complementary form of dualism that is declared predominant. Thus, Hau'ofa dissolves the diverse semantic contexts of Mekeo culture and society under a comprehensive principle of "inequality" (1981:289-302). Indeed, to an English-speaking outsider, relations of senior and junior siblings and clans, of wife-giver and wife-receiver, and of chief, sorcerer, and commoner, etc., all seem to involve variations of political "inequality. " This supposed uniformity, however, does not have any clear counterpart in indigenous understandings. As far as I am aware, in both Mekeo and Bush Mekeo cultures there is no single category opposition such as "equal" versus "unequal" applicable to all of these contexts, much less to contexts of inside versus outside, visible versus invisible, and so

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on. Indeed, in his enthusiasm to articulate the elements of Mekeo society to the single idea of "inequality," Hau'ofa has inadvertently distorted the very character of the categories and relations he is investigating. Two ethnographic cases from Bush Mekeo are most obviously noteworthy, and from what I understand they would apply equally well to Mekeo. First, in his analysis of ipangava affinal relations, Hau'ofa (1981:130-53) recognizes a uniform inequality between wife-givers and wife-receivers, such that the former are categorically dominant over the latter. Among Bush Mekeo, however, there is a status difference between some ipa ngaua affines, but not all. One's spouse's "real" opposite sex siblings, as distinct from more distant "brothers-" and "sisters-in-law," are not expected to exhibit any of the asymmetric behaviors; theirs are ideally purely symmetrical ties. And for more distantly related wive-giving affines (spouse's parents, cousins, clan members, etc.), these people are understood as being themselves one's own wife-receiving affines. As the total context indicates and as villagers themselves testify, the result is that these affinal asymmetries altogether balance each other out for the system overall, and personally for individuals on different occasions. When Hau'ofa extends the notion of "inequality' into the context of feasting reciprocities in order to characterize relationships between ufuapie groups and ana "soulmates," the identical confusion arises (1981:154-83). As with the Bush Mekeo, feast reciprocities between any two partners are strictly identical in terms of the types and quantities of foods exchanged. Nevertheless, in his zeal to find "inequality" here, Hau'ofa emphasizes that, in the early and late phases of any one feast, the givers are first "supplicants" and then "superiors" in relation to their guests, who are correspondingly on this occasion "superiors" and then "supplicants. " Later, when the guests have their own feast, all these roles will be reversed: The earlier feast-receivers will now become giving "supplicants"/"superiors," and their earlier hosts will play the roles of receiving "superiors"/"supplicants. " Hau'ofa has chosen to gloss these relationships as "symmetrical inequality" (1981:177-80). For me, it is tempting to posit here another dimension of quadripartite structuring in Mekeo culture. However, the data do not allow either, as there is no indication of any indigenous recognition that I am aware of that the roles of feast-giver and feast-receiver are anything but merely symmetrical and directly reciprocal. Even in Western terms, moreover, reciprocal or symmetrical relationships of "inequality" would seem to balance out to "equality," if anything, and not "inequality." Hau'ofa has evidently been misled by nothing other than the fact that Mekeo feast reciprocation between ufuapie and aua is not immediate but delayed. Yet, this cannot be enough to characterize the institution as one based on some principle of "inequality," or even "equality," for that matter (see Young 1982).

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More generally, the difficulty is not that the ethnographer has sought an order to Mekeo society, but that he has misconstrued that order in terms of Western meanings, ironically in many instances with the same sorts of Western meanings suggested by Brunton. In trying to fit Mekeo constructions into the Western notion of "inequality," Hau'ofa ends up ethnocentrically distorting the semantic content of Mekeo culture categories, and in the process he is led away from developing the structure intrinsic to the culture-as-constituted. Thus, after the dualistic tendency of the culture's categories is noted, the theoretical significance of this is laid aside and the whole hung instead on the singular notion of "inequality." Indeed, had the potential coexistence of both Batesonian notions of complementary and symmetrical dualism been more vigorously pursued, a more dynamic kind of structural ordering for the society and the culture might have been realized - one encompassing the systematic bisections of the dualisms that were observed. As a result, also, Hau'ofa might well have discovered a more sound ethnographic and theoretical basis for framing his psychological argument of Mekeo ambivalence about social life generally. Therefore, although going some considerable distance in isolating many of the important categories of the culture, Hau'ofa's effort creates a skewed conception of the whole of Mekeo culture and society, one that casts back upon the constitutive meanings of the indigenous categories and distorts them. By contrast, for Bush Mekeo culture I have aimed at making the indigenous concepts and categories intelligible through their given ethnographic relations to one another and as they are evident in the structural ordering of the culture as a whole, not as they relate to Western distinctions. Quite different theoretical considerations lead to precisely the same conclusion. The last decade or so has witnessed the resurgence of historicist perspectives in anthropology that tend to disavow the view of a culture as a meaningful and structured systems of signs. These raise once more, but from another quarter, the question of the analytical efficacy of native constructions and of cultures constituted as wholes. Judging on the basis of the Bush Mekeo case alone, these oversights are critical. Historicist perspectives typically substitute foreign for indigenous categories and thereby risk abandoning the hope of capturing the essential features, semantic and structural, of the phenomenon that is to be described, interpreted, and explained, that is, of culture. Moreover, they fail to appreciate the manner in which the noting of a structured cultural whole is capable of encompassing and comprehending historical events. The full theoretical dimensions of these issues go well beyond the bounds of this relatively modest ethnographic effort. But given their contemporary significance in anthropology, it is certainly appropriate that they be explored

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in light of my findings for Bush Mekeo culture. For indeed, the full theoretical value of the structure of bisected dualities has yet to be stated. The divergence represented by history and structure immediately recalls the Saussurian distinction of langue versus parole, variously rephrased in modern anthropological terms as structure versus event, synchrony versus diachrony, or culture-as-constituted versus culture-as-lived (Saussure 1959; Levi-Strauss 1966a:66-74, 231-44; Sahlins 1976, 1981; Schneider 1980). On the side of langue, the concern is with abstracted models of systematic relations among signs, among meanings, among ideas. Alternatively, the emphasis for parole is upon action, event, and behavior, upon historical or chronological determinations rather than upon system, ultimately upon concepts external to the object of study (i.e., those of the outside investigator's own cultural or scientific tradition) (Harris 1980; cf. Geertz 1973:3-30). The appropriate response to the historicist challenge, which is sustained by the empirical treatment of Bush Mekeo culture in the preceding chapters, is that the anthropological endeavor is of necessity first to make intelligible the systems of meaning and ideas that constitute the cultures of diverse societies. Only after the system of meaning of any particular culture has been thus synchronically elicited is it possible, secondarily, to account for the acts and events diachronically generated by that culture without obliterating in the process those very conceptual relations and structures that lend them their own systematic character. It was perhaps the case at one time that functionalist anthropologists neglected historical questions merely because they did not know how to incorporate them into their analyses (Leach 1954:282-7). However, this is no longer so (if it ever really was). Whereas the critical problem for many remains selecting one approach to the virtual neglect of the other (e.g., Harris 1980), for others including myself it involves instead recognition of the validity of both synchronic and diachronic views in their proper perspective, that is, according to the Saussurian precept of the priority of the former over the latter. Even Godelier, who has been perhaps the most insistent upon welding together structural and historical perspectives, argues that, in a correct Marxian framework, the study of the origins and development of a structure must methodologically come subsequent to a consideration of that structure's internal functioning (Godelier 1970:340-58, 1971). To undertake what is logically the second stage of investigation (i.e., history or diachrony) without first completing the synchronic analysis of the culture-as-constituted in its own terms would leave little option but to invoke the analyst's own externally imposed categories. The object of study - the system of signs and meanings - would thereby be almost certainly distorted. The issue, reduced to its essence, is this: "An exact knowledge of the system under investigation and of its

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structure is a necessary condition of any studies of the dynamic aspect of facts, i.e., of historical or genetical studies" (Schaff 1978:14). To understand the changes of a system, one must first specify what the system is that undergoes those changes. At the level of social action, there is no inherent logic or meaning except in the context of a coherent and consensual system of signs (Sahlins 1976; Geertz 1973:17). Were it to be assumed otherwise, the conception of cultures as integrated totalities, each in their own right, would evaporate, leaving piecemeal residues unconnected except for their temporal coincidence. Clearly, considerations of social action and history need not be inconsistent with, nor mere alternatives to, structuralist constructions. In their accurate, concrete, and meaningful forms, they logically follow from prior synchronic considerations. Bush Mekeo lineage and clan histories, as described at length in Chapter 6, for example, become intelligible only within the total conceptual framework of the intersecting dual contrasts of peace versus war and chief versus sorcerer, which is, furthermore, logically consistent with the structure of bisected dualities that ramifies throughout all of the culture. Similarly, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 6, the Bush Mekeo conception of warfare (aoao), although it has been for long now obsolete as an event, is an inescapable fact or reality in contemporary village life. The meanings of other ideas in the culture such as peace sorcery, courtship, marriage relations, etc., are partially shaped by it, and vice versa. And so too are many actual occurrences and developments throughout Bush Mekeo postcontact history up to the present. This does not require that from an analytic viewpoint practical considerations are not involved, or that they are to be excluded at the expense of the "merely symbolic." Rather, the notion of practicality itself can have meaning only against the fine texture of a specified system of signs, that is, only when it is contextualized by a wider set of culturally conditioned understandings. This is, I think, the essence of Sahlins's attack upon theories of practice in his book, Culture and Practical Reason (1976), which I have found many opportunities to cite; namely, "there is no material logic apart from the practical interest, and the practical interest of men in production is symbolically constituted" (p. 207). Jamous's critique of Bourdieu takes this general position as well (1981:140-2). An anthropology of history is not thereby deemed impossible. Quite the reverse. In a more recent work interpreting and explaining the sequence of events surrounding Captain Cook's experiences in early Hawaiian history, Sahlins traces a convincing dialectic between, on the one hand, the preconceived and developing cultures-as-constituted of both the Hawaiians and British and, on the other, the chronological unfolding of their mutual interactions (Sahlins 1981; see also Sahlins 1983). Represented as both exemplars and contradictions to prevailing symbolic val-

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ues, events did contribute to revaluing or restructring the culture. Nevertheless, at no point did any of the players act free of the values embodied in their contemporary world views. The culture-as-constituted at every step lent significance to the culture-as-experienced. Although the interactions may have contributed to the reshaping of categories and relations of the culture, their unfolding and interpretation were inevitably screened through preexisting conventional understandings. Structural relations remain, then, prior to diachronic ones. Again, as Sahlins remarks, the world is experienced as already segmented by relative principles of significance; and even if experience proves contradictory to people's categorical presuppositions, still the process of redefinition is motivated by the logic of their cultural categories. The innovative value is still a relationship between signs and cannot be determined directly from the "objective" properties of the referents. (1981:70) My analysis of the structure and meanings of traditional Bush Mekeo culture contained in this volume should be seen as thus representing a first and essential step toward examining the course of development of that system in postcontact history. Indeed, the most suggestive theoretical possibility deriving from this work goes beyond the relatively simple observation that the categories of the culture are structurally ordered to the recognition that the precise logical form of that structure has a specific appropriateness for the kind of historical analysis Sahlins envisions. For him, synchrony through the agency of its inherent contradictions opens itself to diachrony. In my model of Bush Mekeo culture, contradiction is explictly embedded in the pairing of conceptual contrasts systematically bisected by their own inversions. In the wider view, there appear to be altogether two sorts of "contradictions" possible, however. Their relation, moreover, seems to be instrumental in the articulation of synchrony and diachrony. On the one hand, conceptual elements contradict each other; on the other, they as idealized forms are contradicted by observed deviations from them in action. Leach's classic exploration of the logical and empirical implications of mayu-dama relationship in Kachin society isolated both of these kinds of integrative discrepancies (Leach 1954). And it is around these two also that many contemporary studies in Melanesia continue to revolve. A particularly illustrative case in point is Kelly's study in structural contradiction in the social organization of the Etoro of the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea (Kelly 1977). Rather than deny the compatibility of structure and event, Kelly demonstrates the theoretical virtue of their interconnectedness. Speaking of social structure specifically, he "envisions an entirely different relationship between elements than that entertained by either descent or alliance theorists" (1977:5). Socialstructural principles involving conflicting rules of action, he finds, are

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segregated from one another. Obligations that appear, then, at a superficial level as not inconsistent are at a deeper level contradictory. In the Etoro case, rules of patrilineal descent conflict with those of siblingship, and vice versa.2 There is as a consequence additional discrepancy and inevitable contradiction between these rules and their observance. Nonetheless, in the unfolding of social action, deviation in one context or domain may represent compliance relative to another. And, paradoxically, statistical deviations from idealized rules are viewed as public endorsements of shared structural understandings. This view of structure is rooted in the very notion of contradiction itself. It is thus differentiated from more conventional perspectives informed by assumptions of simple consistency, structural or otherwise. In this respect, Kelly's analysis is clearly assimilable to the kind of interpretation of Bush Mekeo culture I have offered in terms of homologously replicated bisected dualities. His fundamental proposition, that behavior incompatible with rules in one domain can be consistent with rules in another, has essentially the same implications as when I have shown how opposed indigenous categories are bisected by their own inversions. The so-called real world of action and experience will only rarely if ever perfectly conform to the cultural or idealized models of that reality. Any attempts to classify the real world will thereby generate ideational anomalies. It is at this juncture, however, that my argument deviates considerably from Kelly's (1977:298). To account conceptually for the empirical experience of these anomalies, new categories are, or will be, generated. The expression and resolution of the contradictions are not necessarily to be discovered only through action, but also in the conceptual realm of the culture-as-constituted. This view quite closely resembles that of Leach (1964) and Douglas (1966) - that it is the anomalies of structure arising at the boundaries of distinct categories where the structures themselves are at once threatened and redefined. Nonetheless, my view differs slightly from theirs too in that with Bush Mekeo culture it is not merely a single intermediate third category that performs this function, but again an additional binary inverted version of the original pair resulting in a complete quadripartite structure. Bush Mekeo contradictions in the contexts of conception and alimentation, gender roles, social structure, and mortuary feasting are resolved through their own inversions.3 Like Kelly's model of structure, then, my own rests on the notion of contradiction or inversion; unlike it, however, contradiction is resolved in further conceptualization, and not necessarily through action alone. Still, it is experience of the world that partially generates the impetus for that further conceptualization. As with Leach and Douglas, furthermore, my view of structure is based upon the inevitability of conceptual anomalies

Conclusions

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as a result of simply binary discriminations and experiences; but unlike theirs, it involves quadripartite rather than tripartite classifications. There is an additional aspect of structures such as I have been discussing that potentially extends even further the analytical linking of structure to event. Structures of bisected dualities, it seems, may well possess a special capability to encompass real-world deviations from cultural precepts in an entirely comprehensive manner. Conceivably beginning with any simple binary pair, there will be considerable correspondence with, as well as deviation from, both terms in the process of employing them to interpret experience of the world, as argued by Kelly. The correspondences will reaffirm the epistemological "truths' of the initial pair, but not so easily the deviations. The experiential manifestations of either category of the pair that do not exactly correspond to the alternate term as well may generate, in both instances combined, a new additional pair of terms that inverts the first, for a total of four terms altogether. As a simple hypothetical (and I hope not too provocative) example of the logic being suggested here, there are, in our culture, two gender categories ordinarily recognized: female and male. Further significant or idealized paired qualities are also conventionally associated with one or the other gender respectively: short versus tall, gentle versus aggressive, weak versus strong, and so on. Living experience of women and men, however, occasionally belies these correspondences. Some men are seen as shorter, more gentle, or weaker than women generally, and so too are some women oftentimes noticed to be taller, more aggressive, and stronger than many men. A simply binary distinction is therefore inadequate to accommodate all commonplace experiences of gender variation. Instead, four categories would be required: conventional female, conventional male, feminine male, and masculine female. Examples of this logical mode from Bush Mekeo culture that are perhaps most easy also to visualize would include spatial distinctions of the world and of the body. In the former context, there exist the bush and the village, but there is also a portion of the bush adjacent to the village where village wastes accumulate, and a region of the village where bush resources, once processed into wastes, are collected. In the context of bodily discriminations, there are, additional to an inside and an outside, regions where outside space is inverted into the body (i.e., the abdomen) and where substances of the body's inside are everted to the outside (i.e., excreta). The quadripartite distinctions in each of these examples are utterly comprehensive. Seeming exceptions to, or deviations from, our standard cultural classification of gender are encompassed elsewhere by inverted culture categories. There is thus no experience of gender in American culture that does not easily fall within one or another of the four pos-

248

Quadripartite structures

sibilities. So too are instances of spatial and bodily anomaly in Bush Mekeo experience systematically accommodated by quadripartite distinctions. In this manner, I propose, structures of bisected dualities may possess a particular efficacy. The theoretical implications of this potential for the relation of structure to event or synchrony to diachrony are distinctive. Structure and synchrony are not necessarily irreconcilable to historical events and diachrony (cf. Saussure 1959; Godelier 1977; Auge 1982). Not only are the two perhaps enjoined, as I have argued, but structure remains prior to event. Deviations and exceptions, or even change for that matter, are not fortuitous but follow from the structure of symbolic meanings. It seems intrinsic to the phenomenon of human experience that the world is not experienced except through cultural or conceptual precepts and symbolic classifications. These properties together provide some grounding for the empirical possibility that the structure of bisected dualities may not be unique to Oceanic cultures. In Chapter 1-, I discussed analogous formulas prevalent in traditions of Western scholarship. In anthropology, these included established structuralist theories of myth from Levi-Strauss, Leach, Godelier, and Willis, Van Gennep's classic formulation of ritual along with its many modern elaborations, Andriolo's characterization of the relation of myth to history, Hohfelds analysis of legal relations, Douglas's scheme for classification for grid and group, and Auges Marxian reconstituting of the anthropological field itself. Beyond anthropology, the most noteworthy instances of structures homologous with these are from Jakobson's patterns of phonological features, Piagetian developmental psychology, and the applications of the "Klein group' in mathematics. These last two, more than most, perhaps by linking together the logical operations of identity, negation, reciprocity, and correlation, have been viewed as the most widely generalizable. There are certainly still others (Piaget 1970). One possible implication of this convergence, of course, is that my having found essentially the same structure represented systematically in the non-Western traditions of the Bush Mekeo, Tikopians, and the Trobriands is due, not to the intrinsic nature of the latter, but rather to my own conditioning and adherence to a pattern of thought (conscious or unconscious) widespread in Western culture and scholarship. If such is indeed the case, then it is essentially to the same point, namely, that there is at least one culture so ordered - our own, or at least a significant part of it! More likely, though, the detailed examinations of Bush Mekeo, Tikopian, and Trobriand cultures contained in the previous chapters should lay aside most serious doubts that bisected dualities are not somehow important in ordering relations among their respective constituent categories. I have tried to suggest how structures of bisected dualities might be

Conclusions

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capable of encompassing behavioral deviations and exceptions in experience and in history. Deviations of action, from this perspective, are programmatic, just as conceptual ambiguities and contradictions are respectively encompassed and resolved. Does it finally become a credible possibility to describe, interpret, and explain cultures as wholes, or total social phenomena, rather than leaving it as an assumption that such is the case based upon the close examination of only parts of a culture? It seems not unexpectable that structures of bisected dualities with their special potential for both conceptual and behavioral comprehensiveness and wholeness might well typify more cultural systems than has heretofore been recognized. It is, of course, virtually certain that many cultures manifest fully effective structures of other sorts - simple binary systems, triadic ones, etc. - and conceivably even more diversity in the manner by which those structures articulate with historical events. Undoubtedly, the question will remain as much empirical as theoretical. Perhaps, the most prudent course would be to investigate first the extent to which bisected dualities structure the cultures of other Austronesian-speaking Pacific societies. If this structure is as pervasive in Bush Mekeo, Tikopian, and Trobriand cultures as I have suggested, one would expect it to be identifiable to a greater or lesser extent in cognate systems. What would be needed thereafter would be similar models of cultures from many culture areas, aimed too at uncovering the structures that give them each their distinctive sense of wholeness or totality while preserving as best as possible the systematic meanings of their respective indigenous categorizations. It should be noted that the contexts of the cultures I have selected for exemplification in the preceding chapters are in most cases not trivial ones. They concern not only politics, economics, kinship, and religion, but whole ways of integrating total cultures in their own terms. It is in this general direction that I have here taken a few very tentative steps. Therefore, besides finally bringing the Bush Mekeo out of hiding and into the anthropological world, I hope to have revealed a useful structural plan for describing, interpreting, and comparing cultures generally.

Appendix 1

Village resources derived from bush resources

garden foods meat of game animals houses, platforms, and clubhouses weapons tools of bone, wood, tooth, steel, and stone clothes (loincloths for men, grass or sago-leaf skirts for women) arm- and legbands bark belts combs string bags water for cooking and washing mats barkcloth blankets and sleeping nets nets for fishing and hunting dancing drums flutes canoes, paddles, and rafts firewood areca nut, betel pepper, and lime tobacco vegetable dyes ornaments and valuables of bone, shell, feather, and tooth ingredients (fuka) for ritual charms medicines (mulamula), etc.

250

Appendix 2

Ingestion and ingestibles

Ingestive process

Category of ingestible

eani eating

fuka medicines tsiale native tobacco nao twist tobacco sugar sugar tsitsimalu salt fokama plant food [traditional] akole sweet potato angeange taro kokou taro foa banana konga coconut ongoi breadfruit ongoi breadfruit seeds aisa sago kabatsi greens kamai almond fruit anifa pandanus nut ili sugarcane paupau papaya [introduced] banana ripe banana orantsi orange lemoni lemon tomato tomato plaur bread and scones laitsi rice nanatsi pineapple kauni maize meloni watermelon pumpkin squash pinutsi peanut onioni onion

251

252 eani eating (continued)

einu drinking

Appendix 2 tsitsi meat [traditional] kuma domesticated and bush pig matsi, mani wallaby pio cassowary auke dog kungaka cuscus apai bush fowl aina egg angai mullet kokolo chicken anika prawn kola tree iguana afinama flying fox oala crocodile maipa duck mokoa, bull catfish kangaua eel engo cockatoo ainapa hornbill moa frog inema rat tsinotsino glider opo bird of paradise boku barramundi (and several other unidentified species of grub, amphibian, and marsupial) [introduced] bull corned beef and mutton kampai camp pie maka tinned mackerel gugu breast milk fuka medicines ivi water [traditional] ivi river water kemoa wild banana stalk fluid konga coconut milk imenga broth of boiled food konga coconut oil [introduced] tsi tea cofi coffee loli water soft drinks milak cow's milk bia beer

Ingestion and ingestibles

euwa chewing

uiski whiskey rum rum fuka medicines max areca nut awaka betel pepper apu lime

253

Appendix 3

Categories of food

Plant foods Food category

Preparation

sweet potato cooking banana ripe banana cabbage small taro big taro coconut coconut oil pineapple papaya tomato pitpit maize squash watermelon sugarcane litsi almond fruit breadfruit breadfruit nuts sago pandanus rice sugar salt

B/R B/R raw B B B raw B raw raw

Parts eaten

Sex of eater

Body sustenance

S/N N N

M/F M/F F F M/F M/F F M/F F F M/F M/F M/F M/F F F F F M/F M/F M/F M/F M/F M/F M/F

H H C C H H C H C C H H H H C C C C H H H H H C C

N N N N N N S N N N N N S N N N N N N

B B/R R B raw raw raw raw

B/R B/R B/R B B raw raw

Note: B = boiled; R = roasted; S = skins; N = not skins; M = male; F = female; H = hot; C = cold.

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Categories of food

255

Bush meat foods

Animal species

O O O O/I O/I

o o

O/I

o o o 0

o o o o o

O/I O/I

o

o

O/I O/I O/I O/I

B/R/D B/R/D B/R/D B/R R B/R B/R/D B/R/D B/R/D B/R/D B/R/D R B/R B/R B R B/R R R R B B

R

Dirty parts

Unsweet parts

Big/ small

HAF HAF HAF A? SAFTOU HAF HAF AF HAF HAF HAF HAF HSAF HSAF

U U U S?

s b s s b b b b b b b s s

HAF SAFTOU SAFTOU HAF ST ST SAFTOU SAFTOU SAFTOU SAFTOU

u u us u u u u u u u u u u u s s

s s b s s s C/3

O/I

Preparation

C/3

wallaby bush pig mullet prawns eel cuscus barramundi crocodile tree iguana cassowary large flying birds small flying birds glider bird of paradise grubs beetle bush fowl catfish buli catfish rat cassowary egg bush fowl egg snakes small lizards frogs ground iguana

Bush location

s b/s s s b

Note: O = outside of bush holes; I = inside bush holes; B = boiled; R = roasted; D = smoke dried; H = hair, feathers, scales (buibui); S = skin; T = meat and blood; O = organs; U = bones; A = anus and colon; F = feces; b = big meat; s = small meat.

Appendix 4

Work and nonwork skills

Work skills garden clearing, burning, planting, weeding, harvesting carrying chopping firewood construction of houses, platforms, clubhouses canoe manufacture fencing grass cutting rubbish removal digging butchering wood carving boiling food bark pounding tool manufacture (axes, adzes, knives, weapons, drills, pounders, etc.) valuable manufacture (shell armbands, feather ornaments, strings of dogs' teeth, strings of cowrie shells, etc.) fire making Nonwork skills hunting with dogs, spear, shotgun, bow and arrow, nets fishing with spear, bow and arrow, hook and line, nets ritual for hunting, fishing, gardening, curing, peace sorcery, war sorcery, courting, mefu, pig husbandry drum making dancing drumming singing roasting food chewing areca and betel childbirth marriage-compensation exchange mortuary-feast exchange

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Appendix 5

Categories of human dirt

Bloody dirt blood flesh semen menstrual blood placenta umbilical cord pus

Bloodless dirt feces urine skin oil saliva fufu head hair buibui body hair nail parings tears vomit areca spittle

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Appendix 6

The myth of Foikale and Oa Lope

Version Ft* A long time ago in the region of Inauakina (a Bush Mekeo Village), there was a village (sic) where there were only men. No women, no girls, nothing but men. They gave birth by themselves (men to men), and upon being born they were already strong and able to search for their nourishment. These men were savages. They did not wear clothes, lived in caves in the side of a hill, and did not even make gardens. Their only nourishment was a kind of earth called onkimo; they dried it in the sun and swallowed it that way. The principal personages of this curious village were Foikale, Koikoipike, Kapankoupike, Maimaipike, and Ikangopo. They were very famous. Foikale was the chief. In the same region, there was a family of which the husbands name was Oa Lope, and the wife was Oini. They had several children. Oa Lopes family completely ignored Foikale's village, and the latter had no acquaintance with Oa Lope. One day, Foikale was going walk-about and came to a fence constructed of split and interlaced bamboos. Never had he seen such a thing. He made a tour of the border, found an opening, entered, and was stupefied at the sight of a garden of magnificent bananas. This was Oa Lope's garden. Keeping a distance, he cried, "Psh! Psh!" to see if the stalks of bananas would run away, but they did not. They stayed in place, immobile. Then he advanced and walked in the garden, wondering what this might well be. Thus, he arrived at the foot of a banana tree, of which a ripened bunch was detached and on the ground. Foikale stopped. He was afraid. He thought it was a snake, and he said, "Psh! Psh!" But it did not move. He came up to it, and with a stick he drew one of the bananas away. It allowed itself to be caught without difficulty. Foikale felt it, smelled it, and hazarded a bite with his teeth. "My, but this is good." And he swallowed it. He took a second one and ate it too. * Translated from Guis 1936:220-6.

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The myth of Foikale and Oa Lope

259

But as this nourishment was new to him, he vomited it up. Foikale was not to be beaten, and he recommenced to eating, finding the bananas more and more delicious. When he had eaten his fill, he shook the tree, and a bunch fell down. He caught it, covered it up, and returned triumphantly to his village (sic). He rolled away the heavy stone placed at the entrance of his cave. His companions were together there and sleeping. He woke them up and said, "You must eat whatever thing is good, better than onkimo." But at seeing the bananas, they thought they were seeing snakes, and they ran away out of the cave. Foikale called them back, shouting, "Nonsense to be afraid, you go away although it does not move!" And so to encourage them, he ate one in front of them, and they returned. But Foikale, anticipating that they would vomit, placed them back to back so that they would not take a dislike to them mutually. Then he gave everyone two bananas. They ate them, and they tasted good. But after several minutes, there was a universal collapse, as Foikale had thought. His greatly angered companions accused him of having deceived them, but he responded that he also had done it thus, and that they must come to try a second time, the bananas will stay in place. They allowed themselves to be persuaded, and indeed they were not disturbed by them at all. They looked at one another with an air of complacence, clicking their tongues and rubbing their stomachs in sign of satisfaction. They asked him questions without end, and Foikale, with the help of many details, described his last walk-about. When Foikale had left Oa Lope's garden, Oini, the latter's wife, went there to work, and she was very frightened on seeing the footprints, which were not those of her husband and her children. She went to tell Oa Lope, and the two of them returned and installed themselves in the garden to take up guard. Several days later, Foikale, dressed in the manner of his first adventure, went directly along his new path toward the garden. This time he perceived plumes of smoke, and great was his fear: "This time for sure this is a snake, it walks in the air, it flies!" And trembling, he squatted behind a trunk of a fallen tree. From his hiding place he saw two people seated near the stalk of this serpent. His fear increased, especially when these two people rose and came toward him. He thought himself lost, and he uttered a cry. Oa Lope and Oini, in their turn, fell to the ground with fear. They overcame their fear and, approaching, asked, "Who are you?" "I am Foikale. And you, who are you?" "I am Oa Lope, and this is Oini, my wife." "Your wife? What is that?" Oa Lope thought that Foikale was being funny, and he did not respond to this question, which Foikale had posed very seriously. "Where do you come from?" asked Oa Lope.

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Appendix 6

"I come from over there, from the foot of the mountain. My village is very big," responded Foikale. "Come with me," said Oa Lope. And all three went together. But when they approached the fire, Foikale was afraid, and he asked, "What is this? Is it something that will bite me?" "No," said Oa Lope, "it is fire. It is a very good thing. It is with this that we cook food. Watch." And Oa Lope told his wife to put on the embers some green bananas. When they were cooked, he took one, removed the peel, and gave it to Foikale, who did not care to eat it. Oa Lope reassured him and ate one in front of him. Then Foikale tasted his but vomited it a little afterward. However, instructed by his first experience, he began again and found that the bananas cooked were better than green. Oa Lope told him that this depended on the kind and indicated to him that some were eaten raw and some were cooked. At the moment of departing, Oa Lope said to him, "You return in three days. Now take away this bunch of bananas and this ember. On arriving in your cave, lay the ember on the ground with some dry leaves and small sticks on top. Blow, and the flame will come, and henceforth you will have fire, which you must not allow to die. But tell your friends not to sit down on top of it." Foikale, completely happy, returned to his village where the cooked bananas and the fire, especially, after having caused a moment of distrust and panic, obtained the greatest success. Foikale, filled with pride, explained everything to them. True to the appointment, three days later Foikale was again at the place of Oa Lope. He saw Oini squatting close to the fire, looking from time to time into a great bowl that was in the middle of it. "What is this large bowl in the fire?" "It is a kettle. Oini makes it with clay, soil. It allows us to hold water and boil vegetables." And Oa Lope had him drink a little of the sauce from the bowl. Foikale said that it was very good and that this was much better than the soil of his village. Oa Lope made him a gift of a pot and gave him some explanations necessary for using it. Foikale took it away and made known his new marvel at this place. After three days, on another visit, Oa Lope taught Foikale about the spear and its use. He took it with him to hunt a wallaby. On seeing this beast, Foikale trembled with all his members. "Why are you shaking?" asked Oa Lope. "I am afraid of that man with hair, over there." "It is not a man, it is a wallaby (matsi). Aren't there any at your place?" "I've never seen one," said Foikale. "Ah, well, you come watch now," said Oa Lope, and, brandishing his

The myth of Foikale and Oa Lope

261

spear, threw it into the stomach of the wallaby, which fell down dead. Oa Lope grabbed it, scorched off its hair, cut it open, cleaned it, cooked a piece, and gave it to Foikale, who declared that it was better than bananas, even cooked. Oa Lope killed three other wallabies and gave them to Foikale, who took them to his village, cooked them as he had seen Oa Lope do, and invited everyone to eat. After several grimaces, all the stomachs (sic) digested this new nourishment with bliss. Again, three days later, Foikale returned to visit Oa Lope. They were becoming great friends. Oa Lope said to him, "I have given you many things, I have taught you many things. Now I am going to make a gift again. This is the last, because afterward I will have nothing. You see this person. Ah, well, this is a girl, this is my daughter; I give her to you. You marry together that your children will be numerous and that your village will prosper." Foikale left with the daughter of Oa Lope. He had several children. Oa Lope on his side had many other children, and the boys of the village of Oa Lope married daughters of the village of Foikale, and some of the village of Foikale married the daughters of the village of Oa Lope. It is thus that we still do, for it is not good for a young man to take a girl of the same village (sic) as himself. It is thus to Oa Lope we render intelligence (makarima) because previously we were aki (savages), had no houses, no bananas, no vegetables, no spears, no game, no women. We ate nothing but earth. Not us, but our old, old, old grandfathers. It had been this way a very long time. Now it is no longer so, and it is Oa Lope who has changed everything. Version Fu* Oa Lope knew how to do everyting. He was very clever to make houses, gardens, fire, cook food. But Foikale lived in the bush, mucked about there. Foikale did not know how to cook nor make fires, and so he and his clan lived together and ate only raw food. So Foikale one day came to Oa Lope's garden, cut down some ripe bananas, and took the bunch away. However, he did not steal this food properly so Oa Lope would not detect the theft; he left leaves hanging down and on the ground. Oa Lope came to his garden later and saw the footprints and the places where the grass was bent over from someone walking. He followed the footprints and the grass, came to the banana tree where the fruit had been stolen, and called out, "Who took my bananas? " Foikale had hid himself at the edge of the garden in small trees. Oa Lope followed the footprints to him. * Recorded by author.

262

Appendix 6

After Foikale sat in the small trees, he sat down and thought or talked to himself. First, he considered, "Now that Oa Lope has come, I will have to give them (the bananas) to him." But then he thought, "When I take them to Oa Lope, he will see me coming with his bananas and try and kill me." Foikale had been sitting facing the direction from which he had come, so he turned his back to where Oa Lope was coming from. But then he thought if he turned his back to Oa Lope, then Oa Lope would think he was afraid. So, at this Foikale turned his side to face Oa Lope. Then Oa Lope came up and called out, "Wau [namesake], where do you come from?" Foikale said, "I grew up here (as a tree)." Oa Lope asked him who took his bananas, and Foikale said he grew up there so he did not know. Then Oa Lope took him back to his village. When they got to Oa Lopes house, Foikale saw it, and they went inside. There Foikale saw Oa Lopes wife. He was surprised, and asked, "What is this?" Oa Lope said it was his wife. So then Foikale went up to her and felt her skin all over with his hands. Then he pulled open her grass skirt, grabbed her vagina, and asked, "What is this?" Oa Lope said, "Vagina, you do this with it, let me show you." So then Oa Lope copulated with his wife while Foikale looked on. When Oa Lope was finished, Foikale copulated with Oa Lope's wife too. Then when he was done, and after a little while, Foikale was sitting in the house, and he began looking at all the parts of it from the inside. He asked his namesake, "What is this?" and Oa Lope said it was his house. And so that is where Foikale stayed. Then next day, Foikale went outside the house and started to disassemble it piece by piece, untying all the string on the roof, all the grass, and all the sticks of the walls. He laid all the pieces on the ground. And when that was finished, he began to build it again using the pieces of the old house. For the roof, he went and cut new grass, and put it on. So now Foikale knew about houses. The first time Foikale came to Oa Lope's, he never knew about fire. One day, Oa Lope made a big fire in the bush out of dried timber, sticks, and so on, and Foikale saw it and got afraid. But then Oa Lope told him, "Wau, it is fire, do not be afraid, women use it to cook food." So Oa Lopes wife cooked some food and they ate it together. But when Foikale finished eating, he vomited out the food because before that he only ate uncooked food. Later in the evening, Oa Lope asked Foikale to have a chew with him. Foikale had never chewed areca with lime before, so he took a limestick, stuck it up inside Oa Lopes wife's vagina, got the juice on it, and put it in his mouth with areca nut. Oa Lope told him, "No, we do not do it that way." As he himself chewed, Oa Lope's mouth got red, so when Foikale

The myth of Foikale and Oa Lope

263

saw this, he was surprised, thought it was blood, and asked, "What is that? Blood?" Oa Lope said it was not real blood, but mouth-blood (akeifa) or chew (auwa). "So we do not use vagina. Instead we use lime and betel pepper with areca." After Foikale lived with Oa Lope a while, Foikale brought his people out of the bush to Oa Lopes village. They built houses, but they did not wear loincloths. So Oa Lope taught Foikale to wear a loincloth. Because Oa Lope taught Foikale to wear a loincloth, how to make fire, cook food, build houses, and chew areca, Foikale showed his people how to do these things. They were bushmen (ango aonga aunga), so they built their own houses and learned how to live in them, and Foikale showed them fire and how to cook with it. And when they ate, they too vomited from the cooked food, and Foikale showed them how to chew areca. So the people of Foikale came to live at the village. Version FHi* Foikale went to Oa Lope's garden, and he stole some bananas. Then he went into the bush adjacent to the garden. When Oa Lope came to the garden, he saw that some bananas were stolen. Then he noticed footsteps from the plundered tree to the forest, and he followed them. Meanwhile, Foikale was sitting in the bush facing the garden. When he heard Oa Lope call out, that he was coming to look for him, Foikale thought that it would be better if he did not see Oa Lope, because then he would try to dodge the spear and reveal to Oa Lope his own fear. So he turned sideways. Then Foikale thought about it again, and he figured if Oa Lope speared him in the side, it would kill him, so he turned with his back to the garden and said, "Let him go ahead and strike/kill me," reasoning that this way he would not see what Oa Lope did to him. When Oa Lope came up close, Foikale made a noise and surprised Oa Lope. So then Oa Lope saw him and told him that three of his bananas were taken from his garden, and the thief came this way. Oa Lope asked Foikale, "Who are you?" Foikale told him that he had always been at this spot, that he did not have a village or any other place. Then Oa Lope told Foikale to carry the bananas to the garden house, so they both went to the garden house. Oa Lope told him to get a stick with a crack in it and a string to make a fire. Foikale asked Oa Lope, "What is that?" when Oa Lope started working the vine on the stick and smoke came up. Oa Lope said it was the smoke of fire. When the fire started burning with flames, Foikale got afraid and ran away. Oa Lope called him back, and then Foikale asked what it was, and Oa Lope answered it was fire. They roasted the bananas, peeled the charred skins, and ate them. * Recorded by author.

264

Appendix 6

After eating, both men were thirsty (also ekupu). Oa Lope told Foikale that there was no water around there, only grasslands. But he told his namesake to stay there while he went to get a stick from a tree called aloalo, sharpened the end of it, punched the ground with it, and held the top. He pushed it back and forth, screaming in a loud voice "Foikale panganga" ("Foikale asks more questions"), and then he pulled the stick and water boiled out of the ground and continued to rise. Oa Lope put the water in his mouth and said, "It is good water, you can have a drink." And Foikale said, "Water is good." This water brought out of the ground became a big swamp or lake. The aloalo tree is still growing on Kuipa land. That is the story of how people acquired water.

Appendix 7

The afinama myth

Version At* One day, all the men of the village went to the bush to hunt pig, cassowary, and wallaby with their nets and spears. In the evening, they came back to the village. The women cooked the meat and took it to the clubhouse where the men were gathered. The men ate all the meat, not giving any to the women to eat. When the men ate the meat, they called their sons to eat. All their wives and daughters ate nothing. The daughters went to stay with their mothers. Inside their houses, mothers and daughters waited for their husbands and fathers to call them, but they never did. The next day, the men went hunting again, doing it the same way, and again they ate all the meat with their sons, sharing none with their wives and daughters. Day after day they did it in the same way. Then one day, when all the men were away in the bush hunting, the women who remained in the village held a meeting. The husbands of the married women were not kind to their wives, and the women tried to do something. That day, one small boy had remained at home in the village. The women told him to climb a coconut tree and bring down some flock or netting in order for them to make wings (panina). When all the women finished making their wings, one of them tried to fly up to the coconut tree, and she sat up there. All the women looked up and said it was not good; she should use her feet to hang upside down. After that, all the women with their daughters flew up to the big tree (apanitsi) with round leaves. All the women went to that tree. They left one very old woman behind. That evening, all the men returned from the hunt, but they did not see any women in the village. They put their meat inside the houses but saw no women anywhere. They found only one old woman in a house. She stayed behind because her eyes were not good. The women had left all their sons behind, taking only their daughters. When the men asked the old woman about what had happened, she told them the story: Every day * Recorded by author.

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all the men went hunting in the bush, got meat, and brought it back to the village. After the women cooked it and took it to the clubhouse, the men ate it all. The wives and daughters got nothing. That is why the women were shamed. That is why all of them flew up to the big tree. So all the men looked up to the tree, went over to it, and cried. They told the women to come down, saying they would give them plenty of meat. But the women did not come down. They did not want to. "You go get meat, we only cook it. You eat it, we get nothing. So now we are separated, we make our own place in the tree, and we are going to leave you now. When our time comes, we will come up here, and you men will come here and kill us and eat our flesh." When the men heard this, they all grabbed axes and tried to cut down the tree so the women would fall down. But when the tree fell, the women flew away, saying, "We are going." That time, the flying foxes [who had been the women] flew to the swamps and settled on the smaller trees there. When their time comes [at the beginning of the dry season], they will come here to the forest and around the village to stay on the apanitsi branch. At the end of their time, they will go back to the swamps. So the men had no wives, no daughters. In our grandfathers' days, the old people believed this story. So no one ate flying fox, because its flesh was flesh of woman. Today, men do not believe it, so they will eat it. When present-day men were boys, though, they did believe it and would not eat flying fox. Version AH* There were once women called afinama. All the husbands went hunting with their bows and arrows and nets, and they killed many pigs, cassowaries, and wallabies. At a place in the bush they ate all the meat, and when they had finished there was none left for their women, their wives, back at the village. So they returned empty-handed, with nothing. The next day, after sleeping, the women asked the men if they brought back some meat with them for them to eat, but the men said they did not see any. So then women asked the small boys, and the latter told their mothers that they caught pig, cassowary, and wallaby but ate them in the bush. The men went hunting again, caught many animals, and again the men and boys ate all the meat in the bush. Back in the village, the women asked the men for some meat. The men said they had no meat, but the small boys said they ate plenty of meat in the bush. And then they went to sleep. The next day, the men went hunting and killed many animals. But this * Recorded by author.

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time while the men were gone, the women were talking - "The men went hunting, caught meat, but ate it in the bush and did not give any to us. Yet they did give some to the small boys." One old woman told the others that the next day they all must take coconut flock under each arm and tie them tight like wings, so when the men come back they will all fly up to the top of a tree and stay there. The men did the same that day and came home without meat, as they had eaten it all in the bush. The next day, one small boy stayed back in the village with the women when the men went hunting. The women told the boy that every time the men eat meat and bring none to the women, and, because they never gave meat, the women were going to fly up to that tree. So all the women tied wings onto their arms, and they flapped their wings and flew up to the tree. Then they flew back to the ground. The women told the boy when his fathers come back to tell them their wives are up in that tree, that they had flown up there. From now on they would be like birds, and so the men can eat them. They were meat. When the women had flown up to the tree, one old woman, who had not gone up, looked up and could see their vaginas. She told them it was bad, to hang upside down instead. When the women did as she said, she remarked that it was good. They then all came to the ground again. The women cooked and ate some food. In the late afternoon, the women tossed away all their things (blankets, skirts, pots, etc.). Everything they threw away. They told the boy to tell his fathers for them, "Today you ate meat, and we are shamed. So we are living on top, like the birds, so we are like meat. You must hunt us like meat." So the women flew up to the tree. The boy was left alone, and he cried until the men returned. They told him to be quiet and asked him where the women were. "Did they go to the gardens to get firewood?" they asked. The boy said, "Always we went hunting, shot some meat, and ate it in the bush, not giving any to the women, so they had none to eat. The women got ashamed." The boy then told them to look up into the tree and they would see their women. One man named Apanitsi went up to the tree, and he told the women to come down to get some meat. They would eat it together. On hearing this, the women flapped their wings and started flying all over the place in the air around the tree, but landed in the tree again. The old woman told them, "You did not give us any meat. We are shamed. Now we are up in this tree, and it is finished. We will not come back to be your wives anymore." When the old woman said this, all the men cried. When they stopped crying, they grabbed their axes and cut the tree down, and it fell over.

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But the women flew away. One woman, however, was pregnant. Her body was heavy and not strong, so she fell when she tried to fly away and died. Then one of the women told the men, "One woman was pregnant, she fell and died, so all of you look at her. Take her and bury her. But the rest of us, when you cut down the tree, we did not die, we will not die now. The pregnant woman was not strong, so she died." The men cried, and again they asked their wives to come down and eat meat with them together. Again the women answered they would not come down, and again the men cried. The women said, "Now we have become meat, so you hunt us and eat us. We are shamed now, so it is finished. When it gets dark, we will go looking for our food, and you men come look for yours - us!" When it got dark, the women flew away, leaving the men crying; but eventually they went to sleep. The next day, the men took the body of the pregnant woman who fell and died, they cut up her body and gave a piece to a bad boy for him to eat to see if it was good meat. It did not kill him, though. So they waited a day, and he was healthy. He told them it was good meat. So the men then asked the women when next they saw them out looking for their food what their name was now, and the women answered, "Afinama." Version AiU* Originally,flyingfoxes were women. Their village was called Aouaou near the Angabunga River at the foot of the mountains. The men of Aouaou were going hunting. They caught some pigs, wallabies, and cassowaries. When they had the pigs, wallabies, and cassowaries, they started to return. They celebrated because they were happy, and they were happy because they had so much game. One day, arriving at the village, they sat down and quarreled as they counted the pigs, wallabies, and cassowaries. They counted them, then divided them up between the chiefs and the hunters. When the division was finished, they said to their wives, "Take these pigs, wallabies, and cassowaries. One part you will cook in pots, one part you will roast, one part you will smoke-dry, and tonight we men all alone will eat them, we will feast." The women did the cooking as ordered. At night, the men met on the clubhouse, and they ate. They ate like cassowaries [i.e., greedily], and they ate even to the last morsel. When they had eaten to expiring, they laughed at the women and told them, "You others drink the soup." And always the men did like this. Their stomachs lacking, the women beneath the clubhouse defied the men, saying, "Oh, oh, how the smell is good," and they smacked their "Translated from Guis 1936:189-93.

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tongues. They thought to themselves, "If they gave us just a little bit, we would very much appreciate it." One day, the men went hunting again. The women, meeting in the village, talked and talked, made some reproaches to their husbands, and said, "Our men are cassowaries, they eat everything, and we others get only the soup, and this is bad. They scorn us. What if we scorn them? Let's do something! What will we do?" They thought about it. Then they called their children and said, "Children, climb up the coconut trees, cut off the flock, and throw it down." The women gathered the branches and sewed them together as they do mosquito nets. One woman said to another, "Attach this covering at the top to your shoulders, at the bottom to your ankles, and try toflya little, to see if you fly a little bit." One old woman who had not spoken yet then said, "This is true indeed! It is bad, our men do not treat us well. Now make like you pledge. If you like them again, do not do what you come to say; if you do not like them again, do it. This is your affair alone. Me, I am too old, I rest here. When your husbands come, they will see. This is their affair." The other women responded, saying, "Our men we do not like them much, we scorn them." Then the woman who had attached the pad of coconut to her shoulders and to her ankles like wings went to the middle of the village. She shook her arms and her legs, and she flew. She flew like a bird and rose very high, then descended and came to rest on the branch of a large tree. There, like a bird, she perched with her feet on the branch and her head above. The other women below followed her with their eyes, their stomachs shifting with emotion, and they cried with joy. But when they saw that she was sitting like a bird, they told her, "It is not good thus." The woman responded, "You also come up high and make me see how I must hold myself." And one other woman holding wings flew near her, but she did not hold herself upright on the branch. She hung with her feet, and held her head down. Then she replaced her arms, and her wings retreated entirely. The flying foxes are still like this now. The other women saw this and said, "This is thus very good." They all attached wings to themselves and flew to a very high apanghi tree. They suspended themselves from the branches next to one another in bunches. This tree was at the end of the village. That night the men returned. When they saw the first coconuts, they sang a mourning dirge (agopa). The children heard them, saw them, ran, met them, and said to them, "You carry pigs and wallabies, it is good. But who will cook them?" "Who will cook them . . . and the women?" asked the men.

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The children answered, "Look and you will see." They arrived at the village. The village was cold, no one speaking, no one shouting, no singing. Then they cried out. Each men said, "Hou! Hou!" and named his wife. No women! No wives! They saw the old woman sleeping near a pile of embers half-expired. They woke her and asked, "Eh! Old woman, where are the women?" And the old woman leveled her hand toward the summit of the apanghi tree and said, "Look, they are on that tree. They are angry with you. You did not give them meat to eat. Then they dressed themselves with wings and flew high away, like birds." The men, their stomachs shaken to the ground, cried. Then they called their wives, "Beloved women, do not be angry! Come down, eat everything, we others nothing. You see, we are carrying much pig, much wallaby - we are stuffed, truly. We have angered you, but now we are thinking and our stomachs are bad because we have done bad." But the women did not come down. They balanced suspended from the branches and responded in song. "Koki, Kokikokil" The men cried all night long. The next day, the women were still hanging from the tree. Then the men went into the forest, taking strong sticks. They fitted them to their axes of stone. Then they returned and began to cut the trunk of the tree to make it fall. The women made fun of them. The men were furious and struck the tree with all their might. The tree was going to fall. Then the women, becoming afinama, cried "Koki, koki, kokf and saved themselves on another tree. One alone did not fly away very quickly. She was held in the branches and fell to the ground. She was killed. The men picked her up, gave her to the old woman, and said, "Cook it, perhaps she will be good to eat." The woman cooked it, and they ate it. It was very good. All the other afinama from the height of their tree, on seeing this, became very afraid, and quickly they went to hide in the forest. And because they were afraid, they never see the day. At night, they come out all together. They eat the nuts of breadfruit trees and also that which they find in the gardens, especially bananas. It is thus that afinama were born, and people eat them, and the afinama eat the fruit of the gardens out of anger at the men.

Notes

1

Introduction: the problem and the people

1. Wallace (1956) in actuality posits five phases, but the first (I. Steady State) and the last (V. New Steady State) clearly are redundant. 2. I shall discuss this specific substantive topic further in Chapters 6 and 10 by specifically comparing culturally ideal group constitution with documented group composition, on the one hand, and generally discussing the relation of structure to event on the other. 3. This region corresponds roughly with the North Mekeo Census Division of the Kairuku Sub-District of the Central Province. However, not all villages contained within the North Mekeo administrative area are Bush Mekeo in terms of their cultural identity and social participation. 4. Kuipa Bush Mekeo villages were contacted one by one over the next twenty or so years. 5. It seems very likely that the early years of contact with Europeans had at least one unintended consequence to the same effect, nonetheless - severe depopulation - as wave after wave of newly introduced disease swept up and down the coast and inland. See Mosko (n.d.). 6. This is due in part to an infestation of the rhinoceros beetle, which kills the palms. To date, the Amoamo villages have been the hardest hit.

2

Between village and bush

1. Literally, "on the skin" (fa). 2. Eating the indigenous diet from our very first day at the village, my wife and I very soon fell into step in this regard. 3. Reporting from among the Central Mekeo, Hau'ofa (1981:42-4) polysemously renders ina as "bowels," "womb," "beginning," "pregnant," "conceive," and "mother." See below and Chapter 6. 4. Nowadays, under mission influence, however, a shrine to the local patron saint is singularly erected in the middle of the abdomen. 5. Under government order, cemeteries are now erected in the bush adjacent to the village. 6. The first Europeans to visit the Bush Mekeo territory in the late nineteenth century were initially perceived as invading faifai. 7. The term for "pig (kuma) also has the meaning "body" (kuma). The pigs of ongokapu spirits are real, nonspirit animals, usually of the species associated with faifai. Thus, faifai are simultaneously the pigs and the bodies of ongokapu. 8. Tetanus? 9. As far as I am aware, there is no kind of burial beneath clubhouses.

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Notes to pp. 38-69 3

Body and cosmos

1. I was unable to uncover a single indigenous term for "clean" that embraced both mitsia and etsiu, but English-speaking villagers themselves used this gloss. 2. Although certain details of animal and plant taxonomy are relevant in numerous contexts discussed in this and subsequent chapters, the complete system lies well beyond the limitations of this work. 3. Indigenous categories of ingestibles are listed, albeit far from exhaustively, in Appendix 2. 4. See Chapter 5. 5. See the Amaka myth, Chapter 4. 6. Certain elements of the indigenous Bush Mekeo understandings of work and nonwork bear a striking resemblance to the orthodox Marxian labor theory of value; see Marx (1906, 1971); Lefebvre (1968:41-50). 7. People are much more circumspect about disposing of their bloodless body leavings when they travel to neighboring villages for fear they might be stolen by enemies and given to sorcerers to cause them illness; see later discussion in Chapter 3. 8. As well as animal faifai blood; see Chapter 2. 9. See Chapter 4 regarding further meanings and transformations with areca and betel chewing. 10. And presumably bush animals; I cannot say for faifai species.

4

Sex, procreation, and menstruation

1. Cf. Chapter 3 concerning mefu ritual. Peace sorcery will also be explained at greater length in Chapter 5. 2. Because Bush Mekeo men are potentially polygynous, sex outside marriage for them is adulterous only when the woman involved is married to another man. A married man's union with a single girl is not adulterous, according to traditional views. 3. This and related sexual overtones of male ritual specialization, including sorcery, will be discussed at length in Chapters 5, 7, and 8. 4. Excepting the newlywed phase of marriage, when the bride does not cook; see Chapter 5. 5. These categories and rules are described in Chapters 6 and 7. 6. It is perhaps significant that human fetuses gestate roughly the same length of time as in each of the two seasons of the year; see Chapter 3. 7. In private, women who already had many children occasionally expressed considerably less enthusiasm. 8. In prepacification times, especially, when the threat of attack was ever present, there was additional reason for requiring the husbands of all pregnant and nursing women to keep distant from their wives; see Chapter 5. 9. Lactation is discussed more fully in Chapter 5. 10. Guis (1936:172) implies that perhaps women will burn menstrual blood - but in the hearths used for cooking food? Thinking of this possibility, I have devised an alternative explanation of this ethnographic curiosity since returning from the field, as follows: Burning of meat or vegetables directly in fire destroys the blood and/or blood-elements of the foods, making them unsweet and cold for blood synthesis. Similarly, with menstrual blood, its burning might conceivably destroy its bloodelements and thereby transform it from a hot bloody to a cold bloodless dirt. Consistent with this interpretation, a married woman's kitchen hearth accumulates ashes of her cooking fire throughout her life, and only upon her death are the ashes overturned onto the village abdomen to be disposed with other rubbish in the adjacent bush.

Notes to pp. 70-98

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11. Memengoa birth techniques are described in the following chapter. 12. Note at the beginning of the myth that upstream Amaka has both a wife and child. 13. Villagers do not "eat" (am) areca, betel, and lime; they merely "chew" (euwa) it and then spit it all out of their mouths.

5

Male and female

1. Many of the ethnographic details I employ in this chapter can be referenced to similar practices and conceptualizations in Egidi (1912) and Hau'ofa (1981). 2. Unless the groom is widowed or divorced, it is very unlikely that he will already have established a household separate from that of his parents or, since becoming a bachelor (koaekongo), his unmarried clansmen; cf. Williamson (1913:276); Hau'ofa (1981:57-9). 3. Buibui, a cold bloodless dirt, is regarded as ugly and sexually unsweet to persons of the opposite sex. Bachelors and married men also depilate their bodies as a matter of course. All hair, scales, and feathers of animal species are also categorically buibui. Only humans possess fufu on their heads, and, although fufu is also cold bloodless dirt, when it is fully combed into a nicely rounded coiffure, it is regarded as sexually sweet. 4. See Chapter 7 as regards head shaving and beard growth during mourning observance; cf. Leach (1958b). 5. The indigenous categories of these relationships are discussed at length in Chapters 6 and 7. 6. Wallabies of two varieties, matsi and mani, are also small meat, but brides may not eat them because they are the flesh of the culture hero Akaisa and, for that reason, hot; see Chapter 8 and Appendix 3. 7. Single girls need not fear conceiving afaifai baby, villagers insist, unless they are sexually active enough with human males to conceive simultaneously a normal human baby. Otherwise, however, single girls who eatfaifai are still vulnerable, just like other villagers would be, to faifai illnesses. 8. Because hunting, fishing, and nonaggressive garden ritual do not employ hot, bloody, and dirty things, brides and pregnant women are not cold or vulnerable to them; see Chapter 3. 9. Presumably, this is another sweet/unsweet transformation. 10. I suspect that pregnant women eat big meat for their own bodily sustenance, and continue eating small meat to nourish their developing fetuses. 11. According to Guis (1936:62), Mekeo women traditionally suckled baby pigs and dogs. 12. Categorically, the hunting and fishing the groom does to supply his bride with meat is not "work" (pinaunga). 13. Chili and ginger medicines are also eaten for routine curing of illness, especially abdominal ailments; see Chapter 3. 14. Villagers steadfastly assert that long ago men lived without being born of women and without dying; they just shed their old skins "like prawns and snakes" and grew new skins. 15. Alternately pronounced Oa Rove, Walope, or Oa Ngope; see also the culture hero Akaisa, Chapter 8. 16. Women, while I was in the village, held their meetings on the ground of the village abdomen, and the men held theirs of course on clubhouses of clan chiefs. 17. "Weak" is occasionally used as a euphemism for pregnancy in women. 18. The question of the edibility or inedibility of female meat posed here will be of critical concern to interpreting the ritual of the death feast, so I will wait until Chapters 7 and 8 to discuss it at length in that context.

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Notes to pp. 103-137 6 Kin, clan, and connubium

1. By far the majority of contemporary marriages to persons outside the tribe are with peoples who are not Bush Mekeo, and most of these involve persons who have left the village and work in the towns and cities of the country. 2. Literally, "senior-junior siblings. ' 3. These terms are portrayed in the third-person plural personal possessive; au — "my senior sibling(s)," atsiu = "my junior sibling(s)," etc. It is important to note that here, as with all other terminological distinctions excepting "father" (ama) and "mother" (ina), the sexes of the persons speaking or spoken to are irrelevant. Also, villagers employ the same nomenclature for both reference and address. 4. It is my distinct impression that precise genealogical knowledge well beyond this range is commonly possessed, at least by older men. In interviews, villagers typically have much more information about the pedigrees of others than they have, or admit to having, of their own. Also, the names of patrilineal ancestors are incorporated into secret ritual spells (menga) possessed by their male descendants. Among the spells I was able to record, there were between six and fourteen names, all purportedly patrilineal ancestors who also owned the spells. 5. Nonetheless, working together in this particular context does connote a particularly significant form of kin relationship through "de-conception"; see Chapter 7. 6. Clan and village names used in this chapter are pseudonyms. 7. It is interesting to note that, according to Egidi's genealogies, of the five children of this man, three married back into other lineages of NA. 8. An Austronesian-speaking mountain people. 9. Katsi is the name of their natal clan. 10. This is the man mentioned in Chapter 2. 11. Similar to Fortes's notion of "complementary filiation" (1959). However, as indicated, Bush Mekeo recognize in papie ngaunga ties more than filiation strictly. 12. And, intergenerationally, they and their respective parents. 13. Kofu = "chief's clubhouse"; apie = "half," in Central Mekeo, ufuapie, and in Roro, aruabira. See Seligmann (1910:348-65); Guis (1936:39-40); Haddon (1901:358); Belshaw (1951:4); Hau'ofa (1981:160). 14. These figures do not include 4 cases of marriage within the same local clan or within the dispersed clan. Apparently, there has always been a minor but persistent frequency of these marriages; see Seligmann (1910:365). 15. The number of extratribal marriages has gradually increased since pacification along with the establishment of extratribal friend relationships; see Figure 6.7. 16. The year 1965 was chosen here and above because it marks the first time marriage compensation was paid with money, and for a betrothal no less. 17. Of course, this does not preclude persons in other patrilines or lineages of Ego's clan and generation who are not papie ngaunga to Ego's mother's clan from marrying there; see discussion below. 18. Although it might appear in my figures here that Bush Mekeo are represented as practicing actual sister exchange in violation of their own marriage rule V discussed above, it must be noted that these relationships are classificatory, that is, exemplary of the culture categories; also see below. 19. Compare these complementary Bush Mekeo processes with Schneider's depiction of two distinct elements of American kinship - the union of opposites in sexual intercourse, and the separation of identities between parents and children (1980:3940). 20. A third private or "hidden" (onge wake) transaction between parents of the bride and groom will be discussed in Chapter 8.

Notes to pp. 137-168

275

21. Regarding the notion of "exemplar" in this chapter, see Schneider (1980:96). 22. "Valuables" (kefu) appropriated for marriage compensation include numerous kinds of shell articles, strings of dogs' teeth, string bags, clay pots, bird of paradise skins, pigs, and other articles. 23. See the cognate notion, pange death-feast prestation, discussed below and in Chapters 7 and 8. 24. According to Bush Mekeo conceptions, however, the bride and groom who possess different bloods upon marriage-compensation payment subsequently become one blood upon the birth of their first child. The ideology of shared blood in this instance encompasses persons with cognatic descendants, instead of ancestors, in common.

7 Feasts of death (i): de-conception and re-conception 1. I anticipate taking up the theories of Van Gennep and Hertz as well as contemporary views of this subject in a subsequent publication. 2. The perspective of social continuity I employ here resembles Weiner's (1980) notion of "reproduction." However, I do not so hastily discard the notion of reciprocity, and I view the continuity of Trobriand Island society quite differently from Weiner; see Chapters 9 and 10; cf. Weiner (1976). 3. This ritual specialization reportedly has been imported from the non-Austronesian Toaripi peoples of the Papuan Gulf. Among the Bush Mekeo, crocodiles are never regarded as spirits in animal form, like faifai, but as real animals directed by human specialists. 4. See sweet/unsweet relativism, discussed in Chapter 3. 5. The surviving spouse is said to have been one blood with the deceased after the two have produced their first child. 6. Each spouse of the owners remains different blood with respect to the owners and the deceased, except for their own particular mates among the party of mourners, assuming they have produced at least one child. 7. Literally, katsiamore translates as "ground-putting." Nowadays, and perhaps in the past as well, the burial feast is termed "extinguishing the fire" (ito epalo) in reference to the fire kept burning during the vigil to smoke bush meat. However, the term ito also means "vagina," and it will be seen below that the related notion "extinguishing the vagina" is not entirely lacking in significance in this context. 8. Smoking tobacco and chewing areca nut may also become bafu. 9. The term onge apua is used for marriage betrothal; see Chapter 6. But unlike marital onge apua, garden onge apua involves ritual appealing to spiritual ongokapu bush people to attack thieves and violators of the taboos. Moreover, the Bush Mekeo possess no tradition of masked kaivakuku enforcers of the taboo; cf. Seligmann (1910:299-301, 314). 10. See Chapter 3 regarding the relation of work to eating. 11. Nowadays, fowl are sent with feasting invitations, villagers explain, because the people are adopting European customs such as the avoidance of dog meat. No invitations are sent for burial feasts. 12. The arrival of the kofuapie is described at some length by Seligmann (1910:360-2). 13. At burial feasts, male laborers kill the pigs and dogs behind, not in front of, the clubhouse. 14. Into the adjacent waste-disposal region of the bush; see Chapter 2. 15. For lack of space, I do not describe these personal exchanges at length. But briefly, men maintain their own hereditary reciprocal interclan exchange or trade relationships known as ekefaka - the same term used for nonagnatic siblings beyond first cousins. In some contexts, ekefaka trade partners are likened to ekefaka relatives.

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16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

Notes to pp. 169-221

Also, ekefaka trade partners are frequently compared to chiefly friends (pisaua). Peace chiefs have no ekefaka trade partners of their own; they only have friends. All other men of the subclan, including peace sorcerers, war chiefs, and war sorcerers, may have trade partners but no friends of their own except by virtue of those they have through the peace chief. Like friends, trade partners within the tribe reciprocate village pig meat when their clans make final death feasts. On other occasions, trade partners reciprocate raw bush meat and plant food or valuables; cf. Hau'ofa (1981:154-60). Nowadays, a chicken or a joint of village pig — lower jaw, hindleg, or foreleg - is used instead of dog. Kou structures are not used in burial feasts; rather, food is stacked in piles on the floor of the peace chief's clubhouse before it is carried to the friends of the feastgiving chief. Compare the notion of ngope tightening in the contexts of binding two sticks together and male tightening ritual (Chapter 5) with the closing of interclan relations, discussed later in Chapter 7. That is, by remarking that he or she eats bafu when his/her relative has died. Regarding the significance of "noise," see Needham (1967) and Leach (1976:63). Compare the terms of this distinction with that of engorging bride versus tightening male (Chapter 5).

8 Feasts of death (ii): the sons of Akaisa 1. Au akaisa officeholders therefore may not eat the meat of dogs either, but for a slightly different reason; see later section of this chapter. 2. More will be said of this comparison below. 3. As regards eating a food for the first time and vomiting, see Chapters 4 and 5. 4. Matsi and mani, two species that are "brothers." The former is elder, and the latter younger. 5. There would seem to be an indirect reference here to the growth capacity of iunge fanga, as argued earlier in the discussion of the Akaisa myth. Old men, closer to death themselves, characteristically prefer the fatty backskin to all other foods. 6. One might easily speculate that wallaby and dog legs are broken to keep them from running away should they revive, as in the Akaisa myth.

9 Tikopia and the Trobriands 1. I am, of course, enormously indebted to the several ethnographers of the cultures of Tikopia and the Trobriands, without whose superlative descriptions of indigenous categories my analyses would not be possible. 2. Firth's (1969:67-8) empirical reservations here, to the effect that paito are not bilateral, are, I think, telling. 3. Malinowski (1929:30, 1966:385) mentions an indeterminate five or six ranked classes, but specifies only these four. 4. These yam exchanges were improperly termed urigubu by Malinowski; see Weiner (1976). 5. Powell (1960) has noted that, after the death of a village leader or district chief, there may very likely follow a phase where not all four levels are evident as chiefly rivals vie with one another for high office. This does not necessarily imply, however, that during this interim there is no significance to these distinctions; see my remarks later in the chapter. 6. Although the issue here is essentially ethnographic, Weiner's and my own theoretical positions do differ as well. In contrast to the more or less conventional, structuralist

Notes to pp. 223-246

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

277

perspective I have taken, she proposes that Trobriand social life is premised on a division of "I" and "other," or "personal autonomy" and "social control," such that in exchange the separation of the two is overcome at the same time that it is reinforced; see Weiner (1976:211-26). My guess is that the number of sagali exchanges at the women's mortuary ceremony, as an exact multiple of four, is not a coincidence; see Weiner (1976:105-16). Weiner records that these kaymelu bundles are given to the female owners' kinsmen (1976:110-12). But, in actuality, it is only the name of these women's kinsmen that is called. The wives of these men are the ones who take up and keep the bundles. To view kaymelu as Weiner suggests simply appears wrong, for this would be the only one of the sixteen exchanges in this series where the givers directly present wealth to receivers of the same clan. Moreover, to give and receive lisalabadu this way plays havoc with the notion of sagali as an act of "reclaiming." If he lives with or was raised by another male relative - father's brother, mother's brother, elder brother, etc. - a man would make his exchange gardens for him; see Weiner (1976:146). To members of subclans of his own clan, of course, a chief is not "father' but "elder/senior of the same subclan or clan," and he correspondingly receives other categories of annual gift: urigubu, pokala, bopokala, or guyapokala; see Malinowski (1966); Powell (1960); Weiner (1976:204-7). Is there here yet another quadripartite context of exchange? Trobrianders, like Bush Mekeo villagers, evidently possess distinct hungers for both plant and animal food; see Chapter 3; Malinowski (1966:43).

10

Conclusions: indigenous categories, cultural wholes, and historical process

1. See Schneider (1980:123-4) for further methodological remarks along these lines. 2. This recalls quite vividly the analogous contradictions implicated in Bush Mekeo contrasts of blood and nonblood relationship, both agnatically and bilaterally conceived; see Chapters 6-8; A. Strathern (1972). 3. It is all the more significant that those I have explored involve transformations or homologous inversions of the same categorical distinctions in the culture: blood versus nonblood. See remarks earlier in the chapter concerning key or dominant symbols and root metaphors.

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Index

abdomen (ina), 27, 75, 193, 234, 271; in birth, 65-6, 70, 81; in conception, 637, 75, 77; in digestion, 38, 49, 52-7, 79, 193; and feast prestations, 193-5; in illness, 90; mythical, 184; see also mother, pregnancy, village, womb aboveground vs. belowground, 28-35 passim; birth blood, 80; menstrual blood, 68-9; mythical, 95-6, 99 adultery, 61, 69, 272 Afai village, dispersal, 118 affines (ipa ngaua), 109-11, 241; clans and, 117, 123; marriage regulation and, 134-6; mother-in-law, 74-5; new marriage and, 74-6, 79; sweet vs. unsweet, 62; see spouse, kofuapie, marriage, kin afinama, myth of, 97-9, 101, 188, 198, 265-70 Akaisa, 197, 198-9, 273; mortuary ritual and, 160, 163; myth of, 183-99 passim; ritual poisons of, 151 Akaisa Men, 167, 183, 197-9, 276; deconception and re-conception of, 191-9; mythical origin of, 185-8, 191-2, 198-9; as relatives, 185, 192, 197-8 Amaka, myth of, 69-72, 80, 83, 88, 91, 96, 187 ambidirectional, see unidirectional vs. ambidirectional Amoamo tribe, 15, 16, 19, 102, 271 ancestors (au apoutsi), 39, 180 Andriolo, K. R., 8, 248 animals, categories of, 39-40; bush, 39, 98, 175, 191-2, 196-7, 260-1; faifai, 30-1, 34, 40, 76, 79, see also bush people, spirits; village, 22, 39, 175, 196-7; Trobriand, 213; see also food, human vs. nonhuman areca nut, 54, 90-2; as medicine, 54-5, 86, 90; plant food and, 90 areca nut, chewing of, 41, 96-7, 253, 273; spitting, 72; at feasts, 165; mythical origin of, 70-2, 96, 97, 262; sexuality and, 70-2, 90-2, 96; tightening and, 86-7

289

Aranda system, 100, 125, 134, 143-4 Auge, M., 8, 248 Austen, L., 210 bachelors (koaekongo): courting, 25; ritual, 29, 33, 87, 88, 90 Bateson, G., 240, 242 bathing, 75-6, 78, 79, 86 Belshaw, C , 128 Benedict, R., 2 betel, see areca nut Biaru River, xi, 14 big-man, Melanesian, 16 birth, 61, 88; catchment, 32; faifai, 31; father's role in, 67, 80-81, 88; and illness, 66; and menstruation, 66; mythical, 70-2; out of wedlock, 73, 76-7; techniques, 80-1; theory of, 65-7; vigil, 79, 81, 88; see also memengoa blood (ifa), 28, 60, 77, 78; birth, 67, 70-2, 80-1, 88; conception, 75-8; death, 2930, 85-6, 153-4; engorging and, 75; faifai, 30; holes and, 31; illness, 52; manipulating, 138-42, 234; menstrual, 33, 65, 68-9, 272; mythical, 70-2, 2623; semen, 33, 60, 63-7, 72, 75, 76-9, 82, 85, 101; as sorcery ingredient, 27, 30, 33, 157-8; vs. nonblood, 52-9, 60, 272; womb, 60-1, 63-7, 75-8, 82, 92; and work vs. nonwork, 52 blood reciprocation, 113; in peace, 101, 103, 124, 157; in war, 102-3 blood relationship, female (or cognatic), 101, 123-7, 129, 139, 175, 180, 199; in feasting, 175, 180; in marriage compensation exchange, 138-42 passim; see also papie ngaunga blood relationship, male (agnatic), 101, 112, 113, 124, 129, 139, 149, 175-7; among Akaisa Men, 185, 192, 197-8; in feasting, 175-7; in marriage compensation exchange, 138-42 passim; see also clan blood synthesis, 48-54, 57-9, 60, 72, 85;

290

Index

blood synthesis (cont.) body sustenance, 41; conception, 63-4, 72, 76-7, 78-9, 101; minimum for life, 86, 87; in nursing, 82, 92 blood, Trobriand notions of, 210-11, 226, 231, 232 blood vs. nonblood, 11, 52, 70-2, 277; and animals, 30-1; dirt and, 52, 71-2, 257; health vs. illness and, 52-9, 65; mortuary feast, 155; and sweet vs. unsweet, 49-52, 71-2; and village vs. bush, 96 blood vs. nonblood relationships, 101—11, 112; feasting categories, 172-9, 158, 198; manipulating, 138-42; marriage categories and, 117, 124, 127, 138, 1402; in sorcery, 157—8; and working together, 117 Blust, R. A., 233 body excretions: alimentary, 24, 27, 32, 52-7; birth, 80-1; blood vs. nonblood, 33, 52-7, 74, 81-3, 151, 191, see also blood; of infants, 81-2; mythical, 70, 72, 96-7; pregnancy, 79; sexual, 61, 67-9, 70-1, see also blood, semen, water; skin dirt, 55, 163, 168; spittle, 72, 96; tightening and, 86; vaginal water, 61, 63, 64, 70-1, 97; vomit, 70-2, 83, 96, 189 body, 10, 234, 247, 271; and chewing of areca nut, 41, 70-7, 86-7, 90-2, 96-7; female cycle of, 73-84, 90—5 passim; hair, 30, 74, 161, 171; health, illness, and curing of, 52-9, 151; inside vs. outside of, 45-59 passim, 63, 65-6, 712, 78, 247; as key symbol, 236, 237; male cycle of, 84—95 passim; menstruation, 60, 64-9; in Tikopia, 202, 207; in the Trobriands, 210, 211, 212, 229; village/bush resources and wastes, and, 38; and work vs. nonwork, 45-50 passim; womb, 63; see also sweet vs. unsweet, abdomen, blood, conception, gender, semen, vagina, skin body, inside vs. outside, 27, 38; in body sustenance, 48-59; male vs. female and, 73-95 passim; and menstruation, 60, 64-9, 71, 75, 79; and procreation, 60-8, 79-89; and village vs. bush, 27-9; and work vs. nonwork, 45-8; see also body excretions, food, gender, open vs. closed, ritual body, open vs. closed, 49, 61, 67, 73-94 passim, 99, 181 boiling, 41; and digestion, 49; food, 42-5, 57-8, 64, 75; medicines, 55; mythical origin of, 260, 264; water, 42; as work, 46

bones, 158, 186, 191-2; in the Trobriands, 226-7 Bourdieu, P., 2, 244 bride, see marriage Brunton, R., 9-10, 230, 238-40, 242 Bulmer, R., 2 burial, 22, 52, 56, 69, 271; faifai 33-4; as hole, 29; mythical, 191-2; regulation of, 17, 271; see also feasts Burridge, K. O. L., 37 bush, 22; adjacent vs. remote, 24, 27-8, 29-35, 95, 98; beings, 22, 30-1, 39, 261, 263, see also spirits, faifai, animals, human vs. nonhuman; extraordinary sphere and, 28-38; ordinary sphere and, 23-8; and sweet vs. unsweet, 39, 47 Busk Mekeo, 1, 10—20; population, 15; villages, 15 bush people, 30-5 passim, 40, 76, 79, 82, 97, 160, 190, 271, 275 catchment, 29, 32, 33 categories, indigenous, 1, 9—10, 12—13, 201, 216, 234-5, 240, 242, 248 change, sociocultural, 12-13 chewing, see areca nut chiefs, see peace chief, war chief chiefs, in Tikopia, 203, 204 chiefs, in the Trobriands, 213-14, 217, 227-30, 231 children, 68, 104; firstborn, 73, 185; pigs as, 175; see also relatives, sons clan (ikupu), 15-16, 111, 124, 173-9, 199, 234; dispersed, 113, 114, 117, 124, 147, 149; exogamy of, 100, 117, 125, 134, 141-2, 199; insignia of, 74, 116, 117, 166; and kofuapie, 127-33; lineage and, 114-15, 116-23 passim, 147-9; moiety and, 112-13, 117, 198; mother's, see papie ngaunga; open vs. closed, 129, 134, 139, 141-2, 177-81, 199, 234, 276, see also de-conception; papie ngaunga and, 124; of pigs, 175; residential, 11523, 170, 171; ritual secrets of, 89, 121; segmentary/fragmentary organization of, 111-23 passim, 124; skin of, 126, 144, 154, 177, 180; subclan, 113, 123, 130, see also senior vs. junior clan officials (see also Akaisa Men, peace chief, war chief, peace sorcery, war sorcery), 114-17, 118-23, 148, 160, 167; succession and installation of, 113, 114, 120, 167, 182-3, 197-8 clans: in Tikopia, 202—3; in the Trobriands, 212-27 passim clean, 38, 272; see also sweet vs. unsweet

Index closing, 73, 111, 234; clans at mortuary feasts, 177, 181; and mourning, 157; marriage compensation and, 139-42; nursing and, 82, 84; thirst and, 49; tightening and, 87—90; see also opening clubhouses, chiefs' (kofu), 25-8, 29, 30, 66, 79, 271, 273, 274, 276; during feasts, 167, 168, 169, 275; rear compartment of (ialiali), 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 89 cold (ekekia) (see also hot vs. cold, sweet vs. unsweet), 38, 159; body transformations, 49-57, 62-3, 65, 79; culinary transformations, 42-5, 49; and gender, 94; of village, 152-3, 165-6, 167, 171; work vs. nonwork transformations, 45-8 colonialism, influences of, 13; business and cash crops, 16, 19; Christianity, 16, 18, 133, 153-4, 271; depopulation, 18, 271; latrines, 17; pacification, 13, 15, 16, 18; taxation, 16; wage labor, 18-19 colors, 165-6, 170-1; black, 167, 170; red, 74, 165, 170; white, 82; yellow, 170 comparison, methodology of, 4, 9-10, 12, 200-1, 212 conception (engama), theory of (see also happiness, de-conception), 11, 60, 64-8, 92, 164, 167, 211, 234, 271; areca nut chewing and, 90-2; faifai animals and, 31, 34, 76, 79, 273; feasting and, 177, 194; female's role in, 73-80, 84; illness and, 63; male's role in, 85-8, 89; marriage compensation and, 139; menstruation and, 64-9 passim; mythical origin of, 96-7, 198-9 conception, theory of (Tikopia), 201-2 conception, theory of (Trobriand), 210-12, 226, 227, 229, 230 contradiction, see structure and contradiction cooking (see also food, boiling, ripening, roasting, smoking), 25, 48, 98; and blood relationship, 179; gender and, 64; menstruation and, 68; mythical origin of, 70-2, 96-7, 260-1, 262, 268; and nonfood resources, 45; sexual intercourse and, 61-3 courting, 65, 159; ritual of, 27, 65, 68-9, 165, 166-7 crocodiles, 275 culture-as-constituted vs. culture-as-lived, 10, 13, 237-8, 239, 242-5 Culture/Nature, see Nature/Culture culture, and society, 10 cultures as wholes, 1-13 passim, 201, 208, 234-44 passim, 249

291

curing (see also medicines), 41, 52-7, 66, 81, 90, 273 customs (kangakanga), 39—40

cycle, daily, 23-8, 74 dancing, 159, 165, 171 day vs. night, 23-8 passim death, 28, 69, 70, 150; mythical origin of, 185-7, 198-9, 266, 268, 270; owners of, 154-5, 156, 159-60, 172, 173; unconsciousness as, 185 death, causes of, 29, 30-1, 33, 53-7, 601, 150-2; dirt and, 53-7, 81; faifai, 301; mefu sorcery, 54—5, 67, 157; menstrual blood, 68, 156; peace chiefs and, 160, 185; peace sorcery, 30, 61, 68-9, 114; poisons, 30, 54, 60, 61, 67, 68; snakes, 30-1; starvation, 41, 52, 76 de-conception (engama) (see also conception, happiness), 177-81, 181-9 passim, 234; in Trobriand mortuary ritual, 221, 224-7 digestion, 49-52 dirt (iofu), 28, 38, 52, 151, 247; birth and, 67, 81, 88; burial and, 157; chewing and, 91; cooking and, 68; and edibility, 40, 78, 81; feasts and, 172-3; food and, 52-7, 60-3, 172; health vs. illness and, 52-7, 63-9; infants and, 81-4; memengoa techniques and, 61-2, 65, 67, 70-2, 80-4, 90; menstruation and, 64-9 passim; mythical origin of, 69-72, 97; nursing and, 81-2; pregnancy and, 79-80; sexuality and, 60-95 passim; of skin, 55, 81, 163, 168; tightening and, 87-8; see also blood vs. bloodless, rubbish dirty vs. clean, 28, 38, 40, 57, 60, 62, 945, 96-8 districts, in Tikopia, 203-4 districts, in the Trobriands, 217 dogs, 15, 24; adultery and, 61; feasts and, 127, 162, 164-5, 169-71, 196-7, 275, 276 Douglas, M., 2, 7, 246 dreams, 31 drinking, 41, 49, 75, 79, 85, 87, 96-7, 252 dry vs. wet, 42, 66, 87, 174, 258; bodily, 50-2, 53-7, 58, 66, 73-95 passim, 186; chewing and, 90-2; conception and, 645, 75, 83, 90-2; cooking and, 42-5, 578, 174 dualities, bisected, see structures dualism, see structures Dumont, L., 2 Durkheim, E., 2, 21, 237

292

Index

eating, 41, 251-2; chewing and, 90-2, 273; engorging and, 74-7, 78, 84; male sexuality and, 85; mythical, 70-2, 96-7, 258-9, 262, 263; playing at feasts and, 163-4; sexual intercourse and, 60-3; tightening and, 86-7 ekefaka sibling terminology alternative, 112, 124-5, 134, 275-6 empiricism, 1, 5-6, 9-10, 12-13, 37, 239 engama, see happiness, conception, deconception endogamy, see exogamy and endogamy, tribe engorging, 74-8 passim, 84 ethnocentrism, 8-10 Etoro society, 245-6 Evans-Pritchard, E., 2, 235 exchange, restricted, 101, 129 exchanges, coastal/mountain, 16 exchanges, food (see also feasts): daily, between households, 25; daily, on chief's clubhouse, 25; engorging bride, 74-7; installation ceremonies for clan officials, 182-3; mythical, 96-9, 189-91; of postpartum mother, 88; of pregnant woman, 78-9; of single girl, 76-7, 79; in Tikopia, 204, 205, 207; in the Trobriands, 212, 219-29 passim; wild game and, 47 exchanges, mortuary, see feasts exogamy vs. endogamy, 15, 16 extraordinary sphere, 21; bodily, 58-9, 61, 69, 70-1, 99; feasts and, 181; gender and, 34, 99; village-bush transfers, 2835, 35-6, 58-9, 61, 69; see also ordinary sphere Eyde, D., 206, 220, 232 faifai, 22; as agents of death, 151; as bush beings, 30-5; compared to humans and animals, 40, 272, 275; Europeans as, 271; mythical, 97, 190; nursing and, 82; procreativity with humans, 31, 34, 76, 79, 273; sorcery and, 151, 190 fat, 74, 75, 175, 179, 196, 276 father (ama), 67, 104, 175; see also conception, birth, relatives father, Trobriand, 211, 212, 216, 218-19, 223-30 passim fauapi sorcerer's bush dwelling, 29-30, 31, 33, 61 feasts, mortuary, 11, 32, 40, 150, 241; burial, 40, 158-60, 162, 163, 174, 178, 192, 276; clan recruitment and, 122-4, 179, 199; distribution of foods after, 171; final, 158, 160-83 passim; givers vs. receivers, 171, 172-4, 177; kumau cere-

mony, 167-70; laborers at, 154-68 passim; mourners at, 161-71 passim, 179, 180, 191-2, 234; mythical origin of, 191-2; peace chiefs and, 116, 120, 130, 159, 160-71 passim; provisioning of, 159, 160, 161, 163-5; release of mourning at, 159-60, 162, 170-1, 179, 191; umupua ceremony, 167, 170—1 feast prestations, 127-8, 198; burial, 15860, 170, 275; dirty pig, 167-8, 169; ekefaka trade partners, 276; ikufuka, 169-71, 172-9, 188, 191, 234; iunge fanga, 169-71, 183, 193, 195-6, 276; onge kau, 165; pange, 172-9, 188, 191, 234 female, see gender Fernandez, J. W., 2 fire (ito) (see also vagina, hot), 234; birth and, 80; burial feasts and, 275; food transformation and, 43-5, 48, 49, 53, 64; menstrual blood and, 272; mythical origin of, 70-1, 96, 259-60, 261-2, 263; sexual intercourse and, 63—4; sorcery and, 54; tightening and, 87; water transformation and, 42-3 Firth, R., 200-8 passim fish, 184 fishing, 15, 24, 69, 76, 85, 88; for feasts, 163; mythical, 184-5; see also hunting Foikale, myth of, 95-7, 98-9, 101, 187, 198, 258-64 food, categories of (see also meat, plant food, feasts, sweet vs. unsweet), 41, 162, 179, 254-5; and dirt, 52-7, 60-3, 172 food, categories of (Tikopia), 207 food, categories of (Trobriand), 212, 227, 277 food, transformations of, see cooking, boiling, roasting, ripening, smoking Foster, M., 6 fowl, 275 Fox, J. J., 2

friend, chiefly (pisaua), 129-33, 145, 1478, 199; mythical, 185, 261; role at feasts, 158, 165, 168, 170; see also kofuapie functionalism, 201, 207-8, 235, 243 gardens, and gardening, 15, 24, 44, 48, 71, 69, 78, 88, 96; mythical origins of, 95-6, 258, 261-2, 263, 270; in preparation for feasts, 159, 162-3; ritual, 29, 33, 48, 85, 275; sorcery and, 29, 33, 85 gardens, and gardening (Trobriand), 212, 220, 228, 231, 232 Geertz, C , 4 Gell, A., 2, 9, 234, 238

Index gender, conceptualization of, 30-1, 73, 89-90; areca nut chewing and, 90-2; clan identity and, 123-4, 126; cooking and, 64; faifai and, 31; food categories and, 77-9, 98-9, 175; feast prestations and, 172-7, 193, 195; holes and, 29-30; inversion/eversion of, 92-5, 98; male/female separation and, 29, 68, 834, 89-92, 98-9, 272-3; menstruation and, 64-9 passim; mourning and, 1539, 161, 170-1, 180; mythical, 69-71, 95-9, 259-61, 262-3, 265-70; open vs. closed and, 94; ordinary vs. extraordinary spheres and, 34, 99; priority of male over female, 94—5, 99; ritual cycle of female, 73—84; ritual cycle of male, 85-90; sexual intercourse and procreation, and, 60-9, 73, 84, 85-6, 88-90; sweet vs. unsweet and, 39 gender, division of labor for, 11; in mortuary ritual, 153-4, 157, 159, 161, 163; mythical, 69-72, 95-9, 265-70; ordinary village-bush transfers and, 24-5, 26-34; procreative, 64-7, 69-70, 73-92 passim; see also feasts, ritual gender, Tikopian conceptualization of, 202 gender, Trobriand conceptualization of, 209-10, 211, 213, 227, 230, 231-2 Gennep, A. van, 6-7, 150, 248 girls, single, 61, 66, 73, 76, 82 Godelier, M., 4-5, 243, 248 good vs. bad, 39-40 grave, 29; faifai and, 30, 35; as hole, 29, 32; peace sorcery and, 31, 33; see also burial Gudeman, S. F., 2 Guis, Fr., 127-8, 132 Hage, P. and F. Harary, 233 hair, body (buibui), 74, 161, 171, 261-2, 273 hair, head (fufu), 30, 74, 171, 273 happiness (engama) (see also conception, de-conception), 153, 268; release from mourning and, 159, 164, 178-9, 197; courting and, 167 Hau'ofa, E., 86, 112, 128-9, 240-2 head, 30, 31, 80, 273 health, 52-9 passim, 72, 82; see also body heat (pangaingai), 43, 44-5, 46, 48, 70; see also hot

Hertz, R., 2, 150, 227 history: anthropology and, 1, 5, 8, 242-9; synchrony and diachrony, and, 1, 12, 243, 248; historicism and, 5, 24, 242; myth and, 5, 8; structure and, 5-13 passim, 118, 142, 242-9

293

Hohfeld, W., 7-8 holes (ine), 29, 38, 58; bodily, 38, 58, 61; and extraordinary village-bush transfers, 29-35, 38, 57, 61, 80, 87; mythical, 95-7 homicide, 33, 34, 85-6, 157 hot (tsiabu) (see also heat, ritual, sorcery, sweet vs. unsweet transformations), 289, 42; body transformations, 49-57, 627, 70-2, 75-6, 79-80, 83; and conception, 62-4, 65; dirt and, 38; fire and, 42-5; food transformations, 42-5, 49; gender and, 94; life and death, and, 152-3, 165-6, 167, 171; work vs. nonwork and, 95-8 houses, 24, 25; birth in, 80; burial and, 32; faifai, 30; menstruation and, 68; mythical origin of, 96, 262; new marriage and, 74; sexual intercourse and, 61; in Tikopia, 207 Hugh-Jones, C., 2 Hugh-Jones, S., 2 Human Mind, 200 human vs. nonhuman: agents of death, 151; animals and, 39-40, 273; of bush, 22, 30-1, 34-5; dirt and, 55-6; faifai, 30-5, 40, 76, 79; feast pigs and, 175; hunting ritual and, 46-7, 260-1; in myth, 97, 98, 260-1, 273; nursing infants and, 83, 175; of village, 22; and sweet vs. unsweet, 39; see also animals, spirits humans, 22; and ordinary vs. extraordinary transfers, 28—31; and sexuality, 62; and sweet vs. unsweet, 39—40 hunting, 15, 24, 46, 76, 88, 184; for feasts, 159, 163, 164, 191-2; mythical origin of, 96, 189-90, 260-1, 265-9; ritual of, 467, 48, 85, 163, 184, 197 hunger vs. satiation, 49, 75, 90 ikufuka, 169-71, 182-3, 193-8 passim, 276 illness, 52-8, 151-2; areca nut chewing and, 90; childbirth and, 81-2, 84; dirt and, 28-9, 32, 154, 272; faifai, 31; food preparation and, 68-81; menstruation and, 63—9; nursing and, 67; pregnancy and, 79—80; sexual intercourse and, 60, 64; spirits and, 28-9, 31, 54 independence, Papua New Guinean, 16 inedibility, see dirt, sweet vs. unsweet inequality, 240-2 infants, 81-4 in-laws, see affines inside vs. outside, 21, 23; body and, 4559 passim, 63, 65-6, 71-2, 78; clan

294

Index

inside vs. outside (cont.) identity and, 144, 180; feast foods and, 174-5, 194-6; gender and, 95; and peace vs. war, 115; social relationship and, 111, 126; and space and time, 23— 35 passim inside vs. outside, inverted/everted: body, 38, 53-5, 57-9, 194, 247; clan bloods and, 144; death and, 154; mythical, 712; village and bush, and, 25-8, 32, 38, 247 inversion, see reversal iungefanga, 169-71, 182-3, 193-8, 276 Jakobson, R., 248 Jamous, R., 2, 244 Keesing, R., 232 Kelly, R. C , 2, 245-7 kin (atsi atsitsi), categories of, 102-12, 274; and marriage regulation, 126-7, 137-42; and mourning, 154-5; see also relatives, affines, blood vs. nonblood relations kin, categories of, in Tikopia, 205-6 kin, categories of, in the Trobriands, 21131 passim, 277 Klein group in mathematics, 8-9, 248 kofuapie, 127-33, 234, 274; at feasts, 165, 170, 171, 182; see also affines, friend Kuipa tribe, 15, 102, 271 hula exchange (Trobriand), 230, 231, 232 language differences, 13, 14, 16, 31 Leach, E., 2, 6, 203, 211, 212-13, 214, 216, 245-6 Levi-Strauss, C , 2, 3-7, 21, 42, 100, 118, 207, 231, 239, 248 lime, 70, 72, 91 MacDougall, L., 230 male, see gender Malinowski, B., 200, 210-11, 212, 219, 221 marriage, 11, 73; areca nut chewing and, 90—2; arrangement vs. elopement, 73, 96, 127, 129, 132, 274; mythical origin of, 261; new, bride's, 74-8, 82, 84, 901, 164, 272, 276; new, groom's, 85, 87, 90-1, 164; remarriage, 157, 171; see also affines, spouses marriage compensation exchange (akaila, kaua), 11, 74, 129, 132, 137-42, 274, 275; feasting and, 155-6, 164, 173-7, 197-8; private (onge oake), 198 marriage rules, 62, 100, 113, 125-34; cognatic proscription, 126; endogamy, tribal, 102, 125; exogamy, clan and moiety, 100, 117, 125, 126, 179; feast categories

and, 173; kofuapie prescription, 127-33, 145; papie ngaunga proscription, 126-7, 145; sister exchange proscription, 1334, 145-7, 261 marriage, Trobriand: exchanges, 218-19, 230; regulation of, 214, 216-18, 221-2, 224, 228 massaging, 75, 80, 81 Marxian approaches, 1, 237, 243, 248, 271 Mauss, M., 2 meaning, 1, 9-10 meat (tsitsi), 40, 42-5, 49-50, 56, 64, 979, 255; big vs. small, 86-8, 82-4, 85, 92, 98, 184, 187; for feasts, 162, 163, 169-70, 174-7; mythical origin of, 96, 189-92, 266-70; village vs. bush, 174-7 medicines: fuka, 47; mulamula, 54-5, 86, 90, 155 mefu sorcery, 54-5, 67, 85, 157-8, 190; see also peace sorcery Mekeo, Central, xi, 2, 13, 100, 114, 271; hereditary officers, 16, 114; inequality vs. equality, 240-2; marriage regulation, 127-31; moieties, 112; relations with Bush Mekeo, 15, 121, 122 memengoa ritual, 61-2, 65, 67, 70-2, 804, 90; see also birth men, origin of, 95-7 menstruation, 33, 60, 64-9, 71, 75, 79 methods, ethnographic, 12-13, 15 milk, 67, 82, 84, 92 mission (Sacre Coeur), 16, 18, 133, 153-4, 271 model, 238, 239 moiety (ngopu) (see also clan), 112, 124, 132; exogamy and, 112-3, 126; mythical origin of, 96-8; peace sorcery and, 115 Montague, S., 210, 214, 215, 216 moon, 64 mother (ina), 75, 104, 175, 193, 234-5, 271; Akaisa Men's, 184, 192, 193, 197; killing and eating of, 70-2, 96, 98-9, 190—4; see also abdomen motivation, linguistic, 9-10, 234 Motu peoples (and Koita), 82, 112 movements, millenarian or revitalization, 7 myth, 3-6, 8, 71; and ritual, 6, 71; structure of, 3-6, 213-14, 248 myths: Afinama, 97-9, 265-70; Akaisa, 183, 189-91; Amaka, 69-72; Fipa (Africa), 5-6; Foikale, 95-7, 98-9, 258-70; Trobriand, emergence, 213-4, 217, 222 Nature/Culture, 2, 4-5, 21 Needham, R., 2 Nganga clan, history of, 117-23 nursing, 67, 81, 82-3, 84, 92, 175, 273

Index opening, 49; and feasting, 177, 181; gender conceptualization and, 73, 84, 92-5; male ritual and, 85-6, 87-8, 91; marriage compensation and, 139-42; mythical, 97-9; new marriage and, 79-80; nursing and, 83; sexual intercourse and, 61, 67, 79, 84, 85, 89; thirst and, 49; see also closing ordinary sphere, 21; bodily, 58-9, 61, 69, 70-1, 99; feasting, 181; gender and, 34, 99; marriage reciprocity, 181; villagebush transfers, 23-8, 58, 61, 69; see also extraordinary sphere ordinary men, 130, 181, 183, 194, 276 Ortner, S., 236 Ostor, A., 2 outside (afangai), see inside vs. outside papie ngaunga ("women's children"), 1234, 274; at death, 155; ekefaka and, 1245; at feasts, 163, 171, 173-4; marriage compensation and, 142-5; marriage regulation and, 126-7, 128, 134, 142-4; see also kin

parents, 68, 73, 103 pacification, 16, 111, 123 patrilineality, 16, 112; Etoro, 246 peace chief (lopia), 15, 113, 116-17; clan war officials and, 114-15; at feasts, 159, 160-71 passim, 181, 182-3, 199; female office holders, 120; functionaries of, 160; installation of, 167, 169, 193; lineage organization and, 114-15; mythical origin of, 183-7; as owners of death, 1601; peace sorcerers and, 114-15, 160; friends of, 129-32, 199; residential clans and, 116-17; tribal organization and, 115 peace sorcery (ungaunga), 15; extraordinary sphere and, 29-34 passim, 61; fauapi bush dwelling, 29-30, 31, 33, 61; at feasts, 160, 167, 170, 171; installation of heir, 182-3; mefu, 54-5, 67, 85, 1578, 190; mythical origin of, 183-7; sexuality and, 61; spirits of dead and, 151, 158; subclan organization and, 114, 118— 23; techniques of, 29-30, 33, 54-5, 61, 79-80, 87, 88, 114, 157-8, 271, see also tightening, ritual, poison; tribal organization and, 115; widowers and, 157 person, 141, 149 Piaget, J., 8, 248 pigs, 15, 30, 83, 271; bush, 30, 46, 175, 196; domesticated, 24, 25, 30, 175, 195; likened to adulterers, 61; ownership of, 168-9; provisioning for feast, 162, 164, 196

295 plant food, 42-5, 49-50, 64, 74-8, 85, 86, 169, 254; areca nut and, 54, 90; for feasts, 169, 174; mythical origin of, 967, 258-64 passim poison (ipani), 30, 54, 60, 61, 67, 68, 151 Powell, H. A., 210, 211, 214-15, 216, 227, 230 pregnancy, 64, 66-7, 75, 78-80, 268, 271, 273 procreation, see conception, pregnancy, birth procreative vs. contraceptive, 77, 82-4, 92-4, 97, 99; at feasts, 164, 179-80; mythical, 184-5, 193-4

rank, see senior vs. junior rank, in Tikopia, 202-3, 207 rank, in the Trobriands, 213-16 passim, 276 raw (maisa), 41, 44, 55, 70, 74, 96, 179, 261 relations, structural vs. semantic, 1, 9, 235, 238 relationship terminologies, 100, 112, 274; affinal, 109-10; Dravidian, 124-5; Hawaiian/generational, 103-9, 112, 125 relatives (see also kin, ekefaka, blood vs. nonblood relations, affines): adoptive, 179, 184, 188, 194; daily food exchange and, 25, 47; mourning and, 154; new marriage and, 76; papie ngaunga and, 124, 134; sexual sweet-unsweet transformation and, 62, 103; sorcery and, 158; work and, 46 residence, rules of, 74, 113, 116; in the Trobriands, 214-15, 216 resources vs. wastes, 22, 23-8, 29, 45-52, 56, 234, 250 reversal (or inversion), structural, 3, 5, 11, 246-9; de-conception and, 177-81, 1919, 234; gender and, 99; health and illness, and, 57; spatial, 25-8, 35 ripening (eaipa), 41, 43-5, 46, 57-8, 74 rites of passage, 6-7 ritual, 6-7, 9, 238-9; extraordinary sphere and, 29-36, 61, 99, 181 ritual, female: areca nut chewing and, 902; birth, 80-1; cycle of, 73-84; menstruation and, 68-9; mythical, 70-2, 989; new marriage sexuality and, 73-9; postpartum and nursing, 81-4 ritual, male (see also sorcery, chiefs), 28, 33, 41, 79, 274; areca nut chewing and, 91-2; bachelorhood, 89-90; courting, 29, 33, 65, 68-9, 165, 166-7, 171; cycle of, 84-92, 97; gardening, 29, 33, 48, 85, 275; hunting, 46-7; marriage and, 79-

296

Index

ritual, male (cont.) 80, 83; mythical origins of, 96-7, 99; sexual intercourse and, 67, 165, 166-7; tightening, 41, 86-90, 157; work vs. nonwork and, 46-7 ritual, mortuary (see also feasts), 11, 32, 40, 150, 195; bafu food abstention, 162, 170-1, 191; burial, 153-8; de-conception and re-conception, and, 177-81, 191-9 passim; hearth, 272; kofuapie and, 165, 167, 170-1; playing, 163-4; taboos, 153-4, 159, 162-3; treatment of corpse, 153-4, 157-8, 168; widow and widower, 156-7, 170-1 ritual, in Tikopia: firstborn, 205; food division, 207; kava, 204, 205; male initiation, 205-6; marriage, 206; Marae, 2078; mortuary, 206 ritual, in the Trobriands, 209-33 passim; mortuary, 218, 220-4, 230, 232 river (ivi), 30 roasting (euma) {see also cooking), 41, 435, 46, 57-8, 64, 86, 89; in myth, 98, 263 Robinson, M. S., 218-19 Roro peoples, 16, 112, 198 rubbish (kamakama), 24-7, 68, 168, 190, 196-7, 272 sacred vs. profane, 2, 6—7, 21, 86—7 sadness (etsetse), 153, 159 Sahlins, M., 2, 232, 238, 244-5 Saussure, F. de, 1, 13, 243 Schneider, D. M., 2, 236 seasons, wet vs. dry, 44, 88, 97, 272 Seligmann, C. G., xi, 82, 100, 128 semen (ilaila), 60; and conception, 64-5, 72, 75, 76-9 passim, 85, 101; excretion of, 63, 65; ingestion of, 60, 62; male ritual and, 33, 61; meat and, 76-8; menstrual blood and, 64-6; nursing and, 67, 82 senior (fakania) vs. junior (eke), 104, 234, 240; friend network of chiefs and, 130; classification of siblings and, 103, 124-5; hereditary officials, 114, 186; lineages, 114; marriage regulation and, 147; residential clans and, 116; subclans, 113, 270; wallabies, 197 Sexual intercourse, 60—72 passim, 73—9, 167; extramarital, 61-2, 66, 69, 73, 90, 262, see also adultery; marital, 61-2, 66, 69, 73, 75-9, 84, 85-92; oral, 61, 63; sorcery and, 61, 67, 84, 86, 88; as sweet-unsweet transformation, 62—6, 75-6, 87, 90-2, 96-7, 99 Shapiro, W., 2

siblings, 73, 103-4, 190, 276 skills (etsifa), 40, 46, 63, 70-1, 87, 189 skin, 63; bathing and, 76; chewing and, 90, 91; of clan, 126, 144, 146, 154, 177, 180; dirty, 55, 81, 163, 168; engorging and, 75; faifai and, 30, 31; homicide and, 86; iunge fanga "lost skin," 16771, 183, 193, 194-6; mythical, 31, 186, 188-9, 198, 262, 273; sexual intercourse and, 63, 75-6, 79, 91; shedding of, 31, 180, 273 smoking, or drying (eongongo), 41, 43-5, 46, 57-8, 165 snakes (faipo), 30-1, 32, 33, 97, 258-9, 273 sons, 66, 153 sorcery (see also ritual, peace sorcery, war sorcery), 22, 41, 61, 81, 185; acquisition of, 15, 89, 157, 190; gardening, 29, 33, 85; in the Trobriands, 232 soul (laulau), 28, 29, 54, 152 space and time, conceptions of, 10, 21-3, 58-9, 236, 237, 241; extraordinary sphere and, 28-37; ordinary sphere and, 23-8; in Tikopia, 206-7 spirits (tsiange), 22, 28, 30-1, 34, 151, 184; bush people, 30-5, 40, 76, 79, 82, 97, 160, 190, 271, 275, see also faifai; human, ancestral, 28, 30-1, 33, 151, 186; in the Trobriands, 212, 213, 226, 227, 229, 232 spouses, 109; adultery of, 61, 68; chewing by, 90-1; desire for children and, 66, 67, 73; ekefaka sibling category and, 124-5, 134; food and, 25, 62; mourning and, 156-7, 170-1; mythical, 70-2, 969, 261, 265-70; as one blood, 275; poisoning and, 68; postpartum ritual and, 67, 80-4, 88-9; pregnancy and, 78-80, 87-8; sexual intercourse and, 61—2, 66— 7, 69, 75-8, 84-5, 88-9; see also affines, marriage, papie ngaunga, relatives Stephen, M., 128 stomach, 90 Strathern, A., and M. Strathern, 2 Strathern, M., 2 structuralism, 1-10 passim, 12, 13, 248-9 structure, and contradiction, 3, 11, 139, 172-3, 239, 245-9; food, sexuality, and menstruation, 60, 101, 172; in Hawaiian history, 244-5; societal bloods and marriage compensation, 101, 139-42, 1723; societal bloods and feasting de-conception, 150, 172-3 structure, and history, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 118, 142, 242-9 structures, binary, 2, 3, 132, 240, 242, 248

Index structures, linguistic, 8, 248 structures, mythical, 3-6, 213-14, 248 structures, psychological, 8, 248 structures, quadripartite, in anthropology, 1-13 passim, 233, 246 structures, quadripartite (Bush Mekeo), 239, 244, 245-8; bloods and interclan marriage, 137-42, 144; bodily, 38, 45, 53-9, 71, 247-8; clan offices and lineages, 115, 116-23, 147-8, 244; culinary, 38, 57-8, 77; intergenerational, 148; interclan feasting, 155, 173-81, 199; gender and sexuality, 77-8, 94, 98, 149; spatio-temporal, 28-31, 32-3, 357, 149, 247-8 structures, quadripartite (Tikopia), xi, 201, 204, 205, 207-8, 248; bodily, 202; chieftainship, 203, 204, 207; clans, 202-3, 204, 207; conception theory, 202; districts, 203-4; firstborn ceremony, 205; food categories, 207; houses, 207; kava ceremony, 204, 205; kin categories, 205, 206; male initiation, 205-6; male vs. female relations, 207; Marae, 207, 208; marriage ceremony, 206; mortuary ritual, 206; patrilineages, 205; politico-religious functions, 203, 204 structures, quadripartite (Trobriand), xi, 201, 209, 216, 225-6, 229-30, 231-2, 248; age/gender distinctions, 209-10; animal categories, 213; bodily, 210; bones of deceased, 226-7; chieftainship, 213-4, 217, 227-30, 231; clans, 214, 215-16, 219, 221, 222-6; cluster leaders, 227-30, 231; conception theory, 210-12, 226; de-conception, 224-7; father, 227-30, 277; food exchanges, 214, 219, 228, 277: gender, 209-10, 213, 230, 231-2; hamlet managers, 214, 22730, 231: kula exchanges, 230, 231, 232; marriage exchanges, 218-19; marriage regulation, 214, 217-18, 221-2, 224-5; milamala festival, 232; mortuary ritual, 223-4, 277; myth of emergence, 213, 222; political integration, 216-17, 22730; rank, 213, 214, 215; residence, 216; spirit, 232; substantial vs. nonsubstantial, 210, 211, 231; subclans, 214, 215, 216, 221, 222-3, 224; valuables, 219, 230; villages, 231-2; wasi exchanges, 231; yam exchanges, 214, 219-20 structures, ritual, 6-7, 9-10, 248 structures, social, 5-6, 10, 11, 100-49 passim, 150; Etoro, 245-7 structures, triadic, 2-3, 6, 246-7, 248 succession, rules of, 15, 16 sun (tsina), 44, 70, 95-6, 258

297

sweet-unsweet, transformations of, 38-59, 60-7, 71-2, 75-99 passim, 153-4, 167; areca nut chewing, 41, 90-1; bathing, 75-6, 79, 86; blood synthesis, 48, 4956, 57-8, 152; cooking, 41-5, 48-52, 70-2, 96-7; curing, 41, 55-6, 90; death, 151-2; drinking, 41, 49, 79, 85, 86-7, 96-7; health and illness, 52-9; menstruation, 65-6; nursing, 82, 84; sexual intercourse, 62-6, 75-6, 79, 87, 90-2, 96-7, 99; tightening, 86; weaning, 67, 83-4; work and nonwork, 46-8 sweet vs. unsweet, 38, 40, 52, 103, 152, 166 symbols, key, 235-8; in Bush Mekeo culture, 236-8 synchrony, priority of, over diachrony, 1, 13, 243-5, 248 Tambiah, S. J., 2, 232 thirst, 49 throat, 47, 49, 77, 79; areca nut and, 90 tightening, 41, 86-90, 157, 276 Tikopia, ix, 12, 201-8, 211, 232; body, conceptions of, 202; chieftainship, 203, 204, 207; clans, 202-3, 204, 207, 208; conception, 201-2; districts, 203-4; firstborn ceremony, 205; gender, 202; houses, 207; kava ceremony, 204, 205; kin categories, 205—6; male initiation, 205-6; male vs. female relations, 202, 207; marriage ceremony, 206; patrilineages, 205; politico-religious functions, 203, 204; rank, 202-3, 207; society, integration of, 203, 208 Tooker, D. E., 230, 232 tribe, 11, blood reciprocation and, 102-3; clanship and, 112-13, 142, 149; at feasts, 173, 179; kin and, 109; marriage regulation and, 125; the person and, 149; populations, 15; see also Amoamo, Kuipa Trobriand islands, 12, 202, 209-33 passim; age/gender distinctions, 209-10; animal categories, 213; blood, 226, 227, 229; body, conceptions of, 210, 211, 212, 229; bones of deceased, 226-7; chieftainship, 213-14, 217, 227-30, 231, 276; clans, 212-26 passim; cluster leaders, 214, 217, 227-30, 231; conception, theory of, 210-12, 226, 227, 229, 230; districts, 217, 276; ethnography of, 209; father, 211, 212, 216, 218-19, 223, 224, 227-30, 277; father's clan, 217-18; food and eating, 212, 227, 277; food exchanges, 212, 219-29 passim, 277; gardens, 212, 227-9, 231, 232, 277;

298

Index

Trobriand islands (cont.) gender, 209-10, 211, 213, 227, 230, 231-2; hamlet, 216; hamlet manager, 214, 216, 223, 224, 227-30, 231; kula exchange, 230, 231, 232; marriage exchanges, 218—19, 230; marriage regulation, 214, 216, 217-18, 221-2, 224-5, 228; milamala festival, 232; mortuary ritual, 218, 220-4, 230, 232, 277; mother, 211, 226, 229; myth of emergence, 21314, 217, 232; political integration, 21617, 227-30, 276; rank, 213-16; sorcerers, and witches, 232; spirits, 212, 213, 226, 227, 229, 232; substantial vs. nonsubstantial, 210, 211, 231; subclans, 214-24 passim; village clusters, 216-17; villages, 216-17, 227-8, 231-2; wasi exchanges, 231; yam exchanges, 214, 21920, 228, 230, 277 Umeda culture, 9, 238 unidirectional vs. ambidirectional, 28, 345, 59, 72, 99, 181 urine, 66 vagina (ito) (see alsofire),63, 64, 66, 702, 91, 98, 234, 275; big vs. small, 1845, 187; mythical origin of, 96, 262, 267 valuables (kefu), 16, 74, 132, 275 village (paunga), 22-37 passim, 39, 40, 116; clearing of, 24, 25, 34, 78; faifai, 30; hot-cold transformation of, 152-3, 165-6, 167, 171, 270; kofuapie at, 12733; mythical origin of, 96-7, 262-3; periphery of, 25-35; resources, 250; Trobriand, 216-17, 227-8, 232-3 village abdomen (paunga inaenga), 21, 74, 234, 273; bachelors prohibited from, 89; burial in, 35; clearings of, 24-5, 34, 272; at feasts, 166, 167, 169-71, 172, 179; and myth, 98 village beings (paunga aunga), 21, 22, 39 village vs. bush, 21-34 passim, 40, 60-1, 96-9, 174, 234 Virgin Birth, 65, 188, 226 Vogt, E. Z., 2

vomiting, 83, 189; mythical, 70, 72, 96, 259, 260, 262 wallaby (matsi, mani), 191, 196-7, 260-1, 272, 276 Wallace, A. F. C , 7 war chiefs (iso), 15, 114-15, 151, 160; installation of, 182—3; and lineage organization, 114-15; mythical origin of, 183-7; and peace chiefs, 160-1; residential clans and, 117; tribal organization and, 115 war sorcerers (faika), 15, 160; and authority of peace chiefs, 160; and extraordinary sphere, 29, 33, 35; installation of, 182-3; mythical origin of, 183-7; and sexuality, 85—6; spirits of dead and, 151; subclan organization and, 114; techniques of, 33, 35, 85-6, 87, 151; tribal organization and, 115 warfare (aoao), 13, 15, 16, 244; as blood reciprocity, 102; techniques of, 85—6, 88; World War II, 17-8 warfare vs. peace, 13, 15, 16, 85-6, 1023, 113-15 water (ivi), 30, 41, 42-3, 49-50; amniotic, 65-6; mythical origin of, 96-7, 264; nonfreeflowing, 86; vaginal, 61, 63, 64, 70-1, 91, 97, 262 weak, 273 weaning, 67, 83-4, 88-9 weapons, 85 Weiner, A. B., 210, 215, 216, 217-18, 219, 221-4, 227 wet, see dry vs. wet, water, blood widow/widower, 33, 88, 156-7 Willis, R., 5-6, 248 womb, 63, 271; see also abdomen work vs. nonwork, 45-52, 256, 272; house building and, 46-7; hunting and, 45, 46; mourning and, 154, 162; new marriage and, 74, 77-8, 85; tightening and, 8790 working together, 115-23