The making of global and local modernities in Melanesia: humiliation, transformation and the nature of cultural change

Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific Series Editors: Pamela 1. Stewart and Andrew Strathem University of Pittsburgh, USA

This series offers a fresh perspective on Asian and Indo-Pacific Anthropology. Acknowledging the increasing impact of transnational flows of ideas and practices across borders, the series widens the established geographical remit of Asian studies to consider the entire ludo-Pacific region. In addition to focussed ethnographic studies, the series incorporates thematic work on issues of cross-regional impact, including globalization, the spread of terrorism, and alternative medical practices. The series further aims to be innovative in its disciplinary breadth, linking anthropological theory with studies in cultural history and religious studies, thus reflecting the current creative interactions between anthropology and historical scholarship that are enriching the study of Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. While the series covers classic themes within the anthropology of the region such as ritual, political and economic issues will also be tackled. Studies of adaptation, change and conflict in small-scale situations enmeshed in wider currents of change will have a significant place in this range of foci. We publish scholarly texts, both single-authored and collaborative as well as collections of thematically organized essays. The series aims to reach a core audience of anthropologists and Asian Studies specialists, but also to be accessible to a broader multidisciplinary readership.

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia Humiliation, Transfonnation and the Nature of Cultural Change

Edited by JOEL ROBBINS University of California, USA HOLLY WARDLOW University of Toronto, Canada

Titles in the series

Of Marriage, Violence and Sorcery David McKnight ISBN 0 7546 4465 0

Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation Elizabeth Burns Coleman ISBN 0 7546 4403 0

Expressive Genres and IDstorical Change: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan Edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathem ISBN 0 7546 4418 9

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© Joel Robbins and Holly Wardlow 2005

Contents

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List of Contributors Series Editors' Preface Acknowledgements Introduction - Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall SaWins and the Study of Cultural Change in Melanesia Joel Robbins

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The making of global and local modernities in Melanesia: humiliation, transfonnation and the nature of cultural change. - (Anthropology and cultural history in Asia and the Indo-Pacific) 1. Social change - Melanesia 2. Humiliation 3. Social evolution 4. Melanesia - Social conditions 5. Melanesia _ Civilization - Foreign influences I. Robbins, Joel, 1961- IT. Wardlow, Holly 306'.0995

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The making of global and local modernities in Melanesia: humiliation, transfonnation, and the nature of cultural change I edited by loeI Robbins and Holly Wardlow. p. cm. -- (Anthropology and cultural history in Asia and the Indo-Pacific) fuc1udes index. ISBN 0-7546-4312-3 1. Ethnology--Melanesia. 2. Indigenous peoples--Melanesia. 3. Social change-Melanesia. 4. Economic development--Melanesia. 5. Ethnopsychology--Melanesia. 6. Culture and globalization--Melanesia. 7. Melanesia--Social conditions. 8. Melanesia-Colonization. 9. Melanesia--Foreign relations. 1. Robbins, loel, 1961- n. Wardlow, Holly. m. Series.

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The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific Marshall Sahlins

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The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization of the Subject among the Urapmin Joel Robbins

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Transfonnations of Desire: Envy and Resentment among the Huli of Papua New Guinea Holly Wardlow

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'We Are Not Straight': Bumbita Arapesh Strategies for Self-Reflection in the Face ofImages of Western Superiority Stephen C. Leavitt

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Sepik River Selves in a Changing Modernity: From Sahlins to Psychodynamics Eric Kline Silvennan

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'We Are All "Les" Men': Sorrow and Modernism in Melanesia, or Humor in Paradise Douglas Dalton

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Moral and Practical Frameworks for the Self in Conditions of Social Change Lisette Josephides

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The Death of Moka in Post-Colonial Mount Hagen, HighlandS, Papua New Guinea Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern

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8 Printed and bound by Athenaeum Press, Ltd. Gateshead, Tyne & Wear.

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On the Life and Times of the rpili Imagination Aletta Biersack

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On Humiliation and Class in Contemporary Papua New Gumea Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz

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Turning to Violence: Hazardiug Intent in Central New Ireland KarenSykes

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Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio: Kastom as Culture in a Melanesian Society DavidAkin Mterword - Frustrating Modernity in Melanesia Robert 1. Foster

Index

List of Contributors

David Akin, Comparative Studies in Society and History Aletta Biersack, University of Oregon

183

Douglas Dalton, Longwood University Frederick Errington, Trinity College, Hartford

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Robert J. Foster, University of Rochester

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Deborab Gewertz, Amberst College Lisette Josepbides, Queens University, Belfast Stephen C. Leavitt, Union College Joel Robbins, University of California, San Diego Marshall SaWins, University of Chicago Eric Kline Silverman, DePauw University Pamela J. Stewart, University of Pittsburgh Andrew Strathern, University of Pittsburgh Karen Sykes, University of Manchester Holly Wardlow, University of Toronto

Introduction

Humiliation and Transformation: Marshall Sahlins and the Study of Cultural Change in Melanesia Joel Robbins

Marshall Sahlins is one of the most influential living anthropologists. Of the handful of those whose prominence might be said to be similar to his, he is the only one who has made the theorization of cultural change central to hislher work. Dming a period when disciplinary interest is increasingly focused on issues of change - be it under the rubric of globalization, postcolonial transformation, postsoviet transitology or what have you - the importance of his work in this area shows no sign of diminishing. The contributors to this volume take up Sahlins' work on cnltural change, delineating and extending it by applying it to cultures in Melanesia, one of the areas from which Sahlins commonly takes his own examples and one whose literature has clearly shaped his own vision. The result is a set of essays that exemplifies the power of Sahlins' approach while also opening up new questions about it and putting it in dialogue with other important theoretical trends. Along with being the first such collection of papers taking up Sah1ius as a theorist of cnltural change, this volume is also distinctive because it comes to Sahlins' work as it were through the back door. Sahlins is best known as a master of the task of finding continuity in change, and his theoretical work is widely used to produce analyses showing how indigenous orders of meaning have been able to shape even the most cataclysmic transfonnations in ways that allow for their own survival, even if in modified forms. While many of the chapters in this volume also demonstrate continuities across what at first might look like cultural divides, and while they draw on Sahlins' best known work in doing so, none of them take such continuity for granted. This is so because all of the contributors have taken as their starting point a relatively little read 1992 paper of Sahlins' entitled 'The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific' (reprinted as chapter one here). Sahlins devotes most of this chapter to developing what were at the time of its original publication some relatively new ideas about how people work to preserve and extend indigenous cultural values in the face of change. But at the end of the chapter, he asks what must happen in order for people to give up on such projects of cultural reproduction and exteusion. What kinds of transformations rupture the unfolding of processes of cnltural continuity-in-change on which he focuses? Although Sahlins' discussion of these questions in this chapter

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

is very brief, he does speculate on some answers to them. And because nothing like this discussion appears in any of his more well known published writings, these few pages take on a great importance for anyone who would read his theoretical work in. a thorough way. Such, at least, is the point of view from which the. chapters .m thiS volume take their bearings, for the authors of all of them find their mvesl1gal1ons of continuity enriched by having make them while reckouing with an approach that also comprehends discontinuous change. Foreshadowing a fuller discussion later in this introduction, we can broadly sketch Sahlins' answer to the question of how it is that cultures cease to produce continuity through change by noting that it turns on the notion of humiliation~!~Jl!e will not stop perceiving the world that confronts them through therr receIVed -categories and bending it to their own values until they come to see thos~ categones and values -that is, their culture - as something shameful and debased. To quote a turn of phrase that almost every chapter of the volume discusses: before people give up on their culture, they

At the same time, however, I point out how Sahlins' remarks about humiliation link his work to contemporary discussions in postcolouial theory and, perhaps surprisingly, liberal political thought. We also discuss the extent to which humiliation may be considered a cultural fact, rather than or alongside its more obvious status as a psychological one. In doing so, I review the arguments made in many of the chapters of this volume that humiliation and other 'emotions' may not be as insubstantial players in cultural life as some perspectives, including the structuralist one from which Sahlins takes so much, might suggest.

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must first learn to hate what they already have, what they have always considered their well-being. Beyond that, they have to despise what they are, to hold their own existence in contempt - and want, then, to be someone else (Sahlins, 1992a, p.24).

It is this observation that is the back door through which these papers encounter Sahlins' theory of change. We all begin with his arguments about discontinuity grounded in humiliation, query and develop his observations, and at the same I1me reread his better known arguments about continuity from this novel vantage pomt. The remainder of this introduction is divided into three parts. The first reviews Sablins' theoretical work on cultural change from the late 1980s onward, paying particular attention to a series of well known essays that I :rrgue siguificantly adv~nce Sahlins' basic tbeory of change as laid out most famously m Islands of HIStory. Smce these essays are polemical and were also for the most part written for specific occasions, it is easy to miss the way that taken as a whole they open up a new chapter in Sahlins' work. Only by reading them together, I suggest, can one see the extent to which they have served to enricb his basic theoretical scheme. These essays also provide the context in wbich the chapter reprinted here and its uncharacteristic final few pages needs to be read. I offer such a reading and use it to contextualize the arguments of the chapters of this volume as well. The second part of the introduction focuses on Sahlins' argument about humiliation. I consider the extent to whicb it needs to be seen as making a break with the main body of his work, and suggest that many of the chapters in this volume would argue against seeing it as such. A review of these chapters indicates that it is possible to indigenize humiliation itself, and show how it becomes a spur to the kind of indigenous agency Sahlins' theory of change has always focused up?n. . "The third part of the introduction addresses the fact that humilial10n nught seem ! a rather slender thread upon which to hang a major theory of cultural change. I consider the extent to which it is in fact ouly a placeholder that points to the need to develop a broader theory of the role of cultural debasement in fostering discontinuity. c

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Sahlins on Continuity and Discontinuity in Cultnral Change In the introduction to a recent collection of essays originally publisbed between 1963 and 1999, Sahlins (2000a, p.9) discusses three fundamental ideas around which he has based ltis work on cultural change. First, he notes in passing that 'in all change there is continuity.' Second, he points out more directly that a theme that he develops through all of the texts collected in the volume 'has to do with the cultural integrity of the indigenous peoples. 'And, third, he hints at the importance to his thinking of the idea thatjpdigel)ousJ)~opies-.-rlfe "active .agents' "processes of change, even in those which the other players represent the dominant powers of the world capitalist systeIii--These" three themes are, of course, connected: it is the -enduring integrity of Indlgen()uS peoples and their cultures that constitute the continuities that underlie change, and this integrity endures because indigenous people actively struggle 'to encompass what is happeuing to them in the terms of their own world system' (Sahlins, 2000a, p.lO). Sahlins elaborates each of these points individually in particular essays, but in all of his work their coherence as a framework for studying cultural change is evident. The roots of these three ideas, and of the overall approach to cultural change that Sahlins fashions from them, are various. Sahlins has recently stressed the importance of White's superorganicist symbolic theory in preadapting him to the sophisticated structuralist version of cultural theory be would encounter in the 1960s (Sahlins, 2000a, pp. 10-17). One can also surmise that White's evolutiouism, which Sahlins worked to refine in his early work, also made issues of change fundamental to him to an extent they were not to those who came to study symbolism out of other traditions such as the Parsouian one. If this point is taken, then one might argue that this evolutiouist side of White's thinking also shaped Sahlins' reading of structuralism, allowing him to recognize aspects ofUvi-Strauss' work that most others missed. For Sah1ins appears from the outset to have been aware of the fact that Levi-Strauss was himself interested in history and change, and to have avoided falling for the willfully simple-minded interpretations of the hollcold distinction that refused to credit that it was not a claim about the absence of change, but rather one about the danger of universalizing a Western cultural model of the nature and valne of change as a theoretical construct. Indeed, if The Savage Mind is to be read as a book with a single theme - if it is to be read beyond the bricoleur and tbe science of the concrete of its first chapter -it

to"ses";;"

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Humiliation and Transformation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

has to be read as a book about the relationships that hold between structure and change (Levi-Strauss, 1966). Read in this way, the book is about the work structures do to make change comprehensible either by taking it in on their own terms or transforming themselves under the sway of its force. Uvi-Strauss' point is not that nothing happens in history, it is rather that in societies that do not share the Western valorization of change, lots of structural work gets done to lend history its placid appearance. 1 Continuity is thus a historical product, not an indication of an absence of history. Sahlins seems almost unique among American readers of Uvi-Strauss in recognizing this point early on. As early as 1976 he wrote that:

history, and the concern with issues of agency - come together (Sahlins, 1981, 1985, 1992b, 1995). The model Sahlins' develops in these works - a model of people putting the categories of their culture into play by acting, thus subjecting those categories to risk in the eveut that the fit between category and reality is not a neat one, and finally suffering the transfonnations of categories and the relations between them when there is a mismatch betweeu category and reality - is well enough known that there is no need to lay it out in delail here. This work on Hawaii provides a fully developed example of how Sahlins' theories illuminate particular histories and demonstrate the power of an approach that looks for how a culture can shape processes of change and in doing so relain its own integrity for a longer time than many would expect. Since the late 1980s, Sahlins has also worked to elaborate and defend not only his model as a whole (as in his debate with Obeyesekere), but also to develop new approaches to the study of change that remain faithful to his fundamental commitment to the study culture in its own terms and to recognizing the force of indigenous agency in securing cultural continnity in situations of change. He has done this in a series of polemical chapters pitched against the arguments of world-systems theorists, globalization theorists and post-modernists. Scholars working in each of these areas present arguments that attack Sah\ins' fundamental assumptions, and his goal in these pieces has been to parry these attacks both by offering critical readings of their theoretical underpinnings and by showing how his assumptions and the kinds of argument they underwrite can shed light on situations that on first glance seem to lend themselves most readily to analysis in the terms favored by his opponents. The

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Structuralism developed in the first place out of the encounter with a typ~ of s~ciety, the so-called primitive, distinguished by a special capacity to absorb perturbatlOns ~troduced by the event with a minimum of systematic deformation. By ~ts co~p~hensl0n of that capacity, structuralism takes on the explication of the wo~k of history III Its most powerful form, the persistence of structure by means of event (SaWins, 1976, p.23).

This point would become a central plank of Sah\ins' structural history, and it allowed him to work with a powerful version of structural theory WIthout glVlng up the mterest . . in change that is also part of his Whitean inberitance. Yet at the same time as Sahlins was preadapted both to apprecIating the structuralist interest in symbolism and to recognizing that it contained at least the seeds of a major theory of cultural change, he also brought to his encounter with structuralism an interest in agency, in acting subjects, that was largely lacking m Uvi-Strauss' antihumanistic vision. If Levi-Strauss (1966) could see in Sartre little more than a philosophical gussying up of Western folk ideas about change and about the power of individuals to make themselves, Sahlin~ has. a1way~ had ,-"ore time for the Sartrean notion that the inapact of structure on mdlVlduals IS mediated by the particulars of their life experience and the corollary claim that in acting individuals are guided by structure but do not mechanically reproduce it Sartre's (1968, p.56) point is nicely captured in his famous quip that 'Valery IS a petit bourgeois intellectual, no doubt about it. But not e~ery pellt bo~rge01s mtellectu~ is Valery.' In Sahlins, a similar insight leads him to conSider how people s individuality plays a role in the way they take up or negotiate the oPP?rtumlles for meaningful action created by structure (Sahlins, 2000a, p26). In dOll)g so, he IS more attentive to contexts of action, differences of SOClal posItiomng and the variety of culturally available motives than most others who work i~ the

structuralist tradition or in other traditions that are build around sophisllcated conceptions of culture. His theoretical advances in this area have allowed him to create a structuralist approach to history that is far more nuanc~d and attenti~~ to change than anything produced by Uvi-Strauss or others working III the traditIOn he founded. The novelty of Sahlins' approach is evident in his work on Hawaiian history, where all of the elements of his thinking so far discussed - the interest in change, the appreciation of symbolism, the recognition of the value of structuralist thiuking about

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outcome of these encounters is a set of analyses that carry over the most basic points

of Sahlins' Hawaiian work but also add a great deal to it. Because Sahlins' argument about humiliation also arises in the midst of this recent work, it is important to review it here. Sahlins takes on arguments about the corrosive effects of globalization on indigenous cultures in a 2001 piece entitled 'Reports of the Death of Culture Have Been Exaggerated.' Although this piece, like all of Sahlins' recent work, conlains an important theoretical polemic, this feature is less in the forefront here than elsewhere. Instead, in this piece_Sahlins focuses on working with what should be hard cases of globalization for his approach .tohandle to.. show. the value ofthat approach to good ~ffect. Many fodlif~arguethat anthropological notions of culture were historically wounded in assumptions about closed, locany situated cOlmt1]mities. that no .one can anymore accept in a world marked. by migration, exile, and the extensive diffusion gf aspects of Wes!<'11lc\llture
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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

the coup de grace to 'integral' cultures actually serve to secure their~c()n1inued existence. .,,-. Even as he attacks that position within globalization theory that equates human and symbolic flow with cultural destruction, SaWins also very regularly borrows from globalization theory the observation that the global spread of Western culture h~s not~ served to produce anything like a single, homogenized global culture. Rath~r, It has elicited innumerable self-conscious movements of cultural preservation, reVIval and differentiation. In order to put this point to work in his OWO arguments, however, Sahlins has to counter the claim that sometimes goes with it that such self-consclOus culturalism at best represents an attachment to something less than an 'authentic' culture and at worst is little more than a cynical 'invention of tradition' in the service of local elites. Offering a critique of these positions is the primary goal of his chapter 'Two or Three Things I Know about Culture' (Sahlins, 1999). In this chapter, the theoretical polemic is front and center. SaWins take the invention of tradition theorists to task for being pat! of a more general trend of 'powerism.' Powerists, on Sahlins argument, make arguments very much in the functionalist tradition by explaining any given cultural phenomenon as existing/persisting as a result of the work it does to stabilize the power ~tructure of the society in which it appears. Like other functionalist arguments, SaWins pomts out, powerist analyses cannot explain the cultural content of the phenomena they analyze, since there is no reason why other contents could not have equally well perfoIDled the stabilizing work with which they are credited. To explain the contents, SaWins argues, one has to stat! with the culture that gives them sense and then examme how that culture constructs and channels the competition for power. But if one is to start with culture, then one cannot start, as powerists do, with universalist assumptions ~bout what people want and what constitutes power in the first place. Hence, ~ shift .to explaining contents would ultimately lead to the collapse of the mam soctal theoretical assumptions about the universality and transparency of the nature of selfinterest that are at the heat! of the powerist approach. After attacking powerist arguments in general, Sahlins turns specifically to the invention of tradition literature and defends the claim that even if newly invented traditions are born in struggles for power as locally defined, or are self-consciously constructed as pat! of efforts to resist the hegemony of an encroaching world system, they are not for all that somehow less than cultural. SaWins supports this point with two different arguments. One is that cultures have always been mvented (albeit in terms given by the culture of those who invent them), ~d hence the fact that they are also being invented now does not make them differ~nt from or somehow less authentic than those of the past. The other argument IS that even when people appear to invent culture by taking one or two aspects of their tradition as central to the whole in a move to differentiate themselves from others, thIS does not represent a reification that makes their culture ~nauthentic. Instea~, with a nod toward Durkheim, SaWins argues that these seenungly decontextuallzed symbols are able to serve as emblems of cultural identity precisely because they express for people the whole invisible skein of meanings that constitute the culture that they share. Both of his arguments against the prevailing style of analyzmg mvented

Humiliation and Transformation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

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traditions are designed to rehabilitate the status of such traditions as trnly cultural, and hence to make them susceptihle to analysis in the terms of Sahlins' own models of how cultural continuity shapes cultural change. The third position that SaWins has recently been in critical dialogue with is world systems theory, especially as it has been developed by Wolf (1997 [1982]) and those influenced by him. In many ways, SaWins' engagement with world systems theory has been more sustained than those he has had with theories of globalization and post-modernist powerism. Reading the world systems theorists as arguing that what anthropologists have always studied as indigenous cultures are actually in most cases products of the world capitalist system, Sahlins reacts strongly against their tendency to cast doubt on the integrity of indigenous cultures and to suggest that indigenous people have little power to affect the courses of change in which the world system catches them up. In opposition to world-systems arguments about the force of the world capitalist system to destroy traditional cultures and remake them to its own specifications, SaWins promotes the notion of 'develop-man. ' Sahlins fashioned the teIDl develop-man out of his own mishearing of Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin speaker's pronunciation of 'defelopman' (see the chapter included here). He uses it to refer to cases in which non-Western people use their encounter with the world capitalist system to develop their owo culture in its owo teIDlS. If development happens when people learn not just to sell their labor on the market but also to remake their social relations along Western lines and hence open up at least the possibility of reinvesting what the market brings them back into the capitalist system, develop-man occurs when people plow the fruits of their labor into the project of expanding traditional social life along traditional lines. In develop-man, the rituals get bigger, the chains of reciprocity get longer, and the followings of the big men and chiefs expand - and throughout the period in which all this happens, the cultural logics governing social relations remain recognizahly indigenous. In develop-man, the ends of social life remain much the same, ouly the means of attaining them and the scale on which one can do so change 2 On Sahlins' reckoning, develop-man happens far more often than most social scientists imagine, and it can last for hundreds of years. In his well known piece 'Cosmologies of Capitalism,' he demonstrates this in great detail and goes on to show how the agency of indigenous people, agency they exercised in the service of their projects of develop-man, decisively iulluenced the development of the world capitalist system rather than capitulating before it (SaWins, 1989). He also makes similar points about develop-man in several later chapters, including the one reprinted here (e.g. 1993, 2000b). Readers of Sahlins' recent writings will recoguize the extent to which the notion of develop-man has hecome one of his favorite ideas to think with. Even when he does not mention it explicitly, one can see its main outlines at work in franting his analyses of pat!icular cultural configurations. For example, the logic of develop-man clearly underlies his argument ahout culture-preserving nature of 'translocal cultures,' which, based as they are on converting market gains into indigenous cultural ones, can be seen as develop-man projects carried out across spatial disjunctures. Given the foregoing

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Humiliation and Transformation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

discussion of Sahlins' fundamental ideas, it is not hard to see why the notion of developman should be so central to his thinking: it very economically combines his interests in cultrnal integrity, continuity in change, and indigenous agency. In spite of the important role develop-man has played in Sahlins' thinking, however, we should see it as just one of a set of innovations - a set that also includes the notion of translocal cultures and that of the integrity of invented traditions - that he has developed by putting his approach to culture into dialogue with other popular theoretical progtarns covering similar gtound. Sahlins (2000b) himself makes almost this point in a recent chapter that picks up themes from all of the work discussed here. Considering his whole set of innovations at once, he notes that develop-man, translocal cultures and selfconscious culturalism should be seen as 'unprecedented forms of human culture,' as new 'kinds of cultural processes' (Sahlins, 2000b, p.I71). What they should not be seen as, however, is symptoms of the death of culture, of its incoherence or irrelevance. Out of his critical engagements with world systems theory, globalization and postrnodern powerism, Sahlins has discovered a set of processes in which we can look for and continue to theorize the integrity of culture,

inferiority co~plex: that leads pe?ple actively to want to change (Sahlins, 1992a, p.24). SaWms wntmg on this tOpIC IS evocatIve and widely quoted throughout the essays 10 this volume, so we will not reproduce the particulars of his discussion here (th~y can be found on pages 36-39 of the chapter reproduced here). Readers WIll notice, however, that in his brief discussion of the topic he does not speculate III gteat detail on the mechanisms that bring humiliation about. But he does insist against those who imagine that any encounter with the West and its technology i~ bound to. be hunulIating, that It does have to be actively brought about. One tool for bnngmg It about that he does discuss is Christianity, but I would suggest that all of the vanous discourses of diminishment at play in colonial situations and recently considered in detail by scholars of postcolonialism - discourses of race wildness, chi~dishness, backwardness, primitiveness. temporal behindness etc. ~ can have a SImilar effect. Similarly, a full study of humiliation in imperial and colo~al contexts would also have to attend to rituals of rule and other governing practices and the ,;ay the~ routinely humiliated people. The chapters in this volume, each of which prOVIde examples of ways in which humiliation can come about, flesh out Sahlins' very sketchy initial discussion of this topic. ~or. those .who come upon the few pages Sahlins devotes to discussing hUmIlI~tion havmg already read his better known work, they have to come as s?methmg of a surpnse. For they lead onto a discussion of questions of cultural discontrnmty and canonical processes of modernization that he has otherwise worked hard to denaturalize for Western social scientists. There are some hints as to the gene.sis of ~s ~nte~est in these issues in an earlier paper that has enjoyed an even more restricted distrIbution than the one reprinted here. In this paper, Sahlins mentions first developmg th~ idea that huruiliation may have a role to play in cultural change while he was a VlSlting professor m China in 1988. There, he reports, 'such words as "culture" . ''backwardness, ., "deve1opment", ''progress'', and ''modernization'" were 'on everyone's lips,. together with certain overtones of huruiliation' (Sahlins, 1990, p.79). Struck by this fact, and recoguizing that he could hear similar discussions pretty much 'everywh?re in the so-called Third World,' he was led to try to integtate the. Issues they ratsed mto his own understanding of processes of history and change (IbId.). At least m blOgtaphical temas, then, the humiliation argunaent does not come out of nowhere ~and in fact it comes out of the kind of encounter with other people that anthropolOgiSts used to assume helped generate their best ideas). Havmg given the humiliation argument something of a genealogy, however, we should .also note that Sahlms did not go on to fully integrate it into the larger body of his theoretical work. The 1990 and 1992 papers are not reprinted in his recent book of collected essays (Sahlins, 2000a). And while his final discussion of the issue which appears in '~odbye to Triste Tropes,' is included there, his discussion in that chapter is one that munnnzes the Impact of the huruiliation thesis. After reviewing the basic argument m a paragtaph, he goes on to note that 'Around much of the world ... the umversalizing eultrn'al project of the West does not succeed so well' in humiliating peopk, and With. that the matter is dropped. Even in the original papers that take up humiliation, Sahlins has a way of turning from the topic before he gives it a full airing. He does this m both cases by arguing that often humiliation is 'double-edged' in that it

10

continuity in change, and indigenous agency. We are, in a sense, a long way from

the Hawaiian case in terms of the basic ethnogtaphic gtound the analysis has to cover. But theoretically, Sahlins' structural approach to action, history and change remains in tact and ready to confront the 'whole new cultural manifold' that today's world presents (2000b, p.I71). The arguments just laid out constitute the main lines along which SaWins' work has developed over the last 15 years or so. They also constitute the background against which his remarks about humiliation stand out as so noteworthy. For SaWins' consideration of the possibility ofradical cultural change in the face of humiliation unfolds in stark contrast to these arguments about the resilience of traditional cultures and their ability to maintain their integrity while guiding change. Indeed, as Sahlins discusses it, the huruiliation argument ouly makes sense as a sequitur to his arguments about cultural continuity. For him, develop-man-style attempts to use the new to better meet traditional goals is everywhere th? 'initial response' to the couring of global capitalism, and it could hardly be otherWIse smce people can only interpret the novel experiences the market brings 'according to their own principles of experience' (Sahlins, 1992a [This volume], pp. 23, 16). It IS . the fact that people's first responses to the market always support cultural continuity in this way that makes humiliation 'a necessary stage in the process of modernization' (1992a, p.23). Put otherwise: humiliation, in Sahlins scheme, is an answer to the question of how, given the bias toward indigenous cultural reproduction and expansion, people ever come to embrace the West and make achieving development stricto sensu their goal. It is the need his theory has to po~e

this question that makes the huruiliation argument an important development WIthin it. How then does huruiliation work itself out as an answer? Humiliation breaks the cycle' of d~velop-man reproduction and expansion by convincing people of their own worthlessness and the worthlessness of their cultures. It instills a 'global

12

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Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

can lead people to develop a cultural self-consciousness that, after an initial period of humiliation, they can use as a basis from which to resist further Western dominance (Sahlins, 1990, p. 93; 1992a, p.24). Because one has to become aware of one's culture to be humiliated by it, this argument makes good sense, and empirical examples of it can be found in the literature on kastom movements in the Pacific (Tonkinson, 1982; Keesing, 1982; see also Akin this volume). At the same time, however, because as noted above Sahlins has also taken pains to argue that self-conscious culturalism is a way of carrying an integral culture into the present, once humiliation gives rise to it we are no longer dealing with radical, Westemizing cultural change. My point in bringing up how marginal the humiliation argument has been in Sahlins own oeuvre has not been a critical one, for Sahlins has surely sidelined it because his own interests were elsewhere. I mention it just by way of indicating how much work still needs to be done to take his insights, develop them and consider the extent to which they can be integrated with the extremely influential model of cultural change that constitutes the main body of his work. The papers in this volume do much of this work, for they not only develop the humiliation argument but also set it in the context of Sahlins' other work in several unexpected

Leavitt notes that losses in traditional exchange put one's claims to ancestral support and personal efficacy very much in doubt. Confronted with Westerners who always threatened to out-give them and thus huruiliate them in this way, the Bumbita responded by construing the Westerners as involved in a very different kind of exchange: that of traditional parenthood. This construal supports a certain amount of develop-man activity, for the Bumbita worked to stabilize their traditional model of parental nurture in the face of the new forces they encountered. Here, then, we have a case where the threat of humiliation, registered and responded to in local terms, drives develop-man itself, rather than pushing for development. Yet in the Bumbita case this solution is not stable. For when parents fail to give, the result is not huruiliation so much as intense feelings of abandoument. These feelings have led the Bumbita to engage in extensive cargo cult activity aimed at se~uring the attention of ancestral and Western parents and have also led some of them to embrace Christiauity - both moves that keep issues of development proper very much in play in their lives. The Hagen case that Stewart and Strathern discuss exemplifies similar themes. They too note that negatively valued feelings such as shame, jealousy, and anger played an important role in traditional competitive moka exchange practices. For many decades, the Moka was a classic case of develop-man, with people deploying what they could gain from the market economy in exchanges patterned along traditional lines in efforts to enhance prestige and avoid humiliation as they traditionally understood them. With the recent breakdown of the moka system, however, Stewart and Strathern argue that the emotions that it once handled now show up in unpredictable places and to destabilizing effect. The Hagen answer to this has been a turn to Christiauity, which provides new ways of understanding and ritually managing emotions, and also, through competitive church building, allows for the competitive jockeying that once found a home in the Moka. As in the Bumbita case, then, in Hagen peoples' attempts to address traditional experiences of emotional difficulty in traditional terms through moka first supported a long run of developman-style expansion, but then, for all its success, proved finally unable to make the issue of development disappear. Silverman also demonstrates the role of indigenous culture in shaping the huruiliation people experience in the face of contact and colonialism. Among the Tarnbunum, the individualism of Western culture has served to exacerbate a contradiction already present in the indigenous conception of the self. This conception saw the self in both sociocentric and individualist terms and tolerated the' contradiction between them. The Tambunum had no difficulty recognizing Western notions of the self, since they accorded well with the individualist side of their own. What they were not prepared for, however, was the lack of emphasis Western ideas put on the sociocentric self. As they became caught up in Western individualism, they found themselves humiliated by their inability to balance the two sides of themselves as they had before.' The Tambunum case is thus another one in which traditional ideas have played an important role in defining the nature of the humiliation people experience. Biersack's is a final chapter that exemplifies the importance of traditional ideas in defining the grounds of humiliation and does so in rich ethnographic detail.

ways. The next section takes up some of their contributions.

Humiliation, Continuity and Change

Sahiins is not much given to Weberian turns of phrase, but if he were, and if he had developed the humiliation argument at greater length, he might well have pointed out that in his usage develop-man and development function as ideal types. No case. fits either completely, and making them do so is not the point. Given this, it is not surprising that, as Foster discusses in detail in his concluding piece, many contributors here emphasize the complexity of the situations they study, noting that they carmot be exhausted by analyses focused exclusively either on develop-man or development. What is surprising is the extent to which in attending to the complexities of their cases our contributors come to see them through the lens of Sahlins' general approach to continuity-in-change, and thus bring that work into dialogue with the humiliation argument. It is this move, repeated throughout this collection, that performs the work of integrating the humiliation argument back into the mainstream of Sahlins' writings on change. One of the core ideas of Sahlins' model of cultural change is that indigenous categories shape people's understanding of novel experiences. Several of the papers here apply this insight to huruiliation itself, arguing that in their efforts to come to grips with their colonial and postcolouial situations, people in the past worked with, and even now continue to work with, indigenous understandings of humiliation and traditional ways of dealing with it. Leavitt, for example, points out that Bumbita Arapesh men traditionally risked huruiliation in the sphere of competitive exchange. Adopting Miller's (1993) definition of humiliation as what one experiences when one is caught out trying to convince people that one has prestige or powers that one has no right to claim,

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13

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

14

I

I

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Among the Ipili, there is a sense in which humans, who need to labor to live and who deplete themselves in reproduction, even traditionally found their condition somewhat humiliating. Contact with Whites, who appear to have no need to work, and with Christian ideas about the fallen-ness of the body and the need to liberate oneself from its degrading influences, has fed an elaboration of these ideas through the development of mi11enatian doctrines and movements. As Biersack points out, the Jpili have developed these ideas over a 70 year period, a period in which one can see them as caught between develop-man and development and as working on both at once. As in all the chapters so far discussed, we can see the Ipili as indigenizing humiliation - figuring it in local terms and using it at least in part as a spur to develop-man rather than development. The Jpili case is noteworthy, however, for the way the in-between position of being caught between develop-man and development has become for them a relatively durable adaptation to their encounter with the West. Leavitt, Stewart and Strathem, Silverman, and Biersack, by showing that humiliation can unfold along lines laid down by the indigenous culture and can support efforts both at develop-man and development, all move toward reconciling the humiliation argument with Sahlins' interest in how indigenous cultures influence change and in doing so maintain their integrity. Other chapters in the volume reconcile the argument with another important aspect of Sahlins' primary model of change: the argument that indigenous people remain active agents pursuing their own goals even during periods of change spurred on by their encounter with the West. Read carefully, this reconciliation is in part effected within Sahlins' own argument. Because he treats humiliation as an impetus to selfdirected attempts to engage the market economy and become modem, his emphasis always remains on local people and their initiatives. Even if the humiliation comes from without, the response is a locally directed one. This makes Sablins' argument one of affinnative Of agentive modernization, rather than passive capitulation. Several chapters here further explore this theme, and they converge in the finding that Papua New Guineans tend to deploy their agency in projects that aim to balance develop-man and development. Errington and Gewertz provide several complex examples of such balancing in a contribution that also picks up the theme of the traditional importance of humiliation and the endurance of traditional ways of addressing it. Among the Chambri, they tell us, humiliation was considered such a powerful negative force that people actively sought to avoid causing as well as experiencing it in the realm of competitive exchange. This emphasis has continued into the present, as those Chambri who have been successful in the capitalist economy are careful to avoid humiliating those who have remained in the village. By virtue of their efforts to avoid causing humiliation, the successful businessmen Errington and Gewertz discuss end up involving themselves deeply in develop-man projects (and come to be participants in the type of translocal society Sahlins discusses elsewhere), even as they prove themselves masters of development as well. Fully beholden neither to the traditional or the modem, these men demonstrate the room for creative action that situations of change have opened up for some Papua New Gnineans.

Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

15

Josephides also stresses the agency of those who encounter modernity in her .discussion of the lives of three Kewa individuals of different generations. All of the individuals she discusses have engaged in extensive projects of self-fashioning in which they respond to the elements of Western culture they encounter without losing control of their own life projects. For them, development has not been humiliating, but has rather presented itself as an opportunity to try out new ways of developmg the self; they deploy their creative abilities in choosing which parts of both the traditional and the modem they will accept or reject. The role of indigenous people in steering processes of humiliation is most strikingly exemplified in Akin's discussion of the Kwaio. The notoriously traditionalist Mountain Kwaio regularly humiliate themselves for their failure to live up to their collective project of cleaving to their traditional culture as it is presently constituted in the complex set of codified rules they refer to as kastom. F~r them, humiliation follows not from their lack of development, but from their faIlures at develop-man - their failures to follow kastom rules. These failures only become more prevalent as people have more exposure to the blandishments of modem life, so in a sense it is the world-system that leads to their humiliation. But in the last analysis they humiliate themselves. As a reflexive project that takes the West only as a foil, the Kwaio make the case for indigenous agency in particularly strong terms: they are both the perpetrators and the victims of their own humiliation. Yet in the K waio case, the indigenous ability to deploy hunriliation to traditionalizing ends is not equally distributed. It is men who have most fully developed ~e means of humiliation, and it is against women that they most frequently dlfect them. This point sensitizes us to the fact that humiliation probably plays out differently for men and women in many cases (see also Clark, 1989), a theme which IS touched on in several chapters but is worthy of further study (see Wardlow's chapter for a fuller discussion of this theme). Akin's paper as a whole not orn,y provide~ an eXaIDple of the extent to which humiliation becomes a support or baSIS for md,genous agency, but it also speaks to the complexities of such agency, and to the fact that a simple score-keeping in this regard (do people have agency or not?) should not be confused with an analysis. The. way that many of the chapters included here locate the indigenous roots of hunulIation and show how active people are in shaping its course do much to reincorporate the humiliation argument back into the main body of Sahlins' work on cultural change. Read together, they also converge on another argument that would fit well with that work, though no chapter makes it explicitly. That argument runs as follows. If we ac<:ept Sahlins' argmnent that when people first encounter new phenomena they understand them through the lens of their indigenous cultural categories, then in order for humiliation to dislodge people from their attachment t? those categories it must first be felt within them. Humiliation, that is to say, must flfSt an~e m traditional terms, since these are the only terms that exist at that point m the lIves of the people whose humiliation is at issue. It is only once humiliation arises in traditional terms that it can work to dislodge the very culture that first made it sensible (see Robbins, 2004 for an elaboration of this argument).

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

Sahlins (1990) implies as much when discussing the case of China in his first discussion of humiliation. In that discussion. he suggests that China's goal in seeking to develop has been to recover its sense of its own cultural importance visa-vis others. In indigenous terms, it is slipping out of the top position that is humiliating, rather than any perception of poverty or technological behindness. It is their desire to regain their sense of superiority that has driven them to seek 'development'. The chapters in this volume also attest to ways humiliation is first felt in indigenous terms. It is this point that underlies their authors' emphasis on the extent to which the humiliation that haunts traditional exchange, and traditional concerns about efficacy and the nature of personhood, serve to define the nature of the threat presented by the coming of the West. In the contributions to this volume we have so far discussed, Sahlins' arguments about humiliation are put back in dialogue with the more influential parts of his theory of cultrnal change. Yet Sahlins' humiliation argument initially looks a bit odd not ouly by virtue of its emphasis on discontinuities in cnltural change, but also for the important role it gives to an emotion. Despite his discussion of the place of love in the structuring of Hawaiian social life, Sahlins, and others working in the structuralist tradition, are not known for their extensive treatruent of emotions or other aspects of the person that might be considered matters of individnal 'psychology' (Sahlins, 1985, ch.1). Surely Sahlins, with his interest in agency, is not a garden variety structuralist anti-humanist. But the question remains of how to situate the humiliation he discusses in the world, and of whether to take his use of the term as significant at all rather than assume it is simply a placeholder for some other notion, presumably not tied to emotion, that he might have developed had he focused more extensively on the humiliation argument rather than made it primarily in passing. In the final section of this introduction, I consider these issues, examine the rather novel lines of communication the humiliation argument opens up between Sahlins' work and that of others interested in cultural change, and then look at the ways some of the contributors to this volume exploit these new openings in developing their arguments.

human essence, but ouly on a willinguess to recoguize that human beings are susceptible to humiliation (1989, p.91). As he puts it, 'recognition of a common susceptibility to humiliation is the only social bond that' need tie members of his ideal liberal polity together (Rorty, 1989, p.91, his emph.). Coming after Rorty, Margalit (1996) has argued at length that a decent society should be defined as one that does not humiliate its members. Although many are critical of Margalit's argument, it has gained wide notice and his emphasis on humiliation has clearly struck a chord among both liberal and communitarian philosophers (see the responses in Mack, 1997). Humiliation, then, has been on the scholarly agenda in the last decade or so - and Sahlins' remarks resonate with a growing recognition of the importance of humiliation within the liberal political tradition. By giving humiliation a prominent role in their theories, Sahlins, Rorty and Margalit also come to speak in terms relevant to recent work in postcolonial smdies. Although they do not address this body of literatrne directly, both Rorty and Margalit treat colonial situations as paradigms of social systems set up to produce enduring humiliation. We humiliate people, Rorty (1989, p.89) says, 'by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless.' 'Something like that,' he goes on to add, 'presumably happens to a primitive culture when it is conquered by a more advanced one.' Margalit (1996), who defines humiliation as what follows when people are treated as non-human, are rejected from the human community, and have their self-control impaired, also describes colonial regimes as particularly humiliating. In doing so, he recoguizes that his argument connects up with themes in what he calls 'the anticolonialist literatrne of humiliation' (Margalit, 1996, p.101). Fanon's early work is particularly relevant here. His discussions of feelings of inferiority fostered by the 'death and burial of ... local cultural originality' are echoed with some fidelity in Sahlins' discussion and lend plausibility to the claims Margalit and Rorty make about the role of humiliation in colonial situations (Fanon, 1967, p.18). Fanon's work also raises an issue about how to locate humiliation that is iroportant for Rorty and especially for Margalit. It is an issue that Sahlins does not take up, but that those who would extend his theory need to grapple with. While many are inclined to read Fanon primarily in psychological terms, his insistence that feelings of inferiority in colomal contexts have social rather than individual psychological causes leads him to treat colonial humiliation as at least in part a social fact. His insistence on this point is very clear in his critiques of both Mannoni and Jung, and he clearly also assumes it even when he is not arguing it directly (Fanon, 1967, pp.83-108, 187-8). Rorty and Margalit share with Fanon a tendency to downplay the emotional c!'aracter of humiliation and define it in more sociological terms. In their efforts to place humiliation at the center of political thought, neither of them focus on its emotional qUalities. Rorty is most interested in our susceptibility to it, and our recognition that we share this with others. Margalit, for his part, is interested in the conditions in which people can legitimately claim to be humiliated, rather than in whether they actually feel humiliated in those situations or in how that humiliation feels to them. As he puts it, he is interested in the normative rather than the psychological aspects of humiliation. Furthermore, Margalit is concerned ouly with

16

More Than a Feeling? On the Nature of Humiliation

For those more familiar with anthropological discussions centered around structures - be they of symbols or of power - humiliation may appear at once too concrete (because it's a tangible phenomenon) and too insubstantial (because as a feeling it comes and goes) to carry the heavy explanatory load Sahlins settles on it. At the very least, it may appear as a term from some other theoretical language game that has somehow found its way into a discnssion in which it really should have no part. Yet it is also interesting to note that Sahlins' discourse is not the ouly recent one in which the term pops up rather unexpectedly, and he is not the ouly one to give it a surprisingly large role to play in social life. Rorty (1989), for example, bases his entire model of an ironist liberal polity upon it. Such a polity, he argues, need not be founded on any shared assumptions about

17

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

the legitimate humiliation inflicted by institutions, rather than by individuals.. Miller (1993), auother scholar who has recently taken an interest in hUImhal10n aud Its role . . llili likewise devotes a good deal of thought to a normallve understaudmg of . li ' .. 'd' al m socm e,

contrast, Wardlow sees as an emotion that only makes sense in a world of

18

humiliation. Humiliation, he points out, can sometimes re er to a q~Sl-Jun le

status' rather than a feeling (Miller, 1993, p.196). Hence, one can be m.a state of humiliation without having the feeling at all (Miller, 1993, p.146). In this respect, humiliation is a 'social fact' as much as a psychological one (N,llller, 1993, p.196). This is a view which accurately characterizes the status of hunuhal10n m all of these recent discussions. The sociological character of humiliation was importaut to Fauon because he wauted to avoid making an argmnent that would pathologize all colonized people. Rorty, Margalit and Miller have different reasons for preferrmg t~ focus on the social qualities of humiliation, but the nuances of theu mOllvatlO~s need ~ot concern us here. For the purposes of the work our contributors do

In

extending

Sahlins' humiliation argument, it is only the fact that humiliation can be.understood as a social fact that is crucial because it allows them to dISCUSS hunuhation and other emotions without abandoning the level of analysis on which the rest of Sahlins' aud much of their own work unfolds. Although there are some astute psychological analyses in these chapters (e.g. Leavitt and Silverman), there are even more detailed discussions of the cnltural definition of emotions and of h~w

these definitions set up expectations, ground motivations, and n~.uenc~ s~clal processes. These discussions are at the core of many of our authors examm~tlOns

of how humiliation and other emotions become pall of culturally sanclloned reactions to the coming of the West. In continuity with the works discussed in the previous section that dwell on the ways humiliation becomes defined in indigenous terms, ,Dalton dlsc~sses how the Rawa drew on their own understandings of the emotlOns. of son (sorr~w and compassion) and les (laziness and weariness) in respondmg the colomal and postcolonial eras. While sari is, for the Rawa, the legitimate emotional respons? to contexts that connect one to others through exchauge, les 18 the. appropnate

reaction to the lack of an involving social context. Western mdlvlduahsm, ~oc~sed as it is on internal states as opposed to social contexts as the so~ce of m~tlVatLOn,

fosters enduring feelings of les that lead to frustration and disconuecl1on from projects of development. Yet at the same time, the indigenous recogmllon of les as an at times appropriate response to the world has also, It seems, allowed the Rawa to interpret their chauging situation in terms that do not lead them to come to see themselves as humiliated. . Wardlow's account of the Huli also centers on a discussion of cultur~ notlOns f emotion and their ramifications for models of personhood and actIOn. Her ~elineation of the Hnli concept of madane, a state of disappoinllnent, resenllnent and righteous indignation, shows how it is connected to a rela~onal model of personhood in which people are understood to have arange oflegrllmate cla:ms on others for support. When those claims go umnet, acllons mol1vated by feelmgs of madane, actions that are often aggressive in nature, serve to remmd tho~~ ho are remiss of their connection to the person who has been wronged. Hunuhallon, by

v:

19

disconnected individuals who can deny any connection to the self - it is the proof of this disconnection aud the other's lack of obligation to the self that leads to humiliation. As one would expect, given the emphasis other papers have put on the indigenization of humiliation, she suggests that madane characterized early responses to the coming of the West and led people to attempt to define HuliWestern relations as part of a develop-mau project of social growth. More recent responses to development projects, however, suggest that humiliation may finally have taken root, leading people to waut to remake themselves along Western lines in order to foster a connection with the West where they feel none now exists.

Robbins' paper takes up the social force of emotion by focusing on how Christianity has served among the Urapmin as something of a master-narrative of colonial and postcolonial humiliation. He shows how Urapmin Christiau thought organizes Urapmin understandings of the humiliations they have experienced and continue to experience into a coherent notion of sin. Like others in the volume

(Biersack, Wardlow, Stewart and Strathern), he also demonstrates that Christianity both fosters humiliation and suggests ways of overcoming it. For this reason, it maintains its appeal well beyond the colonial era. Even as it proves very effective at dislodging develop-mau projects, however, Robbins points out that Christianity also supplies the grounds for a critique of developmentalist aspirations toward worldly success. This makes it somewhat unexpected resource for critiques of the

postcolonial state and complicates auy suggestion that humiliation must lead directly to an interest in development understood in economic terms.

The connection of emotion and postcolonial politics is also at the heart of Sykes' chapter. She focuses on how the shift from shame to humiliation marks much as Wardlow would expect, a shift to au understauding of Western notions of the possessive individual. She also discusses the way humiliation cau as easily lead to VIOlence (duected at others rather than at one's own tradition) as it does to a drive toward development. This point recalls Errington and Gewertz's argument about how careful Sepik businessmen are to avoid humiliating others - for they recogruze how potent humiliation can be. Its potency, Sykes reminds us, makes it an important tool that the colonial encounter has left in play in situations now open to a variety of different, indigenously driven developments. There are many other themes that arise in the chapters of the volume. For example, as my discussion of individual chapters has made clear, many contrIbutors offer detailed considerations of notions of personhood and their transformations. Several authors also discuss the way class distinctions now raise

the kinds of issues colonial distinctions raised in the past. This introduction, however, has focused on drawing out two sets of themes in particular. One set

contains those themes that are embedded in SahHns' own discussion of hurniliation and that serve to tie that account to his more well know ruminations on cultural

change. The other is made up of the responses many authors make to Sahlins' provocation to open the discussion of change up to issues of the social life of

emotions. It is hoped that this discussion gives enough of a glimpse of the Important terram covered by these essays to prompt further reading and response.

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

20

Notes 1

I

2 3

This work is the precise analogue of the work that gets done in Western culture to see in all developments examples of major change - the kind of cultural work that gets done to make, for example, technological developments seem always radical, giving us such cataclysms as 'high speed modem revolutions' and 'breakthroughs in cosmetic dentistry.' Seen from any distance, Western culture is as dully regular in it."> ability to render everything that happens something new under the sun as any moiety system is in construing the future as coming to it two-by-two. Sahlins provides a variety of concrete ethnographic examples of the develop-man process in the chapter included in this volume and so none will be summarized here. Silvennan's argument has wide comparative resonances. Kulick (1992) and Robbins (1998) offer related accounts of changes in concepts of the self, and Tuzin (1997) provides a detailed account of the way the impact of novel ideas - in this case Christian ones - can be exacerbated as they become caught up in contradictions within indigenous culture.

References Clark, Jeffrey (1989), 'The Incredible Shrinking Men: Male Ideology and Development in a Southern Highlands Society,' Canberra Anthropology Vo!. 12(1-2), pp. 120-143. Fanon, Frantz (1967), Black Skin, White Masks, Markmann, Charles Lam (trans!.), New York, Grove Press. Keesing, Roger M. (1982), 'Kastom in Melanesia: an Overview,' Mankind Vol. 13(4), pp. 297-301. Kulick, Don (1992), Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction: Socialization, Self, and Syncretism in a Papua New Guinea Village, New York, Cambridge University Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1966), The Savage Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Mack, Arien (1997), 'The Decent Society,' Theme Issue of Social Research Vol. 64. Margalit, Avishai (1996), The Decent Society, Naomi Goldblum (trans!.), Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Miller, William Ian (1993), Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence, Ithaca, Comell University Press. Robbins, Joel (1998), 'Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Desire among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea,' Ethnology Vo!. 37(4), pp. 299-316. Robbins, Joel (2004), Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Tonnent in a Papua New Guinea Society, Berkeley, University of California Press. Rorty, Richard (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1976), Culture and Practical Reason, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1981), Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1985), Islands of History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1989), 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: the Trans-Pacific Sector of "The World System",' Procedings of the British Academy Vo!. 74, pp. 1-51. ,

:

il

Humiliation and Transfonnation: Marshall Sahlins and Cultural Change

21

Sahlins, Mar~h~l (1990), 'Chl,~a ~econstructing or Vice Versa: Humiliation as a Stage of Econo~c. Development, WIth Comments on Cultural Diversity in the Modem World Syste~ 10 Toward One World Beyond All Barriers, Seoul, Seoul Olympic Sports PromotlOn Foundation, pp. 78-96. Sahlins, Marshall (1992a), 'The Economics of Develop-Man in the Pacific,' Res Vol. 21, pp. 13-25. Sahlins, Ma~shall (1992b), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of .Hawall. Volume One, HIstortcal Ethnography, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Sahlms, Marshall (1993), 'Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of .Modern World History,' Journal of Modem History Vol. 65, pp. 1-25. Sahlins,. Marshall (1995), How 'Natives' Think: About Captain Cook, for Example, Chicago, Ulllverslty of Chicago Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1999), 'Two or Three Things That I know About Culture' Journal of the ' Royal Anthropological Institute Vo!. 5(3), pp. 399-421. Sa~ns, Marshall (2000a), Culture in Practice: Selected Essays, New York, Zone Books. Sahlms, Marshall (2000b), '~'Sentimental Pessimism" and Ethnographic Experience: or, Why Culture Is ~ot a Dls~ppe~ng "object"', in Biographies of Scientific Objects. L. Daston, (ed.), ChIcago, UruversIty of Chicago Press, pp. 158-202 Sahlms, Marshall (2001), :Reports of the Deaths of Cultures Have Been Exaggerated,' In What Happens to Hzstory: The Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought H Marchitello (ed.), New York, Routledge, pp. 189-213. ' . Sartre, Jean-Paul (1968), Search for a Method, Hazel E. Barnes (trans.), New York, Vintage Books. Tonkinson, Robert (1982), 'Kastom in Melanesia: Introduction' Mankind Vol 13(4) 302-305. , . , pp. Tuzin, Donal~ (1997): The C~ssowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New. Gumea Soczety, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Wolf, Enc R. (1997) [1982], Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley, University of CallfolTIla Press.

Chapter 1

The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific! Marshall Sahlins

'Developman.' I first heard the word on the campus of the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. At least I thought I heard the word. It was in a conversation between two New Guinea students. One of them inserted the English 'development' into a Neo-Melanesian (pidgin) sentence. To me it came out sounding like 'developman' - a happy misunderstanding that seems to express truly the initial relation of Pacific island peoples to the encroaching Western economy. The term captures the indigenous way of coping with capitalism, a passing moment that in some places has already lasted more than one hundred years. The first commercial impulse of the local people is not to become just like us, but more like themselves. They do not necessarily despise our commodities. But they are selective in their demands and transformative of their uses of such things. For a long time, or so long as their own relations and ideas of the good life are intact, they use Western goods to furnish these exotic ideas, or even to advance and 'develop' them. The object of the islanders is not yet the accumulation of an abstract wealth, the desire for gain optimus maximus that many Western economists have supposed to be primordial. Nor are they yet attacked by the modem disease - recently become a global epidemic - of galloping consumptionitis. That sort of modernity requires a certain kind of individualism: a system in which each person takes the betterment of himself as his life project, thus a society of autonomous individuals preoccupied with private material satisfactions. In contrast, the Pacific peoples, as they are still embedded in relationships of kith and kin, as they are self-consciously social beings, have not yet acknowledged the radical opposition between 'satisfaction' and 'obligation' by which we rule our lives. Whatever we do for others diminishes our selves; whereas, as a rule in traditional Pacific societies, in doing things for others people constructed themselves. Referring to 'pre-capitalist economic formations,' Marx once praised the sublirnity of the ancient conception that made man the objective of production, by contrast to a modem world in which production is the objective of man, and gain the objective of production. Aristotle's sense of an 'economy' whose aim was the welfare of the oikiJs and the polis was perhaps the first scholarly treatment of developman economics. Nor is the idea that the economy is socially ordered out of

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

date, however much it seems to us a domain of purely practical wisdom. We only deceive ourselves by this disenchanted consciousness, as if we lived by a purely utilitarian rationality. Not everything in our rationality is rational. Rationality is the practical wisdom of a cultural order that is based on other principles, the means of a historical mode of existence that as such has no particular claims to material good sense. Our vaunted rationality, what is it but the cunning way we produce ail the idiocies of modern life - it is how we acquire rock music, one kind of 'coke' or another, VCRs, suburban backyard barbecues, Reeboks, MacDonald's hamburgers, Walkmans, mink coats, and a lot of other things whose own rationality as ends would be difficult to imagine. The invisible hand of the market economy turns out to be a perverse form of Hegel's cunning of reason: it is rather a 'cunning of culture' which, by using libidinous energies to set a scheme of arbitrary values in motion, harnesses subjective rationality to its own meaningful logic. So it has been also for many New Guineans. Brought into the orbit of the capitalist World System, this global crusade of economic rationality, they have proven themselves quick studies in commercial cunning - which they use to stage the most extravagant traditional ceremonies anyone could ever remember. More pigs have been eaten and more pearl shells exchanged in these recent shindigs than was ever done in the good old days, not to mention the liberal consumption of such novelties as beer and tinned corned beef. The effect has been more pleasure for the ancestors, which also means greater power and fame for the living. And let the hard-headed development economists or the neocolonial officials complain as they may, this is neither 'waste' nor 'backwardness.' Precisely, it is development from the perspective of the people concerned: their own culture on a bigger and better scale than they ever had it. As a leader of the Kewa people of the Southern Highlands told the anthropologist: 'You know what we mean by "development" [in Kewa, ada ma rekato, to raise or awaken the village]: building a "house line" (neada), a men's house (tapada), killing pigs (gawemena). This we have done.'2 Developman: the enrichment of their own ideas of what mankind is all about.

Objects Of course, for most Westerners these indigenous ideas are impenetrable, and accordingly the creative uses to which the peoples put even the refuse of the colonial economy must seem to us merely the signs of their indigence. Rena Lederman, an anthropologist from Princeton University, recounts how she and her husband, Michael Merrill, a labor historian, worked through such an experience to a rather different consciousness of the way the Mendi people of the New Guinea Highlands related to our objects.' Above all the field-workers had to learn - by way of a classic ethnographic epoeM - what the Mendi meant by our goods, how they reinvented these things for themselves. By their apparently impractical and indiscriminate desires for Western things, the Mendi were not simply expressing their own deficiencies. They were not pathetic. At first Mike Merrill thought so. What else could one think of men who

The Economics of Develop~man in the Pacific

25

had gone all their lives barefoot and are now walking around in rubber galoshes several sizes too large for them? Nor were oversized galoshes the ouly signs of 'civilization' affected by the Mendi in 1977. A tom umbrella, an expensive radio that soon broke down, an aluminum-can arm ornament, a hat made out of a bread wrapper, a Swiss ski parka donned as fancy dress: signs indeed - but of what? This eclectic appropriation of the bits and pieces of Western existence, if it made no functional sense, Merrill decided, must have some other value. Most likely it represented a sense of want and deprivation when confronted by our riches. So at the time Merrill wrote in his journal: 'One shoe is of no use and in fact is probably a hindrance to walking, especially when its heel is tom out ... But one shoe does mean something. It signifies a desire on the part of the owner to have two shoes, and probably not just shoes but everything else as well. ,4 More than that, one could well foresee that for want of a shoe, the whole culture was lost. Westerners know not ouly about technology; we also have this certain knowledge of its functional implications, from which it follows that if the Mendi take our material things, they must adopt the whole cultural package. Unable to avoid participating in the meanings and relations of our commodities they will set themselves on a course of cultural corrosion that must sooner or late; rust out their traditional existence. Again from Mike Merrill's journal: Articles of Western manufacture have replaced those of local origin ... And sooner or later the material will begin to assert its own meaning. For steel axes, textiles, cars, table service, rice and tinned fish, nails, etc., are not neutral objects ... They come into the area with their social origins visible and influential ... The meanings of the world market must, in the long run, predominate ... Eventually the traditional social structure will be eroded by the corrosive action of the articles which are now used in traditional ways, but which contain within them other, more powerful intentions. 5

But then, if these objects really are signs, a sign is precisely something whose meaning is not contained in its physical presence. The meaning is not self-evident. So we should not be too eager to suppose that the erosive effects of the global economic system come directly from goods in themselves, or even from the relations of their acquisition. There is a whole native world to be undone before such things can be perceived and desired in the capitalist spilit in which they were intended. As it turned out, the Mendi were gradually able to dissolve the significance that Lederman and Merrill a priori attached to the presence of European objects in the New Gninea Highlands. In two related ways the ethnographers describe how the New Guineans contradicted all preconceptions of their victimization. Or better, they describe two dimensions, as it were subjective and objective, of the process by which the Mendi domesticate their foreign imports: on one hand, by an unassuming assertIOn of human mastery over anything material; on the other hand, by mterpretatlOns and uses of European commodities that were never dreamed of in the philosophy of their production. The Mendi struggled to encompass the capitalist World System in an order that is logically and ontologically even more inclusive: their own system of the world.

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

There is something distinctive about the relation of nonindustrial people to the domain of the 'material' or to 'nature': it is generally fearless. Probably because, unlike the Western sense of disenchantment, their world is not simply 'material.' Sentient and intelligent, or what we call 'spiritual,' nature for them is intelligible and humanly controllable. It is a social and humanized nature. The counterpart in praxis, likewise beyond the experience of most Western people, is the kind of universal confidence and manual competence that Mendi and other so-called underdeveloped peoples show when dealing with a wide variety of material things, whether these be man-made or natural, strange or familiar. They have a 'hands-on' attitude, akin to what Veb1en called 'the instinct of workmanship.' Whereas, when it comes to technology, the instinctive reaction of many Westerners is more like awe. I think I am not speaking merely for myself as a bourgeois intellectual, trained since childhood to be circumspect - and remain ignorant - of machinery of all kinds, when I say that, as technologically sophisticated as Western people are, at least as consumers, a great many are to the same extent alienated from the nature and workings of the objects of their existence. Even in regard to the machinery of everyday life, most of us conld not know less - or be more reluctant to take it apart. Nor do the paradoxes end here, with the manual incompetence of the technologically endowed. There is even greater irony in Qur sense of intimidation, insofar as it is conditioned by the purely matter-of-fact regard in which we hold 'things.' On one hand, they are just that, inanimate material things. On the other hand, as objects to our subjects, at once impenetrable, powerful, and estranged from us, these material things would then act upon us from outside; they constrain us and make us respect them in ways more than reminiscent of a fear of God. Indeed we endow the material with creative Powers. Not content to submit merely on the personal level, we develop this oceanic ideology - which also passes for normal social science - that technology determines us. We even find it plausible that the handmill gave us society with a sovereign and the steam mill, industrial capitalism (Marx). Mills of the gods. In separating themselves from an objective world, Western people constitute external and obdurate Powers before which they must incline. Whereas, by humanizing the powers of the material world, bringing them within the sociable and the knowable, the Mendi (or the Fijians or the Ojibway) are prepared to assert their own mastery. To put it oversimply: we elaborate spiritual relations to the matter-of-fact, while they exercise matter-of-fact relations to the spiritual.' So as time went on, Lederman and Merrill learned to appreciate the Mendi people's 'lack of awe at the physical world' and their 'ease with its appropriation' - which also helped explain their nonchalant bricolage of Western flotsam and jetsam. 'People seem so easily to incorporate Western odds and ends into their everyday lives,' Lederman reflected, 'gathering them as casually as they gather bush materials.' Her field journal continues: Here most things in the [Mendi] world are generally accessible. People know how to make most of the things they use. How then are Western items, so clearly differept in

The Economics of Develop~man in the Pacific

27

this respect, to be d.ealt .with? Well, as if they were 'natural,' of course! ... Tolap turns the bread wrapper m hIS hand for a moment, considering what is to be done with it. The wrapper has no fixed purpose, but may be given one and then shaped to fit it. Is it to be burned or worn?7

For the ethnographers, moreover, this hunting and gathering of bread wrappers and umbrella spokes was losing its air of poignancy. It no longer seemed the sign of poverty or unfulfilled desire. Not that it had become familiar, but precisely as it was so strang~. There ,:as a logic to the Mendi's exotic improvisations, which happened to be theu own lOgiC. The goods they appropriated were recognizably European, but not the needs and mtentions. 'The Mend~' Ledennan commented, 'do not see these objects in the same way we see them: their purposes supplied for us' (p.8). Rather they conld perceive in Western things certain possibilities of human value the manufacturers nev~r envisioned. And the corollary of the people's practical selfconfi~ence .was an .mtel1~ctual domination: they encompassed our goods in their own mearungs, literally m theu own scheme of things. This is a common reaction of peoples the world over to the so-called benefits of so-called civilization. The ethnohistorian of Cree Indians echoes the ethnographer of New Guineans: 'Most technical innovations adopted by Indians were modified to fit their existing perceptions and social system, and many European goods were employed in Indian c~Jtnre for purpose~ other than those for which they were produc~d .m Europe. If anthropolOgiSts have not always recognized this mdLgemzation of Western ~bjects, it is probably because they were talren in by their own tenmnology. There IS a sense of the people's passivity in the received ~nt~opologica~ c?ncepts of 'diffusion,' 'cultural borrowing,' or the 'acculturation' of mdigenous SOCLeties by expanding European regimes. It is as if Western goods and technologies made their way into 'backward' hinterlands by 'demonstration effects,' as Lf they were the benefits of some progressive program of foreign aid _ with all kinds of cnltural strings attached. True that such naive ~ews of capitalist expansion have since been superseded, at least morally, by the. cogmzance of Western greed and violence - thus things leaving m place the perception of Europeans as active and the others passive, the first the authors of world history and the second its victims. The historiographic principle, an Australian scholar remarks, is that 'there must be a white man behind every brown." Along With this goes the presupposition that the effects of European power are certain disaster. The 'peoples without history' finally acqnire one, but it is a tale of victimization, deprivation, and transformation, tuming their cultures likewise into adulterated goods. Yet what we see in New Guinea, the Canadian subarctic or the Amazonian forests is local peoples taking responsibility for what is being inflicted on them. They relate to the European presence rather as producers than consumers. They wonld creatively appropnate commerce with Europeans to their own forms of life, which is also to ~ay that they render things European intelligible according to their own lights, mtegrawg them mto then: o,wn schemes of significance. 'The events of this century,' wnte GULdien and Pelhzz~ and especially those of the last two decades, demonstrate

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

that traditional cultures are as resilient as they are permeable in the face of drastic change.' 10 Perhaps it is romantic to speak of 'resistance,' as this would imply a selfconscious political opposition. But whether or not it comes to this, the indigenous mode of response to imperialism is always culturally subversive, insofar as the people must need to interpret the experience, and they can do so only according to their own principles of existence. This again mayor may not succeed. In any event, what I would show here is that in the Pacific the attempt at indigenization is totalizing, a process of developman that goes quite beyond the traffic in Western odds and ends we have been discussing.

The Political Economy of Developman

The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific

29

Solomon Islands and New Guinea 'big men' - they all came after the 'penetration' of European commerce, not before. They were the ones who knew how to turn the

trade to their own (cultural) account. The 'prestige goods' brought by foreigners turn out to have a better market than 'necessities' or 'utilitarian goods.' (These terms, adopted by anthropologists, have to be used with reservations because they smuggle in too much of the vulgar Western distinction between needs and luxuries.) At some risk of oversimplification one could say that a rapid passage from utilities to prestige items is a characteristic sequence in indigenous demands for European commodities.13 Of course, the particular sequences are complex and diverse, but two generalizations can be suggested. First, the demand for means of production, strong initially, soon reaches a limit and thereafter accounts for a decreasing

proportion of the total trade. European tools and utensils are surely appreciated for In fact, the demands of Pacific peoples for Western things are soon enough selective as well as distinctive, and very particular about quality. The Islanders also quickly learn to drive a bargain as well as the next man. The famous King Kamehameha of Hawaii, ruler of the archipelago in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was described by one of J. J. Astor's captains as 'a magnanimous monarch but a shrewd pork dealer ... as shrewd and sordid in his dealings as a white man.' 11 Hawaii at this time was a recruitment stop on the route of the Northwest Coast-Canton fur trade. Yet by the time the British and American merchants plying this trade got to the Islands, they would have had more experience with sharp bargaining than they wanted from their dealings with American Indians on the Northwest Coast. Said one early fur trader, 'We found to our cost that these people possessed all the cunning necessary to the gains of mercantile life.'12 Nor did the local people have to be taught what they liked. If anything the Europeans were forced to comply with demands that were exotic enough - whale teeth in the Fiji Islands, Hudson's Bay blankets in Northwest America, flashy clothing and swank household furnishings in Hawaii - not just any old beads and baubles, such as European folklore then and now supposed were 'good enough to please a savage.' The so-called savages did not enter the capitalist economy as passive objects of exploitation. The 'exploitation' was indeed two-sided. True that, in a classic sense of the term, the Europeans took profits on local production by means of the trade. Rates of exchange reflected unequal inputs of labor, with the effect of a net transfer of labor power from the Pacific hinterlands to the European metropole. On the other hand, the Pacific peoples were acquiring more goods of extraordinary value with less effort than they did in the days of the ancestors. For them, another idea of value was at issue, quite apart from labor Of other costs: the social powers of goods, in the traffic of which the local people, by fitting Western commodities into native categories of sacred kinds, were able to obtain some extraordinary cosmological bargains. Trade goods were appropriated by the indigenous societies as mystic bestowals, as signs of divine benefits and spiritual achievements, to be

negotiated in ceremonial exchanges and displays that were thus political triumphs. In the event, the greater the development of commercial trade, the greater the developrnan. The most powerful of Hawaiian and Kwakiutl chiefs, the biggest of

agriculture, fishing, craft manufacture, and the domestic economy. Axes, knives,

carpentry tools, fishhooks, culinary utensils, and the like are immediately applied to traditional areas of subsistence, often with immediate positive effects on

productivity. Yet just as quickly the time and output thus made available are diverted to other spheres, including cash cropping or other production for the market, all in order to subsidize activities that Westerners categorize as 'ceremonial.' It seems a 'waste' in the Eurocentric view, considering the people's

apparent 'poverty.' But personal consumption and our so-called comforts of life are not yet the stuff of which their happiness is made, nor is maximization of material gain their relation to production. What is disgnised by terms such as 'prestige goods' and 'ceremonial' is an interest in imports whose use and exchange

develops the larger relationships of community and society, not excluding relationships to ancestors, gods, and the cosmos in general.

Hence the second and corollary general trend in the market behavior of Pacific peoples: demands for commodities of social and ritual value run stronger than means of production or goods of personal consumption. The people's efforts to obtain certain so-called prestige goods may have no apparent limits. Nor do increasing supplies of these things bring about a corresponding decline in value. The effect rather is to increase society as such: the scale, density, and pageantry of its relations.

Foreign commodities are thus harnessed to the evolution of traditional culture. The high value of Hudson's Bay blankets in Northwest America, sperm whale teeth in Fiji, or imported cowrie shells in the New Gninea Highlands represents their socializing powers. 'Wealth' consists in the kinds of things that organize the social totality, that create and ally clans and tribes - goods that in their creativity thus have the force of divinity or convey the blessings of god to man - but not all in the same degree. Typically the commodities obtained in trade are ranked by sociality, factored into subcategories of value according to the social sphere in which they circulate. So for the Siane, another Highland New Guinea people, R. F. Salisbury distingnished their commercial interest in 'luxuries' from the greater social 'valuables,' a distinction

reproduced all around the Pacific. l4 Luxuries would include such things as tobacco, cloth, tmned food, and beer, Items that often pass more or less casually between kith and kin. Offered in hospitality, exchanged in the small rituals of everyday life, or

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

presented in rites of passage, these goods are the ~urrency ~f i~terpersonal relations. They trace out networks of kinship and acquamtance wIthin and between local communities. Indeed fhey can make such relationships of sociability, in fhe way fhat for us 'gifts make friends.' Hence, in an era of commercial a~uence, the people, may not only strengfhen existing interpersonal ties but extend tbe like to newfound friends and old acquaintances once forgot. In (Western) theory, kinship relations and fhe market economy are usually supposed to be antifhetical - because we presuppose the existence of private interests, which fhe efhics of kinship generosity would contradIct. But if kinship is a good thing to begin wifh, market commodities can be used to have more of it. At fhe same time, beyond this sphere of interpersonal solidatities, fhe acquisition of commercial means of social production may be funding str~ctu~es of higher order. Not uncommonly, developman is realized in political orgarnzatlOn of unprecedented scale and centralization: the evolution of tnbal groupmgs and confederacies and fhe emergence of higher chiefly aufhorities. Here IS where 'valuables' s~ch as whale teefh, trade blankets, or even the cash acquired from foreigners come into play. Assimilated into traditional categories as goods of great social cum cosmological powers, these commodIties enter mto the exchanges that constitute marriages, settle disputes, or otherwise fashion alliances and agreements between groups, even as they differentiate the status of fhose who are able to organize the transactions. Indeed fhe reason why the local demand for such commercial riches may get out of hand - Hudson's Bay blankets by the tens of thousands exchanged in Kwakiutl potlatches 15 - is fhat fhe market resources get engaged in intense competition of a traditional kind for tribal power. Of course, the pragmatic-military means for the conquest of p~wer also have their commercial appeal to contending chiefs and would-be chiefs. European weapons and ammunition were important in the nineteenth-century PaCIfic ,trade. Muskets were acquired in Northwest America in exchange for furs,. and m the

islands for trepang (dried sea cucumber) and sandalwood, all these natIve products being destined for the China market. The arms are said to have made fhe career.~f more than one so-called Napoleon of the Pacific, chiefs such as Cakobau of FIJI, Kamehameha of Hawaii, George Tupou of Tonga, Maquinna of the Nootka, all men of commercial acumen as well as political daring, who managed to become

the greatest mlers in fhe history of their peoples. In this co~ection Eric Wolf observes in his influential work Europe and the People Without HIstory that 'European trading spurred fhe rise, on a nmnber of islands, of small states headed by powerful chiefs equipped with European armament.'!6 Likewise, Gerard Ward, writing of Fiji in particular observes: In the wider political scene, the forces ofMbau [Bau island] greatly increase~ throu~ fire power during the beche-de-mer [trepang] period as Mb~u had c1o~e relations Wlth many of the coastal groups in the main production areas. This was an ~~porta~t ~actor enabling Thakombau [Cakobau] to establish Mbau as the dominant polthcal urnt III the

1850s17

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31

Yet these formulations present some difficulties. Bau was already a dominant power in Fiji long before the musket trade of fhe 1840s and 1850s; moreover, Bau controlled this trade fhrough its hegemony rather fhan its resources - the supply of trepang in the immediate vicinity of fhe island was unimportant. Hence it is at least as true that Bau acquired fhe trade because of its dominance as that it achieved dominance because of fhe trade. An analogous issue is reflected in the argument of long standing - it began with missionaries and traders in the 1840s - over whether the commerce in

muskets or in whale teeth had been more important to fhe rise of Bau and rival Fijian kingdoms such as Rewa and Cakaudrove. In the view of many Fijians, as of certain missionaries and anthropologists, it was not European anns but the trade in

sperm whale teeth - traditionally the greatest treasure of the islands, the supply of which was greatly increased during the Pacific whaling trade - that made Bau's political fortunes. Such, for example, was the view of the intellectual and historian Ratu Deve Toganivalu: At the time Naulivou and Tanoa were War-kings [of Bau, circa 1803-1852], many whale teeth were brought by European merchants and this particularly was the cause of the increase in power of the Bau state. For many whale teeth were carried to various lands in order to organize wars. It was the same for Rewa, Cakaudrove, Bau and Macuata: the reason for the power of their kings was that whaling and merchant ships often anchored there, bringing whale teeth in exchange for trepang and sandalwood

(Toganivalu, n.d.).!8 One argument against the political significance of fhe musket in Fijian history is fhat in the humid tropics it is a relatively ineffective weapon, as likely to misfire and harm the person using it as to hit fhe enemy. Indeed it would be more likely to put the bearer out of action if it is true, as fhe missionary John Hunt heard tell, that Fijians loaded fheir guns wifh an amount of powder proportionate to fhe size of fhe man they intended to kill: 'If he be a large man they put in a large charging, and if a small one, a small charging. They then fire wifhout taking any aim.' 19 There is also the notorious difficulty of reloading fhese muskets, so fhat upon firing fhe gunner is left vulnerable to a rush and attack by hand weapons?O For Fijians, in any case, dispatching fhe enemy by braining him wifh one of fheir famous war clubs was always more honorable, and ritually more efficacious, than long-distance killing by musket ball. Requiring no strength or bravery, fighting wifh muskets was considered effeminate, reports fhe excellent ethnographer Buell Quoin. 21 Indeed fhe number, vatiety, and quality of Fijian war clubs developed dramatically in fhe nineteenfh century, in tandem wifh fhe influx of European arms. Beautifnlly carved of dark ironwood, decorated wifh incised geometric patterns and sometimes wifh ivory inlays, these nineteenth-century clubs - some of fhe so-called gunstock type said to imitate muskets - now fill the storerooms of American and European museums. 22 Also

abundant in these collections are Fijian whale teefh valuables, for which the demand, always great, continued long after guns were no longer wanted. But then, an argument

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

could be made that whale teeth do embody and convey more social power than either war clubs or muskets - indeed they kill more surely. Death was one of the great traditional uses of whale teeth: individual death and collective, assassinations and wars; for by ritual prestations of whale teeth one enlisted accomplices and allies, and also rewarded them in return for the bodies of their victims.23 But there were other values, which Fijians could think of as analogous. 'The whale tooth,' says Toganivalu, 'is customarily used to kill men, to make war, to offer in supplication to the chief or the god, and to fetch the woman in marriage. ,24 In the Fijian view these several uses are analogous because they have the same finality: the reproduction of the society, whether directly through marriage and the procreation of children or through the offerings to the god, as of cannibal victims, which secure divine benefits for the people. Whale teeth are lifegiving. Such is one aspect of their divinity, inasmuch as the gift of life is a function of god. This helps explain the kind of veneration of whale teeth Europeans have observed in Fiji since the beginning of the nineteenth century. An early sandalwood trader notes in his journal: When a native [Fijian], by purchase or any other means, becomes possessed of a large tooth, he hangs it up in his house, and for the first few days scarcely ceases looking

upon it and admiring it. He frequently takes it down, and rubs it with a particular kind of leaf, and polishes it; some of them almost for a month continue to labour upon it ... [S]ome vessels from India carried elephant's teeth, which they cut into pieces ... These being very large, were considered of greatest value, and procured vast quantities of

sandalwood. So great an account was set on them, that some chiefs actually came from 25 islands more than a hundred miles distant to see them. One is reminded of A. M. Hocart's observation on the exchange value of whale teeth in Fiji: 'A little of it was given for quantities of stuff because a few ounces of divinity were worth pounds of gross matter. ,26 The rubbing and polishing of the whale tooth remarked by Captain Siddons is relevant to another aspect of its divine marketability. Whale teeth appreciated in value with the appearance of use and age. Darkened and oiled, whale teeth would thus represent in concrete qualities the important social relationships they had engendered: the men killed, the women married, the alliances made and urunade, the victories and the submissions. As an active force in human affairs, emanating from beyond society and with the power to create it, whale teeth are again like the god. Means of the constitution of chiefly authority and of political relations between groups, these riches do actually fashion the collective social order. Hence the merit in the argoroents of Fijian intellectuals to the effect that whale teeth were more significant than guns in the formation of the great nineteenth-century kingdoms. The more whale teeth in circulation, the more power in existence in the Fiji Islands. In the event, not only do whale teeth increase but so do political ambitions; and then, not only do traditional politics flourish but likewise Fijian culture in all domains, spiritual as well as material. Fiji in the nineteenth century saw more warfare and cannibalism than ever before, and accordingly more ceremonies and

The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific

33

festivities, more tributes and sacrifices, more travel and communication more hospitality and exchange of gifts. And this meant developman of the n:aterial infrastructure, including the abundance of traditional as well as trade objects. The mdlgenous matenal cnlture flourished too, achieving unprecedented levels of quantity, diversity, and quality. All of this was made possible in large measure by new European technologies such as metal tools, even as it was made necessary by th~ growth ?f the old Fijian polities. The enlarged powers of the ruling chiefs were obJectlfied m houses and temples whose great size testified to the number of men they controlled, and whose intricate ornamentation represented the specialization of labor they supported. Nor would any such establishment be complete without the appropriate human sacrifices, perhaps taken in overseas raids by means of the g~eatest c~noes ever bu~t in this ocean - double canoes over one hundred feet long WIth steenng rudders It took two or three sailors to man. In sum, the scale of construction expanded in proportion to the visions of domination. But there were ~Iso other .mate~al manifestations of the new cosmic ambitions. Notably an interest III a certam vanety of native goods. or even a demand for the exotic. that was matched by a concern for the aesthetic. Refinements in production could be seen even in the most practical objects, such as the :,ar clubs whose proliferation has already been mentioned. This protean productIOn of clubs was due not to tbe intensification of warfare only, but to its social and ntual celebration. Many of the clubs were made as gifts, to reward allied tribes; some were destined to become sacrificial offerings in shrines. Certain of the un~sually fine ~pears too had tbese exchange and ceremonial purposes. And it is the political and t;~al functions, more than lethal ones, that help account for the aesthetics ~f Fijian weaponry. Insofar as it is 'attractive,' beauty effects a social movement. Beauty surmounts boundary. It overcomes the separation between tribe and tribe, as also the. dista~ce between man and god. Many of the objects now widely clrcnlatlng over FIJI III gift exchange and the support of political relations were unusually well done: the kava bowls, carved wooden trays and dishes, pottery, ivory and turtle-shell of1)aments, dyed and smoked barkcloth, mats, dyed sinnet cord, fish nets, dance fans,. cannibal forks. Fiji gained a great reputation for craftsmanship in the chromcles of nmeteentb-century European visitors. Perhaps it was only partially deserved, because many of the best tbings were exotics: produced in the outer islands of Lau on Tongan models or else imported directly from Tonga - whence came also a number of the ceremonial forms and titles witb which Fijian chiefs were now outlining themselves."' The great Bau ruler Cakobau maintained a large workshop of Tongan craftsmen on his Island. They turned out certaiu turtle-shell and ivory breastplates of i7eat value - which Cakobau used to dazzle the warrior nobility of the mountams of VltI Levu. To this day, the old breastplates remaiu the treasure of many of tbe mounta.m peoples. Like whale teetb, they represent tbe virtues Fijians attribute goods connng fro~ the sea and from the east, generally superior to the indigenous tbmgs of the land.. The expansIOn of Bau and other central kingdoms in tbe mnetee~th century stimulated a great trade through tbe islands and stretching out into PolyneSia, all tbe way to 'Tonga ~f the sunrise' (Toga matanisiga). Carrying this exotic trade to tbe mtenor, along Wltb the appropriate whale teeth, the coastal kings

;0

34

The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

were thus able to enlist the mountain people's ferocity in their own projects of hegemony,

with circumstances not of their doing and beyond their control, whether acts of nature or of other peoples. Hence tradition has changed in the past, and, by encompassmg the goods and relations of the market in its own terms it would continue to do so.

The Fate of 'Tradition' 'Tradition' is not static, nor is it in this way opposed to 'modernity.' In recent times,

'traditional' most appropriately refers to a mode of cultural change characteristic of 29 the expanding periphery of the capitalist global order The ethnohistorian Bruce Trigger thus characterizes as 'traditional' the evolution of the Huron confederacy of eastern Canada in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a developman like

nineteenth-centnry Fiji in which the new political formation was complemented by an increase in the extent and volume of trade, the growth of craft production, and the overall enricinnent of ceremonial life. The new order, writes Trigger, 'was based on an expanded application of principles that must already have been present ... and, in this sense, is traditional. ,30 Likewise all the great Northwest Coast art and ceremonial, the famous 'potiatch' culture: it is a relatively modem, post-European elaboration of Indian traditions. So another historian comments on the way eastern American

Indians responded to Christian missionization: Most native Americans reaffirmed their traditional beliefs and strenuously resisted Christianity. But whatever their responses, Indian peoples did demonstrate that their traditions were dynamic intellectual systems, capable of change. The fact that most native Americans cho$e to retain their beliefs does not mean that Indian societies could not change; the evaluation and reaffinnation of accepted belief constitute in themselves a kind of transfonnation. 31

For the most part it is Western intellectuals who show themselves to be the prisoners of traditional conceptions by holding to a rigid and exclusive distinction between the 'traditional' and the 'modern' - which is of course self-congratulatory. We are trapped in the logic of received dichotomies, what J. H. Hexter shows to be the false 'assumption of the conservation of historical energy. ,32 It is as if history was a zero-sum game, so that for any such binary opposition as traditional/modem or stability/change, any increase of one necessarily means, or even is evidence for,

the decrease of the other. From this perspective, the recent history of certain indigenous peoples is a paradox. As described by C. A. Gregory for New Guinea, the paradox is that the so-called gift economy and the commodity economy are growing together. More generally, Gregory writes, 'the indigenous economy has not died out with the advent of political and economic development but has "effioresced.",33 Gregory goes on to note that the effect runs counter to our ruling economic theories of 'development' as well as the policy recommendations ensuing therefrom. Also then in question is the way we perceive the 'traditional':

as authentically belonging ouly to the past, an unchanging legacy, which in the present has the status of a cultural 'survival.' But 'tradition' is not the dead hand of the past. On the contrary, 'tradition' is precisely the way the people always cope

35

'

Not that the people will necessarily succeed in realizing modemity in their own, post-Western way. Even apart from colonial or neocolonial domination, the process of developman engages a historical and structural contradiction from which no society can completely defend itself. So long as it would harness the good things of the market to the evolution of Its own cultural order, it makes this culture increasingly dependent on the relations of world capitalism. And in this hostile context, certain types of developrnan prove tragically self-destructive. Hawaii is a classic example. From the late 1780s until his death in 1819, Kamehameha - the afor~mentioned magnanimous monarch and shrewd pork merchant - was the architect of a remarkable developman of Hawaiian cUlture. 34 The transformations were notably political and ritual. The several islands had been independent before Captain Cook's advent. By 1795, Karnehameha had overcome most of them and in 1810 he completed the conquest, establishing a governing aristocracy and ;unified ceremomal system throughout the archipelago. Kamehameha's victory had been made possible by adroit - although in fact honest - trading of provisions and sandalwood to European merchants in return for arms, ships, and naval supplies. The sacred remams of Captain Cook, inherited by Kamehameha through conquest, played an Important role III this commerce, at once in signifying his sovereignty Wlthin HaWaII and connecting the Hawaiian king to overseas lands and riches - the source, by indigenons tradition, of gods, ruling chiefs, and cultural good things. Hence when the greater chiefs, late in Kamehameha' s reign, began to accumulate commercIal good things for themselves, it was a sign of their own political cum cosmologlCal .~reten~lOns. After the conqueror's death, these acquisitive impulses

?f the Hawal1an aristocracy turned into a veritable orgy of competitive and Illvldious accumulation. Using the proceeds of the sandalwood trade - or even more often, mere promises to pay - the powerful rnling chiefs were obsessed with outdoing one another in the acquisition of foreign luxuries.

The accounts of European visitors to Hawaii during this period are often scandalized by the chiefs' extravagances. Here are some characteristic examples: Not co~tented ~th the comforts of life, they [the Hawaiian ruling chiefs] latter1y sought Its luxunes, and even indulged in its extravagances. Kahumana [Ka'ahumanu, so-called Regent] filled chests with the most costly silks of China, and actually e~pended ~our thousand dollars upon the cargo of one vessel. Boki {Governor of o ah~] patd. one thousand dollars for a service of plate as a present for the king, notwIt~standmg he had other services in his possession; one of which was of expenSIvely cut glass from Pellat and Green of London. 35 The chiefs invariably wear a complete and reputable English dress; and those among them who hold offices of authority assume a neat unifonn of blue broadcloth resembling the undress of British military and naval officers. Their wives, also: envelope their colossal persons in European manufactures of a very superior

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

36

The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific

in dress are usua~ly descnp on, and upon every fresh importation of novelties h' &. 'n an entire hasers to a large amount. It sometimes occurs that a c leless Wl engross k~~stment of a favorite silk or riband rather than that any portion of it should be worn · c · rank.36 by a female 0 f lDlenor

. ti'

The chiefs' epidemic consumption of dazzling commodities. rep~esented a change in the mode of political competition: as it were, a subhmation of the outright warfare of pre-European times. Such displacements of VIOlence to more C s of competition are common m recent PaCIfIC 'fhIstory. The .al .torm cerernom h. .th Northwest Coast Indians themselves conceived the potlatch as Ig tmg Wl property,' and something similar could be said of the great pIg exchanges .of the New Guinea Highlands. Likewise in Hawaii the shIft from VIOlence to venahty can be logically motivated by relationships of the traditional culture - another. proof that 'tradition' in modern times does not mean stability so, much ,as a dlstmc~ve

way of changing. Indeed the chiefs' avarice was doubly motlvated ill the Haw~llan scheme of power. On one hand, commercial prowess in itself had mIlitary implications, inasmuch as it depended on - and signified - the control of la~d and other hand Ono thew manp er . , the dazzling and d.fferentlatlng consumptIOn . h' hof deluxe commodities represented each chief s cosmological pretensIOns, 1S or ~r

claim of a privileged link to the overseas and celestial homeland of the gods. This had always been the great political problem in Hawaii: how to dlfferentlate the statuses of the great ruling chiefs, all of whom by one genealog.cal means or another could claim descent from the same divine sources, Only now, th~ argument could be carried on in another register, as distinctions ,among ~ore1gn goods,

manifest signs of the divine powers of the invisible lands m the skies beyond the horizon.

.

f h

d·ti

37

But all these good things had been purchased by the ruling aristocracy on the never-never, and they could never pay up. The chiefs were heavily in debt - which debt the common people, who had participated in the trade merely as labor, were rapidly losing interest in working off, even as they were losing the numbers to do so due to devastating diseases. The chiefs proved that they had a greater ability to accumulate goods than they had to make others pay for them. Nor were these great landholders inclined to make productive investments on their extensive estates, As Adam Smith said, 'It seldom happens that a great proprietor is a great improver.' In the event, the chiefs and people would all too soon lose their lands. By the mid-

nineteenth century they were leasing it away and selling it off to white men who could tempt them with goods or cash - and then turn the islands' resources to new

kinds of commercial production, notably ranching and sugar. The Hawaiian nobility, however, had been related to production almost entirely by their interests in consumption. Competing among themselves in a language offashion and finery, they were unable to compete with the advancing capitalist modes of exploiting the Islands. An obsolete ruling class, the chiefs were thrown into the dustbin of history, along with so much of the cultural order and pageantry that had been centered on them. Yet elsewhere, in Fiji, Tonga, or Northwest America, the same kind and intensity of market trade did not have. the same results. The Hawaiians had actually amplified the commercial effects - witness the chiefs' debts, which then brought in American and British displays of naval power - into a cultural catastrophe. Moreover, the economic competition of the Hawaiian aristocracy, as it entailed the invidious accumulation of goods rather than their distribution, excluded the common folk from the benefits of the

trade, provoking a disengagement of the people that ensured the chiefs' collapse. What

I

the comparison with Fiji or Northwest Coast societies shows, then, is that the mediation

conceptions. Fine clothing and domestic possesslOns mdeed made bIgger ~hiefs. they were metonymic extensions of chiefly persons already stretche~ by overe~tlng to theIr . I' 't The brilliance and flash of these things, evoking celestlal fires and orgamc mn s. . h' h' hat

of the World System by the indigenous culture is decisive for the fate of local developman. These other peoples were able to sustain their cultural integrity until well into the twentieth century, even in the face of political domination and popUlation decline just as threatening and destabilizing as in Hawaii. In most of the Pacillc, the passage from developman to development, marked as we have said by the shift from a selective to an eclectic relation to Western commodities, did not happen until the later twentieth century. Some places are still hanging on. As for the others, it usually took one hnndred years, sometimes two or three hnndred years, to break them down. They had to pass through a certain cultural desert to reach the promised land of 'modernization': they

In many ways commercial goods had the c~ncre~e properties o. t ese u:a 1, ona

man;z

v:

light, were strong metaphors of Polynesian ~owers, of 1tself: IC 1S w 'makes the invisible visible,' which 'causes things to be seen, thus gtvmg them fo~

.t Is this not the origin of the aloha shirt? The letters of merchants ill and eXlS ence. T" ted' for Honolulu to Boston firms in the early nineteenth century deW mg .tems wan . the Hawaii trade amount to a commercial catalog of Polyneslan splendors, rangmg from 'superfme broadcloth and cassimere' and 'ladies dresses, large and small S1zes,

first quality materials and showy,' through writing desks, mirrors, and ~nks ~overed with red leather, to gold-adorned cartiages or the steamboat ,~~r wh.ch the Kmg and Pitt [so-called, the chief Kalaimoku1 would g.ve anything. A great ~tematlonal division of labor was coming together in Honolulu - to be arranged m u.nhkely subtropical tableaux: these heavy Polynesian notables decked out m vanegated costumes of fine Chinese silks and English broadcloths being hauled through dusty lanes in elegant pony chaises (or perhaps just wheelbarrows) by strarmng mentals (themselves in loin cloths) to fancy dinners in thatched houses at teak tables set WIth silver and crystal.

had to experience a certain humiliation. This seems to be a necessary stage in the process of modernization, this

experience of humiliation, insofar as the initial response of the local people to global capitalism is a developman that has to be overcome. Westerners, especially professional economists, have been pleased to believe that the superiority of industrial products will automatically recommend themselves to peoples of the Third World. The indigent indigenees are supposed to jump at the (main) chance. Not so. One is reminded of the refrain that has been going on about China, since the eighteenth century at least, about all those hundreds of millions of customers just waiting for British woolens - and then later for cotton textiles, steel cutlery,

38

The Economics of Develop~man in the Pacific

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

carriages, guns, ships, perfumes, jeeps, TV sets - just think of the killing to be made if one could only get at this slumbering giant of a market. A modem capitalist version of the quest for El Dorado, the dream of opening the China market to Western consumer goods still goes on - as does the perennial failure to make it come true, to discover the fabled northwest passage to the riches of Cathay. Latterly it has become a quest for Asian hearts and minds, which helps explain the metaphor of missionization adopted by a vendor of California sunshine in a New York Times report of the latest setback to venal Western hopes: 'There used to be a missionary aspect to it, with a board of directors having a vision of an enormous consumer market - you know, two billion armpits in need of deodorant,' said Mats Engstrom, chairman of California Sunshine Inc., a food company that does extensive business with China. 'But since Tiananmen Square, they've realized that it is a long-term prospect, and even then unless you're in the right area you're not going to succeed.'

38

Yet it is not only imperial civilizations such as China that are so content with themselves and their own things. Europeans have long been reporting the same kind of reaction to demonstrations of their supposed technical superiority, from (what seemed to them) the most wretched quarters of the earth. The Jesuit missionaries of New France (eastern Canada) in the early seventeenth century were abashed at the cultural cheek that Algonkian hunters could show in this regard. The Indians, reported Pere Biard, consider themselves more ingenious [than the French), inasmuch as they see us admire some of their productions as the work of people so rude and ignorant; lacking intelligence, they bestow very little admiration upon what we show them, although much more worthy of being admired. Hence they regard themselves as much richer 39 than we are, although they are poor and wretched in the extreme.

To 'modernize,' the people must first learn to hate what they already have, what they have always considered their well-being. Beyond that, they have to despise what they are, to hold their own existence in contempt - and want, then, to be someone else. How many Western anthropologists, late upon the colonial scene, have been told simply and often that 'you White men are better than we are'? Perhaps the experience is rarely mentioned in ethnographic monographs because it seems merely the banal expression of an imperialism whose real nature lies elsewhere, in violence and coercion. Yet however necessary to the generation of this global inferiority complex, and however fashionable it is these days in the humanities and social sciences to reduce history to a cult of 'power' - 'power' has become a universal solvent of culture and history - however necessary and fashionable to invoke it, coercion in itself does not seem a sufficient explanation. Such would be no real improvement on Thomas Hobbes, who would turn out to be the true prophet of modernity. But these peoples are not natural men. They already have their own cultures, their own ideas of the good. So the question is not simply what forces them to be like us, but why should they want to?

39

In addition to the coercion d d . should not underestimate the co: le~structlOn uuleashed by global capitalism, we the propagation of Clrtistianit pTh entary ~eans ~f cultural debasement such as e ~encan nnSSlOnanes used to complain endlessl that the r . y. contem;. Eating, PI:~~: wI~~:e Hawanans was that they lacked sufficient self-

long, the islanders simpI/~ould ~~;:~~r~t:~ :UCh, while hnever working too ,ow rotte~ t ey were. Not only were they unmindful of their uilt T depravity of their nature and ~e . th~ey were Ignorant of the baseness and Clrtisf I wor essness of thIS world. The whole JudeoIan cosmo ogy of the human condition f h .

~~~:t~~ ::~ ~:h~f~a~ PU~is;;m~nt, Wh~l~ sy:te;::~el~~~~:d~~r::~~

a this lU,[ullllE itself.' Onl th nous, Vlll lctive hatred of life,' as Nietzsche called it, 'life th b yen, when they were suffiCiently disgusted with themselves ey ~ prepared to become like us - 'civilized.' ' HUITIl~~ti:c:~S ~n ~mporta~t stage of economic development, a necessary the benefitso;~ takeoff;. The rol~ of disgrace is critical, for in order to of worth both throgres~, ,ItS matenal wonders and comforts, all indigenous depreciated. ' e peop e s self-worth and the value of their objects have to risks Sp~~~~=g'l~tis'eolfn is double-edged. This punitive experience of 'modernization' -conSCIOusness of the indigenou ultu better than and distin t fr W " s c re, as possessed of values worldwide 'culture ill c om, e.stenll~at10n. We seem to be in the midst of a

Amazon and the AUs:z.:e:~tb~~t~~ :s~: :d~~:::!i IS;dS and Tibet, in the world native peoples b .' em Isconsm, all over the 'cultur 'Th d . are econung aware - and defensive - of what they call their e. e wor Itself has spread over th I t ' surely one of the most remarkabl h e p a,ne : a prrse de conscience that is twentieth c e p enomena III the world history of the later entury: The peoples have dIscovered they have their own 'culture' B £ ,. . e ore they were Just livrng it Now th· ' I Something to be defended and if neelfce cu ture. IS a cdonscious and articulate value. Y d ' ssary, remvente . not theet oels nfoMtt?is very self-consciousness make it an inauthentic 'culture'? Is it merva taking. wi ng at dus. k? Mere folklore perhaps, or phony . folki . ow 0 the srn. a song an~ danc~ routine that is itself marketable - thus a secret love of

usu~~;t!~;~:t:~gb~~~e~~::r~~~~:~~ pro;es!. I~deed the whole ~thnic number is and politically innocuous At th mso ~ as It seems econonucally interesting amusement to post-modernist anthr~ sam~ hme, the cult~e .movement affords people's 'objectification' and 'esse!~I~gIsts, ~ho take delight III the ironies of the

::;:d~:::) f~~:i~~~rsbabout the Sy:t~:~~~tyo!f~~rc~~::~~~:: fs':;;:~~ :~

scholars.

. y an earlIer and more nmve generation of Western

So in all these different w . intellectual, the same strugglea~:, ;:,!~~gd~:' the real-political to the pseudoe stru~gle between the Western attempts to dismember the cultur p : together. es an e people s attempts to hold them

fu

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

40

The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific

Notes . . ally published during 1992 in the journal Res, Vo!. 21, pp.13This article was ongm

1

~5'JoSephides and M. SchHtz, cited in Josephides, 1985, pA4.

2 3 4 5 6

~derman, 1986a; see also Lederman, 1986b. Lederruan, 1986a, p.7.

41

Beechey, 1832. Bennett, 1840. Marshall and Wildes, n.d .. New York Times, March 27, 1990, p.A5. Relation ofP"re Biard, 1616, in Thwaites, 1897, pp. 174-175.

References

Ledennan, 1986a, p.? d i d by Levi Strauss' the more the spiritual the seeming para ox exp ore -. h H ence h I ' s logic of the concrete - the more t ey

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

35 36 37 38 39

:~~~~:d;~;Jr::~ :~~~~t~~s:c~rea~de r~~~1o:s of natural species and objects as the

Beechey, F. W. (1832), Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific ". in 1825, 26, 27, 28, Philadelphia, Carey and Lea.

medium of cultural construction. Lederman, 1986a, p.8. Thistle, 1986, p.5. Shineberg, 1967, p.214. Guidieri and Pellizzi, 1988, p.27. Irving, 1836, pp.71-72. John Meares, in Fisher, 1977,p.!' . Salisbury, 1962; Shineberg, 1967; Fisher, 1977. Salisbury, 1962. Codere, 1950. Wolf, 1982, p.259.

Bennett Frederick D. (1840), Narrative ofa Whaling Voyage Round the Globefrom the Year

17

Ward, 1972, p.1l0.

18

In the same vein, the Enghsh

.,.

1833 to 1836, London, Bentley. Codere, Helen (1950), Fighting with Property: A Study of Kwakiutl Potlatching and Waifare, 1792-1930, American Etlmological Society Monograph No.l8, New York, J. J. Augustin. Clunie, Fergus (1977), Fijian Weapons and Wmfare, Bulletin of the Fiji Museum, No. 2, Fiji, Fiji Museum. Clunie, Fergus (1986), Yalo i Viti, Shades of Fiji: A Fiji Museum Catalogue, Fiji, Fiji Museum.

Erskine J. E. (1967) [1853], lournal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, London, Dawsons of Pall Mall

ohn Hunt attributed Cakaudrove's rise to J . , b means of whale teeth etc. they

Illissl0n~y

~~:~~ ~oe t:~l;~U:~i:: ~~: ::r~~;: o~~:;rg::~~ t;Sfi~t for them' Lyth, n.d .. See also

Quain, 1948, pp.21-22. 19 John Hunt, n.d. 444-446 20 John Jackson, Appendix to Erskine, 1967, pp. . 21

Quain, 1948, p.44n.

23

Thus the observation of C~mmodore 1. es f h .. life' United States Exploring in 1840: 'A whale's tooth IS about the pnce 0 a uman ,

22

.

.

Clunie, 1977; See also Clunk's authoritative

warfare, pp.79-97.

W'lk

di

.

SCUSSlon

of the musket in Fijian

of the U S Exploring Expedition, in Fiji

Expedition, 1845, p.90; see Sahlins, 1983.

;i

30 31 32 33 34

61~~e, .198~·pellizzi make the point:

precis~ly

i~?y

'In many instances ?ecause it .e-:i a~ . . memo seems capable of reconsohdatmg authentIcIty defimtIon lllal~ena~le - ethnic t the~urrent task of traditional societies appears ~o b: through mutatwns tn fonn, so tha h' forms of cultural reinterpretatlOn. the recycling of ethnic memory throug variOUS Ul

(See Guidieri and Pellizzi, 1988, p.26.) Trigger, 1984, p.22. Ronda, 1977, p.67. Hexter, 1963, pAOf. Gregory, 1982, pA. Sahlins, 1988; 1990.

66.

Guidieri, Remo and Francesco PelHzzi (1988), 'Introduction: "Smoking Mirrors" _ Modem Polity and Ethnicity,' in Remo Guidieri, Francesco Pellizzi, and Stanley J. Tambiah, (eds), Ethnicities and Nations, Houston, Rothko Chapel. Hexter,1. H. (1963), Reappraisals in History, New York, Harper & Row. Hocart, A. M. (1969), The Life-Giving Myth, London, Tavistock. Hunt, John (n.d.). Fiji Journal, 18 August 1840, Methodist Missionary Society Collection,

School of Oriental and African Studies, London (South Seas Box 5B). Im Thurn, Sir Everard (ed.) (1925), The Journal of William Lockerby, London, The Ha1tluyt Society.

~!~;ain Richard Siddons, in 1m Thurn, 1925, pp.174-175.

26 Hocart, 1969, p.IO!. 27 Guidieri, 1973, ppA9-66. 28 29

Fisher, Robin (1977), Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774---1890, Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press. Gregory, C. A. (1982), Gifts and Commodities, London and New York, Academic Press. Guidieri, Remo (1973), '0 Kuia, ovvero della truffa,' Rassegna Italiana di sociologia, pp.49-

Irving, Washington (1836), Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains, Philadelphia, Carey, Lea & Blanchard. Josephides, Usette (1985), The Production of Inequality: Gender and Exchange among the Kewa, London and New York, Tavistock.

Lederman, Rena (1986a), 'Changing Times in Mendi: Notes towards Writing Highland New Guinea History,' Ethnohistory, Vo!. 33, pp. 1-30. Lederman, Rena (1986b), What Gifts Engender, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press.

Lyth, R. B. (n.d.), Notebook, B 552, Mitchell Library, Sydney. Marshall, Josiah and Dixey Wildes (n.d.), 'Copies of Letters Rec'd from the Sandwich Islands & Canton' (1820-1832), Houghton library, Harvard University (MS Am W/63 F). Quain, Buell (1948), Fijian Village, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Ronda, James P (1977), "'We Are Wen As We Are": An Jndian Critique of Seventeenth-

Century Missions,' The William and Mary Quarterly, Vo!. 34(1), pp.66-82.

• 42

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

...

'Raw Women Cooked Men, and other Great Things of the FIJI

Sahlins, Marshall (1983), 'Id T . (d) The Ethnography of Cannibalism, Islands,' in PauIa Brown and Dona ~zm e s ,

Washington, D.e., Society for PSYChOl~~cal.~thr~p~~g~rans_ Pacific Sector of the 0 . apl !Srn. 1-51 "World System,'" Proceedings of the Bntzsh Academy for 1~88HPP' .. , in E Ohnuki. h 11 (1990) 'The Political Economy of Grandeur ill ~wall, . Sahlms, Mar sa , . Stanford Stanford UniversIty Press. St '[ Victoria Melbourne University Press Tiemey (ed.), Symbols Through TZlSne. ' bury, Ricbard Prank (1962), From tone to ee, , Sallli . . y for the Australian National urnverSlfit . Sdi d' A Study a'the Sandalwood Trade th (1967) They Came or an a woo . 'J Shineberg, Doro Y "ifi 1830-1865 Melbourne Melbourne University Press. in the South-West Pacr c, T' d R 1 t' ~s in the Lower Saskatchewan River Thistle, P. C, (1986), Indian~European ra e e ~ lO of Marutoba Press, " University O Wmmpeg, Region to 184, , R I t' ns and Allied Documents, Vol. 3, 't R W (ed) (1897) The JesUIt e a IQ " , Tbwal es, .

Sahlins Marshall (1988), 'Cosmologies

C~eveland, Burrows Bros, . kutuku kei Bau [A History of Bau], manuscript, Togamvalu, Ratu Deve (~,,~,), Al Tu National Archives at FIJI (F 621247). Affl . A Reassessment of Early Huron uence. d (1984) 'The Road to Trigger, Brnce G , ,. R F Salisbury and E. Tooker (eds), Affluence an Responses to European ~ontact, m A~erican Ethnological Society, Cultural Survival, Washrngton, D.e., N ' 'I the US Exploring Expedition, United States Exploring Expedition (1845), arratrve 0 , ' '! d J h' a Lea and Blanchard. P'" , Ph 3 Vol., 1 a e PI, 'ft ..,', h d Mer Trade with Special Reference to IJ1, Ge d (1972) 'Tbe PaCl c "ec e- eWar~, ~ G r;'ard (ed)' Man in the Pacific Islands, Oxford, Clarendon press 'ty of Wolf~n E;ic '(1982), Eu~ope and the People Without History, Berke1ey, TIlversl California Press.

u'

Chapter 2

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization of the Subject among the Urapmin Joel Robbins

TIris chapter, like many of those in this volume, takes as its inspiration fhe argument of the final three pages of Sahlins' (1992) article 'The Economics of Develop-Man in fhe Pacific.' The bulk of that article is given over to expanding fhe approach to cultural change and the cultural nature of world-systemic economic integration fhat SahIins (1989) had developed in his more widely read 'Cosmologies of Capitalism' piece. It was in fhat earlier article fhat he first introduced fhe notion of 'develop-man,' a label he uses to characterize situations in which people who are confronted with the Western market and its goods seize the new opportunities this contact offers not as a chance to modernize or develop themselves along Western lines, but rather as one to build 'their own culture on a bigger and better scale fhan fhey ever had it' (1992, p.13). Subordinating the market to indigenous goals, fhose who practice develop-man economics use what the market brings them to fortify traditional relationships and enhnnce traditional powers. The classic Melanesian case of develop-man is the behavior of those Papua New Guinea highlanders who made use of Western goods and fhe colonial peace to expand their traditional systems of gift exchange (SahIins, 1992, p.21; Gregory, 1982). As is true in fhe case of these Melanesians, in instances of develop-man more generally the substrrnce of the main chance remains much as it has ever been, it is only fhe means of taking hold of it that change. As I have presented it thus far, the notion of develop-man fits well with the model of the structure of fhe conjuncture fhat Sahlins has developed to analyze situations of cnltural contact more generally (e.g. Sahlins, 1985). Like that model, it gives local categories and efforts at reproduction a fundamental role to play in non-Western people's encounter with the West. It is also similar by virtue of the way fhat it imagines cultural change to be a relatively long-term process resnlting from consequences that are largely unintended by local people. Thus, SahIins (1992, p.23) tells us that at least in the Pacific develop-man is a structure of the longue duree, usually holding on for 100 years, in some places for 200 or 300, before it gives way to a desire for development as understood in Western terms. It is against the background of this very successful model of cultural change and fhe important empirical work by Sahlins and others fhat has grown up around it that the final three pages of 'The Economics of Develop-Man' article stand out as

44

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization o/the Subject

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

so important. For in those pages Sahlins sets aside his exploration of the ways in which local categories and values are slowly and largely unconSCiOusly transfonned in changing situations and turns instead to examining how it is that they come to be consciously abandoned. He sets his sights, that is, on the moment when the structure of the conjuncture splits open, its tightly meshed local and Western gears coming disengaged and their separation opening up f?r local people a chasm between two sides they will henceforth call something hke the slde of tradition and the side of modernity. Presented with this chasm, people often give up in important respects the effort to reproduce their culture and instead bec~me preoccupied with how it is they will get to the other, the modern slde (cf. Robbms, 1998a). When this happens, people have left develop-man behmd and entered the era of development proper. It is likely that structures of the conjuncture fall apart for more than one reason. Some may fall apart, for example, as the result of the working-out of contradictJ.Ons they themselves set up (see Sahlins, 1985; 1992, p.21). But m the article under consideration here, Sahlins focuses less on causes internal to the structure of the conjuncture than on an attitude or feeling that characterizes those who are living within it. This feeling is one of humiliation. It is when people become humiliated by their own culture, he argues, that they cast aside their efforts to reproduce it. As Sahlins (1992, p.24) puts it, 'To "modernize," the people must first learn to hate what they already have, what they have always considered their well-being ... they have to despise what they are, to hold their own existence in contempt - and want, th~n, to be someone else.' By the end of the article, Sahlins (1992, p.24) has glven humihauon a world-historical role, talling it 'an important stage of economic development, a necessary condition of economic "takeoff.'" This is a good deal of importance to give something as 'insubstantial' as a feeling - divider of eras, sW1tchman on the tracks of history, starting mechanism of local capitalisms - but for anyone who has done fieldwork in a place where the initial, traditionally oriented structure of the conjuncture has lost its grip on local hearts and minds, this move also makes a good deal of sense. There is no shortage of people living in postcolomal locales who combine some form of well defined self-contempt with the hope that becoming modem will allow them to find a measure of self-respect. From the point of view of a model of develop-man that predicts that initial periods of contact with the West will be marked by attempts at expan~?d .cultural reproduction, the pressing question becomes one of where the hunnhaUon that brings this stage to an end comes from. Sahlins (1992, p.24) offers us a clue here, suggesting that 'in addition to the coercion and destruction unleashed by global capitalism, we should not underestimate the complementary means of cultural debasement such as the propagation of Christianity.' Indeed, the language of selfcontempt, depravity, and disgrace that Sahlins uses in characterizing the nature of the humiliation he has in mind is· self-consciously Christian (see also Sahlms, 1996). And in assigning this role of grand humiliator to Christianity, Sahlins can find support from other anthropological sources. In the mfluenUal hterature on kastom in the Pacific, to take a regionally appropriate example, scholars often argue that the groundwork for the revival of kastom is laid by prior episodes of

45

succ~ssful Christian denigration of indigenous cultures (e.g. Tonkinson, 1982; Keesmg, 1982). Beyond Melanesiaas well, few anthropologists would argue with the chum that hurmhaUng people m the face of the lives they are leading is a powerful weapon in the Christian evangelical arsenal. De.spite a widespread sense that Christianity often attempts to proceed by means of humiliatJ.On, however, we do not yet have in the literature a detailed consideration ?f h~w it is that Christianity succeeds in humiliating people or of why the humiliation 1t brmgs 1S more hkely than other sorts of debasement to lead people to give up on develop-man type projects of cultural reproduction. In the absence of such accounts one could easily be led to downplay Christianity's role in bringing develop-man to"; end. There are, after all, other discourses beside that of Christianity loose in colonial d postcolonial situations that could have and often do have humiliating effects: for mstance those of racial inferiority, of innnaturity, and of 'behindness' in technical and educational terms, to offer three examples from among those that can be found in the Pacific .and elsewhere (Lattas, 1992; Nandy, 1983; Robbins, 1998b; Wilk, 1994). And this hst could Without difficulty be greatly expanded for the 'Manichean allegory' that IanMohamed (1985) places at the center of colo~ial discourse provides som?thing o~ a totennc operator for the production of a broad range of such humiliaung bmanes. Furthermore, as Sahlins himself suggests, institutions like the global economy also generate their share of felt degradation. But despite the fact that there ."re many humiliating Western discourses and institutions at play in most colomal a~d postcolonial situations, it is not the case, as many of the chapters in this volume stukingly attest, that the mortification they collectively produce always leads people to leave develop-man behind and wholeheartedly embrace Western models of their future. Although one might want to argue that these institutions and discourses are necessary to the production of colonial and postcolonial humiliation then it would be difficult to argue that they alone are sufficient to produce the' kind; of changes Sahlins attributes to this experience. In light of this situation it is worth considering whether there is something special about the humiliation tha~ Christianity produces that makes it a particularly effective wedge for opening up situations of develop-man reproduction to more radical change. . In what follows, I follow this path and argue that Sahlins' intuition in singling out ChrisUamty was ~OITect; Christianity does have a special role to play in the process of colomal humiliatIOn, particularly m those cases where the people humiliated live far from the centers of colonial or postcolonial control and are only weakly integrated mto the global capitalist market. The claim I elaborate here is that among groups who ha~e been deeply mfluenced by the colonial process but have remained physically penpheral to It, those who have engaged Christianity seriously are the ones most likely to abandon their efforts at cultural reproduction and to take on ideas of development as their own. Christianity plays this central role in the colonial and postcolonial humiliation of p.eripheral people for several reasons. I take one of these reasons to be relatively obviOUS and I do not elaborate on it here: in many colonial and postcolonial settings, Christianity is the only aspect of Western culture that Westerners care to teach local people in any detail. As important as this point is, however, it is not

:m

46

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

sufficient to explain why Christianity succeeds so well in halting the process of develop-man. In order to arrive at a more satisfactory explanation, we need to examine the content of Christianity, and the way that content is likely to be taken up and elaborated upon in colonial and postcolonial sitnations. Once we turn to the content of Christianity in tltis way, two reasons present themselves for Christianity's success in producing humiliation that leads to change. The first reason Christianity provides such a powerful break on the momentum that develop-man often builds up among peripheral people in the period before its arrival follows from the fact that it makes the binaries on wltich colonial domination rests meaningful in the everyday lives of such people. While many of the other discourses of colonial humiliation are adopted by local people and talked about extensively, there is little action that can be taken in regard to them in the local context. Christianity transforms this situation by allowing people to anchor colonial notions of good and evil, exalted and debased, matnre and cltildlike, human and animal etc. in the local discourses and rituals through which they carry out and tltink about their own lives. Christianity is able to localize colonial humiliation in tltis manner because it organizes that humiliation in a coherent way. Viewed from the vantage point of the colonial and postcolonial peripheries, one difficulty with the Manichean allegory as a mechanism of humiliation is that its very oumivourousness, its ability to tnrn any axis of difference into an axis of evaluation, threatens to render it incoherent. Christianity protects colonial discourse from this fate by providing an overarclting meaning for all of the types of inferiority the Manichean allegory produces. It also offers a model for how to live once one has come to see oneself as inferior. In the Christian scheme, all inferiorities come to signify one's sinful nature. Faced with this situation, one has both to identify with one's inferiorities and to work to overcome them by embracing the Christian salvational project. Crncially, in Christian terms recognition of inferiority and the move away from it are not separate moments, but rather they form a unity; without identifying oneself as debased, one cannot move toward salvation. Operating in tandem, the emphasis on recognizing one's inferiority and the demand that one struggle to overcome it in the drive toward salvation together work the multifaceted colonial discourse of humiliation into a tidy narrative in wltich even marginal people have clear and valuable roles tn play. In putting together this understanding of the ways humiliation can be worked into a meaningful life-project, Christianity not only makes humiliation part of a coherent story of self-development, it also goes so far as to give it a positive valence. Since one cannot be saved without recognizing one's own debasement, humiliation in the face of one's inferiority is sometlting to welcome, not simply endure. Tltispoint is not novel for anyone with even a passing knowledge of Christianity and its history, but the well-known Christian drive toward humiliation takes on a different force when it is at play in colonial and postcolonial situations in which it operates while surrounded by a host of other humiliating discourses. In such a context, Christianity prods people to reach out for and embrace the myriad humiliations they are presented with; it draws them deeper into the various byways created by the Manichean allegory even as it systematizes and simplifies them.

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization o/the Subject

47

When it is taken on in this w~y, Christianity becomes something of a clearinghouse for processmg colomal hunuhation and sending it out to local people as sometlting they themselves have ordered. Through Christianity, then, humiliation becomes a local project. Once it has done so in a particular locale, the era of develop-man in that place has in important respects to come to an end. The second reason Christianity proves so successful in spurring movement away from c~tural repr?duction follows from the way it encourages converts to become conscIous of theu 'cultnre,' a hypostatized image of their past way of life. Onc~ people have relfied th~If cultnre, it is but a short step for them to begin making conscIoUS efforts to dIscard It and replace it with something new. . Dhareshwar (1998, p.2l7) captnres an important aspect of this process of reific~tIon and. repu.diatIon when he writes that 'Christianity as a religion ... brings a peculi,?, refleXIVIty mto ?,e w~rld; it begins to predicate truth or falsity of practices.' In Chnstian terms, one s traditional cultnre becomes something one does, not has, and moreover something on~ does consciously. No longer just the way things are don~ or what the ancestors dId, when confronted by Christianity cultnre becomes a chOice, and one that has to be justified. It is through leading people to engage this set of Ideas about actIOn, chOIce. and ,:"sponsibility that Christianity teaches people to look. mward, to modeffilZe theIr. notions of subjectivity as something to be regulated, and m the process to learn not srrnply to be open to the idea of human worthlessness ' but more pomtedly to use it to humiliate themselves. The re~inder of tltis essay develops these reflections on the role of Chri~lIa,:,ty m the prqduction and organization of colonial and postcolonial hunuhati~n and cult~ral change by examining the case of the Urapmin, a recently Christtamzed group m Papua New Guinea. Having examined the way Christianity led the Uraprrun to abandon develop-man in favor of a search for what they understand as a Western way of hfe, I conclude by rejoining the larger issues that Sahlins takes. up. In particular, I look at tensions between Christian and developmentallst mod~ls of th~ .futnre, and consider whether Christianity might not at once focus colomal humiltatIon, giving it the force it needs to dislod entrenched practices of develop-man, but at the same time turn that bumiliati~~ agamst the narrative of development that is so central to the legitimacy of the postcolornal state in places like Papua New Guinea.

Conversion and the Coherence of Humiliation in Urapmin The Urapmin are a group of 390 people living in the Telefomin district of the relatIvely r~mote West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Colonial control only began m the Telefomin District in the late 1940s and was quickly suspended for sev~ral years after a local rebellion in 1953 resulted in the killing of two Austrahan Patrol Officers and two Papua New Guinean Constables (Craig, 1990). ~t w~s only m the ~d-1950s, after the rebellion and its aftermath had passed, that routrne colomahsm can be SaId to have settled on the area (Asad, 1973, p.1l5). By that lIme, Austrahan control had been reestablished and the Australian Baptist

48

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

.

h d set u

a functioning headquarters at the missionize the Telefolmin people

Mission~ SOCiety (ABMhS ) 't ~ d begu~ to Telefomm statlOn from W leh 1· a

'whiteman' (tabarasep,.l waitr~tan),. ~t cl~s~~:n!;~t~~KhWone an~ther in work and they took to be the whlteman s ability t . d' tinned foodstuffs the Urapmin thus to produce plentiful material gOdo~s, I~cf~~nihe whites were also physically considered superior to thelf owndtra Iona d 'healthier than the Urapmin were d th Urapnun beheve , stronger an d r' that claimed to explain a world larger larger an, e themselves. Finally, the whit~s ha a re IglOn th' own comprehended and that

t

.

furth~or; :~~:t~:~:s::~ ~~ ~~~~::t~e~~~~:~~ e~~;" by the govuemme?t

u 0 .. . d t of their own observations, the rapnun officers and nusslOnanes, an ou th t the whites had . . f I . 1 eriod a strong sense a developed durmg the bne co 0:~0~1d than the Urapmin had _ a knowledge that greater knowledge (save) about th k t ether peacefully, produce impreSSive allowed them to control themselves, wo~ og and healthy children and operate a material goods and foodstuffs, rals: : ~ng ed all of these good things to come to religion that controlled the cosmos ~ a a hOW g to do with human worth, wealth, them. On all thes~ level~, the:;~~:~eda~ the Urapmin began in the colonial th ; led them to denigrate themselves and social order, physI~al bemg, a hi period to develop Ideas about w tes a 1r d . play during the their achievements. . Y t despite the fact that such invidious Ideas were a ea y I l l . f e . t that time add up to an overwhelnung sense 0 colo~al peri~d, thtY ~t~e;o~~ not produce an experience of humiliation capable h ' t f expanded cultural reproduction that IS hunuliatiOn. r at eas. of diverti~g the Urapnun from tie ::!:c ;uring these years, the Urapmin kept a them b sending young men to work on captured m the notIOn of deve op hand in the changmg world around . . Yes I'n Telefomin but they also . d tud with the nusslOnan , . plantations an . to s Y l b ' le e and well-being through the practice continued pursumg goals of Ioea su

SIB

ne

49

of their indigenous religion. And on their return, the young men who had been away were quickly reintegrated into the develop-man project by being made to redistribute their earnings in ways that once again immersed them in the flow of

who lived nearby. . I ' li in the Telefomin region lasted As a political fact, Australian co.oma sm d 'th Papua New Guinean th two decades commg to an en Wl scarcely more an , h' . d the Urapmin remained at some independence in 1975. T~roul~~~~t ~c~~~;n~h~y lived (and still live) seventeen remove from th~ center 0 . co th W t f the District Office at Telefomin and for miles of mountamous t~rralll to 1 e ees 1:ly by Patrol Officers or by missionaries. this ·~eason they were vIslted on y lIT ~ those visits did serve to introduce the As mfrequent as thi wer~, h~;:v~i;course of colonial humiliation. The Patrol Urapnun to vanous agmen s o . d them would for example, tell Officers and the Native Constables ~h;t acco:~::~ey were lawl~ss and lacking in the Urapmin that they were pigs an hog~an min lack of self-control was one the f self-control. The latter message 0 t e .;a: their part in the register of sinful missionaries also promulgated, ~astmg 1 . or h' h colonial humiliation came to . And b d these mstances m w IC wlllfulness.. eyon. quent tri s to the Telefomin station where them, Urapnun men m pattlcular took fre d t~e mission the institutions of the they were able to observe the government an e~e im ressed with what

than the now rather lInmedlate-seenung one. .err

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization a/the Subject

local social life. The initial disappointments and humiliations of the colonial era, then, were addressed in terms that still gave the central institutions of Urapmin culture important roles to play in the Urapmin future. By the time of my fieldwork in Urapmin in the early 1990s, things had cbanged decisively. People no longer practiced their old religion, and their visions of the future were dominated by hopes of attaining Christian salvation in heaven following Jesus' return, which was expected imminently (Robbins, 2004). Dreams of Westemstyle development were also prevalent, fueled in part by the opening of the large Ok Tedi mine three days walk to the Southwest, and these provided images of how people would most like to live until Jesus came. With these futures in prospect, no one in the community was explicitly working at reviving or preserving traditional ways of life. This is not to say, of course, that aspects of tradition were not in many instances unselfconsciously reproduced. But what was striking was the extent to which the Urapmin denigrated that tradition and those parts of themselves that they saw as springing from it. As regards their past and those patts of it they had not been able to jettison, the Urapmin of the early 1990s were sunk deep in the kind of transformative humiliation to which Sahlins draws our attention. Given the marked difference between the develop-man oriented Urapmin of the colonial period and the modernizing Urapmin of the early 1990s, the question that arises is that of how this shift took place. In particular, one wants to ask how it happened that the postcolonial Urapmin came to be so extensively engaged with colonial style humiliation ouly after the colonial era as a political fact had come to an end. The answers to these questions turn on the fact that dming the period that stretched from independence into the 1990s, Christianity took on a new role in Urapmin life, and in doing so it largely set the terms in which the shift away from develop-man and toward modernization as locally understood occurred. Evidence for Christianity's importance in this transformation is perhaps most obvious in the way the humiliations of the 1990s, humiliations that turned on many ideas that the Urapmin had encountered andlor formulated during the colonial era, are organized almost wholly in Christian terms. Ideas of racial iuferiority now emphasize the fact that Jesus had been white and Christianity was originally and still is primarily a white man's religion. Notions of ignorance, iufantilism and a general sense of being 'behind' are tied to this understanding of Christianity; whites understand the Christian religion far more fully than the Urapmin both because it belongs to them and because they have had it longer. The Urapmin have come to Christianity late; they are, as they say 'last New Guinea' - the last people to hear the gospel (Robbins, 1997). Furthermore, the Patrol Officers' assertions that the Urapmin were lawless animals, insults that still deeply anger the Urapmin, have found a transformed life in the Urapmin's own Christian understanding of themselves as sinful creatures unable to control themselves or to work for salvation either individually or as a group. As suggested above, this Christian collocation of inferiorities both serves to focus the Urapmin sense of humiliation and to give the

50

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Urapmin a framework in which to make that humiliation a spur to meaningful action. B ut this meaningful action can only be action of the kind that has turned its back on tradition and on the projects of develop-man that kept it alive. A second piece of evidence suggesting that Christianity has been central to the Urapmin move away from develop-man consists in the way they themselves tell the story of their recent past. The Urapmin are very aware of a decisive shift in their attitudes towards themselves and their past and they date its origin precisely to the year 1977. It was in that year that the develop-man style honeymoon that marked the colonial period in Urapmin came to an abrupt end when everyone in the community who had not previously been Christian (at that time this represented the majority of Urapmin adnlts) converted to a chatismatic-style of Christianity in what they call the 'revival' (rebaibal). By all accounts, the revival was a deeply compelling, publicly elaborate theatre of humiliation. One by one, over several months, people found themselves possessed by the Holy Spirit. When this happened, they became profoundly convinced of their sinfulness. They realized that they had been following their own wills despite the fact that, as they now realized, their own desires were worth nothing and God's will was everything and all powerful (to adopt a phrase commonly used in their prayers). Public confession often followed this experience of conviction, people admitting to the willful, lawless things they had done and then collapsing in shame. Once people had confessed, they were able to join violent possession dances (Spirit disko) in which the Spirit cleansed them of sin. Individuals emerged from this experience more hopeful than they went in, but also convinced of their own smallness, and of their deeply sinful nature as people who had previously lived in a 'heathen' (haiden) culture. For its part, the community as a whole emerged from the frrst wave of the revival collectively committed to the Christian project. While the revival was at its height, people not only converted, they also quite literally discarded their 'old' cultrne, recognizing it as a source of much of their sin. They 'threw away' (rausim) the bones they had formerly worshiped, publicly discarded their personal magic, and dismantled their men's houses. They did this because they had come to understand, as they put it, that keeping these things was a 'sinful way of behaving' (pasin sin). This shift to seeing their indigenous culture as evil and as something to be discarded, a shift that is at the heart of the move from develop-man into some other kind of engagement with the West, was facilitated for the Urapmin by the Christian tendency, discussed above, to lead people to reify their 'traditional' culture. In the Urapmin case, Christianity achieved this by encouraging people to sharply divide their pre-Christian past from their Christian present. The Urapmin understood the revival even as it occurred to be making a break between their past 'heathen' culture and the Christian one to which it was giving birth. The effects of this conceptualization of revival as a discrete break are still heard in Urapmin speech today. Although they are not much given to tropes of light and darkness, they do say that various of their customs are things of the past and as such 'not very good.' They also speak of the past as a time when everything was hidden (bantap), whereas now everything is in the open (kern diim). One also frequently hears that

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization of the Subject

51

'before was a bad time' now God's talk h as come down ' And h . '. per aps most tellingly, there is now a Tok Pisin cliche th t tr I a. ans ates qUIte literally as 'that was then, this is now' (bipo em " b' zpo, na nau em 1 nau) th t th u . on the discrete division that separate th' a e r~prrnn use to remark claims to be living in a new epo h s err present from therr past. All of these are conversion, a rhetoric that 'ocu c th supported by the Christian rhetoric of , L' ses on e turn from 'Id h ' new heart' (nupela bel). The ecstatic con . an 0 eart (olpela bel) to a and continue to give this rhetoric d versI~n e:penences of the revival gave and help them to convince thems I a ';;',p e~penenttal grounding for the Urapmin another. eves at t ey really have moved from one era to By making the past defrnitively p t ' th· di has also made it into an ob'ect th as III IS screte way, Urapmin Christianity contempt. As such, it can b~ J'ud adt can be conte~plated, ~valuated, and held in d' Chri . . . . ge more or less III Its entrrety terms It IS Judged to have been bad _ full . ' an m s!lan and strife. But having made a discrete th~f Ignora~ce, gr~~dy self-assertion, anger Id ng of their tradi!lon (alowal imi kukup ways of the ancestors olpela a' tells the Urapmin tha; it was : dSl~ ~ 0 ways of behaving), Christianity not only and that they will be responsib~e / a so tells them that they were responsible for it This leads them to be scru I or any aspects of It that they carry into the future traditional culture, and to their efforts to avoid reproducing heart, feelings) in an effort to root ntly to therr lOner selves (aget tem - inner (aget fttkunin) that might still atise :~r~ast ways of feellllg (aget tern) and thinking

att!~ ~~sns~~

the~

The next section looks at how the U ' ... response to this need to make I' , rapuun have Ills!ltu!lonalized their . new Ives Lor thems I ' practices that both produce and addr h . eves III a set of ntuals and other ess t e expenence of humiliation. Living the Humiliating Life . The legacy of the Urapmin move to discard h t e past and to defme themselves in what they take to be modern Chn' t' t ul . . . s mn enns IS a contemp self-dlsclphne and self-surveillan Th' ~rary c ture centered on .. ce. e VIgOroUS Chns!lan ritual I" f raprrnn IS focused on issues of sin and re . . . he 0 the U of most Urapmin are marked b demptlOn. Sluularly, the personal lives avoid sin. These days the Ur; constant efforts to monitor their own hearts and n longer a matter of refo~ng oldPcuuut regard all sorts of things as sinful. It is no . . s oms In any Simple was understood to be in th I d _ sense, as It In large measure tradition in a direct way the:' e~ y ays of the revival. Rather than involving such as anger, jealousy ~ovetou~:e~~oa~nent ~ont~mporary sins involve emotions is also true that the U~apmin regard a~1 ~~e fightlllg and theft they lead to. But it Urapmin ways of feeling and acting' th hthese sms as. ex~ples of traditional culture (kukup) and as such are part th;ev~ve becom~ Iden!lfied with Urapmin falling prey to them 'lea . f . past that hves on III the present. By , . , pmg out 0 God's pIg p ' the Urapmin routinely humiliat th I en or strayrng from God's path' ';';S. It the humiliation that follows such sinful feelings and acts e rapuun flISt deepen and then finally

;f

~hate~e

~s

o~

52

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

dissipate through the Christian ritual process that currently dominates life in their community. As I have discussed this ritual process in detail elsewhere (Robbins, 2004, pp.253-288), I will only briefly consider it here, paying particnlar attention to the way its engages issues of humiliation. The most forthrightly bumiliating face of Urapmin Christianity is the one visible during the moral harangues frequently given by men to the community in the church and in village clearings and by women to children and younger women in more private settings. Called weng kern (clear speech), this geme of speech is marked by constant reference to people's moral failings: their inability to control their desires, to live together peacefully and to follow God's law. Although harangues will sometimes be aimed at a particular target (e.g. a harangue about people's inability to live peacefully might be aimed at two people who have recently fought), they are often aimed at the community in general. And even when their addressee is not the entire community, they are always phrased in terms of the failings of the Urapmin as a whole - it is always 'we Urapmin,' 'we family,' 'we people' wbose moral failings are under attack. Further, the condemnatory tone of the harangues is picked up in only somewhat muted form in everyday talk, as people discuss all local problems in terms of the imagery of widespread moral failure that the harangues establish. The prevalence of this kind of humiliating speech lends Urapmin community life an air both of continual failure and of constant awareness of the need for reform. It is this need for reform that drives the Christian ritual process in Urapmin. Described as a cycle, the Christian ritual process might be said to begin in church. Here people hear various harangues addressing the debased state of their hearts, but they also take steps toward moving beyond that state simply by virtue of their presence at the service. For attending church services, held minimally every Saturday night and Sunday morning and often as frequently as every day, is in itself a moral practice that encompasses both coming to recognize one's sinfulness and disciplining one's other desires long enough to sit attentively through the service itself. By both deepening people's feelings of sinfulness and allowing them to begin to address those feelings, the church service establishes themes that are elaborated upon in confession. In response to the chaos engendered by the public confessions of the early days of the revival, when those who confessed would often be paralyzed with shame (jitom) and those who learned that they had been sinned against would lash out in anger, the Urapmin have formalized a private form of confession. People now confess to a deacon or pastor during times set aside for this purpose. In confession, people often go on at some length about their sins, detailing every passing feeling of anger, desire, or jealousy they have felt and listing all of the minor thefts of food they have committed since their last confession. While feelings of humiliation are a part of these proceedings, and are particularly worked up as people prepare to go to confession by remembering and enumerating their sins, there is also a palpable sense of relief that marks them. For in confession one gives one's sins to God and so once one leaves confession one is free of them. The Urapmin feel strongly that once you have given your sins to God, they are no longer yours and should not be able to humiliate you any further. As

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization of the Subject

53

;:~ ~~ ~: :;~a~~~:~:ti: i::t~rs in the co~unity once put it in a sermon:

'when li d . ush, you don t go back later to find what you left.' y, mp e ,once.a sm IS confessed you should never think about it a run ritualAI~ough after c~nfeSS1?n people have given their sins to God, there is a ~inai ritual :t:~ ~:~:~::y~:n:'t~ to fully ~id oneself ?f the effects of a past sin. This (Spirit disko) D . th P IClpatton ill a collective dance called a 'Spirit disco' I . unng ese dances, some dancers are possessed by the Hol S irit Similarl he i

s~n~~n";e~:~~o~ a~;~y:~~e;!e~~~~::s:~~~e:~

wrestle~

peoPI~'/pas;

;~:!::~lon

o:;;:':';%c:~: :e:~:~:

Spirit with casts them out (Robbins, 1998c. 2004) AIth ~d!eS, and m tnumphmg over them disco beco ,. oug not everyone who attends a Spirit sins. If the~~v~0~~~s:~~'s~:~7:71~ pr~sent must have confessed all of their past women' (Spirit m .' di no come to anyone, save a few female 'Spirit dances as well ;~l' dm; .".m~who regularly become possessed outside of these qnickly lead t~ di e . pmt fISC.OS, those in which the Spirit does not come SCUSSlOns 0 sms besetting the c · ' the humiliations that drive the Christian a:

have been ~~~~e~y s~::::iyarel take~ as hsignS that all the participants in the danc~ b c ean y t e Spmt. Thus even those who do n t ecorne possessed leave these dances feeling 'light' (fong) Th· li h 0 opposed to what Urapmin call th 'h ,. . . IS g tuess IS feeling of hea . h· h e ea~y (llum) feelmg that accompanies sin. The Vlness, W le accompames sham (fi ) b ..

~~~:::~f ::!sr~~:bylY. ;~: ~estUtdir~Pmin gloss for t~e h::liat~~na~~t ::~e~: :tt~~ Th. . sco IS what finally lifts it from them. p~n

somethi: h7~::';:': th~ SPlnt disco brings is not permanent, however, and this is n:~ WIth regre,t. As sinful people, they are likely to leave the churc~ after a order. The very fleetin' g~ :tslde as they put It, and sin again in fairly short gness 0 . elr success thus rebounds to play a role in their further hu . . .

X:;'

have not

::~a!~:d It~~:~~l~~ I::;e~! ~~:~elves as fb~ksliders, as people who

~::~~~;\:~r~r:e:n I~e~s~nd i~:ep~ the is:;~~ fi~~~:~t~~:m!~;n:; : :

~~~~p~~o~::e~f-pef~~ati~g qU~it/tha:k;:s~:a~t~r~~:~ i~f;eu:!~:~~no::~ borders

Uffil

la

ng

Iscourses coming into Urapmin from outside of its

urap~~st~:~~O~nh~~; ~:tkout

for sin, aware ~f a tendency to backslide, the appear to an outSIder as unnecessarily hard themselves. When one considers the Ur . d fi . . . on avoid it is not . . . apmm e mtlOn of sm, their failure to theft but also f:~~:I~~~ Havmg d~fined as sinful not only acts like adultery or the Ura· Id . anger, J~a ousy and desire, it is difficult to imagine how pnun cou aVOId falling mto sin. Indeed, for reasons that are cul r y complex (and perhaps to some extent humanly obvious as well) th < I. tu athll .. ' e .ee mgs e Urapman take to be sinful are al Urapmin social life (Robbins 2~~~; U:0~lble to avoid in the course of normal loser's game and it quite oft~n le . th s respect, Urapman Christianity is a prone to withdraw as far as posSib~v~s ethUrapnun not only humiliated but also e ram e uncontrollable rough and tumble of

54

The Humiliations of Sin: Christianity and the Modernization of the Subject

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

that social life (Robbins, 1998c). Having laid out the way Urapmin ritual life sharpens and assuages their feelings of humil~ation, ~ want to turn I~ ~oncluslOn to this drive toward withdrawal. For in looking at It, we also reJom the bro~d questions that animate Sahlins discussion of the importan,ce of, hurmliatIon In leading people to break with develop-man and engage m trymg to become something other than what they have been.

Humiliation Without Development: On the Christian Modernization of the Suhject The Urapmin urge to withdraw from the world significantly complicates any model that would assume that Christianity, in bringing the project of devdop-man to a hmniliating end, inevitably leads people to embrace the global capitalist market and the idea that development will briog it to them. In coneluslOn, then, I w~t to ask where a Christian desire to withdraw from the world leaves the. prop~sltlon that humiliation is the spur to economic takeoff? In considering this ?~s~e, It IS u~eful to note that the Urapmin find in the depths of their Christian hum!liatJ.On two kinds of future worth looking forward to. One is what Sah1ins' model would predict: a life ?f successful participation in the market economy, imagined most VIVIdly as one m which the Urapmin have all the Western goods they might want. But as much as they want this, they also remind themselves constantly that all of these goods are Just 'things of the ground' (samting bilong graun, towal dIm majakmajak), not matters of ultimate concern. The more powerful vision of the future, the one that would endtherr humiliation for good, is the Christian millennial one of a life in heaven, where srn no longer holds sway in the human heart. It is this future. they pray for ~onstantly and expect imminently. It is also this future that as an Idea m the present gives them real succor and takes the edge off of the humiliation modermty has taught them to fmd m themselves. But this image of the future demands commitment to the value of withdrawal, for it elicits not a desire to find a reformed engagement ';'th the world but rather one to transcend it. And the value placed on Withdrawal m thiS model ultimately allows it to encompass, in Dumont's (1980) terms, d~velopment. . Why has Urapmin Christianity had thiS effect? In seeking an answer to this question, it is useful to note that this desire to withdraw seems n?t only to trouble Sahlins' brief remarks about Christianity in his 1992 aruele, but It also fits poorly with Weber's assertions about the connection betwee~ ~r~testantIsm and capitalism. This suggests the possibility that the ~odel of Chrlsuamty, or at least of Protestant Christianity, that social sClenusts have mhented from Weber and Widely generalized may in fact be too narrow; it leaves out othe~ ~mportant t~ends ,W1thm Christianity. In exploring this issue, we can rely on a bnlltant essay III which the German sociologist Soeffner (1997) turns a sociological eye on the ~egacy of Lutheran, as opposed to Calvinist, Protestantism. He charact~r1Zes ~utheran Protestantism' as a Christianity focused on a form of self-observatIOn that IS III the end always observation of sins, identification of one's own sinfu~ness, o~e'~ own failures' (Soeffner, 1997, p.31). In this as well as other ways, his descnpuon of

55

Lutheran Christianity fits Urapmin Christianity quite well. At the end of the essay, he notes that this fonn of Christianity eschews practical reason in favor of a selfreflexive reason that aims to effect 'rational control over the inner world, the disciplining of motives and intentions' (1997, p.37). Put otherwise, this type of Christianity is so intently focused on the inner world that it establishes an "'impractical" reason' that 'is under no obligation to the logic of action' (1997, pAl; see also Dumont, 1994, pp.20, 45, 54, 77). This is the kind of reason that guides the inner life from humiliation to salvation, but does not suggest any way to connect that inner life to the social world. It is the kind of reason that formulates Urapmin self-contempt, assuages it temporarily in their possession dances, and leads them to invest their best energies in preparing for a millennium they are sure will come. But it does all of this while at the same time making the Urapmin wary of social action in general, This impractical logic is so predominant in Urapmin that leaders often have to urge people to leave off holding constant church services and get back to their gardens. But so hegemonic is the logic of inward control that even these pleas that people reengage the world are framed in terms of it: if you do not garden and Jesus does not come, leaders admonish, you will have to steal food and thus you will sin. You must at least minimally engage the outer world, they assert, but only so as to avoid damaging the inner one. This impractical logic also leads some Urapmin to forgo the chance to take up important leadership positions in the community. Unsurprisingly, their rationale points to the dangers to which such positions expose the inner self: the burdens of leadership too often demand, they say, that one spoil one's inner life by feeling and expressing anger and by 'pushing' others in ways that make them angry. Given the importance it places on withdrawal from the world, Urapmin Christianity, for all its humiliating qualities, is not caught up in the project of modernizing culture or social life so much as it is with that of modernizing the subject; teaching it to focus intently on itself and to expend its best energies on regulating itself. And in this regard, it has been singt!larly successful. The Urapmin are not waiting for the late Foucault, for he has long since come to everyone there. We might of course take their intensely self-reflective humiliation to be of a kind that is perfectly suited for people living at the frrtthest edge of the world-economy; a place where the market hardly needs them either as labor or as consumers and just worries that it might someday want to take their land, should it prove mineral rich. But if we read Sahlins' (1996) more recent piece on 'The Sadness of Sweetness,' we might also imagine that the Urapmin have in fact penetrated to the core of modern life. As humiliating as it might be to ponder, it may be true for all of us that, as one sector of our own impractical logic is wont to put it, modernity doesn't get any better than this.

Note 1

In this chapter, terms in the Urap language are given in italics while those in Tok Pisin, the mo~t influential lingua franca in Papua New Guinea and an important language for Uraprmn Christianity, are printed in italics,

______

--_-_-c~_-_

-0-::--_

-_-_---0_

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

56

Chapter 3

References

A ad Talal (1973) 'Two European Images of Non-European .Rule,' in Anth;~fo;~r and s , T A d ( d) New York Humarul1es Press, pp. . the Colonial Encounter, . ~a e Wh :NI th?' in Children of Afek: Tradition Craig Barry (1990) 'The Telefonnn Mur ers. ose y. . B Craig and D

cl' .

' Ch e among the Mountain-Ok of Central New Gumea, . . and dma:ngeds) Oceania Monograph No. 40, Sydney, University of Sy~e~. Hynhwar, V(lvek' (' 1998) 'Valorizing the Present: Orientalism,31Postcolomaitty and the Dhares Human Sciences,' Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 10(2), pp. 211-2 ' . r' M . (1980) Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and lts Imf! lcatIOns, . Dumon~, Louts t dB Gulati (transl.), Chicago, University of Chicago Pr~ss. Samsbury, L. Dumon , an . G d Back Chicago · (1994) Gennan Ideology: From France to ennany an , , Dumont, LoUlS University of Chicago Press. . . ( 1982) G,ijts and Commodities, London, Acadermc Press. Th Bc f Manichean Allegory: The Function of Gregory, c . A . , J nMohamed Abdul R. (1985),' e onomy o . 59 87 a Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature,'. Critical InqUlry"VM°1. l 2(d1 P 1~(4; pp. . Roger. M (1982) , 'Kastom in MelaneSIa: An Overview, an k m, o. , Keesmg,

)'J i

297-301. . The Double Self in West New A dr w (1992) 'Skin Personhood and Redempl1on: ne, '. I 63(3) 27-54 Britain Cargo Cults,' Oceama, Vo . , pp. . if S If d r Colonialism

Lattas,

Nandy, Ashis (1983), The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery Delhi, Oxford Unive~sity Press. Y

Robbins, Joe!. (1997), When Do 1 ApocalypticIsm, and the Mora

0

e un e

,

TIll k the World Will End? Globalization,

0 ;

'1 n f Fieldwork in "Last New Guinea,'" en s 0

Anthropology and H~Ulanism, Vol. ,;~?;;tPN:-;:;~;' Apocalyptic Narrative, Negative Robbins, Ioel (1998a), On ~eadlmCghri ti° nity in a papua New Guinea Society,' Social Nationalism and Transnationa s a Analysis, Vol. 42(2), pp. 103-130. . . Eth aphy and . J I (1998b) 'Between Reproduction and Transfonnation. nogr Robbms, o e , I V I 71(2) pp 89-98 Modernity in Melanesia,' Anthropological Quarler y, 0 . . ' . h of Robbins, Joel (1998c), 'Becoming Sinners: Christianity and DeSIre among t e rapmm Pa ua New Guinea,' Ethnology Vol. 37(4), pp. 299-316. . New Robbin~, Joel (2004), Becoming Sinners: Christ~anitJ1. and Moral Tonnent zn a Papua Soc,'ety Berkeley University of Cahfornta Press. G · uznea " . U· .t f Chicago Press Sahlins Marshall (1985), Islands of History, Chicago, mvefSl y 0 P 'fi S to; of ''The Sahlins: Marshall (1989), 'Cosmologies Capitahsm: the Trans- a~ l~ ec World System,'" Procedings of the Bntlsh Academy Vo1.74, pp. 1 5 . , Vol 21 Sahlins, Marshall (1992), 'The Economics of Develop-Man m the PacIfic, Res, . ,

U .

0:.

SahIi~~: ~~:~~ll (1996), 'The Sadness of Sweetness: The Native Anthropology of Western C l ' Current Anthropology, Vol. 37(3), pp. 395-428. " OSIDO ogYG' (1997) The Order of Rituals: The Interpretation of Everyday Llje, Soeffner Hans- e o r g , . bl' h ' Mara (tr ) New Brunswick, TransactIOn Pu IS ers. Luckmann in Melanesia: Introduction,' Mankind, Vol. 13(4), pp. R0 b'ert (l 98;)ns;iastom Tonkinson, , 302-305. . D I t" Colonial Time Wilk Richard (1994), 'Consumer Goods as Dlal~gue about .eve op~n . hur ~d Television Time in Belize,' in ConsumptIOn and ldentlty. 1. Fnedman, (ed), C , Harwood Acadentic Publishers, pp. 97-118.

Transformations of Desire: Envy and Resentment among the Huli of Papua New Guinea Holly Wardlow

We were sitting high up on a craggy ledge from where we could just see Tari town in the distance - the sudden bare stretch of land that was the airstrip, corrugated metal roofs glinting in the sun. Tai Bayabe was telling me - somewhat proudly, somewhat matter of factly - of how he had organized the armed hold-up of a convoy of politicians, trucks, and then later of the local luxury resort. I asked him why had he done these things, and he replied much as I expected: 'Madane piyita' (madane did it). He had acted out of madane - a fierce disappointment in, and resentment towards, those people who had let him down. Those politicians had promised the developmeut of roads and schools; moreover, they had said they would use their discretionary funds to make the compensation payments that would help end the ongoing tribal fight in the area. But nobody knew what they had spent that money on; it certainly wasn't schools, and it wasn't to end the tribal fight. And the expatriate managers of the luxury resort had not hired a large number of local people as they had promised, the wages were too low, and they supplied no food for their workers. Madane - resentment, indignation, and a sense of betrayal- had motivated him to do these violent things. Tari was a madane place, he said darkly. I heard this refrain repeatedly during my fieldwork. When an expatriate store manager was killed by a fanner employee during an anned hold-up, this was attributed to madane. When some young men managed to topple one of the giant electrical pylons carrying power from a small natural gas plant south of Tari to the Porgera goldmine in the north, this too was attributed to madane. When husbands killed wives who had tried to divorce them without returning bridewealth, or when pasinja meri (literally, passenger-women; women who are highly stigmatized for engaging in paid sex) were killed because they refused to have sex with the 'grassroots' - rural, unemployed men - these events too were said to be motivated by madane. The Huli emotion tenn madane (Frankel, 1986, p.143) refers to a specific kind of anger felt when one's sense of entitlement to something is dashed by another person's refusal to abide by a promise or presumed obligation. The mining company had promised - implicitly or explicitly, depending on who is telling the

58

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

story _ to build a road and schools. The store manager, by hiring the employee, had made a promise of wages, which he then broke by firing him. Wives, by accepting bridewealfh for their relatives, make a promise of marriage. And when pasinja meri disembed fheir sexuality from the kinship system by having sex outside of marriage and bridewealth, they forfeit the right to choose wifh whom fhey have sex. Belonging to no one man, they are implicitly obliged to every man; 'grassroots' men should have as much sexual right to them as any businessman. To deny men this sexual 'right' is therefore, in some sense, to violate their entitlement. Madane thus encompasses desire, disappointment, resentment, betrayal, and sometimes righteous indignation. Actions which stem from madane are often spoken of disparagingly, but not always and not completely. There is usually an undercurrent of feeling _ sometimes strong, sometimes almost imperceptible - that the victim of madane deserved what he or she got because he or she promised something and then failed to deliver. Thus, behaviors that may seem admirable (rebellion against a powerful mining company) or abhorrent (the murder of one's wife) can bofh be manifestations of madane. Another word fhat Huli people use to characterize Tari, often in fhe same breath as calling it 'a madane place,' is to say it is a 'jelas place,' or as fhe younger, more hip generation says, a 'J place.' By jelas, people rarely mean jealousy _ fhat is, a feeling of hostility towards a rival or towards someone who is perceived to have an advantage. Rather, they usually mean an inordinate, almost uncontrollable, feeling of desire - for things, for money, and sometimes for people. Huli men and women often say fhat this is the fundamental way that they have changed:' everyone is 'jelas' now; everyone has desires fhat are jnst barely under control (Robbins 1995; 1998). Importantly, fhe termjelas is often described as a precursor of madane, and sometimes used as its synonym, as if the two terms were so bound together in experience that one necessarily implies the other: overwhelming feelings of desire slide too easily (and frighteningly) into a sense of violated entitlement (see also Sturzenhofecker, 1994 for a discussion of Duna notions of entitlement). Sahlins has asserted fhat 'Humiliation' is a necessary stage of economic development ... The role of disgrace is critical, for in order to desire the benefits of 'progress' ... all indigenous sense of worth, both the people's self-worth and the values of their own objects, have to be depreciated. This inferiority anthropologists discover everywhere, it is the father of desire. The selfcontempt of the peoples is the prerequisite of their modernization (1989, p.28).

'Modernization' for Sahlins requires an affective phase of self-debasement that spurs one to identify with the (often white-skinned) Other and to desire the belongings and cultural practices fhat presumably made the Other of such worth. I have at times heard Huli people compare themselves unfavorably with whites, asserting that they themselves are too willful, lack fhe ability to cooperate, cannot save money, aud 'nogat sisan' (literally, lack seasous; that is, lack a kind of temporal regulatedness, bofh in fhe landscape and in their desires). Nevertheless, Sahlius'

Transfonnations of Desire

59

~:~~~:ttyp~ov~ke adnumber of questions: (1) if it is humiliation that is the engine of . ' w ere oes this hUIlllhation come from' h ' w at sorts of processes or discourses precipitate self-loathin (2 in self-loathing d . l ' g, ) do these processes or dIscourses always result an capltu ation to 'modern' 10g1CS . precursors to modem subjectivity and 3 how , or can there be other affective are h~lial1on - or other modem sentiments _ related to desire? Ce~aiul y, It were pOSSIble to do the epidemiology of emotion among th Hul" e 1, one would find that it . d d . ~ne. an Jelas that have increased, not a sense of humiliation or self-loathi IS _ma WhiCh IS not to suggest that these emotions or subjective states are mut all ng I u y exc USlve or unrelated. In this chapter, I use the conce t of m adane to explore Sahlius' assertions about huuu'li 11' . P and the pursmt of modernity. a on

V.

Humiliating Discourses: Christianity, Race, aod Gender In answer to the question of where humiliation . comes from, Sahlins suggests that the propagation of Christianity w'th 't . ' I I S message of human depravity i f fh pnmary discourses fhrough which humili ti .. I ' s one 0 e American missionaries use . a on IS mcu cated. As he says, 'the d to complam endlessly that the problem with the Haw .. abou~~:;;:~a~:~~~~~k;1 s~cient self-contempt' (1992, p.24). Recent writing Christianity is taken up and in~:al:~a .~~gge~ts ~t whe~ this 'self-contempt' of (Lattas, 1998; Tuzin 1997) It i th IS 0 en one so m very racialized terms but of the sinful bl~ck Chrlsti s ehse -contempt not ouly of fhe sinful Christian, perhaps simply because Jesus an7 'I:e ~o~::~~;.sh becaus~ of innate moral flaws, is less powerful and wealthy th th hi appene to come to whites first . an e w te Other Lattas quotes a Kali . saymg, 'we were bikhet [willful, stubborn] and' .h . . aI man as which made us come u black-skin w~re purus ed With a big darkness 35) A d LP. s. Our blackness IS our present punishment' (1992 ' P. . n, as attas pomts out,

it'

Such narratives assign a mo al .. . .. Colonial and neo-colonial tneqounal!l1"l1~ to mequalities between white-skins and black-skins. es come to be personal' d . th th part of a moral economy where the white' Ize , III at ey ... become of his moral laws and moral p h dman s power and wealth are seen as extensions . .. erson 00 ... [Such belief 1 f h mtemalizmg the conditions of colonial dominati' . s are part 0 t e process of making one's race moral1 . on, that IS, they are part of the process of p.32). y responSIble for the conditions of its own SUbjugation (ibid,

Christian discourse thus becomes a means of ex 1 . . rectifying, race-based colonial inequalities Chri ti .tyP ~g, but also potentially permutatious, provides an origin story for . -b ~ am , m ~ome of Its Melanesian time, in its more millennial v ' . race as asymmetries ID power; at the same This kind of racializede~:~~i~~~:~o~~~~ ~Omise ofeventua1 racial equality. people come to feel humiliated b fh . compellmg explanatlOn for how not totalizing and may not ha ~ err own culture; however, such discourses are ve e same consequences everywhere. The Huli of

60

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Southern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea speak proudly of their mana, the body of moral knowledge, precepts, and injunctions that ~rdered ~oclallife especially gendered life - in the past, cognizance of which IS still perceived to form identity, even if the practices themselves are atten~ated. Many. Huh .are of the opinion that because their customs were more explicltly prohibltlOn-onented than

those of other cultural groups - like modem, juridical 'law' as they say, and as they now prefer to translate the word mana - Huli people are more moral than other people. And since they are more moral, they are culturally superior, e:en to white~. Moreover, many Huli men assert that Christianity is an inferior substltute fo~ theIr mana because (1) it has no rituals for identifying the culprits of theft, of particular concern in the contemporary context, and (2) it asserts that physical aggression is unacceptable regardless of context, a clumsily un-nuanced approach to violence in

their opinion. Christian discourse and practice cannot, therefore, make people feel inadequate since it is itself inadequate to the task of regulatmg people m the way that a moral and cosmological institution should. It should be noted that Huh women are less critical of Christianity and assert that it does offer ritual means for addressing crimes like theft; it is just that men disapprove of these means, perhaps because the agents of these rituals are often female. One can, for example, pay a woman who belongs to one of the more Pentecostal sects to enter a trance state m

which the divine spirit reveals to her the name of the culprit. . When men are more laudatory about Christianity, they tend to engage III a discourse that appropriates Christian doctrine as isomorphic with Huli mana;. the two moral systems are exactly the same, they assert, but they were translated mto

different cultural contexts, or they were simply separated deep in the past. Men,and women sometimes say, for example, that they are descendants of one of the lost tribes.' As proof, like good diffusion anthropologists, they compare linguistic and cultural evidence, asserting, for example, that their word for 'father,' aba, IS the same as the Arabic word, and explaining that just as the Christian descendants of those tribes which did not get 'lost' have their Ten Connnandments, so the Huh have their mana. Indeed, some of these commandments or mana' are the same, they point out, such as not coveting one's neighbor's wife, hon?ring one's parents, etc.

Transfonnations of Desire

61

Neve;theless, while they might not use a predominantly Christian idiom, the Huh, particularly men, do search for the basis of black/white differences in wealth and power, and do find these asynnnetries humiliating. This was particularly apparent dunng the OJ Simpson criminal trial. The Papua New Guinea national ne~spapers daily wrote about the case, and most of the Huli men I knew adamantly mSist~d that OJ was innocent (Wardlow, 1996). These emotionally charged ~ssertlOns we~e grounde~ m a sense of shared racially-based asymmetry more than m the case ltself, and It was clear that Huli men were actively constructing themselves as a 'black race' in opposition to whites, this time not based on shared origins, but on shared histories of inequality.' It is this asynnnetry, and the cultural (not moral) traits and practices that seem to underwrite it, that Huli are intent on

analyzing. As Robbins has said of the Urapmin, 'understanding the differences that follow from being black versus being white is ... one of their most crucial modern projects ... the opposition of black and white skin is now as important in orgamzmg thought as are those other classic dichotomies of male and female kin and affine, or friend and enemy' (1998, p.lll). For example, Huli men ~ften lrutIated conversations with me about comparative sodo-economics: was it true

that white people completely depend on money; buy all their food instead of growing it; engage in wage labor or risk starvation; pay for water, housing, power, and above all, land. These conversations almost always ended with two interre:ated conc1~sions: 'mipela free' (we are free), and 'graun, em muni bilong mzp,ela; mum, em gaden bilong 01 waitskin' (land is our money, and money is

white peoples' gardens). White people depend on money to survive, while the Huh depend on land, and it is the ties to land that make the Huli 'free': unlike wage-earning white people, the Huli 'grass roots,' especially those who live in isolated and private homesteads, are free to work when they want, eat when they ,;ant, and sleep when they want. They never have to be anywhere at any particular lime, they bosslm 01 yet (boss themselves), and no one has a right to interfere with their private business. Thus, some men asserted that they were willing to concede

any chance at becoming wealthy if the price one necessarily paid was the loss of self-determination and the bondage to disciplining routines. Such assertions initially seemed to me to be clear-sighted critiques of capitalist

How could the most important markers of a culture - ItS language and moral precepts _ be so similar unless they have the same origins? The Huli must have originally come from Israel too, they conclude, and Huli people and white (assumed to be Christian) people are descended from the same. ancestors. Such

people also spoke of themselves as 'je/as,' as desperately desirous for money and the things that ouly money can buy, and implicit in this self-characterization was the sense

assertions are not meant to assert similarities between 'white' Christmmty and Hull mana _ i.e. we are like you; rather, they are meant to assert identity and equalityi.e. we are you. 2 What is problematic is that most waitskin (whites) do not see this

of being imprisoned by, or at the mercy of, one's desires. Humiliation, then, seemed to come from disparities in wealth - which, in the contemporary context are class as well as race-based - and the sense that one cannot control one's desires for more wealth.

truth of connnon origins (and thus connnon identity), and many Huli speak of heaven and/or the apocalypse as the place and time when this truth will not only be revealed but will be instantiated in everyday practice. Thus, again, Christian

These humiliating differences are locally intensified by gendered coullicts (Knauft, 1997). More specifically, during altercations women often verbally exploit sources ?f modem humiliation to further humiliate men. The married couple I lived WIth dunng my first year of fieldwork well illustrate this point. After almost five years of maniage they were childless, a painful predicament which Kili attributed (often opeuly and loudly) to Potabe's philandering with pasinja meri and to his consequent gonolza (sexually transnntted disease, as the Huli construct them). They argued on a

discourse, although certainly racialized, cannot be an exoge~ou~ source o~ humiliation since it is not exogenous at all, merely a vernacular of mdigenous Hull

mana.

wage labor and a fair valorization of their own socio-economic system. However,

62

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

regular basis, usually using insults that implied a shameful breach of proper gender nonns. Kili, for example, often accused Potabe of always nosing around her women's house, unable to control his desire for sex, such control being an important trait of traditional masculinity. Accusations of this kind certainly annoyed Potable, but were rarely enough to provoke a physical reprisal. It was only when Kili accused him of violating more contemporary constructions of masculinity that physical violence would ensue. During one of their worst fights, for example, Kili jeered that Potabe seemed to think that wearing modem clothes and hitching rides on other people's four-wheel drive trucks made him a real man. As she said with withering sarcasm, 'Oh, you seem to be a real man because you wear shoes. Oh, I am so in awe of such a man. Or is it because you wear sunglasses? If you want me to think you are like a man, then carry rice and canned fish to our house like other men do.' These attacks on Potabe' s masculinity - his inability to buy trade store food, and especially what Kili characterized as his transparent and pathetic attempts to look 'modem' by wearing boots and sunglasses - were far more humiliating than her more common

jibes about his sexual desire or even about his gonolia. Indeed, after this particular insult, Potabe rushed into our house, punched Kili to the ground, and brutally kicked her in the side with his steel-toed work boots. It is important to point out that Kili' s anger was due to her infertility and her suspicions about Potabe's gonolia; Potabe's lack of a regular source of income was not atypical for the area and did not worry her. She was simply drawing on contemporary notions of masculinity to humiliate Potabe in the way she knew would hurt most. Thus, it is race, and increasingly class, based disparities in wealth that are humiliating to men, and women know how to exploit this humiliation in order to intensify it. Pasinja meri also exacerbate these nascent class-based humiliations by choosing to have sex ouly with those men who can pay for them. Many 'grassroots' men find this assumption of sexual autonomy particularly humiliating since these women have violated the bridewealth system which defines women's proper place. Women are 'for bridewealth,' as people often say, and from this perspective, not ouly are pasinja men immorally repudiating their proper place and purpose, they are selectively rejecting and humiliating individual men. These highly gendered

63

Madane: Another Modern Emotion The que~tion of whether 'humiliation' is the sole or preeminent affective precursor

to adopnng a modem self evokes the work of postcolonial and other theorists who explore the alienated subjectivity of colonial and racial subordination. Wbether these theorists can be usefully put into dialogue with Sahlins' model may be quesuonable smce much of their work assumes a psychoanalytic and textual paradigm. Ho."'ever, Fanon's work in particular resonates interestingly with Sahlms' assertlOns. Like SaWins, he is concerned with subjectivity and affect in the conte~t . of conj~n?ture between indigenous peoples and the project of Impenaliswcolomallsm, and his writings are more 'ethnographic' than much postcolorual theory or criticism in that they are based on therapeutic case-studies.

Moreover, although his approach is psychoanalytic, his exegesis of his clinical work. With Algerian patients is, in part, as Lewis Gordon puts it, 'a demonstration by fatlure' (1996, p.76); that is, an attempt to critique psychoanalysis by analyzing 'the, neuronc .s~ucture of colonialism itself (Fuss 1994, p.20) and by underlining the soclOgemc causes of ahenation. For Fanon, the neuroses he observes in black

people are the result of colonialism, not the psycho-sexual traumas of individuation within the family. Indeed, he asserts that the colonized ouly become psychoanalyzable when they come into contact with whites/colonizers. It is, as Mary Aune Doane puts it, 'the conjuncture between the two which produces neurone effects ... [These effects stem from the] network of gazes, desires, fears, and transgressions born of the colonialistiimperialist enterprise' (1991[1952], p.217). In Black Skins, White Masks, Fanon asserts that 'in the man of calor there is a constant effort to run away from his own individuality, to annihilate his being

... the Negro, having been made inferior, proceeds from humiliating insecurity through strongly voiced self-accusation to despair' (1991[1952], p.60), an assertlOn remmiscent of Sahlins' discussion of humiliation, if far more racially

charged. Thinking about Sahlins' discussion of humiliation through the work of Fanon leads to. some productive questions, for although they have similar interests, they

dimensions of the Huli experience of humiliation in the contemporary context beg

are ~tlng from different subject positions and, moreover, assume quite different

the question of whether Sahlins' model as a whole is implicitly gendered. Does, for example, becoming 'modem' entail humiliation and self-loathing on the part of women? As Cynthia Euloe has asserted, postcolonial social projects, particularly nationalism, have 'typically sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation, and masculinized hope' (my emphasis; 1989, p.44). Often it is assmned that it is men's humiliation at the hands of more powerful (white)

colomal. contexts. Fanon, for example, in The Wretched of the Earth, discusses the colo.malist practice of forcing Algerian male intellectuals to undergo prolonged seSSlOns of bramwashing, a practice designed to 'attack from the inside those elem~nts which constitute national consciousness' (1965, p.286). Clearly this is a

missionizing, colonizing male Others that spurs the yearning for modernity, and

this assumption may well be correct, if partial. Certainly Kili's exploitation of Potabe's humiliation suggests that male humiliation is central to social change and that women bave the role of either exacerbating or alleviating that humiliation. How discourses of humiliation shape gender, and alternately how gender shapes the experience of modem humiliation needs to be more thoroughly explored.

I,i

Transfonnations of Desire

sItuatlOn far ~ore coercive than the one Sahlins is assuming. Even if one rejects a

psychoanalytlC approach and even if one acknowledges that not all colonial histories are as bmtal as that described by Fanon, his work does prompt one to ask whethe: Sahlins' model is sufficiently attuned to the way in which the experience of humIliation does not always stem from reflective comparison of one's self with ~nother, but may be deliberately cultivated by a dominating other. As Fuss says,

Fanon IS concerned With the profoundly debilitating psychological effects of colonial mimesis on all black men who must labor under the brutal colonial injunction to become (in Bhabha's eloquent turn of phrase) "almost the same but

64

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

not white'" (1994, p.29). In other words, do humiliation and the desire to be 'modern' arise from an internal sense of comparative lack, Of are they deliberately and forcibly imposed on the colonized? Sherry Ortner raises similar questions about Sahlins' work. Commenting on his debate with Obeyesekere about the voyages of Captain Cook and whether Cook was considered a god by the Hawaiians, Ortner says, 'Most commentators have considered that Sahlins effectively demolished this particular part of Obeyesekere's argument .. . Yet there is a strand of Obeyesekere' s book that I found very compelling and that - unless I missed something in the extraordinary detail ?f Sahlins' response - Sahlins never refuted. Obeyesekere foregrounded mCldents m which Cook, the other British captains, and the crewmen all regularly committed acts of humiliation and violence vis-a-vis the Hawaiians ... [This strand of Obeyesekere's argument1 forces a recognition of the systematic practices of power and domination, and small and large acts of resistance, that shadowed the economic, sexual, and cultural exchanges that comprised the "structure of the conjuncture'" (1996, p.6; my emphasis). Thus, Fanon (and Obeyesekere) remind us that humiliation may be deliberately and systematically strived for and achieved by those engaged in the colonial project. Fanon's work, and that of more current postcolonial theorists, also remind one that the 'cultural desert' to which Sahlins refers is not only one of humiliation; there are other emotional experiences that go hand-in-hand with self-contempt. Floyd Hayes, drawing on Fanon's work and that of Scheler (1994) to analyze contemporary racism in the US, emphasizes the experience of resentment and argues that 'the hunger for revenge ... is the fundamental cause of ~esentment. This hunger, which shonld be distingnished from active and aggressive Impulses, IS a response to a prior attack or injury ... As Scheler observes, "revenge tends to be transformed into ressentiment the more it is directed against lasting situations which are felt to be injurious but beyond one's control - in other words, the more injury is experienced as destiny'" (pp.I4-15)4 What these writers suggest is that humiliation and self-loathing are accompanied by, indeed cannot exist without, resentment. These discussions of resentment as a response to humiliation are provocative in the Huli context, for madane seems a close cousin to resentment, and, as the

Huli suggest, 'modernity' is a 'taim bilong madane' (a time of resentment). Indeed, as I suggested at the outset of this paper, Hnli people talk often of madane and rarely of humiliation (although, of course, it is probably far easier to speak of resentment than humiliation). Both resentment and madane are subjective states of ill will that result from what others do (or fail to do) to (or for) the self.' However, while these two affective states appear to be similar, they are premised on, and emanate from, different constructions of the self and different assumptions about the relationship between self and other; these differences have important

Transfonnations of Desire

65

Madane differs significantly from the ressentiment of Scheler or the rese.ntment discussed by Hayes, in that madane implies action, not just

~ internal

feelmg state. Indeed, one recognizes madane from its marks on the material world: the slashed tires of the truck belonging to someone who refused to give one a ride, the uprooted garden of someone who denied one food, the body of the passenger woman who refused one's sexual advances, the toppled power pylon of the mining company that wonldn't share its profits. It is both the emotional and practical :esp?~se to injury rather than the experience of 'injury as destiny.' While the mabIlity to act IS central to Scheler's theorization of ressentiment, action is fundamental to madane because madane assumes its victim had an obligation to the actor. The person who acts out of madane has every right, in some cases even a ~uty, to retaliate because victim and actor are not in a relationship of autonomous

mdependence to each other; they are connected and in mutual obligation. Madane, I suggest, springs from a specifically Melanesian construction of self, or at least a self that has been very thoroughly theorized and explored in Melanesmn anthropology; that is, the relational, multiply-authored self who is embedded in networks of kinship and who, in a sense, exists and reproduces society through duties to others (Strathern, 1988; Busby, 1997). Indeed, it is a self that emerges throu~h a generative history of debt and obligation. According to the cnlt~ralloglC of this kind of self, if the other - a mining company for example _ obtams wealth, then of course it will share some of its largesse with the self, for the two are connected, and the gold is the mediating, partible dimension which both solidifies and dynamizes the relationship (Wardlow, 2001). Madane, then, is a response to ruptures in this kind of self/other relationship; it is a very ungentle rennnder to the other of his or her obligation. Humiliation, in contrast, depends on an autonomous, delineated, non-partible other which has no automatic obligation to the self and, indeed, successfully repudiates any claims the self has on the other. What I am suggesting is that madane may be an alteruative to the humiliation and self-loathing presented in Sahlins's model, an alternative that stems from an alternative experience and expectation of self/other relationships. Thus, madane on the Pan: of landowners is a rejection of the mining companies' autonomy; it is an aggreSSIve enforcement of interdependence and an attempt to re-suture the

self/other relationship into one of mutual obligation. The fact that madane is very often dlfected at the objects belonging to the delinquent other further suggests that madane is embedded in a particular construction of self/other relationships: the actIons stemnnng from madane are meant to be a reminder to the other to meet his

or her obligations, a reminder inflicted on the partible aspects of the other _ or rather, on those objects that should be partible but that the other is holding back.

So What About Desire?

implications for whether humiliation is universally central to the experience of

becoming modern, or whether it is a culturally specific emotion state that may not be experienced in other contexts.

The final question raised by Sahlins' model is the relationship between humiliation _ or ~ther 'modern' emotions - and desire. According to Sahlins, self-loathing leads to deme, specifically the deslfe to refashion oneself in the form of the other. Whether

66

Transformations of Desire

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

this is true, or how it is true, in the Huli case is a complex question: on the one hand, desire, and its management, have always been a central tensio~ in Huli cons~c~ons of personhood; on the other, the Huli speak of the present time as a qualitatively different 'taim bilong jelas' (a time of excessive, uncontrollable deSIre). The expression of desire is thought to be fundamental to Huli personhood. Children's temper tantrums, for example, are seen as acute exp~essions of legitimate desire, and they are often laughingly acceded to, for they sImply mean that the child feels very strongly about what it wants. SImIlarly, chIldren are encouraged at a very early age to hit people who try to take things from them, and there is a sense that if you aren't willing to fight physically for what you want, then you couldn't have wanted it very much. Thus, to be a person i~ t~ express autonomous desire. However, Huli also assert that many prohiblhons ~d injunctions on behavior are designed to constr~in desire. For example, durmg menstruation women are not supposed to look directly at men. Some people say that this is so they don't entit substances that are dangerous to men, but .others say that to look directly into a man's eyes is to incite his desire, and so this taboo 18 meant to limit desire during a time when it would be too dangerous to have sex. Sintilarly, the insides of many contemporary Huli houses have two :id~s, one. for the husband and one for the wife, and neither should venture to other s SIde. This IS meant to curtail the desire for each other's things and to prevent the theft of each other's belongings that the Huli say is inevitable if such rules were not in place. Even in the communal men's house, each man has his own particular area that no other man is supposed to enter, for to see another man's belongings - hi~ feather~,

his sunglasses, his steel-toed work boots - is to want them, and to enter his space IS half way to taking those coveted items. . .' The larger social organization of Huli space IS also often sMd to be mtended to constrain desire. The Huli don't live in villages, but in widely dispersed households surrounded by thick stands of bushes and deep trenches. This fortification is eant

n:

in part to ensure privacy - so that no one interferes with another person's busmess

_ but also to ensure that people do not see and covet each other's things. Not seeing and not knowing about another person's belongings is accorded moral value. As one woman I lived with boasted, 'my cousin lives just up the hill and I

never go to her house unless she asks me, and she never asks me unl~ss she has a specific reason, such as to give me some pork. I don't even know which room she

sleeps in.' (This cousin was part of our extended household, a.nd her house was less than 20 yards away, but we never visited her, and she only VISIted us because I, as the ethnographer, had asked that I be able to socialize with a varkty ~fwomen.) Thus, desire is ontologically connected to visibility, and vlSlbillty IS tied to spatiality. One desires what one sees, which in the contemporary context now includes money, watches, sunglasses, women, cowboy hats, le~ther bo.ots: an~ f~ur­

wheel drive trucks. And, what is sometimes referred to as the ASlaruzation of Papua New Guinea - that is, the incre~se in investroent by, and imports from, Asian countries - has contributed to Utis specular dImenSIOn of modern deme. Products from Asia - the fake Levi jeans, the lacy acetate dresses for little girls, the intintidating sunglasses - tend to be much less expensive than their equivalents

67

imported from Australia, making them affordable even to some rural wage-earners, but still not affordable. to those who do not have jobs or who do not have money from sellmg used clothing or from rentittances from urban-based kin. One reason, then, for an apparent increase in jelas and madane ntight be that there

IS

so much more to want. Increased visual exposure means increased desire

which means an increase in expectations of others that they will help you attain wha; you want, and a resulting increase in resentroent when they fail you. Implicit in this resentroent are conflicts over relationality and social obligation. One of the first words children are actively taught is 'ba,' the imperative form of the word meaning to hit or to kill, and Utis word is typically taught in the context of actual or pretended scenarios about people taking a child's things. However, at the sarue time, the child is also being taught two other words, 'ngi' (give) and 'au' (here, take it). Thus the initial socialization of language and the proper accompanying emotion/subjective states emph~size that the aggressive assertion of desire is always embedded in a relationship of recIproCIty. Thus, for e~ample, women will spend hours with toddlers provoking des~e for an object, bnngmg them to tears of rage by pretending to steal the object, urgmg them to hit the offender, and then demanding a few rounds of give and take of the ?bJ?,"t -: e.g. 'au' (here it is, take it), 'ngi' (give it back), 'au' (here it is again, take It), ngl (give It back). Thus, I suggest, while the expression of autonomous desire is encouraged as a sign of personhood, it is also always circumscribed by relationship and one's connections to others and their desires. However, in the current context, desire is experienced as more individuated

"J,'d solidly located withi.n the self, not embedded in webs of relationship (cf. LlPuma, 1998; 1999). Mmmg companies, employers, and pasinja meri have no explicit moral. obligation to meet one's desires, nor eVen to form a relationship

where the demes of both self and other can be negotiated. Thus, not only is there the good chance that one's sense of entitlement will be huntiliatingly repudiated by the ,other, there is also .th~ dis~oncerting experience that one's desires are only ?ne s own problem. Chnsti~ discourses, even if they do not necessarily humiliate tn and of the~elves, do. remforce this sense that desire is now a personal problem

and an expenence that IS located only in oneself (Robbins, 2002). Thus, as one becomes 'modern,' one feels frighteningly unimpeded in one's own desires, and at

the same time, frighteuingly alone in bearing moral responsibility for them.

Conclnsion: Maybe Sahlins is Right After All I have asserted in Utis chapter that Sahlins' model of humiliation/desire/modernity may be too SImple ID ItS dependence on a construction of personhood that is autonomous and unconnected (and perhaps in its lack of attention to gender). Among people whose sense of self is more relational, humiliation and self-loathing may not be the .a~fectlve precursors or accompaniments to modernity. Madane, a

cult,:rally speCIfIC form of resentroent which acts to aggressively enforce relationahty, may be more likely. However, this model ntight be changing, or there seems, at least, to be increasing ambivalence among Huli about the moral

68

Transfonnations of Desire

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

evaluation and practical consequences of madane. In general, madane is mildly disparaged, but is usually considered understandable, and sometimes it is valorized. Indeed, in the case of the young men who knocked down the electrical pylons, many people described the young men's madane as heroic and courageous. Actions motivated by madane would force the mining company to take landowner demands for local development and increased compensation payments seriously. However, there are also discourses among the Huli that are not so tolerant of madane and that frame it as immoral and as a mode of SUbjectivity which impedes development and progress. I will illustrate these more pessimistic discourses by discussing the way in which the most well-known of Huli myths - Habe Ainya!Homabe Ainya (Mother of Life! Mother of Death; also see Goldman, 1983, p.93) - has been reinterpreted in the contemporary context to reframe the history between Huli people and the various multinational companies that have attempted to develop a gold mine at nearby Mt. Kare (Wardlow, 2001). In the more traditional version of the myth, the first human man approaches the first woman after she has had a child and calls out, 'Mother of Life, Mother of Life.' She refuses to answer, so he sarcastically changes the phrase and calls out, 'Mother of Death, Mother of Death,' to which she responds. By answering to this call she has named her child 'Death,' and since we are all descended from this child, she has doomed us to mortality and all its entailments of aging, illness, human conflict, etc. If you ask people why this first woman was so truculent and oppositional, they often say that she was feeling madane (although they do not explain why). This myth has been elaborated and updated, particularly by women, and is now said to be a 'parable' or a 'prophecy' (people use the English words) which both predicts and condemns the actions of the young men who oppose the mining companies. As one version of this myth now asserts: The first man came, and he called out 'Mother of Life, Mother of Life,' but first woman was feeling madane and didn't respond, and so we HuB were fated to illness and strife. Then Jesus came and called out 'Mother of Life, Mother of Life,' but again we Huli refused to answer, and so we do not have development. And now 'The Company" [meaning the mining company] has come and is calling out "Mother of Life, Mother of Life,' but we landowners are feeling madane, and we refuse to answer. Instead we answer to the name Death, and so we wil1 never receive all the good things The Company has to offer. We must give up madane, and when the company calls out to us, we must simply answer 'yes.'

This reformulation of the myth emerged after the young men knocked down the two power pylons and brought the Porgera mine to a halt for one day. Initially most Huli who lived in the vicinity of the two pylons and who knew the young men approved of their actions. However, once the mining company responded by telling local police to 'investigate' (i.e. bum down local houses until the young men turned themselves in), people's interpretations of the young men's behavior changed. Notice that in the above formulation madane is characterized as feminine, illegitimate, and as obstructing the course of progress. Here men's resistance to the mining company is framed as resistant for no good reason (a typical characterization of women), rather

69

than heroic. The proper beh aVlOr . ill . thiS scenano . would be that of a docile and bl am;na e woman who responds to whatever name 'The Company' wants to call her an gIVes hUP all of her own desires and expectations. Here madane what had bee~ seen as ng teous. retaliation in the f ace 0 f an other who needed to be taught ' to respect its obligation self Sd' IS now seen as obstructive and unreasonable. This positioning of the correspon s more to Sahlins' model In the former . the other -: who wa; not truly trul . g meet that obligatIOn. Instead, the moral lesson now is that the other y IS sep~ate. from the self, and the ouly way to obtain those things that will stave o~ ~h:'r,humilial10n of being less than the other is to remake oneself in the image of a b e :ther dwants. Righteous indignation is replaced by humiliation which can ' o y e 0 VIate by voluntary deference and docility.

:~m~~~ e:d~~t~;hat

separ~t~~=~~;s~~,:a;:::d ~e:~

':r

Notes I

Just when this change is s d h independence, since missi;!~~:i:n~~tc~:ei:~:~:~ace - i.e. since colonization, since

2

ImhPortantly, Hnli people assert that it is not all cul~ral groups in Papua N G· W 0 share tene (roots . . . ew umea I '. common ongms) WIth white people, only the Huli or perhaps the H I e a, a cosmo oglcally ordained political 0 h' h .' consists of the Huli d . hb . gr up w tc , accordmg to the Huli, th . an nelg onng cultural groups that again accordin

!~~i:~~; !~~s~:i*:=~l ~~~~nk)e: i; ~he ~eep mldyth~IOgical past byga t;ri:o~~~~ b . .. , . us ow It cou be that the Hnli are surrounded

c~nss~~=:~~:-::ti~~ltural groups which are not descended from a 'lost tribe' is not 3

Those few women who knew f th case to local incidents in whi~h ~e~a~a:~h~ ~~ ,:"as ~uilty, and ~ey likened the insubordination. e elf Wives out of Jealousy or for

4

-f' This qu?te is provocative for it leads one to wonder whether 'mod 't" people III some pIa ti h "'. erru y IS, lor some Fanon's work ICdes, a me ': en mJury is experienced as destiny." Certainly WOll suggest this to be the d' th .

5

~l~rization of violence as the means to purge fee~:;s : i~:rio:tyb=~Si!;~t~~~;ater

a ane somewhat resembles the Melpa emotion state of resentful anger pop·okl· however ' ill and ,'thamong dthe Melpa it'IS the person who expenences popokl who can" become (S~athem, e{;~~, p~i~~~ on the revelation of such anger as a prerequisite to healing'

References

Busb:~~e~~~~ (~~9~~~~e~~::1::nd Partible. P~rsons: A Comparative Analysis of Gender Institute, Vol. 3(2), pp. 261-27~. MelaneSIa, 10urnol of the Royal Anthropologicol Clark, J;ffre y (1997), 'State of Desire: Transfonnations in Huli Sexuality' inL M (eds)u' S.ites Desire:Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in , ago, mverslty of Chicago Press, pp. 191-211.

~:Clifi~ ~~lrc

~f

d

ASiaa:n~~~:

70

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Clark, Jeffrey and Jenny Hughes (1995), 'A History of Sexuality and Gender in Tari,' in A. Biersack (ed.), Papuan Borderlands: Huli, Duna, and [pili Perspectives on the Papua New Guinea Highlands, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, pp. 315-340. Doane, Mary Ann (1991), Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis, New York: Routledge. Enloe, Cynthia (1990), Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley, University of California Press. Fanon, Franz (1991)[1952], Black SkiniWhite Masks, New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Fanon, Franz (1965), The Wretched a/the Earth, New York, Grove Press. Frankel, Stephen (1986), The Huli Response to illness, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Fuss, Diane (1994), 'Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification,' Diacritics, Vol. 24(2-3), pp. 20-42. Goldman, Laurence (1983), Talk Never Dies: The Language of Huli Disputes, London, Tavistock Publications. Gordon, L. (1996), 'The Black and the Body Politic: Fanon's Existential Phenomenological Critique of Psychoanalysis,' in L. Gordon, T. Sharpley-Whiting and R. White (eds), Fanon: A Critical Reader, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell Publishers. Hayes, FIoyd W. TII (1996), 'Fanon, Oppression, and Resentment: The Black Experience in the United States,' in L. Gordon, T. Sharpley-Whlting and R. White (eds), Fanon: A Critical Reader, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell Publishers. Knauft, Bruce (1997), 'Gender Identity, Political Economy and Modernity in Melanesia and Amazonia,' iRAl, Vol. 3(2), pp. 233-259. Lattas, Andrew (1992), 'Skin, Personhood and Redemption: The Double Self in West New Britain Cargo Cults,' Oceania, Vol. 63, pp. 27-54. UPuma, Edward (1998), 'Modernity and Forms of Personhood in Melanesia,' in M. Lambek and A. Strathem (eds), Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 53-79. LiFuma, Edward (1999), 'The Meaning of Money in the Age of Modernity,' in D. Akin and I. Robbins (eds), Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 192-213. McClintock, Anne (1995), Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York, Routledge. Ortner, Sherry (1996), Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture, Boston, Beacon Press. Robbins, Ioel (1995), 'Dispossessing the Spirits: Christian Transfonnations of Desire and Ecology among the Urapmin ofPapua New Guinea,' Ethnology, Vol. 34(3), pp. 211224. Robbins, Ioel (1998), 'Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Desire among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea,' Ethnology, Vol. 37(4), pp. 299-231. Robbins, Joel (2002), 'My Wife Can't Break off Part of her Belief and Give it to Me: Apocalyptic Interrogations of Christian Individualism among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea,' Paideuma, Vol. 48, pp. 189-206. Sahlins, Marshall (1989), 'China Reconstructing or vice-versa: Humiliation as a stage of economic "development," with comments on cultural diversity in the modern "world system," , Paper presented at the SOAC Congress, Seoul, Korea. Sahlins, Marshall (1992), 'The Economics of Develop-Man in the Pacific,' Res, Vol. 21, pp. 12-25. Scheler, M. (1994), Ressentiment, Translated by L. Coser and W. Holdheim, Milwaukee, Wl, Marquette University Press.

Transfonnations of Desire

71

Strathern, And~ew (1996), Body Thoughts, Ann Arbor, University of Michlgan Press. Strathe~, M~ly~ (1988), ~he Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems . with Society m Melanesra, Berkeley, University of California Press. TUZlll, Donal? (1997): The c.assowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Gumea Society, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Wardlow, Holly (1996), "'Bobby Teardrops": A Turkish Video in Papua New Guinea. R~flections on Cultural Studies, Feminism, and the Anthropology of Mass Media,' V,sual Anthropology Review, Vol. 12(1), pp. 30-46. Wardlow, H~lly (2001), 'The Mt. Kare Python: Huli Myths and Gendered Fantasies of Ag~ncy, Ill~. Rumsey and 1. Weiner (eds), From Myth to Minerals: Mining and Indigenous Life Worlds in Australia and Papua New Guinea, Adelaide, Crawford House Press, pp. 31-67. Wardlow, Holly (2002a), 'Headless Ghosts and Roving Women: Specters of Modernity in Papua New Guinea,' American Ethnologist, Vo1. 29(1), pp. 5-32. Wardlow,. Holly (2002b), , "Hands-Up"ing Buses and Harvesting Cheese-Pops: Gendered Mediati~n of M~dern Disj~~cture in Melanesia,' in B. Knauft (ed.), Critically Modern. Alternatives, Altentles, Anthropologies, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, pp. 144-172. Wardl~w, Holly (2002c), '~ving Birth to Gonolia: "Culture" and Sexually Transmitted DIsease among the Ruli of Papua New Guinea,' Medical Anthropology Quarterly Vol. 16(2), pp. 151-175. ' War~ow, .H~l1y" (200~), 'Ange~:. Economy, and Female Agency: Problernatizing 'ProstItutIOn and Sex Work In Papua New Guinea,' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 29(4), pp. 1017-1041.

Chapter 4

'We Are Not Straight': Bumbita Arapesh Strategies for Self-Reflection in the Face of Images of Western Superiority Stephen C. Leavitt

The contributors to this volume take their inspiration from Marshall Sahlins' article 'The economics of develop-rnao in the Pacific' (1992). At issue is SaWins' assertion, toward the end, that 'a necessary stage in the process of modernization' is an 'experience of humiliation' though which people must 'learn to hate what they already have' and 'despise what they are' (1992, pp.23, 24). These comments come after an extended discussion outlining the ways colonized societies in various places appropriated features of the colonizers' world - commodities, mostly _ for enhanced performance of their own cultural practices, in Sahlins' words for the promotion of 'their own culture on a bigger and better scale' (1992, p.12). This process he calls 'develop-man,' as a play on the Tok Pisin term for development. Even when I heard Sahlins' paper for the first time, at a public lecture at the University of Hawaii in 1991, I was struck by his characteristic skill at articulating a model of cultural difference within a frame of general social and historical processes. Less characteristic was his evocation of a general psychological experience, felt 'humiliation' leading to the generation of a 'global inferiority complex' as an explanatory variable. Sahlins writes, '[N]o matter how fashionable it is these days ... to reduce history to a cult of "power" ... coercion in itself does not seem a sufficient explanation' for different peoples' decisions to want to 'be like us' (1992, p.24). He argues that an appeal to people's actual experience, in this case humiliation in the face of colonial rule, is also required. Abandoning traditional forms comes at a certain point in the colonial enterprise, when the colonized come to experience the encOtmter as something fundamentally humiliating. For someone like me, interested in including general psychological processes in an empathic view of others, this assertion was something I could easily applaud. To expand on Sahlins' point, I shall argue here that, in fact, the specter of humiliation as an experience lies behind not only the rejection of one's culture at a certain historical point but also the whole process of 'develop-man' itself. Even as people pursue with zeal 'traditional' activities in the face of colonial intrusion, there remains the threat of being humiliated, and this threat can itself serve as a powerful motivator. On the face of it, Sahlins' typology of a frenetic pursuit of activities in the

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name of 'develop-man' followed by a humiliation, producing 'a certain cultural desert,' has a certain artificial cast to it. How does this humiliation suddenly appear? How can it so powerfully transform cnltural effervescence into a desert? A close reading of his argmnent reveals a kind of dialectical process whereby an initial embrace of Western wealth can lead to disenchantment with local cultural authority. His example is from Hawaii, where 'the invidious accumulation of goods [by chiefs], rather than their distribution, excluded the common folk . . . provoking a disengagement .,. that ensured the chiefs' collapse' (1992, p.23). In this view, the deep doubts and the cultural desert come after a prior collapse of a traditional system. The problem for many Melanesianists is that even as they recognize people's local activities as still 'develop-man-esque', there is already a well-developed local idiom of inferiority to the West. Sahlins himself points out that Western anthropologists, coming late on the colonial scene, frequently hear: 'You White men are better that we are.' Melanesianists hear this, though, even when they arrive relatively early on the scene, when develop-man activities are in full force. It does not take a cultural desert to produce a feeling of inferiority. My aim is to take a specific case from the Bumbita Arapesh of Papua New Guinea to argne that Sahlins' larger enterprise, the understanding of historical practice from within the frame of symbolic structures, can be enhanced by an appreciation of the psychological motives at play throughout. While it may take a certain crisis of humiliation to push people to abandon their tradition in the pursuit of Western ideals, the specter of humiliation, I argue, is at work from the beginning, influencing behavior, shaping the symbolic forms people pursue. It is not at the point of crisis that psychology suddenly becomes relevant. Sahlins himself has described at great length how cultural reproduction, at all times and in all places, must be seen as a process that marries symbolic forms with the pragmatic actions of people in historical contexts. On the one hand, new events become framed in 'a conventional wisdom,' in 'already given concepts of actors, things and their relations' (1981, p.67). What is new becomes framed by traditional ideas already in place. On the other hand, 'the specificity of practical circumstances, people's differential relations to them, and the set of particular arrangements that ensue (structure of the conjuncture), sediment new functional values on old categories' (1981, p.68). New events provoke pragmatic responses that can shift the ground for traditional ideas, giving them new meanings. In the Bumbita Arapesh case, the appearance of Europeans, a historical event, required that individual Bumbita actors respond, and they did so by applying conventional categories to the historical circumstance. At the same time, though, the pragmatics of the histodcal encounter - and I argne the threat of humiliation entailed by them _ shifted the symbolic ground upon which the ideas were framed, creating new valences to traditional relations of exchange, changing Bumbita culture even as people sought to preserve it. Specifically, in the Bumbita case what was at issue was how to interpret the exchange relations implied by the European presence. Following a broadly based Melanesian pattern, traditional Bumbita culture defines all relations in the context of well established bases of exchange. They make a sharp distinction between the

,

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mediated exchange that creates com .. . sharing of substance that und r petition?r publIc debt and the umnediated r ts : Schieffelin notes a similar disti::;:~ rel~tions with children. Edward where links work to resolve '0 ' t i ' e Kaluli, notmg that, unlike exchange identification' (1980 p 512) MPPolsl °Sn, shanng works 'by a process of mutual ,. . an yn trathern has d h M . transactions as ways of transportin ' ar~e, t at, elaneslans see distinguishes 'mediated' exchan ~ parts of one s bemg m a literal sense. She persons' (1988, p.I92) from 'U:'~di::!~~bles where objects 'circulate as parts of contribute directly to the cre ti f exchange where the products of work a children) (1988 pp 177_17 8 on 0 .Oth)ers (such as in the case of parents feeding ,. , passIm. It was upon thi I I European intervention had to be framed IOC all F h s cu tura ground that consider Europeans as potential c ti't , y, or t e B umblta, the choice was to . ompe ors m the sphere of t' . compe ltive exchange _ WIth its potential for humiliation in the Europeans in the sphere of unmediated h face of. defeat - or to encompass of humiliation propelled them awa f ex~ ange relatIOns of close kin. The threat But as Sahlins' model sugge?ts r~m ~:z!:rmer ~d tow~d the latter. Europeans as kin, the Bumbita had' stIfted the gs the Is~ues m this way: by se~ing more broadly. In the traditional cui . ymbolic ground for kin relations the relatively reliable success in tur~, sIgns of ancestral support could be seen in growth of crops of yams and the boPurotiufulcmhg material goods. Each year, with the , n arvest the Bumb' t Id . of support from ancestral spirits. In this b .' ,1 ,a, cou see eVldence for a general sense of spiritual IIw~y: su slstence activIties provided a basis conviction that ancestral spirits we d emg, Successful harvests conveyed a . approve of the people's Idl .. . Important to stress that the Burnb't . all of th· . wor y activIties. It is I a VIewed ancestral spirits were not distant anon b ' . IS m personal terms - these their own deceased parent d ymhous emgs, rather, these were the spirits of s an ot er close rei (" 0 successful subsistence activities I'm I' d I ' a Ives, n a personal level, , p Ie re ations of good will d . one s deceased parents. Once the Euro e . an support WIth scheme oflocal symbols though th b P an pr~sence was mcorporated into this was now in jeopardy The s b'r e aSlc premIse of support from the spirit realm not only with producing go';: ~ I~ ~round;ad shifted. Success became associated of those seen to be in the hand's o~ th so ' ; acqUlnng Western goods on the order failure to acquire those goods impli o;e ew E~~:eans m the area. The inevitable be a very I erent scenano in relation to the spirit world Suddenly th. . e Issue ecame 'Wh provide the Western wealth that I h' Y are my ancestors refusing to failure to provide wealth implied see ot ers can have?' In local Bumbita terms, the spirits of one's parents and clos a r~JectlOn, a, personal rejection in fact, by the humiliation by frarnin E e relatives. In thIS way, the initial attempt to avoid h . g uropeans not as competito b t has relations of unmediated exchan e h d h rs u as t ose WIth whom one lack of goods as a ersonal re' .g a. t e unwanted consequence of framing a shifting of SymboliCPground ~~~tI~nhl;~:clts concomitant sense of failure. This the importance of recognizing, !s Sahl' al practice IS an excdlent example of symbolic forms and historical practice. ms mSlsts, the dialectical mterplay of

la:

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

The Specter of Humiliation iu Bumhita Unmediated Exchange In recent years the Bumbita Arapesh people of the East Sepik of Papua New Guinea,

with whom I worked in 1984-86, have had to build new views of themselves against a growing sense of inferiority in comparison to Westerners. Bumbita discourse is rife

with images of inferiority in contrast to the perceived virtues of Europeaus. But as I reflected on SaWins' ideas in light of Bumbita discourse, it occurred to me that the rhetoric of inferiority, pervasive as it is, does not allow for any sense of humiliation in relation to Europeans. In fact, it can be argued that the whole edifice of cultural ideology about Europeans is built to avoid humiliation, as defined in local Bumbita

tenus. Thus, the Bumbita are quick to point out that, in comparing themselves to Europeans, they are fractious and prone to social conflict, they are competitive, and they have a penchant for murder (through sorcery). Europeans, they say, never fight, don't like to compete, and know nothing of sorcery. I remember being quite frustrated by this insistence on the moral superiority of Europeans - 'but we do fight,' I used to say, ,_ Only it's behind closed doors!' However, these Bumbita admissions of frailty, of moral failings, do not entail any sense of humiliation. How different it would be if they chose to say instead that Europeans have knowledge in the face of Bumbita iguorance, have tremendous skill at producing goods in the face of Bumbita clumsiness, are sophisticated in the face of Bumbita primitiveness. But that is not what they say, usually.

In fact, Bumbita discourse in response to colonialism, including cargo ideas and

I

interpretations of Christiauity, with the insistence that Europeans be seen as allied with spirits of the dead - all part of a 'develop-man' enterprise - is mobilized to avoid facing any humiliation in relation to them. The key to the argument lies in articulating with some precision what humiliation is, and how it is defined in local Bumbita tenus. I have found useful some basic distinctions put forward by William Ian Miller (1993) in his book-length treatment of humiliation and its social dynamics. Miller points out that humiliation needs to be juxtaposed with its cousin, shame. Uulike with shame, there is a clear distinction between the state of being humiliated and the feeling of humiliation. A person may be humiliated by another without in any way recoguizing it or feeling it. The same cannot be said for shame - in being 'shamed' one is expected also to feel it. Miller argues that the difference lies in the fact that humiliation, unlike shame, depends fundamentally on the 'deflation of pretension' (1993, p.13?). Built into the concept is some sense that one is aspiring to an image that is fabricated. It is easy to see how state and feeling can be separated: in concentrating on presenting an image of erudition and knowledge, someone speaking at an academic conference can be entirely unaware that he is humiliating himself. He is humiliated but feels no humiliation. Miller argues that the fact that the word can be constructed in such a way highlights the extent to which a pretense is involved. He summarizes the distinction: 'If shame is the consequence of not living up to what one ought to, then humiliation is the consequence of trying to live up to what we have no right to' (1993, p.145; emphasis in the original). Humiliation comes not to those with

moral failings, but to those who have aspired to be something they are not. The Bumbita are meticulous in constructing their comparisons with Europeans in ways

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th~t. focus on moral failings and avoid focusin on asserti0n . spmtnal power or creativity. And it is the fe! of humili .s O~ki\l, competence, frame the discourse in this way. To understand further aMn at drives them to needs to look at how the issue of h '1' ti' . fr the terms of the dIscourse, one urm la on IS amed m local terms I t toms out that the Burnbita I ' . of shame and humiliation . h anguage articulates the contours ID a way t at resonates with Miller' d' tin . . carries three terms which' s IS eMns. The Bumblta language we nnght gloss as 'shame' and are translated as 'sem' in Tok Pisin Th fir t . , e s IS u um oweriua (lit. 'bad heart, ') a term that needs to be distin . hed fro .

s~t";:::~:~nc:e~:~~dT~~:':e: ~:~ :~ ::!~~o ~e fe~ling~ fe~

when a pro::taty secrets being revealed in public Th t . li s, sem, at e ought of men's cult anger at being wronged. The se;ond ~e;,rm rm: ~s a se~se of shame overlaid with an personal sense of shame b ' ~ oZlp owenua (lit. 'bad spirit') refers to a and feeting hot. This is ~: e::a~~~:nt m public. It is accompaui?d by a flushed face nuteriaih nitawah, (lit. 'sitting wi~ lowe:ehw~~ nou:nger IS Implied. The third term, call humiliation My lin . ti infi ea 18 e term closest to what we would some men are ~itting i;~~d c onnant c~nstructed a scenario where this would be felt:

directly accuses them of eating ':=i:~~~: ~ar!: fu°~p, ~d s0n;"'0ne comes in and or children. This exam le refers . s W1 out gIvmg any to women the first term but h pth to the same revelaMn of cult secrets as mentioned in , ere e context IS different Here the h" sec~ets revealed inappropriately in public so m~ch .emp aSlS IS not on religious theIr elaborate religious rituals are all alias forcmg men to acknowledge that eating meat is an activity they normall a :s~ to ow them to eat lots of meat, when here the di tlin Y s am as beneath them. The term highlights dissirnulati~~an g of a pretense of religious solemnity in favor of a base gluttony with It is not insiguificant th th hi humiliation also applies to' co~n'etit~e tex~ last and 'stron~est'. sense of 'sem' or context for humiliaf .p hange. In BumbIta discourse the central IOn, as It IS recogruzed cultnrall f II ·th exchange gone awry Wh . y, a s Wl competitive . en one man vanqUlshes an oppon t thr h

exchange, the opponent suffers utte h T ' . . en. oug competitive propriety of reciprocal exchange' it ~a=; ~:~:. ~ IS a SItudation antithetical to the , . ne man escnbed It this way: TIlls business about men dying from sore h" . Cresis') competiti al d . ery, ~ at IS It from? It IS from competition , on one an men dIe from It Compefti h Some say, 'I have beaten him! I h b .' 1 on over w at? Over food. him. I have given him a big y~ :v; h eaten him by. killing pigs and giving them to . h I n e cannot pay It back' TIlls kind of th· 'All fIg t, must put talk to sorcerers and kill him H h ' : mg. So now men die from this ... the reason is just

~o~p:~~~:'~:~p~:t:~ !~~~~~~t~ig.'

What is striking about this desc . t i · .. vanquished, who resort to sorcer T~P ~n IS that It IS the vanquishers, not the exchange is of such significance ~ t .; r ,:::onc states that VIctory in competitive The defeated party is so utterly ~u~7ate~S t~~s~[~rd: ~:ath to follow fro~ it. consequence. Similarly when a man

usually over a conflict" he will ,

. ..

a

comes as a lOgIcal

dw:n~ to Imtiate a competitive yam exchange,

sen

0

s opponent a tiny shriveled yam, as a

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

token gift, alluding to a huge prestation to follow. The symbolism is not subtle. The recipient will himself be like a tiny shriveled yam in the face of what IS to come. The specter of humiliation in the context of competitive exchange is real and powerful. .' . Behind the ideology of competitive exchange, where It IS pOSSible to utterly humiliate an opponent, lies a pretense, a pretense at the heart of Bumbita thought. This is the idea that a man can find the ultimate expression of his masculine power and his spiritual efficacy in the production of goods, in his crops of yams. An integral part of this spiritual efficacy is the intimation that behind every powerful man lie spiritual forces, localized in the evidence of ~upport from his own dec~ased relatives. In traditional Bumbita culture, the production of goods was the baSIS for spiritual harmony and efficacy. What the colonial system imposes. upon this scheme is the patently superior production of goods that could be used, m pn~clp1e at least, as instruments for vanquishing foes through competitive exchange. It IS the specter of humiliation under such a scenario that Bumbita ideology about Europeans is mobilized to defend against. . What options do they have? Under the general Melanesmn model for exchange, the alternative to competitive exchange is the kind of excha~ge that occurs between intimates. To avoid humiliation, the Bumbita must base theIr sense of their relationship with Europeans upon a local model of exchange which regards caregivers as the source of substance, what Strathern (1988, pp.I77-178) calls 'unmediated exchange' in contrast with the competitive 'mediated' exchange tbat occurs between groups. By viewing colonial relations in these t~nns, the. Bumb~ta bring the European presence into a familiar discourse surro~nding relations w:th the dead, and at the same time avoid any sense of havmg to compete With Europeans through exchange. The assertion that Europeans are intimates is erected against the specter of having to compete with them. Committing themselves to the Europeans-as-intimates scenario leaves the Bumbita with few options in framing relations in local tefllls. The patent superiority of European material wealth, combined with the predominantly paternalistic idiom of the colonial regime (see Leavitt, 1995a), has requrred that the Bumbita frame the European presence in tenns of intergenerational relations, as between parents and their children. Once they have done this, the emotional vicissitudes that define relations with parents - with all their ambivalences included _ become applied to the sphere of relations with Europeans. I shall outline briefly the cultural terms for those relations. . Relations with parental figures are framed in local ideology under a rubnc of the literal sharing of substance. The Bumbita describe family relations under the same teflllS as the propagation of yams. So for instance, just as new yams grow from the top of a planted 'parent' yam, so also do human offspring grow out from their parents, drawing literally on their parents' substance. In the case of the yan;, the 'pare~t' yam shrivels up and rots, supplying nutrients to its offspring. The Bumblta say that It IS the same with humans. Through their hard work providing food and subsistence to therr young, human parents literally pass their strength on to their children. In the Bumbita view, it is the literal growth and prospering of children tlmt causes parents to age.

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They make it a point to state tlmt those few people without any children indeed do look much younger than their years. It is important to stress that the process is seen in literal teflllS, as the actual transfer of vitality and substance from parent to child causing the child t~ thrive and the parent to age. In the Bumbita view, this proces~ contm~es on a.spIntual pl~e after one's parents die. Ancestors continue to provide for therr offspnng by en~Uf1ng the abundant crops upon which the Bumbita depend. Th~s the sharmg p~adlgm that provides the alternative to competitive exchange relies on a literal shanng of substance. In emotional terms, the sharing paradigm takes on its significance in the process of growmg up. What was initially an association of food transactions with the nurtunng of parents becomes overlaid in later years with a concern about acceptance and belonging. In the case of imagined transfers of wealth from ancest~rs, both themes are present, but the intergenerational dynamic becomes more Important. And because of the paternalistic idiom of relations with EuroFeans, they too are seen in those tenns. It becomes a preoccupation to co~slder whether Europeans and ancestors are going to provide material wealth _ attlCulated m teflllS of Western 'cargo' - as a sign of their good will. · . It IS mstructive to look at an illustration of this set of dynamics in a conventional IdIOm for talking about what Europeans mean. The Bumbita habitually refer to the Europeans as 'our n:;0thers' brothers,' by which they mean people who take on a predorrunantly nurturmg role. In local thinking, the 'mother's brother' represents the purest and mo~t ideal fo~ ?f nurturing: In contrast to actual parents who might spend considerable tune dlsclplirung tlierr children and engaging in otherwise complicated behaV1~r With them, the 'mother's brother' is expected to be purely nurtuting. A ~other s brother, they say, cannot possibly refuse anything of a sister's son and the sIster's son" fo~ his part, is expected to raid the personal belongings of a ~other' s brother. These Ideas are most forcefully expressed in a series of behaviors between c~oss:nepotic relatives in infonnal personal interactions. Mother's brothers and sIster.s sons are expected to joke freely with each other, sister's sons may take anything they ,,:,ant fro!" their. mother's brothers, and the latter are expected to side always With therr sister s sons ill any disputes. I There is an obligation to share freely, a clear reference to the passmg of substance across generations. By calling Europ . place them squarely into a well-defined local eans ··o~ mothers '.b rot h ers,' the Bumb1la IdIOm. They cite Europeans' protection offered from the Japanese, the missionaries' care of the SIck, and the government's overseeing of development as various examples of this nurturing. ~here is one di~ension to the idiom of relations with mothers' brothers, especially when seen ill tenns of the topic of humiliation discussed above, that deserves mention. ~n the course of joking with a mother's brother, there is one preferred taunt that IS used more often than any other: a sister's son will accuse his moth;r's brother of having pretensions to be a European. So, for example, he will say, Here comes that European guy ("masta"), maybe he'll give me his car!' The hu~o~ ID this taunt comes from the tacit recognition of a pretense of superiority _ it is a joking effort at humiliating the mother's brother by calling attention to his aSSOCIatIon WIth Europeans. While there is no actual humiliation involved, as all is

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

said in jest, the choice of this particular idiom reveals that the assertion that Europeans are nurturing kin (rather than competitors in exchange) has associated with it a reference to the specter of humiliation that the whole system of signs is framed against.

Emotional Consequences of the Nurturing Paradigm

Just as Sahlins asserts that the structure-of-the-conjuncture produces new unanticipated relations among signs, so also does Bmnbita framing of the European presence in terms of umnediated parental relations create a new series of preoccnpations and anxieties. AB an emotional consequence of fending off humiliation by casting Europeans as intimates, the Bmnbita must contend with the specter of outright rejection and abandonment. It is under these terms that their aspirations for Western cargo are framed. In people's accounts of their own cargo aspirations, the tenor of their discussion becomes very

personal. They describe a longing for reunion with the dead and a longing for a gift of cargo as a gesture of reassurance that they are still cared for by the ancestral spirits. The failure of cargo to artive, in this emotional frame, has disturbing implications. Having cast Europeans as nurturing figures in a paternalistic idiom, the accumulation of Western cargo has strong emotional implications. It signifies the good will of ancestors and continued communication with them. Failure to acquire Western goods, by contrast, contains the threat of abandonment by deceased parental fignres. In Bumbita personal narratives, these issues tend to be framed in terms of a passionate desire to communicate with the dead. The following example comes from the account of a young man I call Amarin (for a detailed treatroent of Amarin's personal narratives, see Leavitt, 1995b). During the time I was in Bumbita, Amarin's discourse was dominated by cargoistic themes, and at times he

showed signs of extreme emotional disturbance. For Amarin the hope of acquiring Western wealth from Europeans resonated particularly with his hope for a renewed relationship with the spirit of his deceased stepfather. At the time of my stay in Bumbita Amarin was embroiled in a dispute with his clan brothers over which land he stood to inherit. The others wanted him to take the place of his literal father, but Amarin was adamant that he should take the place of his stepfather, the man who actually raised him. The dispute brought to the fore a whole host of feelings associated with his memories of his stepfather's nurturing.

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Amarin persisted in believing that Europeans regularly speak with the dead, and once when I asked him to tell me what he thought about this, he said, Yes, let ~e go back to you all [i.e. Europeans] now. I think that you Europeans, I want to go With you Europeans. Do you [Stephen] go around with these people [i.e. the dead] or not? Do you go straight to these people, do you really meet with them or not? If y,ou meet with th~m you mu~t tell me! You can't say 'no,' you must tell me! You can t say that you will conceallt. If you meet with them, sit with them, if you sit with an ancestor. of mine, and he has talked with you about me, you must tell me. Say, 'I have met WIth your father, and he said this and he said that, saying, "You must follow ~h~ law as I do. Their laws and your own, you must follow them like this.'" ... Now it IS Just the two of us sitting here - you can't hide it, you must tell me. Some ghosts started t~ hold m~. ~ut I myself was afraid. They wanted to tell me something, but I was afraId. Who IS It that will strengthen my back so that I can stand up straight and see them?

When he irnagin~s my sitting with the dead, he is interested in one thing - my finding out and telling him what It IS that his stepfather has to say to him, particularly about the law of the Europeans. He goes on to say that some ghosts tried to give him some answers but he was afraid and ran away. He refers here to a hallucination he had when walking past a graveyard one uight. He heard spirits talking about him, saying, 'Hey! Let him go. You can't hold him. Let's let go of him. He's one of us here. He's ours. He:s not f~om another family, he's not from somewhere else, another family. Amarm IS o~s. He mterprets this experience as the spirits' wanting to tell him secrets, but hiS own fear prevents it from happening. The issue of which 'family' Amann belongs to reflects his anxieties about where he stands because of his adoption by his stepfather. In his imagined communication with the dead, he is always thwarted by something, whether it be his own fear or something else. What IS most striking about Amarin's account of longing to commuuicate (through me) with his deceased stepfather is the level of anxiety he betrays over his stepfather's goodwill toward him. He longs desperately for some sign of reass~ance, Ideally through some revelation about the source of European wealth, that hiS stepfather still cares for him. Had there been no European presence, no external threat due to the vivid superiority of Western wealth, Amarin would have looked to his successful crops as signs that his stepfather's spirit was with him. But the European presence has shifted the symbolic ground, forcing him to look for

These themes were uppermost in Amarin's mind when I sat down with him for

reassurance in the revelation of cargo secrets, secrets that have not been

several personal interviews over a series of weeks in early 1986. Given Amarin's

forthcoming. He is forced to rely on his close personal relationship with me as a pOSSible condUlt to the spirit realm. Having to frame the issues in this way was deeply troublmg to him, and mdeed he remained preoccupied with this issue until my departure some months later. I, of course, was unable to offer any hope for any gestures of communication, and it was inevitable that Amarin would interpret my

interpretation of his relationship with his father, it is not difficult to see why he was so powerfully attached to the idea of inheriting his stepfather's land rather than that of his own father. Having that land would enable him to compensate for his other failings. He could still see himself as 'taking his father's place' in some way. But in addition, Amarin's account showed that he needed some iudication that his stepfather still cared for him the way he remembers being cared for as a child. Indeed, being recoguized by the dead and getting things from them had become the central issues in Amarin's cargoistic thinking. Throughout my stay in Bumbita,

sIlence as an implicit rejection as well.

While Amarin was himself a troubled young man, with perhaps more pressiug emotional needs than most, the pattern of preoccupation with commuuication with spirits specifically through the revelation of cargo secrets was widespread and

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

'We Are Not Straight': Bumbita Arapesh Strategies for Self-Reflection

ever-present. To avoid humiliation in relation to Euro~eans, the .Bumb~ta had c~st their lot with the Europeans-as-relatives symbohc scenano, WIth all Its consequences. . ' As is characteristic of ideologies mobilized agamst an unwanted alternat,lve, the Bumbita strategy of avoiding humiliation by defining Europeans as relatIves does not in fact offer full protection. The ideology should not be seen as a fully effective mask. Even as they pursue their 'develop-man' endeavors ill ways that help them avoid confronting European material sup~riority: there ~evertheless remains the perpetual threat of the kind of cultural cnSIS Sahhns descnbes for the Hawaiian case. On a personal level as well, Bumbita men and women h~d to h~e with a kind of tacit recognition that perhaps Europeans were not the relatIves theu ideology had made them out to be. In my experience, it wa.s very rare, ~hough, to hear people actually talking in terms that showed an unmedmted recogmtIon of an imagined incompetence in relation to Europeans. ?ne excepu?n was an mCldent I had with one of my better friends, a man I call Senwen, and his response offers ~n instructive look at how all of these issues can actually lurk m the back of one s mind. The incident is one that I have described elsewhere (1995a); it frames well what hides behind the insistence on seeing Europeans as intimates. One day, Senwen, a friend in his late-30s, asked me for KJO so he could buy a share (Tok Pisin:. 'sea') as a member of an ex-serviceman's club. The organization had hopes of getting large payments from Allied governments for the part their members had played as veterans of the war. I gave him the money but indicated that this probably was ~ boondoggle, and that he should think about to whom he gave his money. That mght, as I was working with several men in my house, Seriwen came by and returned the money, saying that he had decided not to give it to them. I started tellmg .stones ab~ut how gullible people could be, and how New Guineans were bemg explOIted by opportunists. Some of the men present tactfully tried t~ change the subject, but I insensitively forged on. Finally, Seriwen broke forth WIth a speech that was qUIte unlike any I had heard in Bumbita before, paraphrased as follows: I'll tell you what the problem is. We were just sittin~ here fonowing our custo~ and e all of a sudden you Europeans come in and say, You ~ave to follow us ... listened to you and we tried to follow it. We do everythmg you told us to, we dig toilets, we make graveyards, we plant coffee, we throw away ~n our customs. An~ then what happens? You just leave us and don't tell us h~w to ~o It.! We ~ to figure It out for ourselves, we do this and we do that, but all we re domg IS trampmg thr?ugh the bush, trying out our own knowledge and o~ own power. All we want to do IS follow what you have told us and live the way you live.

w.

I had humiliated him. His protest takes on the modality of appeal of a person vanquished. In his appeal he asserts what one never hears in pU?li,c discourse" that the real issue is that the Bumbita are 'tramping through the bush (bruklm bus ), at a loss, without knowledge, without power. And yet, even here, in the course ?f thIS protest, he outlines the Bumbita response to the situation: defer to the supenor, be

83

a relative, where 'competition' in the sense of competing over goods can never be a factor. Take yourself as the moral failure instead. For there lies no humiliation in revealing moral frailty to a parent.

Conclusion: Psychological Experience and Historical Practice Colonialism has for some time been a topic that insists on some kind of appreciation for both local ethnographic particulars and general processes. Each society has its own vision of the world that must respond to change in a particular way, but there are also general historical patterns of colonial intrusion that assert themselves in similar ways everywhere, and these cannot be ignored. Robert Foster argues in his monograph, for example, that a 'juxtaposition of "historical" and "ethnographic" approaches is necessary for placing local understanding ... in the context of supralocal (global) political economic circumstances' (1995, p.5). While many anthropologists have responded to calls such as this, there has been less of an effort recently to articulate colonialism as an experience bearing general psychological themes - even with the influence of thinkers like Fanon and Memmi. And here Sahlins has at least broached the topic. The argument he presents in the 'develop-man' article, with its invocation of the concept of humiliation, builds on a broader frame for understanding historical practice outlined in his Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (1981). There he argues that any detailed study of symbolic forms must appreciate the impact of contingencies created by the specifics of historical practice. In making this point, he articulates a critique of those - such as some cultural theorists - whose arguments tend to assume a hegemonic position for cultural fonns in human life. In this he and other practice theorists like him share with psychological anthropologists a dissatisfaction with models that do not account for other explanatory variables besides culture. Sahlins points to historical 'action' as a factor to be considered, while psychological anthropologists point to 'motives' or 'individual psychological experience.' As Sahlins put it, '[T]he relationships generated in practical action, although motivated by the traditional self-conceptions of the actors, may in fact functionally revalue those conceptions' (1981, p.35). Practical action redefines symbolic forms. As Sahlins goes on to articulate some of the features of practical action, his formulation reveals a potential for a significant contribution from psychological anthropology in understanding the dynamics of history. 'Action.' he says, 'is intentional: gnided by the purposes of the acting subject, his or her social living in the world' (1981, p.68). In the manipulation of symbolic forms as a part of the process, new meanings are created, and '[a]l1 such inflections of meaning depend on the actor's experience of the sign as an interest: its place in an oriented scheme of means and ends' (1981, p.68; emphasis in the original). It is this issue of 'interest' that psychological anthropologists should seize upon as the point for their contribution to Sahlins' scheme. As motivated beings, humans develop 'interests' not ouly out of the exigencies of their life position, but also out of the conditions of

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

psychological experience.

,.

t ,.

part to satisfy emotional

peoPI~ devel,: Ill~;es~ so:nHere I have argued that in

needs, to d;f:d ~gai::~:::;::h a;o~:e:~n~ with c~lonial intrusions, a ce~tral the case, 0 .e urn . 0 ean resence in a way that would avmd a 'interest lay III .accommodan~g Eur~ on the established local tenns feeling of humiliatIOn III relanon to ~~. th ra::~~!1 of Europeans as intimates as for interpersonal e~change, the~ :~:teshift:d the grounds for their understanding opposed to compentors, and as. . d d kin Understandlllg the of their spiritual relations Wlthth theu o':'"'t enetceawsi~ its' resulting unwanted at COffilfll m , . I . I d' nsion to psycho oglca Im~ .: with abandonment, is an essennal part of consequences creatmg preoccupauons . . anyaccoun t 0 f thel'r historical practice in the face of the colomal regime.

g .

Chapter 5

Sepik River Selves in a Changing Modernity: From Sahlins to Psychodynamics Eric Kline Silverman

Note

1

To be technically accurate, the ::r:1 ~~b~:~:: 8

~;~~a!~na~! ~:~::~~e~o~;~ :~~ ~~~

interaction occurs not bbet~e;n Ita parents but between classificatory cross-nepotic seen,as so cl°hse as tth° emSo't:r~: father's brother's son. See Leavitt (1989) for a relat1ves, sue as e discussion of that distinction.

References Foster, Robert J. (1993), Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Christ and Nostalgia for the Dead: Themes of Intimacy Leavitt, Stephen C. (198~), Cargo,. AI' h S 'a1 Experience Doctoral dissertation, and Abandonment m BumbIta apes ,OCI, ' f C ffi ' San Diego UniversIty MIcrofilms. University 0 a 1 orma, , " I tion and the Absent Oppressor: Images of

D . LeaV~~r~te:'::~;B~~~~:)Ar:;~:~C~arr~=~' Ethnology, V?l. 34(3), pp. 177-189:... Case , p ph C (1995b) 'Suppressed Meanings in Narratives about Suffenng, Leavltt, Step en N' G I'ne~' Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 20( 2), pp. 1-20. from apua ew u , . 'Pr

u;;;:::z R:~~ities,

~!~~:'s~~::~n ~~~~~;: U;;~:~~~:~t'!;t:~ah;~r:e~~

Ann Arbor,

Sab1i~;'i~:~~:[Q~~~~~~:~~~nomics of Develop-man in the Pacific,' Res, Vol. 21, pp. . and the Construe11' on 0 f Reality', Man (N.S.) . 12-25. I'Ill, Edwar. d L (1980) , 'ReciproCity Schleffe

Vol. I 5, ppI' 50(2- 17), The Gender of the Gift, Berkeley, University of California Press. Strathem, Man yn 19 88 •

In 1994, I returned briefly to the Eastern Iatmul village of Tambunum in the middle Sepik River of Papua New Guinea.' Tambunum is a large and prosperous, fishing and horticultnral community that is well integrated into the Melanesian marketplace, and a central tourist destination in the region. My two village brothers had converted the rear room of my house into a modest tradestore. On the door was a cardboard sign that read in Neo-Melanesian Pidgin or tokpisin, 'No ken kam askim moa long dinau. Yupela mas sem.' In colloquial English, 'Don't ask for any more IOUs. Have some shame,' What shame? On the surface, the answer to this question is fairly straightforward. Modern individualism is erasing the moral bonds of kinship and traditional sociocentric or relational identity. Tradestores represent the modem aspirations of commerce, cash, capitalism and commodities, in a word, development. Tradestores are also about egocentric identity. They are owned by individuals, not kin groups, who hope to do quintessentially modern things: make a cash profit, deposit the money in a bank, and go shopping. Tradestores accommodate and enable individual consumption. To ask for an IOU is to disrupt these modern assertions of individuality through appeals to an out-dated sense of personhood that is rooted in relationships and reciprocity. Such requests shame proprietors with subtle accusations of selfishness, and they shame the requester by exposing a profound ignorance of how a modern person should act. What is shameful, in other words, is the stubborn retention of 'tradition' that thwarts the individual citizen's right to development, capitalism, commodity consumption, and choice. In short, the tradestore sign corroborates Sahlins's (1992) thesis that a humiliating repudiation of 'traditional' subjectivity precedes the adoption of 'modem' individualism. But to explain the 'shame' that so incensed my brothers solely on the basis of a modern rejection of tradition is a partial truth. We need also to understand local conceptions of shame, selfhood, and the conventions for asking. When we do so, I will show contemporary humiliations in Tambunum appear to arise from the disjunctions between tradition and modemity, as per Sahlins, and also from disjunctions within the traditional self. Personhood in Tambunum was always

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pluralistic and often discordant rather than nnitary. This complicates the snggestion that modernization requires one sense of self to replace another. Instead, I WIll modify Sahlins's thesis and argue that modernization re-configures aspects of identity already present in traditional subjectivity. Modernity is humiliating, in large measure due to an emphasis on individuality. But some of this humiliation arises from traditional experiences with normative selfhood. My essay begins with a brief overview of Sahlin's argument concerning the modem belittling and then replacement of traditional personhood. I next corroborate Sahlins's thesis with a brief historical overview of the village, in which I offer several anecdotes of past and present humiliation. But then I begin to revise Sahlins's thesis. After discussing tensions in traditional identity, I anchor the tradestore sigu to local notions of shame. I also show the play of contrary yet traditional psychological drives in the context of toutism. Then I introduce an explicitly psychological dimension to my argument, thus attempting to synthesize psychodynamics with the study of historical process. My goal, to repeat, IS not to refute Sahlins, but rather to enhance his thesis by linking cultural transforroatlOn with a consideration of personhood. Psyches, both traditional and contemporary, and not just modem social worlds, are sites of contradiction and change.

Developman and Development In the postcontact Pacific, argues Sahlins (1992), intercultural engagement and massive social transformation entail a twofold shift in personal identity. Initially, Pacific peoples utilize novel European things 'to increase society as such: the scale, density, and pageantry of its relations. Foreign commodities are th~s harnessed to the evolution of traditional culture' (1992, p.17). Sahlins calls this forro of identity developman, whereby extramural objects and ideas motivate local people to hyperbolize tradition. Yet dependence on a world market to fuel traditional cultural grandeur is unsustainable in the long run. Developman inevitably yields to development, at which time the adoption of Western desires eclipses indigenous goals. Developman overstates tradition. Development rejects it. Between developman and development, argues Sahlins, lies a 'cultural desert' of self-disgrace and humiliation. The trappings of modernity remain a fantasy, yet the aspirations of tradition are now derided. In order to modernize, writes SahIins (1992, pp.23-24), 'people must first learn to hate what they already have, what they have always considered their well-being ... to despise what they are, to hold theu own existence in contempt.' This grim process, aggressively promoted by missionaries through Christian notions of misery and sin (Sahlins, 1996), nonetheless fosters a 'self-consciousness of the indigenous culture' which local people can harness and recreate as a forro of 'value' (Sahlins, 1992, pp.24-25). But the reinvention of culture as 'culture,' too, must succumb to repUdiatIOn and self-Ioathiog. Indeed, ouly when thoroughly-humiliated local people fully dismiss their traditional identity, continues Sahlins, can they embrace the forward-looking

87

promise of modernity. Towards illustrating the partial truth of SahIins' thesis, I now turn to the Sepik River.

Humiliated Selves

Since the lat~ 19~ century, Sepik lives have experienced dramatic upheavals. The htany of histoncal transformations is typical: colonial governments, labor recruiting, out-migration, ethnological expeditions, new technologies, inflation of tradiuonal valuables, erosion of bridewealth, disrnption of trade networks, new hngua francas, Pax Australiana, missionization and the demonization of indi?enous religion, cessation of male initiation, capitalism, literacy, citizenship, tounsm, and so forth (see Gewertz and Errington, 1991; Smith, 1994; Tuzin, 1997; S~lverman ~OOOa, chap. 1; 2001). Many of these changes were, and remain, dIsempowenng. Yet historical transformations also foster novel modes of local creativity and agency, as I discuss below in regard to toutist art (Silverrnan, 2000b; 2004). For the moment, though, I want to focus on the issue of humiliation. . Without question, Eastern Iatmul sometimes reflect contemptuously and cyrucaIIy on theu premodern culture and selves. In this sense, Sahlins is vindicated. Indeed, my two village brothers had no interest in mastering traditional ritual and 2 esoteric lmowledge. They were far more interested in outboard motors and the 3 trad~~tore. Likewise, when young men drink beer, they dramatically abjure tradluonal modes of adult comportment through excessive boasting, blasting c~sette tapes of loknl musik till dawn, 'disco' dancing, exaggerating Western euquette, speaking English, and maligning their less savvy companions as 'bush knnaka' (see Ogan, 1966; 1986; Marshall, 1982). Later, the very same men would often bemoan their inability to drink, as do Europeans, in pleasant company. Whether sober or drunk, they were unable to measure up. Contemporary instances of self-imposed humiliations bnild on the historical legacy of colonialism. Spears were no match, men say, for the guns of Imperial Germany. Even today the local European priest derides village spirits and magic. Durmg World War Two, Eastern Iatmul experienced compulsory labor from the Japanese occupation troops, who shot the father of one of my research assistants, a noted sorcerer who could allegedly transform himself into a parrot, but not apparently when it mattered most. Some men, too, report with bitterness how Australian patrol officers tempted them like children by discretely leaving money around the camp. Eastern Iatmul, however, reacted like adults. They never filched the misplaced coins. The afterroath of World War Two was similarly humiliating. Agumoimbange, a semar elder of the Shui Aimasa patrician, may don his Australian military cap and boast of n;'artial exploits after a few bottles of South Pacific Lager. Another man, WangoWl, was awarded a medal after the War, which still hung around his n~ck some 45 years later. Wangowi was proud of his military service, as is the VIllage m general. In the last years of his life, Wangowi mostly sat outside his small ramshackle dwelling. He was frail, and hobbled with a cane. Unlike the younger

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generation of Papua New Guineans, Wan~owi ~as ti~id around, Europeans. But his son and younger men in the village readIly VOIce theIr rage at hIS treatment after the war. He risked his life for the Australian army and what did he receIve m retrrrn? A small medallion. It was a token neither of developman nor development 4 Wangowi died, embittered and silent, in the early 1990s. I rarely interacted with Wangowi. His acquiescence towards me, and use of the phrase 'masta,' was humiliating for us both, although fordifferent reasons. He seemed, like many men of his generation, resigned to watchmg the cultural norms he once valued slip away like so much detritus that endlessly floats down the Sepik River. s But did Wangowi's humiliation, as Shalins might suggest, translate into a repudiation of traditional selfhood? Do villagers today who belittle t~adition assert a modem self that opposes indigenous personhood? It IS to this questIOn that I now turn.

Traditional Selves

Before we can speak about a historical clash between modem and premodern identity, we need first to understand the traditional self. To the extent that we ~an generalize indigenous personhood in Tambunum encompassed two opposmg motivatio~. On the one hand, Eastern Iatmul were, and largely remain, classically sociocentric. They pursue maximal personhood and renown by furthering their 'social beings' (Sahlins, 1992, p.12). Eastern Iatmul, as Marriott (1976, p.lll) wrote for Hindu Indians, are 'dividuals' rather than bounded, private, autonomous individuals. The person contains 'a generalized sociality within' (Strathem, 1988, p.13; Wagner, 1991; Weiner, 1995). From this angle, person'. are not self-made on the basis of acquisitions and voluntary, contractual relahonships. The person. does not choose his or her social relations and group affiliations. Rather, pre-exlshng descent groups and social relations define the person and delineate the horizon of entailments that he or she should pursue. On the other hand, the premodem Eastern Iatmul self was, and agai~ remai~s, also defined on the basis of motivations that are commonly assocIated With egocentric selfhood. Eastern Iatmul respect deeply the integrity of individual thought and agency. Even the unborn, Mead (1949, p.83) reported, 'c~n hurry or delay as it wishes.' And as Bateson (1936, p.91) wrote, 'It was n?body s busmess to say him nay in this individualistic culture.' A person's own deSIres, ansmg from . the heart (mauwi), have an inviolate sense of autonomy. Marriage exemplifies the customary clash between sociocentdc and egocen~c

personhood. The sole matrinaonial rule i~ for a man to ,:"ed a wo,:",n from h~s

father's mother's lineage, a woman called tal. The prermer lat spouse IS the father s mother's brother's son's daughter (FMBSD). In Iatmul culture, men are named

after paternal grandfathers; women receive patronymics from fathers' fathers' sisters (Silverman, 1997; 2001a). This way, the highly-valued la! rule Ideally replicates prior marriages every second generation. But iai marriage can only fulfIll

89

this cultural expectation when men and women abdicate their independent 'wills' and identify with grandparents, thus choosing a sociocentric identity. Marriage also reveals a remarkable degree of individualistic personhood in which the self refuses subordination to social expectations and a merged sense of

identity. However much Eastern Iatmul praise the rule of iai marriage, they still validate all unions enacted on the basis of private choices. Individual desire, whether economic, political, or romantic, trumps the weight of tradition and social

pressure. Eastern Iatmul are loathe to contest marriages that transgress the rule. More than that, they refuse even to speculate on the spouses' private intentions.

My point is that the notion of a bounded and autonomous agent who abrogates sO~Ial norms to act on private desires is a valid aspect of traditional personhood

(SIlvennan, 2001a). The opposition between egocentric 'satisfaction' and sociocentric 'obligation' (Sahlins, 1992, p.12) is premodern and modern. Today, youth may elope, despite years of careful planning by their parents and kin. Yet modern ideals of romance and individual freedom do not necessarily entail the humiliation of traditional marriage and sociocentric identity. . A similar dynamic is revealed by totemic names. Each clan-based patronymic IS bestowed onto one living individual. Thus names emphasize the person as a unique totemic entity. But each individuating name, because it is part of a wider

cosmogonic 'path' across the mythic-historic landscape, also ties persons through magical 'consubstantiality' (Harrison, 1985) to other bodies, names, places, and phe~omena. Human lives are sociocentrically iterative and egocentrically creative

(Wemer, 1991, pp.196-98). Moral personhood in Tambunum has always tacked uneasily between expansive 'dividuality' and bounded individuality.' This is not, of course, to deny the role and force of history. It is merely to suggest that historical transfonnations become locally significant in tenns of, as much as against, traditional concepts of personhood. Another aspect of the totemic system reveals the contrariness of traditional identity. Men in the nearby societies of Charnbri (Errington and Gewertz, 1987) and Manambu (Harrison, 1989; 1990) are hesitant abont divulging esoteric wisdom to junior kin. The loss of names hastens the onset of old age and death. But totemic disclosures across the generations are necessary for the reproduction of descent groups. In the end, social morality eclipses the desire to retain names. Totemic inheritance in Tambunum manifests a different tension between self and society.

Although men voice deep concern with totemic continuity, they may still decline to reveal their magic to sons and agnates. It is, as they say, 'their problem.' Concerns

for the future of society thus clash with a man's individual autonomy. I want to stress that I am not inaplying the existence of a traditional subject in Tarnbunum who, ,:"hen shorn of his cultural clothing, resembles Western Man, driven by utilltartan ca\culahons, the relentlessly selfish pursuit of individual grandeur and a universal sense of practical rationality. 7 Instead, I am offering a more

~odest

proposal: many traditional cultural practices in Tambunum, as Eastern Iatmul themselves acknowledge, are motivated by an egocentric, oftentinaes selfish, mode of personhood that conflicts with, yet does not demean, the sociocentric virtues of tradition.

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In sum, the Eastern Iatmul self is dissonant rather than unitary, attuned both to kin and individualism. The self was plural, driven by contrary moti vations, often leading to ambivalent resolutions. People in this or any sociocultural world work with a multiplicity of models about personhood. There is no single script about how the self should constitute itself, formulate desires, and create the world. Consequently, the interpretation of historical transformation must take into account the existence of multiple traditional identities, or discordant 'subselves' (Gregg, 1998). In this sense, the sign on my brothers' tradestore admonishing villagers to refrain from requesting IOUs was as much about the clash between modernity and tradition as it was about a tension within the traditional self.

Shameful Selves

The tradestore sign did not merely scold Eastern Iatmul. It made a statement about modern personhood with reference to shame. This raises an important question. If Eastern Iatmul are supposedly ashamed in the context of capitalism and tradestores, then how is shame locally conceived? The answer to this question will further contextualize the humiliations of modernity in traditional conceptions of personhood. Eastern Iatmul abhor situations in which they must request things, especially food, from other persons. Requests diminish the self through insinuations of childish dependency and inadequacy - the precise opposite of maximal personhood. But it is perfectly appropriate for someone else to voice your desires. It is not dependency per se that is shaming but, rather, its unmediated pubhc admission. Before my visits to Wewak, the capital town in the East Sepik Province, I was frequently approached by pairs of Eastern Iatmul - both men and women, separately and together. One person wanted me to buy something, say, aspirin or fish hooks. The requestor, moreover, was usually prepared on the spot to give me cash or something else in exchange. These were not petitions of poverty. But the desiring self remained mute while the other person actually voiced the request. For the most part, Eastern Iatmul cannot directly assert individual autonomy and speak their minds, or 'hearts.' Instead, persons must conceal some aspect of their identity, usually their voice but sometimes, as when they speak through a ritual mask, their face. I have elsewhere discussed this aspect of 'partible' identity in Tambunum (Silverman, 2001a). What I want here to stress is the cultural fact that Eastern Iatmul do not ordinarily show their faces and speak on their own behalf when making requests. Let me offer two further examples of shame and desire. First, polygyny often foregrounds a man's individuality and agency, especially since this aspiration often opposes the will of other men and descent groups. But a man can ameliorate the potential conflicts of polygyny if he asks someone else, particularly a type of partner called tshambela but also a sister's child, to act on his behalf. If the suitor himself walks to his beloved's domestic ward, he may encounter a violent

91

reception. But should he send someone else to escort the woman back to his house ' I was told, other people can do little or nothing. In pidgin, '01 i no ken tok.' Second, Eastern Iatmul men rarely arise in public and praise their own explOIts. Often, they contrast this sense of public decorum with Highland New Gninea big-men who, as Eastern Iatmul see it, delight in recounting their feats before an audience of rivals. Eastern Iatmul seldom speak on their own behalf during public events, including modern courthouse proceedings (see also Errington and Gewertz, 1987b, p.87 note 20). In Tambunum, self-assertions are problematic, mfrequent and muted. They are, in the main, performed by others. Now we can return to the tradestore sign. I have already suggested that the humiliations of modernity are ouly partially reflective of a clash between a modem and traditional self. Cross-cultural differences in self-making are not essentialistic. Rather, modernity heightens a tension between egocentric and sociocentric identity that was its~lf constitutive of tradition. Now I suggest that the shame of modernity IS not mdlVldualism per se but assertions of individualism that, contrary to the norms for adult comportment, reqnire or encourage umnediated displays of selfawareness and self-presence. We need to understand the experience of historical transfonnation, I am suggesting, in tenns of, not despite, local notions of

personhood.

Modern Selves

Having discussed two important aspects of traditional personhood through which Eastern Iatmul engage historical transformation, I now highlight those aspects of modem identity that build on or intersect with, but do not outright replace traditional personhood. ' Capitalism in Tambunurn foregrounds the traditional axis of individuated personhood. This occurs in several ways. In the competition for the sale of arUartifacts to dealers and tourists, men express an egocentric self by striving to create unique objects (Silverman, 2004; 2001; 2000b; 1999). These wood carvings are not reflectIve of sociocentric identity or membership in a descent group. In fact,

carvers often inscribe these objects with their Christian rather than totemic names. To be sure, ca~italism motivates the design of individual artistic expressions,

and even the very Idea of explicit aesthetic innovation. But these objects do not repudiate traditIOn. Rather, they often represent a visual dialogue between tradition and modernity. Men recombine anew motifs from the customary repertoire with various cont~mporary insignia, such as writing, dates, references to God and Mary,

and the natIOnal emblem. Carvers may harness traditional social processes to enhance the range of their artistic novelties. They may seek pennission from nonIatmul affines to reproduce art styles from other language groups, and modify Imported necklaces and masks, much as Mead (1938; 1978) noted long-ago, only now for sale to tourists. These processes differ from Sahlins' notion of developman. Eastern Iatmul are not expanding the pageantry or logic of tradition

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per se. Rather, they are drawing on tradition in order to modernize their society and selves.

,

8

Several Eastern Iatmul maintain private bank accounts m Wewak. These financial assets, like the ability to manage a small village tradestore, emphasize the boundedness of egocentric personhood. This sense of identity, it is true, conflicts with sociocentric selfhood and the moral norms of reciprocity, thus leading to disavowals of tradition as per Sahlins and others (e.g., Tuzin, 1997). But recent studies of commodity consumption in Papua New Guinea (e.g., Foster, 1996/1997; Errington and Gewertz, 1996; Gewertz and Errington, 1996) also indicate that modernity transforms, rather than replaces, local logics, values and ideals. In the late 1980s, a guesthouse called the Tambunum Lodge was erected with Australian financing across the river from the main village. It has become a local symbol of development and modernization. In its construction, men utilized skills which they learned in vocational schools. The guesthouse also encouraged the provincial goverurnent to cut a bush path that connects the village with the dirt Sepik Highway that winds to Wewak, across the Sepik Plains, over the Prince Alexander Mountains. Two Australian men were successively hired as managers for the Tambunum Lodge. But now, two villagers, Linus Apingari and Henry Gawi, oversee the operation. They have traveled to Australia, speak excellent English, .and inter~ct confidently with Westerners. Previously, Linus worked at the Bougamville Mme whereas Henry served on a merchant ship. In Tambunum, these two men embody

local development, not developman. Yet Linus and Henry do not themselves believe that their participation in the guesthouse and tourism more broadly conflicts with traditional aspirations and activities, or denigrates their kultur and kastom. I detect little in the way of hurniliation on the part of Linus and Henry concerning the traditional Eastern Iatmul self. Those aspects of local identity and practices that they do occasionally forswear represent traditional social conflicts

and tensions within the self, and not just the collision between culture and modernization. If they denigrate their less-modernized rivals, these statements often concern local politics rather than global worldviews. The Lodge occasioned a complex totemic dispute (Silverman, 2000b; 1997). The feud was triggered by a young man named Njumwi who was excluded from the guesthouse negotiations and the eventual legal contract. His goal was simply to be recognized as the legitimate totemic title-holder of the ground, which he asserted by arguing in the cult house that his ancestors alone first named and thereby created the lodge location. B ut it is vital to note that this dispute did not

93

Njumwi lost the debate largely as a result of his marginal political status. As a youth, Njumwi trespassed on a sexual taboo, after which he drank kerosene and wandered aimlessly tbrough the region in a state of dementia. Upon reaching the Wewak CatholIc Church, Njumwi was miraculously cured of his derangement. Smce then, he looks to Catholicism and the Bible for authority and guidance rather than totemic myth and ritual. As a result, Njumwi professes nonviolence,

brotherhood, thrift, and devotion to God. Despite these eminently modern personality traits, he lacks a truly legitimate voice. Numwi's flaw, as locally assessed, IS hIS refusal to synthesize Christianity with the traditional religious system. Ironically, the tontist lodge, as a token of modernity and development, trIggered a traditional totemic dispute that undennined the political aspirations of a man who otherwise represents many of the ideals associated with success in bisnis tourism and development.

'

Njumwi notwithstanding, capitalist desires and Christianity in Tanabnnum do not necessarily foster a self that is opposed to, and humiliates, traditional personhood. In another Sepik society, liahita Arapesh, millenarian Christianity pronused a modern paradise yet delivered ouly the total breakdown of social norms for gender and an alanning rise in domestic violence (Tuzin, 1997). By contrast, Tambunum has been spared devastating Christian revivals, indigenous annihilation~ of ritual and religion, and abrupt attempts at dramatically redefining personhood In order to foster spiritual modernization.

Indeed, men in Tambunum who ally themselves too closely with Christianity, :re have. see?, may fOlfeit their political voice. As a result, they are denied success In totenuc dIsputes, which remain integral to village social life and, in the case of the Tambunum Lodge, development. In general, there are no exclusions in Tanabunum on the basis of baptism or totemism. Most people embrace both cosmologies without the anguish of theological incongruity (see Gewertz and Errington, 1991, p.156). Eastern Iatmul, too, interpret economic success or failure in terms of traditional religious idioms rather than, as on Kairiru Island (Smith, 1994), Christian morality. In Tambunum, there is no unitary self about which the modernizing person can be ashanaed. (If anything, men of development, should they leave the village for ~rban employment, will later yearn to return.) This hybrid, shifting self is able to Incorporate, rather than results from, historical disjunctures. Contemporary personhood accedes to and resists modernity, both localizing global forces and transforming local cultural practices into global value.

center on economic wealth, access to the building and its associated facilities, and

cash employment. 9 Instead, the dispute centered on totemic identity and the prestige hierarchy of the particular clan that claims proprietorship over the releva?t tract of ground. In this regard, the guesthouse precipitated a dispute that m structure and substance resembled the countless other totemic quarrels that punctuate everyday village life. Nevertheless, the significance of this dispute is precisely that a development project reproduced rather than replaced or eroded traditional politico-ritual process.

A Brief Historical Excursus My arguments were somewhat presaged by the classic Culture and Personality outlook of Mead and Bateson. Mead noted that Iatmul villages have 'an absorptive and retentive ability in excess of their powers of integration' (1938, p.163). Later, she commented on the 'great deal of flexibility' in Sepik Tokpisin etlmocategories: 'artifacts, ritual usages, musical instruments, taboos, and so on, may

94

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

easily be moved from one category to another without, however,. destroying the generality of the thematic relevance' (Mead, 1978, p.70). This cultural and cognitive system of fluidity and contradiction, where objects and Ideas shift between categories as they dissolve and redefine the boundanes between them, portends some success in the clash between tradition and modernity. Since Sepik cultures and selves are highly flexible, they are uulikely simply to shatter from the allure of modem goods and aspirations. Bateson ideutified a highly divisive mode of social interaction among Iatmul, lO which he famously termed schismogenesis. The Iatmul polity was highly quarrelsome. All norms and rules were to some degree under threat of ~ontest~tIon.

Bateson, too, brilliantly outlined a common structure to the hypertrophic quahty of Iatmul cognition, or eidos, and social process (1936). AB far back as the 1930s, then Bateson and Mead understood the Iatmul self as contrary rather than unitary, dra;ing its wholeness not from consistency, but from mu1tiplicity." They also sketched the ethnographic features of Iatmul and Sepik cultures in such as way as to suggest a predisposition to cognitive, psychological, and cultural hybridity rather than historical replacement of the traditional by the modem. True, Bateson (1936) remarked that Iatmul 'were fatalist before the decay of their culture.' But the outlook of my essay, and that of much of Mead's work, is more in line with Clifford's (1997, p.176) recent formulation of culture as the 'normalization of inventive impurity.'

The Desiring Self of Lacan

Let me briefly recapitulate. I began the essay by endorsing Sahlin's thesis that modernization entails huntiliation. In Tambunum, this huntiliation often hinges on a heightened expression of individuality. However, I also sugge~ted that the te~sion between relational and egocentric modes of personhood IS also traditional. Psychological conflict is not the exclusive product of historical upheaval. Additionally, I proposed that contemporary huntiliations must be understood at least partly in terms of traditional notions of shame. All this suggests. that modernity does not merely replace one type of self With another. No self IS qUite so unitary. Rather, historical transformations act on, and through, multiple models. of personhood. Now I am in a position to offer my final, perhaps most controverSial, analytic move: a synthesis of SaWins with Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of desire. My anthropological entree to Lacan's concept of desire (e.g., 1968/195~) is Trawick's (1990, pp.142-48; 1992) elegant discussion of Tanul Nadu SOCial hfe. Trawick and the Lacanians characterize infancy as a state of tender, sensory and

affective wholeness. But the intimate oneness of the mother-child bond is 12 inevitably ruptured by cultural norms and social structure. Through this rupture, though, and the concomitant experience of loss, the infant gains a true sense of

selfhood. The child, now driven by desire, learns to seek fulfillment through cultural conventions. The child becomes a cultural subject. And what does the

Sepik River Selves in a Changing Modernity

95

child, and all of us, desire? Primary symbiosis. That is, the self seeks to regain originary wholeness by reaching out, as it were, to cultural symbols and ideals. But primal unity is illusory - the result of Lacan's famous mirror stage - and so is the promise of regaining wholeness.

Lacan's symbolic code of culture, as Trawick (1990, p.144) writes, resembles Derrida's notion of "trace" (e.g, 1978). Culture 'perpetuates desire, sets up the illusion that there is something on the other side of what we perceive that will complete us.' If our desires were truly fulfilled, 'if there actually were closure - a perfect culture - and if the self felt itself to become whole, then human life would end, everything would stop' (Trawick, 1990, p.144; relatedly, see Lemaire, 1977, p.162; Smith and Kerrigan, 1983; Elliott, 1992, p.132; Nuckolls, 1996; Weiner, 1995; Wikan, 1995). Culture, in this psychodynantic sense, is not a repressive constraint on instinct as per Freud. Nor is culture a sublimating defense mechanism

against anxiety as per R6heim (1943, p.106). Rather, as Trawick (1990, p.152) accentuates, culture .creates longings that can never be fulfilled.' In essence,

human life is fueled by foiled desire. Trawick's Lacanian approach is befitting of traditional Melanesian social life and personhood. 'At the heart of the person,' writes Weiner (1995, p.13), 'is not some inviolable self-identity but the deposited or introjected traces ... of the others who constitute that person.' After all, as Weiner (1995) stresses, the experience of sociality in Melanesia often entails exchanges of personified substances and objects. Local people typically understood these exchanges through various bodily idioms, including feeding, sexuality, birth, excretion, detachment and incorporation. Weiner (1995, pA) correctly invokes Freud (1917, pp.243-58) to summarize Melanesian selfhood as 'attachments that are established and then abandoned.' What does Lacan's theory of desire have to do with SaWins and modernization? In my view, a Lacanian approach to self and sociality complicates the idea that modernization disrupts the 'wholeness' of traditional society and selfhood. I am well aware of the perils in bnilding on Sahlins' s work with a psychodynantic, seentingly ahistorical view of the self. I endorse in general Sahlins's overall thesis on the humiliations of modernization. Yet I also endorse in general the utility of a psychoanalytic framework for illuminating the entanglements and frustrations of social life. 13 My use of Lacan, as refracted through Trawick, intends only to suggest that at least some of the dilemmas and shames experienced in Tambunum through the broad process of modernization are

rooted in the essential processes of Melanesian social life and selfhood. Like Levi-Strauss and Bakhtin, each in their own way, Lacan offers a way of thinking about social life and culture as irreducible, frustrating, and often ambivalent. The unfinalizability of culture, moreover, and the impossibility of attaining psychological wholeness, suggest an avenue for usefully exploring human motivation, whether traditional or modern. What I seek, in other words, is to

enhance Sahlin's project of understanding the complexity and angnish of historical transformation through consideration of the role played by psychodynantic process and desire in shaping culture.

96

Sepik River Selves in a Changing Modernity

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Conclusion: Is Modernization Irrelevant? I must repeat an important qualification. I am not denying or belittling tbe force of history and the changes wrought by modernization. Today, Eastern Iatmul experience different desires and sUbjectivities than tbey did in the 1930s, never mind tbe 1890s. I began this essay, after all, witb reference to two brothers who link their aspirations to the success of a tradestore ratber tban the efficacy of totemic recitations. Many contemporary yearnings are framed by a political-economy that dramatically differs from tbe precontact era. Traditionally, as Gewertz and Errington (1991) astutely note, Sepik persons interacted in a world of 'commensurate differences.' Most forms of inequality were unable to eclipse the potential for relative social equiValence. Moral personbood presupposed an essential sameness. Now, however, Eastern Iatmul confront a world of 'incommensurate differences.' They must cede some cultural autonomy to the nation-state and its central institutions (Foster, 1997; Gewertz and Errington, 1991; Linnekin and Payer, 1990; Nash and Ogan, 1990; Maclean, 1994). They recoguize emergent class inequalities despite the promise of citizenship to offer wide-ranging equality, regardless of kinship and gender. And Eastern Iatrnul routinely struggle against the economic asynnnetry between tbemselves and Europeans as they desire objects and ameuities that will surely remain beyond reach in tbe foreseeable future. No totemic debates can level tbese hierarchical relationships. Like it or not, Eastern Iatmul must now accept a wideuing vision of moral personbood that entails indelible disparity. Hence, modernization does matter, as both a global processes of incorporation and a subjective state of selfhood. Yet historical transformation must be analyzed in terms of the complexities of local cultures and especially local modes of personbood. At least some of the conundrums and humiliations that Eastern Iatmul experience today pertain to traditional identities. The customary self was no less contradictory and multiple than the contemporary self, despite tbe fact that tbe terms and symbols of identity have become altered (see Weiner, 1995, Chapter 7). Notwithstanding the many pains and indignities of recent Sepik history, modernity has not entirely debased, replaced, or destroyed the traditional worldview, etbos and eidos of Tambunum (Metraux, 1976), and its plural construction of selfhood. To some degree, we can understand the local pathos of modernization in tbe Sepik on the basis of conflicts witbin tbe premodern self and a broad view of human motivation as theorized by Lacan. To be sure, these conflicts are played out in the coin of tbe day. Moderuization matters. But the study of modernization requires us to attune our analytic frameworks to the creativity of culture, tbe complexity of psychodynamic motivation, the power of agency,14 and the plurality of models through which people create their sense of self, and tbereby derive meaning from their actions. What, then, to return to the beginning of this essay, did my brotbers mean when tbey appealed to 'sem' on the door of their tradestore? I remain uncertain.

97

~:s literary exhortation is far too complex to be reduced to a single statement.

ely, my br?thers. wanted otber VIllagers simply to offer cash for rice and soa rather tban prnnordJaI sentiments. Yet the shame of borrowing from a tradestor~ e:emplifies . ~ara~oxe~ of des~re and identity that require consideration of more t : a speCIfic hlstoncal era m tbe Sepik. We need also to think about tensions W1 ~ tbe traditIOnal self as well as the broader psychodynamics of human ~xpenence. T,he tradestore SIgn represents neither develop man nor development n~tead, tbe sIgn offers us a glimpse into tbe dialogicality of culture and hi t . pomtmg to co~trary moralities and identities within the self as well as be:w~: dIfferent histoncal forms of what it is to be a person.

Notes 1

:iel~work in 1988-1990 was graciously enabled by a Fulbright Award the Institute

or ntercultural Studies, and related support from the Department of Anthro

I

:~hthe Gra~uate School, University of Minnesota. The Wenner-Gren Foundatr:n°f~ ,

ropologIcal Researc~ and DePauw University generously supported a return visit

;!:~-August 1994. T~IS essay was initially written at the kind invitation of Holly th w ~nd Ioel Robbms: who organized a session at the 1998 Annual Meeting of

e Amencan AntIn:0?ologlcal Association. They also furnished several perceptive on the ongmal draft, as did an anonymous reader. Of course I extend my ' grahtu e to the people of Tambunum. ~tr~:~~:,ledg~, ,along ~ith, Sahlins (1992, p.21), the difficulty in using the tenus . , an, mo~er01ty, Nonetheless, I do so heuristically, without a strong distmction or relficatlOn, But many of their peers actively study clan-based esotelica. Th~ film 'Angels of War' movingly depicts the plight and pathos of Papua New Gumea~s who ~erved the Australian military. ~est thIS phraslllg see~ intrusive, I note that river currents and driftwood are salient Ima~es of ~h~ge and hme throughout Eastern latmul culture (Silverrnan 1997) My Intention IS not to essentialize two modes of selfhood that Shwed~r a d (1984) call 'egocentr'IC contractuaI' and , . . organic' (see also Hollan n ounae . SOClOcentnc 1992' ' , S pITO, 1993). co~ednts

2

3 4 5 6

B

le evokke, of course,. Sahlin~' (1995) response to Obeyesekere's (1992) critique of the 00 -as-Lono theSIS (Sahhns, 1985). 8 F~~d~e ~xpectations. and plight of Sepik villagers in Wewak, including an emergent ~I e c ass, see Emngton and Gewertz (1991) and Gewertz and Enington (1999) 9 a~e men and women are employed at the guesthouse as grass cutters canoe dri~ers 10 ~ecunty, cooks, and so forth. These jobs rotate through each clan every fortnight ' , at~s.on defined this neologism, as 'a process of differentiation in the no~ of ~~dIvldual b~ha~riour res~lting from cumulative interaction between individuals.' In g~t of Sahl~ns s essa~, ~t see~s noteworthy that Bateson (1935) first presented his notion of schlsmogenesls m a dIscussion of culture contact. 11 ill her review of Bateson'~ 1936 book Naven, Powderrnaker (1940) discerned a resemblance between schismogenesis and Harry Stack S u·11'Ivan ,s tbeory of , tall ' : erpe~son ,re atlOns, Bateson's latmul work influenced his later collaboration with ead ID Ball (Mead and Bateson, 1942), and his contributions to communications 7

Sepik River Selves in a Changing Modernity

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

98

theory, cybernetics, and the double-bind theory of schizophrenia (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland, 1956). Naturally, I am not arguing that inconsistencies within Iatmul personhood, or the lack of wholeness, is tantamount to a personality disorder

(see also Ewing, 1990). 12

Lacan labeled the cultural order that shatters originary wholeness Other, Language,

Culture, Father, and, most troubling, Phallus (see Rubin, 1975; Gallop, 1982; Flax, 1989). My use of Lacan here makes no claim to the universality of this androcentrism. Some readers might object to the anthropological use of psychoanalysis. Yet, at this point in the history of the discipline and modern social thought, most casual dismissals of psychoanalysis (e.g., it denies the role of culture and history) have long since been addressed, resolved, or refuted (see, for relevant citations, Silvennan, 2000a). 14 For a type of modern humiliation as a fonn of 'recessive agency,' see Knauft (2002).

13

References Bateson, Gregory (1935), 'Culture Contact and Schismogenesis,' Man, VoL 35, pp. 178-

83. Bateson, Gregory (1936), Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn From Three Points of View, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Bateson, Gregory, D.D. Jackson, J. Haley, and J. Weakland (1956), 'Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,' Behavioral Science, VoL 1, pp. 251-64. Bateson, Gregory and Margaret Mead (1942), Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis, New York, New York Academy of Science. Clifford, James (1997), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Derrida, Jacques (1978)[1966], 'Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,' in Writing and Difference, Chicago, Chicago University Press, pp. 278-93. Elliott, Anthony (1992), Social Theory & Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva, Oxford, Blackwell. Errington, Frederick and Deborah Gewertz (1996), 'The Individuation of Tradition in a Papua New Guinean Modernity,' American Anthropologist, VoL 98, pp. 114-26. Ewing, Katherine P. (1990), 'The illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience

ofInconsistency,' Ethos, Vol. 18, pp. 251-78. Flax, Jane (1990), Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Postmodernism in the Contemporary West, Berkeley, University of California Press. Foster, Robert J. (1996/1997), 'Commercial Mass Media in Papua New Guinea: Notes on Agency, Bodies, and Commodity Consumption,' Visual Anthropology Review, Vo1.

12, pp. 1-17. Foster, Robert J. (1997), Nation Making: Emergent Identities in postcolonial Melanesia, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.

Freud, Sigmund (1917), 'Mourning and Melancholia,' Standard Edition XIV, pp. 237- 58. Gallop, Jane (1982), The Daughter'S Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis, Ithaca, Comell University Press. Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errington (1991), Twisted Histories and Altered Contexts: Representing the Chambri in a World System, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errington (1996), 'On Piety and PepsiCo in a Papua New guinea "Modernity,'" American Anthropologist, Vol. 23, pp. 476-93.

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Gewertz, De~orah an~ Frederick Errington (1999), Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea: The Tellmg of Difference, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gregg, Gary S. (1998), 'Culture, Personality, and the Multiplicity of Identity: Evidence IromNorth African Life Narratives,' Ethos, Vo!. 26, pp. 120-152. Hamson, Slmon (1985), 'Concepts of the Person in Avatip Religious Thought,' Man (n.s.) Vo!. 20, pp. 115-30. Hollan, Douglas (1992), 'Cross-Cultural Differences in the Self' Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 48, pp. 283-300. ' Knauft, Bmce M: (2002), Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before ond After, ChIcago, UmversIty of Chicago Press. Lacan, !acques (l968)[1~53], The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. Anthony Wllden, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore. Lemair~, Anika (1977)[1970], Jacques Lacon, London, Routledge & Kegan Pau!'

Lmnekin: Jocelyn and Lin Poyer, (eds) (1990), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press. Mac1ean, Neil (1994), 'Freedom or Autonomy: A Modern Melanesian Dilemma' Man (n.s.), Vo!. 29, pp. 667-88. ' Marriott, McKi~ (1976), 'Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism,' in Transaction and Meanmg. B. Kapferer, (ed.), Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues pp. 109-42. ' Marshall, Ma~, (ed.) (1982), Through a Glass Darkly: Beer and Modernization in Papua New Gumea, Boroko, Papua New Guinea, Institute for Applied Social and Economic Research.

Mead, Margaret. (1938), 'The Mountain Arapesh, Part I: An Imporriug Culture,' Anthropologzcal Papers of the American Museum 0>/ Natural History Vol 36 pp 139- 349. ' . , . Mead, Margaret (1978), 'The Sepik as a Culture Area: Comment,' Anthropological Quarterly, Vo!. 51, pp. 69-75. Metraux, Rh?~a (19:6).' '~ido~ and Change: Continuity in Process, Discontinuity in Pr~duct: III Soc~allz~tlOn m Cultural Communication. T. Schwartz (ed.), Berkeley, UmversIty of Cahforrua Press, pp. 201-16.

Nash, Jill and Eugene Og".'" (199?), 'The Red and the Black: Bougainvillean Perceptions of Other PapuaNew GUIlleans, Pacific Studies, Vo1. 13,pp. 1-17. Nuckolls, Charles W. (1996), The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire Madison University of Wisconsin Press. ' , Obeyesekere: Gan~ath (1992~, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, Pnnceton, Pnnceton University Press. Ogan, Eugene (1966), 'Drinking Behavior and Race Relations,' American Anthropologist Vo!. 68, pp. 181-88. ' Ogan, Eugene (1986), "'Taim Bilong Sipak": Nasioi Alcohol Use 1962-1978 ' Ethnolo Vo!. 25, pp. 21-33. ' gy, Powdermaker, Hortense (1940) 'Review of Naven,' American Anthropologist Vol 42 pp 162-64. ' . , . Roheim, Geza (1971)[1943], The Origin and Function of Culture, Garden City, NY Anchor. ' Rubin, Gayle (1975), 'The Traffic in Women: Notes on the "Political Economy" of Sex' in R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women, New York, Monthly Re~ew

Press, pp. 157- 210. Sahlins, Marshall (1985), Islands of History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Sahlins, Marshall (1992), 'The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific,' RES, Vol. 21, pp. 12-25. Sahlins, Marshall (1995), How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. SaWins, Marshall (1996), 'The Sadness of Sweetness: The Native Anthropology of Westem

Cosmology,' Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, pp. 395-428. Shweder, Richard A. and Edmund J. Bourne (1984), 'Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?, in R.A. Shweder and R.A. LeVine (eds), Culture Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 158-99. Silvennan, Eric Kline (2004), 'Cannibalizing, Commodifying, and Creating Culture: Power and Creativity in Sepik River Tourism,' in V. Lockwood (ed.), Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall, pp.

339-57. Silverman, Eric Kline (2001), 'From Totemic Space to Cyberspace: Transformations in Sepik River and Aboriginal Australian Myth, Knowledge and Art,' in J. Weiner and A. Rumsey, (eds), Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea Societies, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, pp.

189-214. Silverman, Eric Kline (2000a), Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery: Psychoanalyzing Culture and the Iatmul Naven Rite in New Guinea, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. Silverman, Eric Kline (2000b), 'Tourism in the Sepik River of Papua New Guinea: Favoring the Local over the Global,' in H. Dahles and T. van Meijl, (eds), Local Perspectives on Global Tourism in South East Asia and the Pacific Region, Special Issue of Pacific Tourism Review, Vol. 4, pp. 105-19. Silverman, Eric Kline (1999), 'Art, Tourism and the Crafting of Identity in the Sepik River (papua New Guinea),' in R. Phillips and C. Steiner (eds), Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, Berkeley, University of California

Press, pp. 51-66. Silvennan, Eric Kline (1997), 'Politics, Gender, and Time in Melanesia and Aboriginal

Australia,' Ethnology, Vol. 36, pp. 101-21. Smith, Michael French (1994), Hard Times on Kairiru Island: Poverty, Development, and Morality in a Papua New Guinea Village, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press.

Smith, Joseph H. and William Kerrigan (eds) (1983), 'Interpreting Lacan', Psychiatry and the Humanities, Vol. 6, New Haven, Yale University Press. Spiro, Melford E. (1993), 'Is the Western Conception of the Self "Peculiar" within the Context of World Cultures?', Ethos, Vol. 21, pp. 107-53. Strathern, Marilyn (1988), The Gender of the Gift: Problems With Women and Problems With Society in Melanesia, Berke1ey, University of California Press. Trawick, Margaret (1990), Notes on Love in a Tami! Family, Berkeley, University of California Press. Trawick, Margaret (1992), 'Desire in Kinship: A Lacanian View of the South Indian Familial Self,' in D.H. Spain (ed.), Psychoanalytic Anthropology After Freud: Essays marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of Freud's Death, New York, Psyche Press, pp. 49-

62. Tuzin, Donald (1997), The Cassowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Guinea Society, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Wagner, Roy (1991), 'The Fractal Person,' in M. Godelier and M. Strathern (eds), Big Men & Great Men: Personifications of Power, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 159-73.

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W' em;r, James F. (1.991), The ~mpty Place: Poetry, Space, and Being among the Foi of . apua New Guznea, Bloommgton, Indiana University Press. Wemer, James F. ~1995), '0e L~st Drun:: The Myth of Sexuality in Papua New Guinea and _ Beyond, U . Madison, UruversIty of WIsconsin Press . an, nm (1995), 'The Self in a World of Urgency and Necessity' Ethos Vol 23 259-85. ' , . , pp.

Chapter 6

'We Are All "Les" Men': Sorrow and Modernism in Melanesia, or Humor in Paradise Douglas Dalton

Introduction

In his article 'The Econontics of Develop-man in the Pacific,' Sahlins (1992) rentinds ethnographers of those field experiences we sometimes feel are best left behind, forgotten, and ignored. He points in particular to those self-deprecating statements people sometimes make about themselves (in contrast to what thel' perceive to be positive attributes of the 'whiteman') which indicate the experience

of cultural huntiliation that Sahlins tell us people overwhelmed by the power of Western global capitalist expansion apparently undergo. In this paper I recount and rethink one such statement - 'We are all "les" (lazy, lame, weary) men' - made to me by a group of Rawa speakers of northeast Papua New Guinea, who have thus seentingly traversed through 'that culturalw desert' of humiliation that Sahlins argues lies on the road toward modernism. In Sah1ins' account, 'develop-man' is a complexly located modem neologism that humanizes the Western notion of econontic 'development' by presupposing econonties that work for people rather than people who work for the benefit of economies, and by assuming persons consisting of interdependent human relations rather than autonomous individuals working for their separate rational economic

self-interests. His account of culture change is based on the analysis of the way that local cultures' attempts to indigenize Western development by turning it into 'develop-man' nevertheless come to be subverted by capitalist assumptions. Behind Sahlins' account lurks not an 'economic man' working for material or monetary maximization but a 'develop-man' apparently motivated to maximize

local visions of 'man,' which generally have to do with optintizing prestige through personal relations (albeit relations of debt and obligation) rather than personal profits, with the extraordinary wealth provided by the ever-expanding Western global capitalist economy. This wealth fuels these local desires but in the process comes to subvert local social political arrangements and thus to change the societies irrevocably. What seems to happen in Sahlins' examples is that dramatic increases of wealth stimulate a sort of

104

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

'We Are All "Les" Men ': Sorrow and Modernism in Melanesia

105

government outstation have made it apparent that the dramatic pace of change that characterized the area between 1930 and 1980 has gradually slowed and is now greatly redu;ed. The ,curr~nt situation ~ntails a syncretic ntix of Christianity and

democratic free for all, an increase in political ambitions and competition for tribal power among leaders or potential leaders, or simply an efflorescence of tribal political structures, bringing about local political transformations which brmg tnbes mto modem states and global systems. Having defined 'tradition,' in contradistinction to Wesrern capitalist development, as 'a distinctive way of ch~ging' (develop~)" Sahlins supposes that 'certain types of developman prove tragtcally self-de~tructive (1992, pp.22, 21). He therefore also postulates an empty 'cultinal desert of humiliation between the efflorescence of local ideas of 'man' and indigenous political-econonnc systems, on the one hand, and Western global capitalist development, on the other. My analysis will suggest that the apparently self-deprecatmg statements made to me by Rawa speakers are not after all signs of th~ir traversal through a .cultinal no man's land but instead more in keeping with theu own mdlgenous notions of the

to the ahenal10n they fmd characteristic of urban capitalist transactions. Yet there

human condition, which remain in stark contrast to those of Western capitalism, development and bourgeois humanism I will claim a different interpretation of the

;ncounte~s, with Australian government officials and expressed especially by

'man' in 'd;velop-man' than does Siwins and suggest another kind of cultural psychology operating in the cultural encounters between Western and indigenous tribal peoples, particularly Papua New Gninea Rawa speakers, than that assumed by Sahlins.

Ethnographic Setting

Rawa speakers number about 4000 and live on the southern slopes of the Finisterre Mountains, just above the Ramu-Markham divide in Madang Province. They are notable for the enormous amount of change and 'progress' that they have been instrumental in bringing to their area. Some ancestors of these Rawa speakers lived on the northern side of the mountains near the Rai Coast and worked on Gennan

plantations near the beginning of the century. Evidenc~ suggests th~t populations of Rawa speakers displaced by German colomal pumtlve expeditIOns .from. the north coast fought with populations on the southern Finisterres they now mhablt to gain territory and escape the Germans. This period of warfar~ was ended as groups of Rawa speakers began social movements which entailed brmgtng nal1ve Lutheran missionaries issuing from Finschhaffen to live in the area, marrying them to local

women, and consolidating villages out of dispersed, oftimes warring hamlets or their remains in the 1930s. Men's spirit houses were replaced by Lutheran churches, and ceremonial pig feasts were eventually all but stopped for the sake of coffee cash cropping and beer parties. After being involved in a variety of ways m the Second World War battles that found Japanese regiments retreating northward down the Rama River valley, Rawa speakers were instrumental in getting a

government outstation established in the mountains with an airstrip and s~rv~ce

road (where SIL ntissionary linguists also bnilt a house), and a Lutheran ":"sslOn station, Ranara, was constructed along the Lae-Madang ltighway where It IS now nestled in the Finisterre foothills adjoining the grasslands along the upper Ramu River. Since the completion of the Ramu Sugar factory nearby in 1980, stagnant coffee prices and the failure to complete a road to villages away from the

l?cal Rawa rehglO~s ~ehefs and practIces, which are sometimes 'cargoistic,' and fi~ds local Rawa kinship and marriage patterns residing in modern villages along WIth government and mtroduced relIgious institutions.

Through more than fifty years of enacting and managing cultural change, Rawa speakers have formed and reformed understandings of Westerners as well as themselves: They have created a positive modem ethnic identity and self?nderstandm~ based on theu o~ ability to actively bring about change and develop~en~ as well ~s Rawa notIons of sorrow and sharing, in contradistinction

are also ideas, reinforced by missionary proclamations and earlier colonial

cargOlsl1c OrIented Villagers, that Rawa speaking people are somehow inferior to the European 'whiteman,' wh~ ob~iously has more sophisticated military, technologICal, and matenal capacity remforced by great religious certitude. While the mod~rn Rawa ethnic identity would seem contrary to their apparently colonially mduced Infenonty complex, I shall argue that these two views express one and the same self-understanding and that this understanding is founded on basic indigenous Rawa Ideas of 'man' and contrasts with that of Western modernism.

Languor and Sorrow When o~erwise lively social interactions attenuate, to quicken the discourse Papua Ne:, Gumea ~awa ~pe~ers enjoy recounting a set of humorous stories depicting

theu ancestors foohsh Ignorance of Western material technological culture. One ancestor, for example, is said to have spent several days hiding from the ntirror that had been hung ~n the wall inside his thatched house by his son, who had picked it up whtle worki~g on a plantation. He thought the mirror was a particularly troublesome spmt unl11 he finally shot it with an arrow, only to be made fun of by ltis son. Other times they very seriously describe their history in terms obviously l~ue~ced .by rmsslOnary teachings, saying that the ancestors were 'crazy' and hved ~n a tIme of 'darkness'. and 'ign~rance.' Ancestors are said to have worshiped false Idols or, worse, satamc emanatlOns (thus, as elsewhere, lending missionary

credence to pagan beliefs otherwise declared false)' and to have lived in fear

~ractici~g evil magic against one another and engaging in vicious treachery and mterne~me warfare (~practice which most likely resulted from the displacement of populal1ons and pumllve expeditions of the German Nel.l Guinea Compagnie). 2 When: at a large all-night funeral wake, a group of young and ntiddle-aged men explamed to me 'We are all "les" [or lazy-lame-weary] men,' I took this to be yet another sign of cultural collapse I could safely ignore unless and until the _ I yet hope never - ultimate final totaJ demise of Rawa culture. The vague response to my request for clarification simply referred to the context in wltich the utterance

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had been made: 'Look how we are,' they said, 'We don't make lots of things or activity.' There may have been in this explanation an implicit comparison with the agency of the ancestors, but the context was also clearly that of a funeral for a very old man of some prominence whose remembrances were marred by the fact that he had threateningly bragged of having sorcery magic while drinking, and so was considered to have been a 'man nogood' by many who attended the wake - a sentiment which they did not attempt to hide. The funeral took place in a nucleated village that was the product of colonial government edict, missionary influence, and local effort. Becau~e people ~refe~ to stay in their bush houses, the village is often empty except of ~,gS and their shlt all recognized to be sources of disease and death. In add,hon, the villagers recognize that their many trade stores are mostly dilapidated except for a couple which are nonetheless only sporadically stocked. And villagers comment on therr relative lack, in comparison to white people, of development - especially a road and all that would supposedly come with it: a vastly improved material life free of the laborious exertions needed to prepare gardens and carry cargo to the village. By being 'les men,' Rawa villagers apparently lack not only the will t? obtain ~d maintain material wealth, but also the powers they have occasIOnally tned to obtam in so-called 'cargo cult' activities - powers that would enable them to transcend what they assume to be inherent human limitations - limitations whitemen have apparently exceeded. The picture they presented was of men whose languor was directly related to the old man's death by virtue of the fact that they were apparently so lazy that the village was not cleaned properly of health risks. Moreover, in addition to bein.g unable to sanitize their village their laziness also left them unable to cleanse their society of jealousy and sorcery accusations. Rawa speakers are apparently unable or disinclined to envision these sorts of perfection and then pursue their fulfillment. Except for occasional bursts of collective activity which have brought about notable change and development, they often find such visions for themselves unrealistic and futile, and perhaps understand the force and price of attempting to institute and maintain them, as do so many societies 'against the state' (Clastres, 1989). . 'Les' was also a common complaint made by men who preferred to lounge III front of the frre pit rather than go out and perform the laborious work of clearing the forest for new gardens or to get food and firewood during the cold heavy mountain rains that sometimes last for days. Much as the Kalnli, when some Rawa men did travel or work, particnlarly alone, in small numbers, or in relatively unknown territory, they sometimes sang to 'tighten the bones' and achieve some measure of progress - as though they were up against an irresistible force that required this of them (Schieffelin, 1976). Often in Rawa villages there IS actually little work to do and relatively little social interaction, leading many to apathy. One young man indicated to me that 'les' was the reason he elected not to pr~d~ce any coffee parchment from his gardens one season. As a member of the ongmal affluent society,' this man neglected to earn money because he had no compellmg social need to do so (Sahlins, 1972). Another young man told me that he and others

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had learned to speak English in school but didn't care to do so because they were 'les' about it ('tasol mipela les longen'). Even if 'les' or languor is a culturally articulated emotion - one that recognizes the lack or absence of a shared social context that motivates activity - it would be misleading to describe Rawa social life as a continual exercise in futility and languor. On the contrary, Rawa speakers have collectively achieved great feats and are often very active. They have engaged in a great many collective social mo~ements over the years on large and small scales whereby, for example, they actively recruIted native missionaries, who they married to local women, overthrowing their men's house religion and creating nucleated villages in the process. Rawa villagers have also taken up large-scale small-holder coffee production, displacing elaborate ceremonial pig exchange feasts, and they at one hme persuaded the provincial government to build an outstation for which they lab~ri~usly carved an airstrip out of the side of a mountain by hand (which is very rennruscent of some so-called 'cargo cult' movements) in a collective effort whose social momentum ended abruptly after the first missionary plane to land and take off from the airstrip crashed, killing all aboard and sending the movement's participants fleeing into the bush.' Rawa speakers now laughingly relate that they had fled into the bush fearing that they would be held responsible for having caused the disaster through their participation in the building the airstrip.4 Even bridewealth payments, affinal exchange ceremonies, coffee selling, local development projects, and many church activities take the form of small-scale social movements, and when such activities are not taking place men create their own social contexts and can be frequently found passionately gambling in card ganaes. Yet there is always also languor. Rawa social life alternates between great excitement as social contexts accumulate, and boredom when they dissipate. In addition to calling themselves 'les men,' however, Rawa speakers also desc~ibed themselve.s to me as 'men of "sorrow" ("sari")' to highlight what they conSIder to be therr most salient ethnic characteristic. This emotion is best described as a combination of empathetic compassion, grief, and melancholy. Empathetic 'sorrow' is both the 'mood and motivation' of the giving and sharing that defines close kin, and is the subject of a key cultural symbolic expression - a type of song that is employed for love magic, to solicit gifts, and to express grief and loss at funeral wakes. It both celebrates and laments the expenditure of life energy and death that by definition kin give on behalf of one another. Rawa speakers find that this emotion is missing from white urban bourgeois society, which conspicuously lacks giving and where Rawa speakers say everyone 'lives only on money,' 'each one only for him- or her-self.' It is not difficult to see an affinity between the emotional states of 'les' or languor and 'sori,' even though one seems to be a sign of cultural transfonnation and the other is clearly a source of positive oppositional ethnic identity. Both emotions are related to giving, human relation, expenditure, and death. Sori is actually very difficult to translate. Although it is sinrilar to 'sorrow' and is the emotion appropriate to grieving relatives at funeral wakes, it might also be conSIdered 'compassion' because it is what spouses feel for one another as they get

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married, and what kin feel for one another as they share food and things in households. It is the emotion most clearly related to sharing or 'giving,' which also means expenditure and death. In addition to a debilitating expenditure of energy associated with sharing and 'sori,' 'les' is the result of lacking the shared social context which would motivate them to even do that. To say that 'we are men of sorrow' therefore means that Rawa speakers have compassion for and give to one another, which they find lacking among whitemen. To say that 'we are all "les" men' means that, unlike whitemen, Rawa speakers seem to lack the energy or motivation to build or do things outside of the cultural context in which they give to one another. Whereas Western Europeans are apparently oriented to try to achieve future ideals and dreams, which they support with resources taken from the rest of the globe, Rawa speakers are oriented to give more to their kin and thus expend their life energies. Both 'les' and 'sori' have to do with a debilitating lack, one resulting from the expenditure of energies in the domestic household, and the other resulting from the lack of even the context for this expenditure. The intersection between 'sori' and 'Zes' elucidates the undecideable relation between, on the one hand, Western 'development' - the destructive transfonning dependence upon capitalist markets that brings about modern disenchantment, which Sahlins associates with self-contempt and the 'experience of humiliation' and, on the other, local 'develop-man,' - Melanesians' exploitation of capitalist production to enhance their own ceremonial magnanimity and social selves (Sah1ins, 1992). Understanding this relation renders it unnecessary to employ the transitional third term 'humiliation' to interpose between indigenous and Western cultures. This relation also makes it unnecessary to produce prosaic pronouncements about 'continuity and change, 'tradition versus modernity,' or cultures that change according to different principles. Employing cultural contrasts in this way leads one to view colonized cultures as either inevitably succumbing to or valiantly resisting Westernization, as though global history were a very large billiard game. Yet understanding this relation between development and 'developman' requires a venture into the post-Newtonian relative space-time and modernism itself.

Modernist Selves and Romantic Disenchantment

Modernism is often associated with displacement and disenchantment with or alienation from one's own culture. This disenchantment has been found to come from a division within Western culture between what Quinones (1985) calls two 'modernisrns.' One, which can be seen as the course of alienation, is 'predictive' modernism or 'social modernity.' It is connnitted to the prediction and control of events. The other, 'innovative' modernism or 'aesthetic modernism' is committed to innovation and artistic avant-garde or newness. The artistic commitment to innovation entails, among other things, an attempt to find a more authentic culture. It can be seen as related to the romantic reaction to Eulightenment predictive modernism described by Barzun (1961). Another way to describe this divide

'We Are All "Les" Men '; Sorrow and Modernism in Melanesia

109

between two modernisms is in tenns of the distinction between the 'postromantic' and the 'postmodern' or 'hypermodern' (Sass, 1992). The 'postromantic' is 'apparent in modernism's persistent desire for a kind of aesthetic bliss, a lyrical movement that might redeem the disorder and banality of modern life' (Sass, 1992, p.344) .. According to Sass, in the 'postmodern,' however, 'the lingering vestiges of romantiClsm seem to have been banished almost entirely - leading, in effect, to a type ofhypermodernism' (op.cit.). Disenchantment and lyrical romantic illusion, in other words, are two sides of the same modernist coinage. One theme that remains constant in these strains of modernism and romanticism, at least until so-called 'postmodernism,' is the development of the bourgeois modern subject as the centered Cartesian cogito. That great ethnographer of the Enlightemnent Immanuel Kant discovered that modern Western metaphysical thinking requires a transcendental ego. This ego entails a Western habit of mind which, as Farella shows in his Navajo ethnography, prefers It~ own dreams and illusions to the discomfort, uncertainty, and pain that, along WIth other experiences, give life its most powerful and compelling meaning. The moder~18t ego therefore undermines meaning by imposing it, finding it everywhere, prodUCIng, In Farella's words, 'the reduction of dissonance through the removal of uncertainty: the elimination of meaning through the creation of knowledge' (1993, p.9). In NavajO thinking, this imposition requires of Westerners a lack of wisdom and arrogant belief in 'their own power to influence and to make a difference' (Farella, 1993, p.30) as well as, I must add, enough of the world's resources to sustain and impose their bourgeois illusions, which also requires force and violence. One can suppose, from a postromantic perspective, that the modem era ~shered in a set of separations - between nature and culture, subject and object, Immanence versus transcendence, and so forth - that are so artificial we have actually never been modern, as Latour, with his curiously inverted application of Hegelian dialectics to a Rousseauian view of history, suggests (Latour, 1993). However ~ne can also suppose that the human psyche, with its symbolic linguistic ~apaclty, 18 fundament~lly split - severed from any possible primordial or ImagIned unahenated umty - and that the willed illusions of the Western bourgeois metaphYSICal ego endeavor to exceed and mask this schism. Many psychologists at least SInce Freud have postulated a fundamental schism in the Cartesian cogito although, not surprisingly, Freud and his followers and most modern therapists stress instead the integrated ego and positive self, and so-called 'schizoid' personalities are pathologized (Grosz, 1990; Lacan, 1977; Lang, 1960; 1967). Yet suc~ personalities present such positive traits as great sensitivity to the en~lron~ent, unusual inventiveness, relative lack of ego, and paucity of willed acMn Without external prompting.' It is precisely such external contexts which have ~otivated Rawa speakers to undertake and succeed in bringing development to ~elf enVlronment, however it is the relative lack of Western cogitos or egos which, when such contexts are lacking, make Rawa people express 'les' or languor. The danger in pointing out these parallels is, of course, 'pathologizing' other cultures. The answer to this objection is that we need to tmly question and pathologize

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

what we consider to be 'nonnal' states of human subjects and to nonnalize what we otherwise consider to be 'pathological.' Otherwise we promote Western ego-centered cogitos at the expense of characters that comprehend pathos. Rawa speaking people comprehend pathos. Their existence is firmly rooted in family households whkh are predicated on marriage exchange, debt, and obligation, and whose contmued survival IS understood by them to be based on the giving of life energies and thus the sacrifices and deaths of their members. From this experiential position, Europeans fulfilling their fantasies and dreams can be seen as a form of madness, which accounts for much of their destruction of non-Western peoples and enviromnents that has taken place in the last several centuries and continues unabated. Melanesians may appear 'lazy' by contrast because they are not so compelled, but this does not make them abnormal. Instead it makes them more existentially grounded. From the Datibi curse of Souw (Wagner, 1967), the Foi 'empty place' (Weiner, 1991), and the Kaluli celebration of sorrow and loneliness (Schieffelin, 1976), to Hagen 'contingency' (Strathern and Stewart, 1999), Telefol 'meaninglessness' and 'entropy' (Jorgensen, 1980; Jorgensen, 1985), Chambri ideas of ontological debt (Errington and Gewertz, 1987), the Arapesh' cassowary's revenge, which led men to overthrow therr own house tambaran (ruzin, 1997), Sabarl Islanders' depiction of 'present absence' (Battaglia, 1990), and Rawa 'Ies' and 'sori,' Melanesians appear to me to be more like existentialists who articulate paradoxes and institute conditions of being than like metaphysicists who delineate ideal principles, categories, and forms. . These existential conditions may be seen as 'double binds' whereby, as WIth Rawa speakers, for example, one has the obligation to give more than can be given to pay one's ontological debts - where there is never enough wealth to substantiate all of one's social relationships nor symbolic objects powerful enough to return one's existence, and the ouly way to pay these debts is through the complete expenditJtre of one's life energy, that is, through one's own death and expenditJtre. When Melanesians change themselves and modernize, the most powerful and momentous meaning of life and death remains in the existential conditions of

human relationship instituted in the geography of village and place. Having recently established nucleated villages, Rawa people are far from urbanized and in fact oppose their ethos to that which they find in town when they claim 'we are men of sorrow.' One might say that as part of the modem world they have taken the part of the critical modernist avant-garde rather than the urban bourgeoisie which embraced the promise of modernity. However unlike modernist artists Rawa people have grounded themselves in their local village Christian churches and kin networks. After consolidating village communities around Lutheran churches out of dispersed hamlets and men's houses following a period of warfare Rawa speaking groups have achieved something of a stead state. Although they co~tinue to innovate, they largely do so within the parameters of this relatively new established context. And it is precisely this already established context, wherein compassion and 'sorrow' are yet the norm, that Rawa speakers feel 'les' or languor. So '/es' and 'sori - the emotional states which provide negative and positive self-understandings respectively, are thus mutually interdependent and imply one another.

111

All this suggests that the 'man' in 'develop-man' does not perhaps represent such a 'happy' misunderstanding after all - that a certain type of alienation is always ~lready present in human langnage and consciousness. Rather than contrast modermst dlsen~hantment with the s~cial relatedness of Pacific peoples, then, I woul~ counterpo:se t~e ?OurgeOls IllUSIOns of non-alienated states to the conditions

of eXIstence whIch mdlgenous tribal people such as Rawa speakers institute as presumed mesc~pable aspects of human being. Where Sahlins sees local Pacific peoples employmg new-found foreign wealth to obtain their own ends of human related~ess as ~ fOIl t? modernist. disenchantment, as least until inflation entirely undenmnes therr pohtlcal hIerarchIes, I see this process as simply the amplification of the human condItion Rawa speakers already recognize. Sahlins would therefore :haps co;mt as a 'postrom,'mtic' ~odernist, while I would have to count myself ong the hypermodennsts - havmg banished, or at least attempted to banish all

v~tlges of the romantic illusion. However this does not necessarily lead to

dIsenchantment or forlorn abandomnent of all hope and all things good and true. In fact, on the contrary, it can be seen as quite realistic - even quite funny,

Conclnsion It isak:fair to say that far from expressing a sense of cultural hurniliatl'on, wh en Rawa th'

spe ers say at We are men of sorrow' they are expressing the existential gravity of human relatedness rooted in village aud place and separating them from modem urban contexts. When Rawa speakers describe themselves as 'all "lazy" M ,. t d of ' If c: en, lUS ea . expressm~ a se -transJ.orming sense of humility, they are connnunicating two things. One IS that they do not have the centered Western Cartesian cogitos or transcendental egos .that can provide their own contexts, which drive whitemen to obses~1Vely-compuls1Vely enact and impose their imaginary visions on the world. The other IS thatWestern c~lture, with its alienating class and colonial apartheid systems, fatls to prOVIde a meanmgful social context for action, which is why even those Rawa speakers who supposedly know English are 'les' to speak it. In a Western stratified SOCIal system, what ffilght be described as socio-centric selves are 'les.' Western culture undermines shared contexts through the process of rrnderdevelopment whereby it incorporates and yet excludes indigenous Rawa f"o~k It thus adds to local existential double binds of ontological debt by nstltuting the working assumption that Melanesians must become what they are ne."ertheless not yet capable of becoming, leaving Rawa speakers to provide raw dried coffee parchment in the global economy. As they become dependent upon markets and as mcreasmg flows of capital inflate the Rawa economy, two things happen concurrently: 1) Rawa speakers rrndergo develop-man, exploiting Western wealth to enhanc,e ~elr soclOc.entric selves - especially during coffee season, when Rawa acts of, gl~mg, exceSSive magnanimity, and sari increase; and 2) Rawa speakers feel les and languor about the simultaneous diminution of more new soctal ~ontexts after the initial phases of development and as a result of colonial

apartheId.

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

It is therefore not necessary to suppose that colonial history takes place as two

systems collide, but only that Western devel?pment magnifies the. existential conditions institnted in indigenous cultures Wlth Its IllusIons of bemg able to overcome them. Insofar as there is a collision, is it a collision ofWe~tern ~ourg.e01s fantasies with reality, which includes Rawa speakers and therr eXIstentIally grounded understanding of human being. There should really be no worry about Rawa speakers becoming Westernized because unlike so many mdlgenous people they have not had their land taken away, been physIcally overwhelmed by maSSIve incursions of Western people in their midst, or been subject to ethnoclde or genocide. Not only it is unlikely that they will become wealthy enough to sustam 6 the same sorts of bourgeois illusions as do Westerners, it also seems clear that Melanesians are generally loath to forget the existential ties that bind them to village and place. As Western development and indigenous people change the shape ?f economies and institutions, it is perhaps comforting to know that there are ~tdl people who find what Heidegger once called 'that same old dreary technologIcal frenzy' to be wearisome and inspiring of laziness, not to mentIOn a capacIty notably lacking in Heidegger's prose - lively humor. And what Rawa speake~s enjoy laughing about is not so much the foolish ignora~ce of therr ancestor~ as It IS Western technology's amplification of the human predIcaments that they find both onerous and absurdly laughable.

1 2

Taussig (1980) and Hurston (1990a; 1990b) both explore. ha:" missionaries and preachers lend credence to pagan beliefs through theIr own beliefs m Satan. Such punitive expeditions into Rawa speaking areas on the north coast are documented

by Firth (1982). 3

4

5

finds this paradox to be governed by a 'hyperreflexive attitude or condition' - an overwhelming awareness of one's own active creative role in perception (1992, p.326). Though Sass supposes that this excessively aware and reflexive consciousness is a prod~c~ of modernist alienation, it is just as easy and empirically justifiable to suppose that IS the normal human existential condition of awareness which the safety and securIty of bourgeois metaphysical illusions and the Cartesian cogito sublimate. So-called 'schizoid' characteristics are reminiscent of Melanesian cultures. Kraepelin (1971, p.3), who coined the term 'dementia praecox' for what is now called 'schizophrenia' and identified its syndrome in 1896, defined the first trait of schizophrenia as 'a peculiar destruction of the inner cohesiveness of the psychic pe~sona~ty' or what Sass describes as 'certain mutations of seIfhood - of the ego's umty, dIscreteness, or continuity over time,' which correlates with Leenhardt's finding that the Melanesian social personnage is participatory communal 'plentitude' (Leenhardt, 1979; Sass, 1992, pp.13-15; Lang, 1967). Along with ego loss, however, comes 'damage to the ... will' (Kraepelin op.cit.) and to 'the sense of volitional control,' and 'goal-directedness' (Sass, 1992, pp.14-18), or what Frith describes as 'impairment in willed action ... difficulty in producing spontaneous behavior in the absence of external cues' (Frith, 1992, p.113). One common complaint of the relatives of schizophrenics regards their 'laziness,' which is how Rawa speakers described themselves (Jenkins, 1991). Yet Storr finds that the fundamental schism between int~rn~ and external experience is central to creativity, which is most pronounced in SChIZOId personalities with their basic distrust of convention - a quality Wagner finds in Melanesian cultures as wen (Storr, 1972; Wagner, 1981). It could be that many ~elanesians, in being without Western egos, simply do not have the same sort of goal dlfectedness that seems 'normal' to Western bourgeois Europeans, who commonly speak of pursuing and fulfilling their dreams as a goal or reality in their lives. As I and, I believe, Rawa speakers understand it, having enough wealth to sustain bourgeois illusions requires that someone else is deprived of it.

1:

6

Notes

113

.

.

Morren (1981) tells of a 'cargo cult' that succeeded when a group of Miyanrmn bm.lt an airstrip without external support or prompting to bring Western econorruc development, which it did once a government patrol ?~cer ~iscovered it and deemed it quite serviceable, after which it was employed by IlllSSIonanes and government.. The plane apparently crashed because of mechanical failure, not due to any flaw In the airstrip. It is hard not to suppose that Rawa speakers were thinking in terms of sympathetic magic when they fled the scene, which might be wh~t they now laugh .at. But they also knew from experience how harsh government repnsals could be, which certainly would have inspired them to flee. In this case they could ha:e. supposed that they were more the victims of circumstance, and moreover the VICtims of a new circumstance afforded by Western technology and its fallibility, and Europeans' anxieties about and violent reactions to such failures. Such personalities present, to Western psychologists, perplexing.paradox~s of ego l~ss, lack of affect, and 'impairment in willed action ." [or] difficulty tu producmg spontaneous behavior in the absence of external cues,' on. the one hand,. an~, on the other, great ego expansion (supposing one makes the sun nse, can make It ram,. ~e planes crash, or unduly magically influence others), hyperawareness and se~SItIVlty, and unusual creativity (Frith, 1992, p.113). In his book Madness and ModernIsm, Sass

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Jenkins, Janis Hunter (1991), 'Anthropology, Expressed Emotion, and Schizophrenia', Ethos Vol. 19, pp. 387-431. . ' Jorgensen, , Da (1980) n , 'What's in a Name". The Meaning of Meanmglessness 1ll Telefolrnin,' Ethos, Vol. 8, pp. 349-366. . ,. 1985) 'Femsep's Last Garden: A Telefol Response to Mortahty, m Jorgensen, D an ( , . M' To ward Dorothy A. and David Counts (eds), Agi~g a~d Its Trans!orma!wns: ovrng 0 Death in Pacific Societies, New York, Umverslty Press of Ame:lca, pp. 207-226. a Kraepelin, Emil (1971) [1919], Dementia Praecox and Paraphrema, Trans RM. Bard y, Huntngton NY, Robert E. Krieger. t Lacan, Jacques (1977), Ecrils: A Selection, Alan Sheridan, trans., New York, W. W. Nor on & Company. . Lang, Ronnie D. (1960), The Divided Self, New York, Pengum Books. Lang Ronnie D. (1967) The Politics of Experience, New York, Pantheon Books. . Lato~, Bruno (1993), We Have Never Been Modern, Catherine Porter, trans. Cambndge, Harvard University Press. . . Leenhardt, Maurice (1979), Do Kamo: Person and My~h in the Melaneszan World, BasIa M·ller Gulati trans. Chicago, The University of ChIcago Press. Morre:, George ('1981): 'A Small Footnote. to t?e "Big .Walk": Environment and change 52: pp. 39-65. among the Miyanmin ofPapua New GUInea, Oceanza, Quinones, Ricardo J. (1985), Mapping Literary Modernism: Tlme and Development, Princeton, Princeton University Press. . . .. Sahlins, Marshall (1972), Stone Age Economics, Chlcago, Aldme publishmg,Company. 21 SahHns, Marshall (1992), 'The Economics of Develop-Man 1ll the PacIfic, Res, Vol. ,

'1°1.

pp. 12-25. . h L' h .F M d m Art 0 e , · A (1992) , Madness and Modernism: Insanity . • m t e Ig t OJ Sass, L OUlS. Literature, and Thought, Cambridge, Harvard Umverslty Press. . Schieffelin, Edward L. (1976), The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burnmg of the Dancers, New York, St. Martin's Press. . Storr Anthony (1972) The Dynamics of Creation, New York, Pengulll Books. . ' Andrew and Pamela J Stewart (1999), 'Objects, Relationships, and Meanlllgs: Strathem, . P N G· ea' in David Historical Switches in Currencies in Mount Hagen, apua ew Uln, .. Akin and Joel Robbins (eds), Money and Mode~nity:. State ~nd Local Currencies In Melanesia, ASAO Monograph Series, No. 17. Umvers~ty .of P.lttsburgh Pres~. Taussig, Michael T. (1980), The Devil and Conunodity Fetlshlsm In South Amenca, Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press. .. . . D' na1d (1997) The Cassowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of MasculInIty In a Tuzm, 0 , . . fChi P New Guinea Society, Chicago, The Umverslty 0 ca~~ ress. .. . Wagner, Roy (1967), The Curse of So~w: ~rinciple~ of Danbl Clan DejinztlOn and Allzance in New Guinea, Chicago, The Umverslty of ChIcago Press. . . Wagner, Roy (1981), The Invention of Culture, 2nd edition, Chicago, The Umverslty of Chicago Press.

.

Weiner, James F. (1991), The Empty Plac~: Poet?" S~ace, and Bemg Papua New Guinea, Bloomington, IndIana Umverslty Press.

A

h ~ . if mong teat 0

Chapter 7

Moral and Practical Frameworks for the Self in Conditions of Social Change Lisette J osephides

The original source of this paper is an interest in techniques of the self. How do people everywhere forge a self in their everyday interactions, and what may be inferred about perceptions of what is human from these strategies and motivations? To take the argument further, what may such perceptions uncover about an underlying moral framework? Should such a framework be indicated, what implications would it have for theorizations of the psychological aspects of the modernization process in postcolonial situations? Marshall Sahlins' humiliation hypothesis provided the concrete impetus for my investigation. Refening to the modernization process in post-colonial polities, Sah1ins wrote that in order to modernize, 'people must first learn to hate what they already have,' they must experience a 'certain humiliation' and a 'global inferiority complex' (SaWins, 1992). His argument turned on unstated premises about the nature of modernity, change, and techniques of the self. I start by unpacking these concepts.

Modernity, Change, and Techniqnes of the Self I turn to another paper by Sahlins for a discussion of change. In his 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of "The World System'" (1994a; first appeared 1988), Sah1ins argued against the Wolf hypothesis, according to which 'economy is destiny' (my words), a relentless fate that makes all peripheral or colonized peoples into mere agents of global capitalism. Sahlins, by contrast, in his desire to go beyond a model that reduces the relationship to one of 'force' on the one side and 'fate' on the other, maintained that all societies, whether industrialized, colononized or peripheral, routinely construct their own existence in relation to external conditions. In other words, the need to confront external forces did not arise only with capitalist incursions. Moreover, when colonized or peripheral societies are drawn into capitalist relations, they 'reciprocally [shape1the "impact" of capitalism, and thereby the course of world history' (Sahlins, 1994a, p.414). Sahlins argues that in their early relations with capitalist powers, China, Hawaii, and the Kwakiutl (his three case studies) remained in control of their own development and transformations.

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These assertions suggest the possibility of a different process of modernization from the humiliation hypothesis. They also lead to a different understandI~g ~f what is modernity itself. The humiliation hypothesis assumes that modernIty IS wholly a western notion and substantive condition, which pr~m~derns can achieve only to the extent that they abaudon practices that re~roduce mdlgenous cultme.In yet another paper, 'Goodbye to Tristes Tropes, repnnted 10 1994, Sahlins develops the notion of 'develop-mau' to describe development from the perspective of the people concerned. He found his inspiration in a passage fro~ my book about the Kewa people of the Southern Highlauds of Papua New Gmne~, well-known for their male egalitarianism, gender antagonism, and large-scale pIg feasts in which big men gain status, influence and prestige (Josephides, 1985). 'You know what we mean by development?, says a leader of the ~e~a pe?ple to t~e ethnographer. 'We mean building up the lineage, the men's house, kilhng pigs. That s

what we have done.' (Sahlins, 1994b, p.388) The Kewa big man in this case was consciously using the word 'development' metaphorically aud rhetorically. He was quite aware that there v.:as auother modem process with which he was contrasting tradItional actlVlhes. Sahlins appears to tr~at the big man's statement as if it had been eIther dl~mgenuous: .or an lm~liclt argument for the perceived irreconcilability of modermst and tradItIOnal prachces. He may be excused for doing so, as my ongmal acc?un~ dId nO.t record Its nuances. What I waut to suggest for the notion of modermty IS that It does have a nonrhetorical local use to denote practices beyond traditional ones, which does not suggest cultural abnegation or induce a global inferiority complex m mdlgeno~s people. On the contrary, it can open up new honzons for developmg the self. This is not to say that old practices are not often laughed at or recalled With embarrassment by local people, but wry self-deprecation is an old Kewa trait. Concerning the notion of the self, two contrasting accounts may be dra~ from Sahlins. In two of the chapters (1994a aud 1994b) he descnbes non-capitalist societies entering into political and economic relations with western ~0v.:ers, yet retaining their ability to act as agents and maintaining cultural conhnmty over transformational gaps. In the third article, by contrast, he draws a bleak pIcture of pre-moderns who must barter themselves at the altar of capitalism before they can enter its inner sanctum (1992). A modem self, according to this account, can only be exchanged for a previous self, rather than be added t~ it. Yet such wholesale barterings, though powerfully present in the hum~ Imagmahon, as eVidenced m Faustian legends, are not, I think, courmon ill the history of human psychology.

The Modern Self My next task is therefore to turn to a discussion of the sort of self that must be created for the journey into modernity. I begin with an acco';"'t ~fthe Western self, especially as described by the philosopher Charles Taylor m his book Sources of

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The Self: the Making of the modern Identity, and then consider in that light the Kewa self as exhibited in the practices of contemporary Kewa persons. Having said that, I will let Foucanlt have the first word, if only because Taylor gives him such short shrift. Foucault is concerned precisely with models of selftransformation. For this exercise, one must first be made into a subject. Accordingly, in telling the story of what happened in Europe around the time of the Enlightenment he labels 'forms of moral subjectivation' those models proposed 'for the trausformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object' (Taylor, 1989, p.29). Forms of sUbjectivation include self-reflection, selfknowledge and self-examination. Similarly, in Taylor's account the modem self encompasses two kinds of reflexivity, 'forms of self-exploration' and 'forms of self control.' There are historical reasons for the development of this kind of self. Taylor traces this historical trajectory, in order to show how the self's character and disposition are molded by their embeddedness in practice. He takes us on a journey, beginning from the moral topography of the classical Greek heroic age, through the turmoils of the Refonnation and the cosmic tremors of the Enlightenment, to leave us strauded in the distinctly unheroic age of the triumph of the 'affinnation of ordinary life.' We owe that secularized anthropocentrism to Bacon's scientific revolution: the aim of relieving the condition of man affirmed as a supreme value that replaces 'higher' activities, such as the pursuit of honor and the sacred (1989, p.213). The expressivist turn is next, precipitating the fall into the emotivism that Taylor deplores so passionately. Taylor's aim in undertaking this historical trajectory was to show the embeddedness of morality in the actual world, and its expression in the everyday practices of that world. He contrasts two existential predicaments to elucidate this relationship of embeddedness: the fear of condemnation experienced by Martin Luther in sixteenth century Germany, and modern fears of meaninglessness and ego loss (Taylor, 1989, pp.18-19). For Luther, who spoke of reason (understood as the individual's ability to make judgments) as 'that whore' aud denounced any tendency 'to make reason the guarautor of the good as a fall into idolatry' (Taylor, 1989, p.116), it was never a question of whether a 'larger order' outside oneself and one's understandings and perceptions (as represented by 'reason') existed, only that he, Luther, may be too misguided to see its fulllinearnents aud decipher its meauing. The modem self, by contrast, lives in a moral world disenchanted by scientific advaucement and the political and social liberties of pluralism and possessive individualism. Its practices aud the way its world is organized no longer affirm the cosmos as a meaningful or detenninistic order for humans. Not feeling bound either by nature or by external authority, the modern self must itself create the conditions of being under authority, aud discover within itself those 'paradigm purposes' formerly given in teleological arguments (Taylor, 1989, p.193). A by-product of this 'displacement of moral sources' (ibid., p.186) (from the outside to the inside) is the confining of the psychological to minds, whereas previously it denoted a relationship between the self and the cosmos, the internal and the external. If humaus have no endaim, their paradigm purposes become constructed psychologically (in the new sense)

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and emotionally. Whereas previously passions were considered moral responses to goodness and badness because they were guided by prudence (phronesis), sentiments are now in themselves the 'touchstone of the morally good' (ibid., p.284). We trust our feelings. This emotivism misleads us modems into believing that there is no ontology for the humans, no shared, underlying sense of what is the status of a human being. Taylor's project is precisely to bring to the fore that denied or hidden ontology. It is io that universally shared underlyiog sense of what is the status of a human bemg, he believes, that our almost instinctive moral reactions are rooted. These reactions ~e traced to three axes: a sense of respect for and obligation to others, an understanding of what makes a full life, and diguity, or 'our sense of ourselves as commanding attitudioal respect' (ibid., p.15). We could not have iovented these moral reactions, Taylor argues, because they encompass qualitative distioctions that are iodependent of our own desire and inclinations. For anthropologists, this represents an argument agaiost cultural relativism io questions of morality. (Qualitative distioctions are the distinctions we make when we pronounce something to be better, higher, purer, fuller _ not just more desirable - than something else. These evaluations represent standards [ibid., pp.19-20]). As the modem self becomes disengaged from the world io the sense described above (of not seeing the world as a detenninistic order), 'will' replaces 'grace', and an ethic develops which prizes 'rational mastery and control.' Because the loss of horizons requires a reflexive stance, modems develop a sense of inwardness, freedom, and iodividuality, and order becomes accessible only 'through personal, hence "subjective," resonance' (Taylor, 1989, p.51O). Language acqnires new salience, as the self comes to be seen as 'constituted through exchange in language' (ibid., p.509). The interstitial position of language, being at the same time the tool for portraying an independent reality and the mode of our self-expression, allows us to grasp that order which is 'inseparably iodexed to a personal vision'. (ibid., p.51O). This is Taylor's phenomenology. Moral sources are to be found outSIde the subject, but only through languages which resonate withio him or her (ibid.).

Coming to Conscionsness of the Self Taylor gives us the historical self, and the sources and content of specific selves, but not the evelyday techniques of self--construction. For that we have to turn to the SOCIal psychologist George Herbett Mead, writiog (or rather teaching - his students published his lectures posthumously) io the late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Mead described the self as a social structure, constituted through ioteractions with the particular attitudes of other individuals, and through responses to social attitudes personified as the 'generalized other.' The self's self-construction is based on a self-consciousness, which I understand as objectification, or externalization. A brief consideration of the two aspects of the self, the '1' and the 'me', elucidates this crucial point. The 'I' is my response to the attitudes of others; the 'me' is the attitude of others towards me in response to my attitude towards them, which I have

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internalized as pat! of my self (cf. Bourdieu's (1977) notion of the habitus). As the acllve self, the 'I' always goes beyond the constraiots of the 'me.' This accounts for the. se~se of free~om that accompanies our actions. Despite this freedom, my own ~ctt?n IS always different from what I anticipated, for two reasons. First, because the me acts a~ ~ censor, constant.ly modifying the intention of the'!', and second, because the I must always aWaIt for the completion of its actions in the response of others (cf. Foucault: We know what we do, but we don't know what what we do does). The objectification of the self and the censoring of the excessive 'I' which seeks self-expression and initiative, but is also the pat! of the self that tak responsibility for the self, are elaborated in Mead's discussion of the essential of language as a process and a system of communication. He observes that while we speak to others, our listening self acts as a censor that may check us in midsentence, affected by our talk as an addressee. Thus we act both as subject and object of our speaking. lf our relationship to others is bnilt on this process of externalIzatIOn, m WhIch the self is experienced indirectly, then it follows that the refle~tion by ~hich we know our own self involves self-externalization rather than se~-mtrospectlOn. In order to become self-conscious, individuals must become objects to the~elves. A further corollary is that the process of knowing others is not essenllally dIfferent from that of knowing one's self. It is cle~ that Mead's work elaborates how the self is constructed, not how an essenllal self IS defined by atttibutes. Do selves constructed in cultures and contexts dlffenng from the one in which Mead was placed follow the same process?

ro~:

Kewa Self Constructions 'Elicitiog strategies' ar~ the ways in which Kewa people construct their selves by testmg theIr understandmg of the 'generalized other' (social attitudes) against the pat!lCular atlltud~s of other ~ndividuals, while pushing their own agency (the'!') to ItS hunts. They externalIZe themselves by taking a stand which they want to be unde~stood as expressing the view of the generalized other, where 'generalized other refers ,to a cultural convention or a social attitude. Thus 'eliciting stt'ategies' ar~ ?oth c1~I~S ~o re.rresent a shared cultural view and the actions of an agent Within speCIfIc histoncal, cultural and political contexts. Mead says we listen to ourselves speak and judge our speaking as an 'other.' I would add that 'eliciti . dgment of an other, forciog the other to respond and acknowledge the ng ICltS jU t alk' er' appr~pnate.ness or ~therwlse of one's behavior. Political context and power relattons WIll detelmme a particular eliciting strategy's success as a representation of the 'generalized other' (claimed shared culture). But even if its lack of success modifies the claIms of that agent, it also modifies the generalized other: it has made a difference, by pushmg agents (or actors) into positions somewhat different from theIr prevIOUS ones. This f?rcefulness of eliciting behavior makes it necessary to modify Mead's understandmg of meamng as a pre-existing system of universally significant

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symbols. Kewa practice, by contrast, is a constant labor to achieve agreement about meanings and the significance of symbols. The symbols appealed to must of course be found in the other's expedence, but the contextual meaning of a symbol is left to forceful elicitation. In the following episode, an understanding of the symbolic meaning of a spouse's desertion of the marital home needs negotiation. Did she go because she was tired of her husband, or because she felt neglected and wanted to be coaxed back with gifts? Rarapalu returned to her natal village after a series of episodes of perceived neglect, culminating in a slight when her husband failed to give her the pork she expected to receive at the pig kill. She returned when she heard her husband was taking another wife. In the village court she argued that she had not left her husband, but (assuming the part of the generalized other) on the contrary she had behaved as a wife traditionally does when she intends to compel her husband to show her the regard which is her due. Though she was fighting for a personal appreciation of herself as a wife, she was also claiming that this strategy was cultural practice. Her husband stuck to a different argument, that a married woman should not leave her husband, under any circumstances. The view of the generalized other fluctuated between those two claims. Although a decision had to be made favoring one or the other, the possibility of this kind of contestatIOn had become part of everyone's consciousness.

Modernizing the Self The point of this discussion was to show how Kewa construct the self by a process of elicitation, following techniques that seem no different from those described by Mead for Western selves. Kewa social interactionist practices do indeed appear to construct selves by means of externalization and objectification in a relationship with a generalized other; In conditions of social change, I argue next, this mode of selfconstruction continues, but the external orientation of the self s activities change. This reorientation inevitably entails change in identity as practically experienced, and includes an experience of emotional dislocation. The shift is not achieved within a single generation, but accomplished over several, thus allowing us to observe the relations of connection and disconnection between succeeding generations, as each gains a distance from the previous one but also carries forward an inherited memory. This'gradualist' perspective has the advantage of discouraging the tendency to view modernity as an alien incursion suddenly confronting an unsuspecting pre-modem person. I examine the transition through three generations, represented by Wapa, who died in 1980, his son Rimbu, and Mamasi, Rimbu's daughter. Wapa was an old warrior who spoke no Tok Pisin and no English. His moral orientation arose from the warrior ethic, which he presented as molding his personality in ways he could not help and could not control - a view of the self diametrically opposed to the controlled, inward, reflexive modern self that Taylor describes. On one occasion Wapa had threatened his daughter in law by pacing menacingly np and down the village brandishing his spears. He claimed he had

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been provoked by her habit of going off to the garden and leaving her baby in his care. The Village magistrate told him that the new court system would not tolerate this threatening behavior, and he must desist from it. Wapa responded: I may ~ay anything now, even agree not to do this again. But you know my anger flares up easIly, and when my blood is up I will forget these words and behave like this again. I can't help it.

This was not spoken with pride or self-satisfaction, simply as a statement of mcontroverhble fact. He conld not be responsible for the way his life and practices had molded him. But Wapa was aware that new practices were making these old ones redundant. The very fact that he had to account for himself injected a reflexivity in his self-app:eclatlon, even as he denied his ability to control the dispositions that were 11llbued m him as a warrior. (In another instance, a disputing wife, warned by a village court magistrate about the legal implications of certain behaviors, responded: 'In Samb~r;gJ [her village] we don't have the badge yet.' She was externalizing a dlsposltiO~ as bemg caused by, or being embedded in, parricular social, political and legal relatIOns. The badge was the office of village magistrate, representing the institution of village courts.) For Wapa, the practices to which his children were becoming reoriented had come too late, though he did get himself baptized and renamed Charles just before his death. The next generation, Rimbu's, was brought up in full awareness of another world intenneshing with theirs in inextricable and irreversible ways. The different stance of old and young men to the violent event of first contact was telling in this respect. While old men recounted in a matter-of-fact and non-judgJllental way events that had devastated them at the time, their sons injected anger into the debate. They did not expenence shame or humiliation, except to the extent that anger compressed elements of humiliation in the memory of a shameful event. The differing perspectives of young and old mapped out an emotional shift. The shift was also visible physically: the younger men no longer moved in the birdlike and nimble way of their warrior fathers. In one rueful account of early contact, a young man recounted how his father had lost his mother when she was flown to a different province following a difficult labor. He eventually tracked her down, only to be shown her grave by two uncaring hospital orderlies, who chastised him, into the bargain, for his late appearance. He conld not even sununon up the courage to enquire about the fate of the child. Though this is a story about humiliation, it is told with empathy for the husband and contempt for the orderlies, who treated him with so little respect. Moreover, the shortcomings that delayed the husband and resulted in mishaps had nothing to do with traditional practices and everything to do with introduced, western ones: he had been drinking beer and playing cards. Rimbu, Wapa's son, clearly displays the traits of self-exploration and self-control that make up the two kinds of 'radical reflexivity' which for Taylor define the modem sel[ Rimbu would never say, like his father did, that he cannot help his actions. He adVises me, the ethnographer, on exactly how to deal with a situation in which

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another local man is nursing an injured pride, resulting from my closer association with Rimbu than with him. The response Rimbu wants me to make to the man contains a text that completely effaces himself and stresses the other man's relationship to me. Other incidents are more revealing of the sort of self Rimbu has developed. At the national elections he had already pledged the support of his constituency to one candidate when another attempted to seduce him with money bribes. Rimbu told him that if he changed horses midstream he would never be taken seriously. On yet another occasion, Rimbu became the broker between the village and the police, directly bringing about the arrest of a confidence trickster who threatened to clean the village out and visit the wrath of the police force on it. The extent to which pre-modem Kewa selves practice self-control or reflexivity may need more debate, but Rimbu, at this point in time, certainly displays those qualities. Self-exploration is evident in the way he extends himself out into new areas, and self-reflection accompanies all his actions, enabling hlm to pre-empt even unformulated questions. Rimbu is creating a new moral framework, which stretches conceptually beyond Kewa cultural imperatives, and spatially beyond local politics, to join a wider community. The last link in the chain is Mamasi, Rimbu's daughter. Mamasi and her young female friends display a consuming interest in other lifestyles and the world beyond the village (see Josephides, 1999). In their interactions they reconceptualise male/female relations by innovations on stock responses that reproduced traditional roles. Mamasi extends herself outwards in her detennination to receive some education as a passport to a life that will be different from her mother's, though without necessarily leaving the village behind. To the extent that her schooling takes her away from the village and subsistence pursuits, the village's everyday practices become alien to her, and her posture is not marked by them. Mamasi has always worn 'European' clothes, sometimes even shoes, known writing and books, traveled in motor vehicles, eaten rice, been aware of airplanes, other cultures, other lands. Mamasi channeled her desires, as she is sensible and moderate and aware that achievement follows application and hard work. She had an independently worked-out strategy for which she did not find exemplars. (See Humphrey, 1997. Exemplars do not go with the tentative nature of Kewa elicitation. Elsewhere in PNG exemplars may be used, as when rascal gangs call themselves Mafia, KKK, etc.). To get ahead, Mamasi must to a large extent construct her own moral and practical framework of the self. In this activity, testing the limits of oneself by means of a stretching, to see how much of the outside one can encompass, is a fonn of self-exploration, self-control, and personal commitment, which replaces external moral sources. To sum up, changes in Kewa identity are historical but also self-directed, and not to be seen merely as the result of damage, deformation, and humiliation (though I was not able to touch on literature that in different degrees may treat them as such, for instance the work of Fanon and Mudimbe). Though not in those precise words, Kewa do ask themselves 'What kind of life is worth living?' (Taylor, 1989, p.42). People studied by anthropologists are often denied this kind

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of reflexivity. One argument goes like this: Persons of non-western societies in general experience shame rather than guilt, 'since shame arises out of a tension between the ego and the ego ideal, whereas guilt arises out of a tension between the ego and the super-ego' (Jacobson-Widding, 1998, p.70). The suggestion is that non-western selves do not have a super-ego, understood as that part of the mind that acts as a self-critical conscience. In other words, they are not self-reflexive. I have argued, following Mead, that self-reflexivity is part of the techniques of the se!f. w.hlch ev~ry,:here proceed on similar lines, consisting in interaction, ehCltatIOn, and takmg the part of the other' in the constrnction of oneself. . Nevertheless, emotional and psychological maps, not only cultural and pohtlCal ones, have been changing among the Kewa, with some emotions and psychological states being rendered obsolete and others taking their place. The aggress~veness of the warrior, ruled by passions and expressed in idiosyncratic mannensms a~d ~orm~ of s~eech, as well as the oratory of the big man steeped in metap~or and mdlrection, .glve way to styles better suited to present practices (see Josephides, 2001). There IS a call for efficiency, straightforwardness conciseness as if. time were of the essence. People orient themselves to a larger 'group, which ~eqUITes t~e development of personal strategies. These strategies require more mtrospectlOn, because it is no longer so clear what route to take or on what grounds to legitimate. action. The strategies are more than just pragmatic, they encompass a moral onentation. For Rimbu, the moral dimensions are crucial and explicit, because his ambition is not oriented only towards a life for himself but toward~ the. development. of a community (in which of course he is leader). For Mamasl, bemg a woman m Kewa society means that first and foremost she must reconstitute herself in a way that enables her participation in other fields. Thus, modernizing changes are appropriated piecemeal, and modernity itself is constrncted locally thr?ugh people's experiences, their frustrations, aspirations, extenSIOns, and perceptlOns of what is external.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I argue that people everywhere constrnct the self in similar ways. The mode of that construction stresses the relational and interactional aspects of people .a~ humans. ~n turning to modern practices, individual persons in a modemlZlng communIty such as the Kewa find a channel for personal advantage, for leadmg the ~ommumty into a transforming global world, or for bypassing 'the large~ politICal hfe of a society which offers them no place in its conception of the good (Gledhill, 1997, p.106), or at least in its conception of the powerful, mfluentIal and self-determining. Kewa women are certainly doing this when they pursue ~ducation and oth~r avenues for escaping local restrictions. Modernity in those ClTcumstances provldes opportunities missed in often disempowering local ~onditions .. W;Ule it is trne that for them as well as for many younger men modernIZatIOn conveys the mcurslon of Western fonus, it is inevitable that embracing modernization leads to localization. It may be that what defines each

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modernizing strategy is not whether it is an attempt to localize .modern~t~ or embrace it in an alienating foreign form, but whether it is undertake~ III the spmt of an active, bold self-externalization, or a desperately anxious Sub1111s~lOn. To some extent, any change implies a rejection of at least a part .of a pnor stage, and therefore carries the seeds of humiliation and self-demgral1on, Whether this will develop into a fully-fledged pathology is a function of local condll1ons and the nature of the forces of change,

References

Chapter 8

The Death of Moka in Post-Colonial Mount Hagen, Highlands, Papua New Guinea Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathem

Bourdieu, Pierre (1977), Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, .. 'gh ,. R' h d Wlson (ed ) Gledhill, John (1997), 'From moral economy to mdigenous n ts, m le ar I ., Human Rights, Culture and Context, London, Pluto Press.. .. . of moraltttes m · (1997) , 'Exemplars and rules: aspects of the dIscourse R Humph rey, CaroI me t1 d · , in Signe Howell (ed) Ethnography of Moralities, London, ou e ge. MongoIla, ., I "d" t d morality in Jacobson-Widding, Anita (1997), '''I led, I farted, I sto e ... : Igm y an .. African discourse on personhood,' in Signe Howell (ed.), Ethnography of Morahtzes, London, Routledge. . hides Lisette (1985) The Production of Inequality, London, Tavlstock. . Josep, , d' th t u' Josephides, Lisette (1999), 'Disengagement and estre: e ac cs 0 f everyday hfe', American Ethnologist, Vol. 26(1), pp. 139-159. .' . . h'd Lisette (2001) 'Straight talk, hidden talk, and modermty: Shifts III dIscourse J osep 1 es, . H' hland New Guinea' in Joy Hendry & Bill Watson (eds), The strategy III I g , 8 231 Anthropology of Indirect Communication, London, Ro~t1edge, PP: 21, . 21 Sahlins, Marshall (1992) 'The Economics of Develop-Man m the PaCIfic, Res, Vo1. ,p. l3· M hall (1994a) [1988], 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of Sahl ms, . ks Geoff Eley,.SherI?' B . Ortner (eds) , "The ars World System,'" in Nicholas B. Du Culture/Power/History, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton UmversIty Press, pp. 412-

Sahli!~5'Marshall

(1994b) 'Goodbye to Ttistes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of

M~dern World Histo;y' in Robert Borofsky (ed.), Assessing Cultural Anthropology,

New York, McGraw-Hill, pp. 377-394. . ' Taylor, Charles (1989), Sources of the Self The Making of the Modem Identity, Cambndge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.

Economic situations throughout the Pacific have shifted and altered as Pacific Islanders have conformed to or resiBted the impacts of globalization. Marshall Sahlins (1992 and this volume) has discussed aspects of these transformations in the overall arena of the Pacific. However, the Pacific is large, varied, and not a coherent category for easy analysis. Many of the points of comparison that Sahlins sets up in his paper are of the 'us' versus 'them' sort that impede the application of his argnment in any clear way to the Pacific societies that he wishes the reader and ethnographers to consider. His construct is that of a generic Pacific Islander versus a generic 'Western' capitalist consumer. But in order to analyze the parameters of change within Pacific societies, such as 'development,' we have to look first at the specifics of particular cases, with all their complexities, contradictions, and historical twists. Even the category of 'development' itself is problematic in its use to define, describe, and consider economic and social change in particular Pacific societies. What we as ethnographers can document and analyze is historical change and the accommodations that are made by people to changing circumstances (Friedman and Carrier, 1996; Stewart and Strathern, 2002a; Strathern and Stewart, 2004). In this chapter we examine Sahlins' theoretical propositions about 'development' in the Pacific through an analysis of changing exchange and marriage practices in Highlands Papua New Guinea, and specifically in Mt. Hagen where moka, competitive exchanges, entered into a decline in the 1990s. The earlier cycles of moka exchange were replaced by large, single, unilateral compensation payments for killings (see Strathern and Stewart, 2003), by increased competitive brideprice prestations (Stewart and Strathern, 1998a), and by the intertwiuing of exchanges with parliamentary politics. In the Mt. Hagen area moka, competitive exchanges, were characterized during the 1960s by the practices of increment, chaining, and the alignment of group and individual activities on a regional basis, correlated with the financing activities for moka gifts (Strathem and Stewart, 2000a). Male group leaders in the past were able to lay claim to pre-eminence and individual prowess through their participation in and orchestration of moka exchanges. The moka system involved a

126

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

regional network of interaction in which leading men would amass large numbers

of wealth items (Le., pigs and shells, especially the gold-lip pearl shells brought into the area from the coast along prehistoric trade routes). These items would be given away at the moka celebration in order to establish and maintain relationships which pivoted on obligations and the expectation that subsequent reciprocal gift giving at later moka exchanges would take place, establishing obligations in the inverse direction. The negotiations and preparations for a moka could take months or years. These moka activities contributed to group affairs and prestige as well as fulfIlling the individual's desires for upward mobility in the regional cycle of exchange which impacted on every aspect of life, especially the acqnisition of political power (A. Strathem, 1971; Strathem and Stewart, 2000a). Women were the engine driving the production machine, doing most of the work that supplied the pigs needed for these exchanges. And they were seen to be the mythical source of effective power that caused the successful initiation of cycles of moka. It was a mythical woman who was portrayed as going down on a heroic journey to the Underworld prior to the initiation of the moka festival (Vicedom and Tischner, 1943-8, Vo!. 1 p.120). In this narrative the new wife of a polygynous man enters the domain of a female cannibal spirit who has stolen her husbands' sons, and she brings back the sons she has rescued along with wealth in shells and pigs, which they then use to hold a moka for the first time (Stewart and Strathem, 1997, pp.9-1O). Both men and women were integrally involved in mo/ca exchanges and their lives were profoundly impacted by these occasions and the events leading up to and following them. Moka events were integrated into the cycles of fertility rituals such as the Female Spirit (Amb Kor) cult or Male Spirit (Kor Wop) cult (Strathem and Stewart, 1998a; 1999a; 2001; Stewart and Strathem, 2002b; 2002c). These cult performances would bring together large groups of people and involved sacrifices of considerable numbers of pigs, the distribution of their meat, and its consumption by guests (Strathern and Stewart, 1997a; 1999a). Polygyny was one of the most effective ways for a man to be assured that he could produce enough pigs and raise sufficient wealth to propel himself forward in the moka exchange system. Polygyny also broadened the scope of affmal alliances that a man could enter into and use for his political networking through moka activities. But no man could become and truly excel as a leader in the system unless

he was also an eloquent orator. And the actual occasion of the moka was one of great speech-making by political leaders (Strathern and Stewart, 1999b; 2000a). As we have discussed in detail elsewhere (Strathern and Stewart, 1999b; 2oo0a), the moka system effloresced from the 1930s onward, with initial colonial pacification and an influx of shell valuables brought by the colonial outsiders. Leaders built their reputations out of the possibilities of expanding networks of ties between formerly hostile groups and channeling larger flows of wealth goods into exchanges which they managed and on the basis of which they claimed honor and prestige for themselves and

came from sales of coffee. In this sense therefore 'd

not opposed to 'development' Rath

the latter. The more autono~ous

'th fi

er,

n!:.

'

1

127

'.

ev~ opman.

..

m Sahlins terms was

e onner was m .matenal tenns dependent on

'domesticating' state money and M~~nt :;~geners nnght appear to be by way of so less autonomous) they became as a :e~ul~ t"~ own uses, the n;ore 'dependent' (and Multiple strains and str . 0 err Involvement m the cash economy esses assocmted with thi d . why this particular expan . h s money ependency lay at the heart of Sive p ase came to an end th than ... away from the moka because of a .. . ' ra er any mlrmKtc tuming and Stewart, 1999c; Stewart ands~n::t~!!~!allon or ~hame regarding it (Strathem 02d enables us to see why the cultural elab Il· ' f h ). ThIS bnef analyllcal overview ora ono t emokamH . I a form of resistance to capitali t h d agen was S1ll1U taneously

incorporation into, it. TIlls compl:xi~ :!:t as opposed to 'development.'

:ter

ad ~~ of ac~o.mmod~tion to, and e or ID any VlSlOn of developman'

histo:~~~:o:: :~e~:; not ~t~ti~ and was itself a product of change. It developed

humans that occurred betweeno:ar:.n In, war r~parations - ~a~ents for the killing of

Typically those who had first b g groups m pre-colomal Ilmes before the 1930s. and when' some of their helpers ::d~~ mvol:;~ m a fight called on others to help them, could use the wealth to obt. . wo pay them in pigs and shells, so that they anIa1lWIV~S an . thereby reproduce life as a form of replacement for those killed Th· . IS was c ed carrymg the m ' ( .. was symbolicall e uivalen . an wuo metemen). The wealth given wealth,' wealth ~at\o Id ~ to the lives that were lost because it was 'reproductive extend their relationshipu th e used to reproduce persons. If the two sides decided to , e reCIpients of a reparallon t Id some return for it and the groups involved started to 'makpaym:,~~: agree to make The axis on which moka gifts were built was the W1 each other. out of exchanges of wealth th . mal-maternal one, growing help one of his sister's sons to ::t:~O!t~I:: ;:o=:~!:~ moth.:' s brother might recIpIent of a moka gift Mother' s g mo , or nnght be the the health and welfare ~f their sist~;~p~':u7;re t~ofughftt to have great influence over . ren. gI s were not properly made to them the . h· these t~ ~~~~~: ~~e~~enevolencale and were believed to be able to cause fertili. : ey were so thought to be able to withhold the sense ~OOfg:~:rrg~:~;~:; or.:~ter, preventing her from having children. It made good kin hi d . Y aVOId these undeSIrable consequences. Out of thi span reproducllve morality the politics of . . .. s constructed by ambitious leaders. over-gifting and compellllon was

d

:;'0

cJ{:'::

Nowadays the moka exchan t h elaborate and integrated form itg~:;~:~ :: ~ne;hrough draD1atic alterations. In its s a y unng the 1990s. In a particularly insightful speech made t ka Independence in Papua N:w ~=ea ceremony in 1971 Gust four years prior to predicted the death of moka in hi ) the leader Ongka-K~epa of the Kawelka people 'law' and 'custom.'

s exegeslS on the distmction between what he termed

their supporters. This expansive phase was renewed when state-introduced money was

adopted for use in exchanges, replacing the old shell valuables. But from this time onward the moka itself was made more and more dependent on processes of economic change and development through cash-cropping, since most of the money for exchanges

As to law and custom [in followin 1 ] cars, we build tradest~res we dig fi~hpaowndwe 1ID1atke fences for cattle projects, we buy k .. .' s, a 0 get money. Custom ill akin mo a, sacnficmg pigS, paying bridewealth. These two things are in comp::~o~, the~

128

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia are like a husband and wife, each looks after the other, the law is like the man, and custom is like the woman. Law is for money, if we give it up we will be 'rubbish' in terms of money; if we give up custom we will be 'rubbish' in terms of our own ways. When the older men die, law will take over, people will wear foreign clothes, eat foreign foods, stop making moka, live in strange houses. But till then we will hold onto both of them. I [for example] know the talk of sacrificing pigs, I know all the old ways. Pearl shells, nassa shells, cowries have all been killed by law, we've forgotten them, But pigs and money will remain, in competition with each other. (Strathern and

Stewart, 2000a, p,193) The decline of moka and the proud fonns of symbolic self-decoration aud communal co-operation that went with it has itself produced huge difficulties in mediating inter-group conflicts as well as denying an avenue of social expression and individual attaimuent. Cash-cropping and wealth disparities produce land shortages and widespread resentments, and contradictions between communal land tenure and individual cropping ambitions have become very clear, Social solidarity overall is threatened. In this atmosphere of flux, the fervent turn to the Christiau churches that broke into history in the 1990s has to be seen as a complex search for the recreation of order, the construction of a new or at least revised version of what we call the relational-individual (i.e., the person as a dialectical interplay of relational and individual aspects) through the marking of new baselines for community participation and individual achievement (Strathem and Stewart, 1998b; 2000b; Stewart and Strathem, 2000a; 2000b; Robbins, Stewart, aud Strathem, 2001). Although Ongka's speech of 1971 quoted above does not mention Christianity, many of the speeches of the time do, and the impact of the churches (mostly Catholic and Lutheran at that time) had already profoundly altered economic and religious practices in Ragen (Stewart and Strathern, 2001). By 1989 Ongka was himself baptized into the Catholic church, making a true severing of his ties to 'customary' contexts of ceremonial and political life and recognizing the shift to an altered context of ceremonial and political life within the community. In 1999 he was still talking about the moka and how people owed him debts in it, but the topic was largely a retrospective mental preoccupation rather than a practical prospect for him. Re died in April 2003 without staging another moka event. Sahlins discusses the emotions and states that 'humiliation is an important stage of development' (1992, p.24). We would not deny the importance of 'shame,' a term which ntight be encompassed by the notion of pipi/ in the Melpa language of the Hageners, in structuring economic relationships; but we do not agree, as an empirical matter, that a feeling of disgrace is critical for people to desire the benefits of 'progress,' its material wonders and comforts, or that all indigenous senses of worth, both the people's self-worth and the value of their objects, have to be depreciated in this process. The emotions of shame and pride have, of course, been involved in interpersonal economic transactions in the past and continue to be at work today. The kind of envious self-denigration which is implied in the tenn 'huntiliation' with its connotations of hierarchy and the deliberate crushing of senses of self-worth, need not, however, be involved here, although at times it has

The Death of Moka in Post-Colonial Mount Hagen

129

been .. Rageners tend to speak of their transition from shell valuables to state money In rational terms, sayIng that they saw the limitations on the use of shells in the new colonial context and switched to money instead as a way of expanding their economic opportunities. Emotions of envy and desire were involved but not a loss of their sense of their own 'worth,' For Hageners moka exchange itself was an arena in which the emotions of frnstration (popokl), jealousy (wolik) and shame (Pipi/) were elicited, resolved, and balanced against one another in an institutionalized, if open-ended context. These emotions are deployed nowadays in interactions between people as part of a con~tnuing ethos of competitiveness but dislocated from the organized institutional setting of the moka. Centering on wealth and ineqUalities of wealth, together with the trausfonned desire to convert wealth into durable material assets (cash crops, houses, cars), rather than into the symbolic capital of prestige, patterns of Jeal~usy/envy i~sue in. highly improvised enactments of competition and hostility within commumty settIngs leadmg to unanticipated and sometimes uncontrollable scenarios of shame and anger. Numerous problems of handling violence have also re-emerged (Stewart aud Strathern, 2002e). It is this feeling of disjointedness which has led Rageners increasingly into forms of charismatic Christianity (Stewart and Strathem, eds, 1997; Stewart and Strathern, 1998b; 1998c; 2000b). Although offering to recreate harmony, peace, aud hope, these movements also wield the threat of world's end and disaster to the 'wicked.' And as the charismatic churches have come to the fore the established Catholic and Lutheran churches have either been forced to f~lJow in similar directions to those the newer churches establish or to lose adherents, Charismatic Christi~ty therefore becomes pervasive, but older issues of morality and relations With spmts of the dead remain (Strathern and Stewart, 2002, pp.64-66). . The churches offer the following resolutions to the problems of contemporary hfe In Ragen: they decry the pursnit of individual wealth except insofar as those who possess it give part of it, aud their own allegiance, to the church; they oppose polygyny and the old 'big-man' complex that went with it; they privilege church weddmgs over mamage by brideprices; they forbid alcohol consumption, or excess consumption, pointing out that it leads to violence and crime; they attempt to con~ert 'rascals' who disturb community life; they emphasize prayer, fasting, and healmg rituals as both individual and communal acts and elevate the status of pastors. and preachers to that of the old-style 'big-men'; they argue against cormptIon a~d bribery in politics; and they have begun to actively campaign agaInst pronuSCllity, through preaching that the growing problem of AIDS is a punishment from God brought on oneself by sinful behavior. In social terms these stipulations amount to something on the order of a revolution. Basicaliy, the churches have been instrumental in the erosion of 'custom' as Ongka defines it above (i.e., moka, sacrifices, and the like). The newer churches do this more aggressively, to the point where in 1998 it seemed to us uulikely that the Rageners With who~ we work (the Kawelka) would ever be seen in decorations holding a moka again, other than at a cultrnal show or in a display for tourists within Papua New Guinea or abroad.

130

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Against new versions of individualism, church leaders instigate intensive communal life focused on church activities themselves. They offer new individual roles as pastors or as those who 'witness' to experience in church services (i.e., narrate aspects of unchristian behavior that the witnesser has recognized and modified through faith). They prescribe taboos to be followed, as in the old cults; they offer outlets in song composition and performance (replacing older forms, Stewart and Strathern, 2002b); they attempt to constrain morality and to set up new bases of family life through prayers; and they have turned certain indigenous concepts around, for example with regard to anger and confession, so as to give them a Christian cast. For example, the Christian churches have improvised a pattern in which people are urged to transformpopokl (fmstration) into prayers and forgiveness. In the past the expression of frustration/anger (popokl) was thought to produce sickness inside the person but this sickness served as a sign of a breakdown in a social relationship that needed resolution via compensation or otherwise. Nowadays, popokl is seen as a sin and is not considered an emotion worthy of expression. People are enjoined to 'confess' their popokl to cleanse themselves from sin, not to 'reveal' it as a means of rebalancing social ties. The expression of wolik Gealousy/envy) was in the past a strong emotional outlet for co-wives embedded in complex polygynous situations as well as for politically competing males in interpersonal relations. Attitudes to wolik have been transformed in the Christian context into a professed disregard for wealth or excessive desire for material goods. The expression of shame has been shifted into that of humility before God. The Hagen term that we gloss as shame, pipil, includes the sense of awe and relative lack of power that one felt in the presence of ancestral spirits as well as other spitit forces such as the Female Spitit. This term was also used in relation to the feelings that some Hageners expressed when European outsiders fIrst intruded into the Highlands in the 1930s and onwards. Complex transformations of the expression of shame have taken place. Humility in the face of the Christian God has encompassed shame, dramatically altering the ethos of 'shame on the skin' (Robbins, 1997; A. Strathern, 1975) that informed the social relations of debt, prestige, and status competition which held in the moka. Nowadays, many Hageners have turned to the solutions that the Cluistian churches offer, accepting the emotional and behavioral modifIcations they demand, and the inner stress of self-castigation that goes with these as practices of internal socialization. But 'humbling oneself' in this sense does not necessarily equate with 'humiliation' nor is it a necessary prelude to 'development' in the economic sense of the term, since it is not seen as leading to economic success but to the reform of the 'soul.' With regard to personhood, relationality is reconstructed strongly in the context of the Christian congregation, huilt partly but not exclusively on group lines (Stewart and Strathern, 2000a, pp.I-26). Individuality appears in the responsibility of the person for sin and for saving one's own soul by acts of repentance and prayer, as well as confession. Individual prestige can be achieved in the new communal contexts by the use of verbal arts and skills and by conspicuous contributions to church concerns ('gifts to God,' Gregory, 1982).

The Death of Moka in Post-Colonial Mount Hagen

131

Patterns of gender relations are both affmned and modifIed. Women are in every way a part of the churches and their rituals and can hold prominent places; but pastors still tend to be men, and these are orators, whose talk pierces the hearts of people and makes them repent, mend their ways, and give money to the church. In 1998 we observed a further twist on all these shifts. People openly declared on the whole that the moka was dead, and that young people would scornfully refuse to listen to their elders jf asked to contribute to such an event· this also despite the fact that young people of both sexes commit violent acts that ~ecessitate the disbursement of large amounts of wealth in unilateral payments of compensation (Stewart and Strathern, 2002e, pp.72-79). At the same time coalitions of leaders were beginning to infuse into the Charismatic Christian ritual cycle elements of 'big-manship' that were highly reminiscent of the past, plarming that theIr own future baptisms would be public events demonstrating their Own status, crucial events also bringing prestige to the church and causing many others to convert (a classic phenomenon in PacifIc history), and marked above all by the building of expensive new churches (viz. cult houses), the slaughtering of pigs (viz. sacrifices), and the making of eloquent speeches to large crowds, as well as the necessary acquisition of vehicles to transport supporters. As in the past, these men w~r~ aiming to gai.n political prestige within the community as well as gaining sprntual blessmg - m the past the Female Spirit and the ancestors bestowed these favors, now God is asked to do so. The wives of these men were engaged, as in the past, in raising the pigs that would be needed at the grand baptismal event. These Women were also raising money for the occasion through the sale of coffee from their trees. What was moka and what is charismatic Christianity have become linked together in an 'ouroboric' manner, like the snake with its tail in its mouth. The death of moka coincides with the birth of new Christian ways, but these ways are then adapted so as to reproduce many of the essential patterns of the moka Itself. One man exclaimed that he had thought that since he was now involved in the church he would not have to spend his time in negotiating moka preparations but now he spends his time negotiating analogous preparations for church ~ctivities .. These activities involve the same sorts of arrangements as in the past (I.e., makmg sure there are enough pigs and other funds to hold the event). The empirical historical processes and trends sketched here clearly correspond to some of those outlined by' Sahlins (1992). Sahlins further argued that the expenence of humiliation 'is an important stage of economic development' (p.24) and that people have to despise what they are prior to being able to take 'the benefits of "progress'" (p.24). However, we find a counter to this when Sahlins himself also argues, in the same paper, against any simple opposition of 'tradition' to 'modernity,' and for the local agency of Pacific peoples (pp.2I, 23). In this regard we wish to point out that the social technologies of shaming, long culturally establish~d, enter mto the new Christian world and even into people's seIfdeprecatmg remarks (or abasements), since saying that one 'has a bad life' can be a ~hetorical device, a way of asking to be given something, of shaming the hearer mto 'generosity.' Self-deprecationlhumiliation is also a powerful rhetorical tool that can be documented in the earliest ethnographic records from the Hagen area

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

(Vicedom and Tischner, 1943-8; Strauss and Tischner, 1962; Strathem and Stewart, 1999b). For example, a 'big-man' may state m a speech at a ,:,oka that he doesn't have wealth or influence, but this is really a form of tok bold~ (concealed · M Ipa ik ek) that indicates that any man who gives less back m exchange talk ,me ., PI.Hnfurther for what the speaker has given is truly a 'rubbIsh man. eop e 10 age carry their rhetorical forms of 'humiliation' into a .complex array of adjustments which show that their creative energies are not SImply bent towards econonuc development but into the continuing transformation of sens:s of personhood that already in the past contained an array of individual and relatIOnal elements. These elements penetrate the 'traditional' and the 'modem' aspects of Hagen lIfe today as in the past. h d th As the millenninm approached, Hageners as well as many ot ers aroun e globe who adhere to the Gregorian calendar anticipated that dynaffilc change Id be forthcoming as the new century came to replace the old. WIth the year :~ thousand heralding the 'death of modernity and postrnodernity', the .'death of moka' appeared to be followed by its transformed rebuth ID the ChristI~n moka cycle. 'Humiliation' was perhaps a part of this transformation process but It ~asby no means the only part or the single most important one. Instead, the c~ntmU1~g drive for prestige can be seen as the motor of history here, just as it was ill earher historical phases in Hagen.

References Friedman, 1. and Carrier 1. (1996), Melanesian Modernities, Lund, Sweden, Lund University Press. . c (1982) , GliftS and Commodities, London, Acaderruc Press. G regory,. h Sk· ? M an the State and the Robbins, 1 (1997), '666, or Why is the Millennium on t e . Ill. or 1 y, ., . Epistemology of Apocalypticism among the Drapmm of Papua New G~lllea, In Pamela 1. Stewart and Andrew Strathern (eds), Millennial Markers, Townsvllle, JCD, Centre for Pacific Studies, pp. 35-58. I · J P J Stewart and A. Strathern (2001), Charismatic and Pentecosta R obbms, ., . . , . . V I 15(2) Christianity in Oceania, Special Issue of Journal ~f Ritual ~tud!es, o. . 13Sahlins, M. (1992), 'The economics of develop-man ill the Pacrfic, RES, Vol. 21, pp.

Stew~t: Pamela J. and Andrew J. Strathern, (eds) (1997), Millennial Markers, Townsville, JCD Centre for Pacific Studies. . Stewart, Pamela 1. and Andrew Strathern (1997) 'Netbags Revisited: Cultural Narratives . from Papua New Guinea,' Pacific Studies, Vo!. 20(2), pp. 1:30. Stewart, Parnela 1. and Andrew Strathern (1998a), 'Money, Polttlcs, and Persons In Papua New Guinea,' Social Analysis, Vo!. 42(2), pp. 132-149. . .. Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (1998b), 'Lif~ at the E~d: VOl~es and VlSlons from Mt. Hagen, Papua New Guinea,' ZeitschriJt fur MlsslOnswlssenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, Vo!. 82(4), pp 227-244. St t Pamela J and Andrew Strathern (1998c), 'End Times Prophesies from Mt. Rage?, ew~ra~ua New Guinea: 1995-1997,' ~ournal of Millen~ial Studies, Vol. 1(1) (electromc journal, Centre for Millennial StudIes, http://www.IIl1l1e.orgl).

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Stewart, Pamela 1. and Andrew Strathem (2000a), 'Introduction: Narratives Speak:,' in Pamela 1. Stewart and Andrew Strathern (eds), Identity Work: Constructing Pacific Lives, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Monograph Series No. 18, Pittsburgh, PA, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 1-26. Stewart, Pamela 1. and Andrew Strathern (2000b), 'Fragmented Selfhood: Contradiction, Anomaly and Violence in a Female Life-History,' in Pamela 1. Stewart and Andrew Strathern (eds), Identity Work: Constructing Pacific Lives, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Monograph Series No. 18, Pittsburgh, PA, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 44-57. Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathem (2001), 'The Great Exchange: Moka with God,' in 1. Robbins, P.1. Stewart and A. Strathern (eds), Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity in Oceania, Special Issue of Journal of Ritual Studies, Vol. 15(2), pp. 91104. Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (2002a), Remaking the World: Myth, Mining and Ritual change among the Duna of Papua New Guinea, Washington, D.e., Smithsonian Institution Press. Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (2002b), Gender Song and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea, Westport, CT and London, Praeger Publishers (Greenwood Press). Stewart, Pamela 1. and Andrew Strathern (2002c), 'Water in Place: The Hagen and Duna people ofPapua New Guinea,' Journal of Ritual Studies, Vo!. 16(1), pp. 108-119. Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathem (2002d), 'Transformatons of monetary Symbols in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea,' in S. Breton (ed.), Questions de Monnaie, Special Issue of L'Homme, Vo!. 162, pp. 137-156. Stewart, Pamela 1. and Andrew Strathern (2002e), Violence: Theory and Ethnography, London and New York, Continuum Publishing (for Athlone Press). Strathern, A. (1971), The Rope ofMoka, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Slrathern, A. (1975), 'Why is shame on the skin?' Ethnology, Vo!. 14, pp. 347-56. Strathern, Andrew 1. and Pamela 1. Stewart (1997a), 'The Efficacy-Entertainment Braid Revisited: From Ritual to Commerce in Papua New Guinea,' Journal of Ritual Studies, Vo!. 11(1), pp. 61-70. Strathern, Andrew 1. and Pamela 1. Stewart (1998a), 'Embodiment and Communication: Two frames for the Analysis of Ritual,' Social Anthropology, Vo!. 6 (2), pp. 237-251. Strathem, Andrew J. and Pamela J. Stewart (1998b), 'Seeking Personhood: Anthropological Accounts and Local Concepts in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea,' Oceania, Vol. 68(3), pp. 170-188. Strathern, Andrew J. and Pamela 1. Stewart (1999a), "The Spirit is Coming!" A Photographic-Textual Exposition of the Female Spirit Cult Peifonnance in Mt. Hagen, Ritual Studies Monograph Series, Monograph No. 1, Pittsburgh. Strathern, Andrew 1. and Pamela 1. Stewart (1999b), Collaborations and Conflicts: A Leader Through Time, Fort Worth, Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Strathern, Andrew 1. and Pamela J. Stewart (1999c), 'Objects, Relationships, and Meaning. Historical Switches in Currencies in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea,' in David Akin and Joel Robbins (eds), Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Monograph Series No. 17. Pittsburgh, PA, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 164-191. Strathern, Andrew 1. and Pamela 1. Stewart (2000a), Arrow Talk: Transaction, Transition, and Contradiction in New Guinea Highlands History, Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press.

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Strathern, Andrew J. anfd Pamela nd Ru

J·lds:ewl.na;;.;;.~~~~)' ;=~:;ra~::d~:Wth;!:;;:~ ~~r,~. . th 1

Chapter 9

a trans onmng wor , . Work: Constructing Pacific Lives, Association

III

a . fo~ Socla~ An ropo ogy m ldentrty h S . N 18 Pittsburgh" PA UnivefSlty of PIttsburgh Press, pp. Oceama Monograp enes 0 . "

81-98. nd Pamela J Stewart (2001), 'Rappaporl's Maring: The Challenge of Strathem, Andrew J. a . d M· h I Lambek (eds) Ecology and the Sacred.

i~aO:::~~'; ~n;~~:;ot;!~~e:/~OY ~~ ~eappaport,

On the Life and Times of the Ipili Imagination

Ann 'Arbor, MI, University of

Michigan Press, pp. ~7~;!~ia J. Stewart (2002), 'The South-West Pacific,' in A. Strathem, Andrew J.

a~rt

Aletta Biersack

L M Carucci, L. Poyer, R. Feinberg, and C. Macpherson (eds),

;~:~~:' !:i~t~~uc;iO~ t~

the Cultures and Identities of Pacific Islanders, Durham, Ne Carolina Academic Press, pp. 11-98. I· . al .., d Pamela J. Stewart (2003), 'Conflicts versus Contracts: Po IUe Strathem, Andrew J. an. N G' , in R Brian Ferguson (ed.), The State Flows and Blockages m Papua ew utnea, . d La don Identity and Violence: Politica~ D.isintegration in the Post-Cold War Worl, n d New York, Routledge Pubhshing, pp. 300-317. . h Str ~:m Andrew J and Pamela J. Stewart (2004), Empowering the past Confr~ntm~l~ e a Fut~re: The D~na of Papua New Guinea, New York and London, Pa grave aClll1 an

i

PublHishingd· H. TI·schner (1962) , Die Mi-Kultur der Hagenberg Stamme, Hamburg, Strauss, . an

. dcramGdepGrnytdHer ~i;~hner (1943-8) Die Mbowamb (3 vols.), Hamburg, Priederichsen,

VIce om, . . an . de Gruyter and Co.

,

What is development 'from the perspective of the people concerned'? Marshall Sahlins asks. It is 'their own culture on a bigger and better scale than they ever had it' (1992a, p.13). 'The first commercial impulse of the local people is not to become just like us, but more like themselves' (ibid.). Culmral integrity is preserved in the face of 'the encroaching Western economy' (ibid.) by selecting and defining the purposes of objects that enter indigenous systems via colonialism and market activity. Through this selectivity and deployment, culmre is not only conserved but elaborated as native peoples 'harness the good things of the market to the evolution of its own cultural order' (ibid., p.20). Speaking specifically of New Guineans, Sahlins writes: Brought- into the orbit of the capitalist World System ... they have proven themselves quick studies in commercial cunning - which they use to stage the most extravagant traditional ceremonies anyone could ever remember. More pigs have been eaten and more pearl shells exchanged in these recent shindigs than was ever done in the good

old days ... (Ibid.) Sahlins' target here is world system theory, which narrativizes history in 'lristes tropes' (Sahlins, 1994) ofEurocenlric domination and indigenous victimization (ibid., p.381; see also 1992a, p.23). Sahlins' view is the obverse: indigenous agents achieve culmral efflorescence by indigenizing Western objects (1992a, p.16), thus encompassing 'the capitalist world system in an order that is logically more inclusive: their own system of the world' (ibid., p.14). It is this efflorescence and encompassment that SaWins' neologism developman signifies. Ultimately, however, there is a 'passage from developman to development, marked from a selective to an eclectic relation to Western commodities' (ibid., p.23). This passage bespeaks an experience of humiliation, in which indigenous peoples 'learn to hate what they already have, what they have always considered their well-being. Beyond that, they have to despise what they are, to hold their own existence in contempt - and want, then, to be SOmeone else' (ibid., p.24). It bears remarking that, to the extent that humiliation is inevitable, Sahlins' reading of colonial and postcolonial histories is as teleological as the world system theory it purports to criticize.

136

On the Life and Times of the [pili Imagination

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Accounting for the fate of peripheral peoples under circumstances of colonialism and capitalist penetration in entirely Eurocentnc terms I~ deepI~ flawed. Despite the obvious imbalances of power, knowledge, and wea m suc settings local agents and cultnral mediations come mto play, shapmg the pr~~e;;: l 'ts d n:.mics and its outcomes (Appadurai, 1996; Featherstone et a., . ' Y IS hl 1988'. 1992a' 1992b' 1994' 2000). The contemporary world, for all Its a Ins, , , " .. dift cesa . . . till a world of persisting, even prohferatmg, eren , 9 218) ntinue to homogemzatron, IS s world in which 'received cultural orientations' (Knauft, 199 , p: . co be constitutive, albeit not detenninative. SahEns'. insi~te~ce on wntmg lo~al agency into our narratives of colonial and postcolonial hist~nes 18 th~refore cruCial. call it While the assumption that contact results m a radical ruptnre .'develo ment,' 'modernization,' 'Westernization,' what you will -

bl p ti

IS

clearly

the alternatives that Sablins' poses - standoff or takeoff, pure

~~oro~~c~~~ or pure transformation fr~m

are also not exhaustive. Indeed, we ,know

Sahlins' own account of the course of Hawaiian history - offered m the article to which I have been referring, 'The Economics of Develop-man mt~h; P "f ' s well as in the monograph published the same year, Anahulu -: a, fr~% I~~stacontact onward, the future of the Hawaiian Islands was grounded m the d amics of the entanglements of the local and the global, entanglem.ents tha~ ynd ut any polarization of the contact field, inducmg change not as a passage ., d A S hl' s hImself has un erc Of 'transformation' but as a genuinely histoncal pro uet. s a m said: . im le 0 osition between the West and the Rest is in many ,:"ays an to co~cellvefi oft~ s PColomP'~l history is not wen served either by its representatIOn as a overslmp t lea Ion. . . al' t £ to see M nichean showdown between the indigenous people and the Impen 18 orces,

w~ch one will be able to culturally appropriate the other.

h 1 b' A number of anthropologists ... have taught us to rec~nfigur~ t e lisua mary opposition as a triadic historical field, including a complIcated mterc~tural z:ne where the cultural differences are worked through in political and econOJlllC prac ce. (1994, p.385)

This statement appears in Sahlins' contribution to the Borofsky anthology in Cultural Anthropology. 'Goodbye to Tristes Tropes' argues, or so.'t Assess t g that the contemporary world is cultnrally heterogeneous because Its seems 0 me, al . ,. ,: . which the . ' d ' " s' are by-products of local-glob mteracuons m vanous mo ermue . d' t nd open he local and the global reciprocally constrain, reinforce, undernune, ISfUp, a ·thi the heterospaces of intercultnral encounters. In thIS VIew, t th up eac h 0 er Wl n .h t t Sahlins' polarities of traditional/modem, the West/the Rest, and, Wit respec bO th d lopman argument cultnral reproduction/cultural transfonnatron 0 scure e t1::~ness ('third cultur~,' 'third space' [see Featherstone, ed., 1990, for exarople])

of processes that are irreducibly t~anscultur~'1:;; focu:5~;'~~9~,~~~)~~!:~ , thnography in an ex-centnc mode (Blersac a, p p . , . J:mes Clifford's playful tenn ex-centric (1992, p.101), is not cultnral conservatIOn

137

but cultural production in open, nonteleological, and dialectical processes, a focus that the most interesting recent Melanesian work at least implicitly embraces. 1

Ipili speakers occupy two adjacent valleys in the southwestern corner of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea: the Pakupale River valley, where the Paielas (or west Ipilis) live, and the Porgera River valley, where Porgerans (or east Ipilis) live. Those living in the Porgera and Paiela valleys share a language and a culture and are often, given cognatic descent reckoning and intervalley marriage, related through one or more ancestors. These facts alone are enough to discourage any

rigid distinction between the occupants of the two valleys, and in this chapter I use the word [pili to refer either to the language or to its speakers, regardless of whether they live in the Porgera or Paiela valley.2 Ipili culture is a culture of work, and work is a term the application of which is broad, even all-inclusive (cf. Fajans, 1997). Gardening and pig husbandry are work, of course, but so is any decision-dependent, purposeful, effortful activity: marrying, bearing and rearing children, growing up, going to war, talking to the anthropologist, performing magic, being an observant Christian, and so on. The significance of work, at least as Ipilis define it, lies in its necessity. Human life

depends upon it, but human life is also wasted by it. From the local perspective, human beings work to live, but they also die because they work, a paradox that resonates with propositions implicit in various and sundry pollution beliefs: that human beings reproduce because they die but they also die because they reproduce. In short, it takes a life to get a life, a principle I refer to as the sacrificial principle (Biersack, 1998a, pp.52-55, 60-62; 1999, p.74; 2004). By implication, the cost of life is death, and death and life are two sides of the saroe coin, the hmnan condition (Biersack, 1995b, pp.257-261; 2001a, pp.85-89). Over the last 60 years, Ipilis have been subject, first, to Australian colonial intrusion and, since 1975, to the State of Papua New Guinea. After a brief period of reticence, Ipilis have showu near-unbridled enthusiasm for all things white, from Christianity to white technology, education, medicine, government, and gold ntining. Gold was discovered in the Porgera River by John Black in the course of the famous Hagen-Sepik patrol undertaken with Hm Taylor, another Australian colonial officer, from 1938 to 1939 (Gammage, 1998, pp.188-189; Golub, 2001, pp. 138-148; Jacka, 2003, pp.187-192). For years thereafter, mining was exclusively alluvial, involving expatriate and increasingly indigenous miners. The

proceeds of alluvial mining are now dwarfed by the profits of hard rock mining, which has been ongoing since 1990 under a transnational consortium known as

Porgera Joint Venture. In the 1980s, alluvial gold was discovered just south of the Paiela valley, and a lucrative and sensational gold rush ensued (Ryan. 1991; Vail, 1995, p.345). Mt. Kare mining is notorious for its tumultuous politics (Moramoro and Coleman, 1992; Vail, 1995), but how much ore there is at Mt. Kare remains to be determined. The changes that colonialism, missionization, independence, and now

pronounced capital and market penetration, with attendant class-like inequalities (cf. Gewertz and Errington, 1999), have wrought are everywhere in evidence: from the Ubiquity of the Christian faith and money to a growing knowledge of

138

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

. limited but expanding literacy rate Tok Pisin, an English-based Imgua ~a~c:~i~ circles of travel,3 and ever-rising, tied to Wester~-styk sChOOlmg'9;ve~9;d 199~' 2001b, ppA0-41), expectations even millenanan (Bler~ack, lid. Amon ' the m~ny sources of these expectations as to what the future nught ho. . g focal se and paradise regamed is Christian eschatology, Wlth gs .n~~:sobe~ieversYPAnd, yet, [pili Christianity digenous nor is it a mere hodgepodge, through a heavenly ascent for a is neither pU.reI! Western nor pur~; ~; countles~ local engagements with, and pastiche. It IS mstead a by-pr?du . h rmeneutic that is fundamentally indigenizations of, the for~lgu m a .e th third space of local-global transcultural. [pili Chnstlamty emerges m e

flr .

interchanges. f 1 'Z' Christianity lie novel constructions and understandings ~f At the core 0 pI I . h h b dy as Ipllis the body' My purpose here is to theorize the hist~;. ~! t ;of:'::pe~simism but construct it, a history th~t .ratherf Imlpr~~alablYdbereglsurrect:d bodies. This history is . . . f 1 imaglmngs 0 ce esu lze , . . culmmates m JOY U . . , . as well as by the forerunner of missioTIlzatlOll, propelled forward by nusslOm~al1On th t t ok place in the mid-1940s; but it is a regional cult called mafa a;n0 fa ~t' "on an indigenous philosophical d . 't true pomt 0 tll tau , grounde m, as 1 s .. th history of the body as Ipilis construct it, I find anthropology. In theonzmg e . t d by Doreen Massey (1993), Arif Dirlik t of place as enunCla e . 99 ful h use t e conceP 01) and Donald Moore (1998) (see also BlOrsack 19 , (2001), Arturo :~cobar (~OPla~e is the where of local-global interchanges. As su~h pp.81-82; 200 ,~nlress.' f place are neitherlocal nor global but are rooted m the processes an ynalll1cs ? a ements conversations, and interchanges ' I In this writing the word the conjuncture of the two - m those eng g , . I '1' Christianity ,or examp e. , that have resulted m an pI " d P . la valleys as sites of transcultural pZace refers specifically to the porgdera and' ale the human condition, as these d h nging un erstan mgs of processes focuse on c a d fi t b the 1940s regional cult and, second, transcultural processes were engage, IS, ! . by missionization and other aspects Off gthlobabhzdal1on. it was constructed before b' . th a dIscusslOn 0 e 0 y as I egln Wl I ili s eakers has been conducted after the P understandings of the body and the missionizatlOn. My research among d P .. . t d the area Yet m Igenous rmSSlOnane~.;n erere implicit'in a range of beliefs and practices that, more often . ndemned and tried to eradicate, and it is upon these human con 1 1O.n ~ than not, the mlSSlonanes co d 'b fa kamo the cult innovation of the '... 0 I account. I go on to escn e ma r d the misslOmzatlOn of the 196 s. that I b ase my 1940s that preceded but also context".a lze . f th body that Ipili 1f in Ipih construcl1ons 0 e

~:s::!~~r~o:~~t:t::oa~;:e rbesofnances beotnWl'zeaet~:~~:ge~~I~~o~:~~ot:: :ro~: k ult 20 years e ore nuSSl . .'

~~:~e~~t~on~~~~c;O~~:fl~:a~~;~~:~c~i::~d ~:;h~:c~~~;o~~ePI~C:~~I~b~ settmg to one SI e d' aspect of transnational studies and Vlce interchanges, makes area stu les an versa (Biersack, 2003; in press).

On the Life and Times a/the Jpili Imagination

139

The Body in Ipili Cosmological Disconrse Ipili speakers were and still are acutely aware of human mortality. The risk of death is greatest in infancy and old age, but life is further endangered by intersexual contact in the middle, reproductive years. A man's life can be jeopardized by a menstruating wife, and a woman is progressively enervated over the course of her reproductive years through the traumas of birth and the toll of nursing and childrearing. Whereas a husband loses vital flnid in ejaculation, a wife loses breast milk while nursing and menstrual blood, and she also discharges massive fluids in parturition, the blood of which is understood to be menstrual. The pre-Christian postpartum sexual taboo spaced births and lowered a woman's risk in the reproductive sphere, which is why Paiela women have valued this taboo and continue to do so today. Menstruation is part of a larger cycle, the monthly fertility cycle, which, in turn, is embedded within a life cycle that begins and ends with sterility. If adults risk their lives in coitus and parturition, they do so in a life-giving project: the reproduction of the human body. There is, then, a kind of exchange: life is lost in return for tbe new life that succeeds it. I understand an impressive range of beliefs and practices bearing upon 'pollution' in tenns of this exchange. It is as if Ipili speakers were saying that life must be sacrificed in its own perpetuation and, further, that death and regeneration are two sides of the same coin: the human condition (see Biersack, 1995b, pp.257-261; 1998a, pp.52-55; 1999, p.74; 200la, pp.85-89; 2004; cf. Bloch and PatTy, 1982; Buchbinder and Rappaport, 1976).5 This exchange has a cosmic locus. 'On the ground' (yu nga), plants, animals, and humans come into existence, grow, ideally "replace" themselves with successors, and then die. Terrestrial life is a material, temporalized and spatialized mode of existence, a matter of perishable but replaceable bodies. The earth itself combines a surface, 'outer' skin ('ground skin' or yu umbuaini) with an 'inner' 'ground bone' (yu kulini), and it has a life cycle. According to local reckoning, earths 'originate' and 'end' over a 14-generation cycle, but only to begin again - each earth, as it were, reproducing itself out of itself. This concept of earth's cyclicity (cf. Stiirzenhofecker, 1995) features in some of the events I wili describe below. Beginnings and endings are associated with potent points called yu kimbuni and with those who dwell andlor function at these points (Biersack, 1995a, pp.22-23; 1998a, pp.50--51; 1999, pp.73-74). The term yu kimbuni may be translated as 'ground joint' or 'earth foundation' (Ingemann, 1997, p.32). Kimbu means to join, and the image is architectural, I believe: the earth as built space, a system of coordinates. Sometimes mentioned in this context are 'corners' (kona in Tok Pisin, yu duni? in Ipili), a tenu that suggests sides - four of them, standing in relation to a centerplace. Where a yu kimbuni is associated with an ancestral figure, its relationship to peripheral points is temporal as well as spatial: as the 'origin' or 'source' with respect to which all else is genealogically generated. In the myth associated with Mt. Kare, a python bears mUltiple children, who, after one of them murders the father, disperse to various subregions, marry, and bear children. Since Ipili descent is coguatic, the peoples of all these subregions are integrated through their common descent within a single, totemic whole (Biersack, 1995a, pp.14--16; 1999, pp.72-73).

140

On the Life and Times of the [pili Imagination

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

141

nor 'would he di~.' The sun was imagined as a transcendent subject - in his divinity the very antitheSIS of mortal, material, spatialized, and temporalized humanity.

At Mt. Kate sacrifices to the python were traditionally perfonned, and these sacrifices involved 'holding the yu kimbuni' (yu kimbuni mina), an idiom that suggests preserving the foundation of the world (cf. Stewart and Strathern, 2002, pp.179-l86). As a system of fixed co-ordinates, the earth has an up and a down, an east and a west, and so on. When the ground ends, these co-ordinates are scrambled thro.ugh

Buying the Sky

criss-cross movements of various kinds. Actors may start from obverse duectlOns and move against each other, shifting from up to down and vice versa or from east to west and vice versa. Thus, I've been told that, when a man moves northward out

Consid.ered in total, then, the traditional cosmos envisioned human being as embodied, ~ortal, and regenerative, and it imagined a transcendent, superhuman

of what Ipili speakers refer to as Tukupa (Duguba in Huli) to the Tari basin and beyond while another man begins in Hewa country (north of Porgera and Pmela) and travels to Porgera Station (Yandikale), then the ground will end. (I have heard various versions of the same thing [Biersack, 1999, p.84, n.17; see also Ballard, . . ' 1994, p.1441.) There is one other aspect of the earth and the hfe that [t supports that will be important to this discussion: the earth is the .cos~c locus of t~e ~haractenshc activity of bodies, work (peape). Those who live on the ground tOll to ked and house themselves, maintaining and reproducing themselves through thelf own labor. In a nutshell, Ipili work constitutes various efforts to maintain, reproduc~, and pay for the body. Horticulture produces the where-mthal to grow and sustatn human bodies' bridewealth - at its standard level, 28 pIgS plus, nowadays, some national curre~cy - compensates the bride's kin for the loss of the bride's womb and labor and obligates the bride to bear children as her 'return gift' on the bridewealth; it also obligates her to garden and rear pigs;. and horicide compensation compensates the kin of the deceased for the loss of his ~r her hfe ~nd limb. In traditional warfare, the two groups responSIble for the war ( war roots or yanda tene) compensated the kin of the deceased for disparate parts of the. corpse. Whether working in the garden and taking care of pIgS or accumulating and distributing these sarue pigs, Ipilis generate the subsistence and wealth through which bodies are sustained (horticulture) aud regenerated (bndewealth) as well as reparations for horicide. Without the body, there would be no labor, of course; but it is also true that without the body, there would be no need for that labor. Labor IS b~~b~~b~

.

In the pre-Christian cosmos, the earth opposed the sky. The sky was assoclated with a divine creator, symbolized by the sun, as well as -mth a category of people called 'sky people' (tawe wanda akali). Appearing as heroes in Porgera and Pmela myths, 'sky people' were connected to sky spectacles such as thunder and lightning. At the close of some Ipili myths, sky men and women ascend to taw: taka or 'the sky bridge,' where they appear to live forever (Biersack, 2004). IpillS imagined the sun as an eye, the symbol ?f his (for so th~ sun was gendered) subjectivity. Unlike the human eye, the sun s eye had no pomt of ,;,ew,. no, partIal vision. Disembodied, the sun traveled everywhere and everywhen, outSide where

living people resided and 'inside' where dead people resided, and was thus .all seeing and all knowing. The cause of t~e sun's ommsClence, hI,S dlsembodle~ being, was also the cause of his immortalIty. Sans body, the sun was not born,

sph?re of dIsembodied, celestial life. Human life was burdened -mth necessity: life led mexorably to death and death-necessitated reproduction. In fact, the 'pollution' beliefs of the past prerised that reproduction was itself a cause of death. Life and death wer~ thus two sides of the same coin, humanity's common lot. Sky beings ~scaped this neceSSIty, an escape that was imagined as an ascent to the sky. When m the riddle of the 1940s several Engan men entered the Porgera and Paiela valleys. a~d taught Ipilis how to ascend to the sky, local expectations were revoluhornzed, at least for the time being.

MataKama Mervyn Meggitt was the first to report on a cult that he called the Cult of Ain (1974), after the father of the four brothers who travelled among Enga, Huli, and IPlh speakers, teaching them new beliefs and practices. The cult originated at Yeln:' (a.k.a. Lyeiri, Yeim), which lies in north-central Enga Province, near the proVlnclal border (Wiessner and Turnu, 1998, pp.15, map 2). 6 From there it spread mto Enga-, Huh-, and Ipili-speaking areas (see Biersack, 1991, pp.268-272; 1995, pp.25-28; 1996, pp.98-10l; 1998a, pp.55-60; Feil, 1983; Gibbs, 1977; Go1ub, 2001, pp.173-:-178; Jacka, 2002; 2003, pp.221-231; Meggitt, 1974; Morgan, 2000, pp.65-67; Rellhofer, 2004, ch.lD; Sharp, 1990; Wiessner and Tumu, 1998, p.383; 2001). In all manIfestatIOns of the cult, old rituals and taboos were abandoned and n~,,:, ritnals and taboos, especially ritnals of sacrifice and purification, were lTIltlated, and pacification was encouraged.

The cult was culturally inflected as it moved across ethnic borders (Meggitt, 1974). Accordmg to Meggitt (1974, p.30), whereas the original cult sought to 'return to the status quo ante, in which the "nonnal" incidence of illness and death was acce~table,' in Porgera, the emphasis was on 'perpetual health and, in a sense

personallmm~rtality' (ibid.). The purpose of the ritnal- as the octogenarian Pilato:

who hves m Pltika, m th~ Lower Porgera region, told me - was to go to the sky (be used the tenn afl kenga, above the mountains'?) 'lest we die.' Porgerans were told that 'en~nnous ... pythons would hang suspended from the sky, and all the people and therr pigs would make their way into the sky-world along the "paths" fonned by the bodIes of the snakes' (ibid., p.28). This image of a pathway to the sky is entirely consistent with the indigenous idea of a 'sky bridge' (tawe taka) - signifying clouds, I was told in my fall 2000 research - that could be used to ascend to the sky. The purpose of the ritual was 'to go to the sky.' 'to go to where the sun is,' or 'to go to where the sun and moon are. '

142

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

The sky theme is pervasive in Ipili accounts of mata kamo. Participants were called 'sky people,' the Enga prophets themselves were called 'sky men' or the 'sons of the sun,' and the pigs that were sacrificed were 'sky pigs.' Many have described drinking a special water, 'sky water' (tawe ipa), water that was collected in bamboo tubes and magically prepared by the Engan men. The purpose of the ritnal was 'to go to the sun' or to ascend to the sky, which the cult leaders apparently promised. 'We thought that a rope would drop from the clouds and we would go to heaven.' Some participants fell into a trance and were presumed to have gone to tawe toko (see Biersack, 1996, pp.99-100). The massive pig killing was the most dramatic moment of a ritnal that brimmed with theater. Houses or platforms were built, and pigs were hoisted onto them, killed, and the noses of the sacrificed pigs were held up to the sun - in some accounts, to the sun and the moon. As each pig was killed on the rooftop, the sun or the sun and moon were summoned to receive the sacrificial gift: 'Alu nai, maiyawana gula, alu nai nimba yia geyo, gula nimba yia geyo' (,Sun sun, moon moon, sun, I am giving you pig, moon, I am giving you pig'). Then the pigs were dropped to the ground, cooked, and feasted upon. In the Paiela valley, an excessive number of pigs were slaughtered, too many in fact to eat, and many pig carcasses were left to rot on the ground. As said, the pmpose of sacrificing the pigs to the sun, or to the sun and moon, was to go to the sky. This intention inhered in several aspects of the sacrifice. The platform onto which the pigs were hoisted and killed was high, and their noses were held up to the sky, as if to indicate the ritnal's skyward-bound teleology. In the traditional kepele ritual (see Gibbs, 1978; Wiessner and Tumu, 1998, pp.107109), the tallest structure was fashioned as a kind of ladder to the sky, and there was perhaps something of this imagery in the high platform that the mata kamo ritual specialists built. Also, several people living in Andita at the southern end of the Paiela valley told me in fall 2000 that the quid pro quo for the sacrifice was, in effect, access to the sky, the slaughtered pigs being offered up to 'buy' (kamba) the sky. Kamba here has the same sense it has in the context of bridewealth (waitapu): to offer a compensatory payment for the gains that the person paying realizes at the expense of the recipient. To kamba or 'buy' a bride is to compensate her kin for their losing her (her 'arms and legs' [ki ke loll as a producer and reproducer, and 'buying' the sky was tantamount to acquiring, or ascending to, the sky. But why did participants want to go to the sky? Answers to this question uniformly emphasize the liberatory effect of achieving the sky. When I asked N ane Pasia, a man living in Andita at the sonthem end of the Paiela valley, why he had wanted to buy the sun's ground, he said that his own ground, the earth, was 'bad' because 'we work too hard here and because we suffer and die here.' But life in the sky, where the sun and moon are, would not be harsh, and there is no death there. 'There we would not work, we would not garden or build houses. We would ouly be happy, and we would not die. We would continue to exist. We would not die and be buried.' A man named Katini - who participated in mata kamo in Konema, just west of the Paiela valley - told me that the pigs and any other gifts to the spelhnan were given to buy the new ground, the ground in the sky. When I

On the Life and Times of the Ipili Imagination

143

asked Katini why he had wanted t ground was where his mother and f~~or to ta'".e toko, he told me that the earth's humans die _ and that he wished t e had dIed - and, by ImpircatlOn, where all 0 go to the sky so that he would become immortal (oma na pene). Lewambo - an old leader who has lived i b h h (see note 2) and who has marri d . n at t e Porgera and Palela valleys e sacrifices established a framew k,:omen Ihn both places - also indicated that the or ,or exc ange with th moon. He told me that th" e sun or the sun and the h e pIg owner s name was called out as the' and the sun and moon invoked th 'd b' . pIg was eld up . . ' elea emg that the pI . I' g was an opemng prestatlOn m an exchange that would When I asked Lewambo why h . h r:su t m the owner's ascension to the sky toko is a 'good ground' (yu ep e to go to tawe toko, he told me that who ascended to the sky (as :p;o~ d t ~en are Immortal' (oma na pene). Those ng on the ~arth's ground) would not die. Lewambo's father had alread ~. dO s father; he wanted to go to tawe toko i:st~:;. Lewambo dId not want to die like his

:I,~~

r

taw~

As part of the mata kamo procedure hr £ eaten. The pig belly fat was removed and' s~::ed~o~s were ritnally prepared and certam leaves, and the wing bone of b t . ' t en It was placed on a bed of of the fat together with these le a Ala was Jabbed at it. Eaters consumed pieces aves. so sugar cane t was ea en raw, and sweet potatoes were prepared in a way th t Id·.b . eating these foods as well as of ob:ervi:;~~ e ::tt;te ~ext section. The pmpose of red pandanus and salt was to go to th ky e c s ta oos on the consumption of es .

Bodily Purifications Mary Douglas' argument in Purity d D well known. Pollution is caused by ~tt anger about t?e ~ources of pollution is dirty, but dirt in the house is Polluti er out of place. Drrt m the garden is not t categorical grid inside:outsid~"dirt ~n IS.dhUS rooted in the transgressions of the pollution, for all its interest i'-far t a s~n~ rrt present (1966). Douglas' theory of anything Ipili spenkers are' mediev~~ ~ ~h:ct to cast ~y hght on the Ipili case. If domain of pollution entirel focused IT se~sIblhties (Bynum, 1987), in the abstract _ in particular on ~e b d . on the tangrble and physical rather than the reproduction as well ~s the dea~hY;oIt~~~~~oductlOn, and the filth. associ~ted with mexorably linked. The filth that matters i rep:oduction, as IPlhs Imagrne it, is unseemly bodily exudations the refuse f s not dIrt .tracked m from the outside but are menstrual blood and th; putrefyin ~o~rga:c Hfe. The paradigmatic pollutants and ultimately the body-as-dischar e!e de~/ e Idea bemg that bodily discharges with the lower body _ which pro g ' d mg. BodIly dIscharges are associated cesses 1.00 reprodu d the upper body _ which think d ' ces, an excretes - rather than s an exchanges and h h .. not decayed, disgusting substance but ethereal (aod ~O;~~~I ":a~~nsti)c emission is Y . u Ime speech. Like Engans (Meggitt, 1964) P menstruating women could harm ' orgerans and Parelas believed that minimize their contact with wo men, an~ males observed strict taboos, hoping to . men at times of menstrual fl h th . menstruatIOn or (since the blood of b' h . ow, w e er dunng rrt was conSIdered menstrual) parturition.

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Adolescent boys restricted their contact with women and secluded themselves from time to time in the upper forest, where they performed omatisia magic to grow

themselves (Biersack, 1982; 1987; 1998b; 200la; 2004). Washing was the most important omatisia device for purifying the body. As among Bngans (Megg,tt, 1964, p.213), the boys stood under an aqueduct made of bush materials and washed their eyes vigorously with the water - so v'gorously that theIT eyes became bloodshot _ in an effort to rinse away the filth that had accumulated on the eyeball in the course of seeing defiling and defiled things. One of the purposes of the omatisia ritual was to fortify young men as they prepared for the next stage of the life cycle: marriage and fatherhood. Rinsing their ,eyeballs of the fihn that had accumulated there over years of 'seeing bad things (gemtaha, the vagmal canal), the boys steeled themselves against the vulnerabilities of coitus and fatherhood that lay before them. . . Mata kamo washing was omatisia-like. Accordmg to my Porgera and Paiela informants water was cascaded onto the bodies of the participants using pandanus leaf conduits (ipa kendo). As the participants stood under the falling water, the ritual experts stood above them, scraping pearlshells and muttermg a spell. The pearlshell 'dust' was either collected on a bed of leaves and then dropped mto the water or dropped directly into the water - the procedure has been descnbed both ways to me. The water that washed over the participants contained this 'dust,' which cleansed them. Meanwhile, the participants scrubbed away the filth. According to Pilato, participants held their anus up to the cascading water. Othe~s have focused on the genitals, easily the most revolting body pUlts. Meggttt s description of the procedure emphasizes the vagina. First, the brothers took a pearlsheU from the payments given the~ bespelle~ it and wrapped it in a piece of tapa [bark cloth], together with a quantity of :ed plgm~nt. Then they stood beside the water spout at the stream, holding the b~ndle m the fall~ng water and uttering spells as the local men washed below and received the protective power emanating from the charm. After the men withdrew, t?e local women bathed, while the wives of the visitors held the unwrapped pearlshell m the water and scraped it with a stone. The fragments thus dislodged were thought to enter the vulvas of the women bathing below and neutralize their potential for polluting their husbands when next they copulated. (1974, pp.29-30)

Mata kamo participants could go to great lengths to preserve the purity of their bodies. The ground itself is considered defiled because sexually active adults walk over it, ipso facto defiling it. (The verb kalo pi means both to cross .aver and to defile.) Pauwi, a man I talked to at Yapatep in the Low~r Porgera reglOn, told me that after the washing, participants were sent away w,th mstructlOns to .walk home without letting their feet touch the ground. Using two logs, each partic'pant laid these on the ground one after the other to pave the way. Walking along th~ logs, the ritual participants avoided contact with polluted matter and preserved theu own purity. Had the feet touched the ground, the pUlticipant would not have ascended to the sky but would have died instead - so I was told.

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The sweet potatoes that participants consumed also appear to have symbolized physical purity. The sweet potatoes were fITst charred in the open flame and then scraped with ~ pearlshell and eaten as a spell was said.' In the spell that Pilato gave me for scrapmg the sweet potato, the lawe and the waleane (kokoli or 'hidden spe.ech' for ainanana) birds are alluded to, birds that Frances Ingemann, the leXIcographer of the Ipili language, identifies as parrots (1997, p.1 for ainanana and ibid., p.39 for lawe). In the spell that Luke gave me, the lawe bird, a red bird, was also mentioned, along with another red bird, the akatawaliama bird. Both these birds, Luke said, represent cleanliness and purity. The feathers of these birds may be used as male decoration, and the imagery seems to have conjured that

bright, vibrant appearance - that mint condition - that mata kamo participants demed. The spell also spoke of expelling from the body any contaminant and referred specifically to menstruating women and the need to purify them. In this procedure the sweet potato is first charred and then whitened and brightened through the scraping action, a transformation that symbolizes 'sympathetically,' as does the ,magery of the various spells, the desired purification of the human body. Despite continuities between indigenous pmity-and-danger themes and the particulars of mata kamo, there were also odd discontinuities. Ordinarily a variety of taboos hedged intersexual contact, the most important being those that restricted contact with menstruating or post partum wives. But in mata kamo all caution was thrown to the wind, and men and women stood together in the water - naked, even, some say. Katini told me that in Konemats mala kamo a naked woman had straddled the conduit spout. Anything that passes beneath a woman's vagina is ipso facto defiled, and this woman was naked! Ordinarily menstruating wives avoided glancing at their husbands or intimacy of any kind and kept to private areas lest they inadvertently contaminated whomever they came across. But during mala kamo males and menstruating women gathered together in the rivers, and they looked at each other. 'The woman's blood flowed into the water; we forgot our ancestral knowledge; we looked at the woman's menstrual blood,' one man told me. When Lewambo participated in mata kamo, he was a youth who either had begun attending the omatisia ritual or was preparing to do so, and the need to regulate sexual contact was therefore uppermost in his mind. Nevertheless, dming mata kamo he bathed with women in the river. He described the scene for me this way: Women's skirts and netbags were ruined by the water. We were out of our minds [keJ and didn't bother straightening our aprons and grass skirts. Consequently, our genitals were exposed. We tried to fashion makeshift clothing out of tree leaves, but these har~ly covered us. In this state, we danced. We danced virtually naked, with our gemtals exposed, and we did not even worry about that ... We were very happy about that, and so we danced.

All explain mata kamo's obsession with cleanliness with respect to the ritual's overarching goal: to ascend to the sky. Luke told me that the purpose of scraping the sweet potato was to 'shed' or 'wipe away' the dirt, thus facilitating an ascent to

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the sky. Nane Pasia told me that ascent to the sky was the purpose of sitting in the water with people of the opposite sex: 'So that we could achieve these goals, we ate the pork fat and happily discarded the bush clothmg, and we men and women sat together perfectly naked washing ourselves with water.' Lewambo, too, told me that his principal concern was to arrive in the .sky with an immaculate, body. Bathing with women in the river did not concern hnn, he saId, because he would be going to the sky.'

Mala Kamo and Christianity In fall 2000, Lewambo surprised me by telling me that Lunguni, the Engan brother who (along with Langate)9 is emphasized in the Paiela acconnts that I have collected, had mistakenly killed his own son and that this was the catalyst for mala kamo. According to Lewambo, Lunguni and his son Yange went to Mt. Yongosla presumably lying in the Engan area - to hunt game. In the middle of the mght, the father mistook his son for a possum, and he hit him in the middle of the ~hest ,;,th an axe. Blood spurted out, and the son died. Still not aware that he had killed his own son, the father cut out the 'possum's' heart and lungs (yamapane) and cooked and ~te them When he finally realized that he had killed his own son, Lungum heard a vOice teJJi~g him to cut out the corpse's fat and cook and eat it, which he did. Then he climbed a mountain and looked down upon his siblings, and he called out to them to join him. He gave his siblings their nephew's fat to eat, and together th~y deVised the fat, sweet potato, and water spells of the mala kamo ritual. Knowmg that theIr nephew had died and that they had consumed him, the four decided to prosyletize the new cnlt (see a similar account in Jacka, 2002, pp.208-209; cf. Glasse, 1995). Today Lewambo thinks that Yange either was or symbolized Jesus a~d that the sweet potatoes that were eaten in mala kamo were, or symbolIzed, Jesus. body. He also now thinks that his own pig was not so much slaughtered as cruCified. As It was hoisted up to the rooftop, it was speared again and again. As I~he male owner of the pig Lewambo received the head and the heart-lungs to eat, and he saw that the he~ had been speared several times, something that i~ retrospect Lewambo understands to have been a symbolic crucifixion. By this lOgiC, his pig, like Yange before him, became, at least symbolically, the body of Christ. Also by thiS lOgiC, eating the pork fat was Lewambo's frrst communion. Similarly, the blood that ."'~s spilled in the massive pig slaughters of m~la k~mo was symbolIcally Christ s blood. Other participants in mala kamo now Identify the wme at commumon Wl~h the 'sky water' of mala kamo. In general, then, the commensal meals and symbolIc consumptions of mata kamo were, or represented, what has come to be understood as Christian communion. There is much more in mata kamo that - retrospectively, at least - serves .to

connect it with the missionaries, who entered the area in the early 1960s, and w;th the doctrine and ritual they taught. For example, the remarkable abandon Wlth which men and women freely intermingled in the washing phase of mala kamo resonates, in the minds of some, with the missionaries' denigration of the taboos on

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intersexual congress. Also, the Engan visitors preached pacification, encouraging participants to discard or burn their weapons, and this theme of pacification seems in retrospect to anticipate the pacifist rhetoric of the missionaries and Australian

colonial officers who would follow. Another strong link between mala kamo and mission teaching, one that I only learned about in my fall 2000 research, was the contempt that the four Engan spellmen showed for traditional ritual. Simion (ne Toyo), a Kolombi-based man who was an important Paiela leader in his prime and who is still highly respected, recalled that the Engan men who introduced mala kamo 'told us that we shonld break with ancestral customs,' suggesting that mala kamo was proselytized not merely as a new ritual but as a reform ritual. According to Lewarnbo, the paraphernalia associated with the pre-Christian fertility ritual called kepele - the ritual stones and the wicker basket ritual figurine - were all discarded, not just when the missionaries came years later but at the time of mata kamo, in response to the teachings of the four Engan men. l l As shocking was the destruction of parental skulls. In the past, these were carefully preserved and fed bits of pork to bribe the recently deceased to aid survivors. But during mata kamo, these skulls were discarded in the river. In this light, we can begin to understand the pecnliar stylistics of mala kamo sacrifices. According to Lewambo, the visitors explicitly stated that pigs should be killed in a way that was different from traditional sacrifice. Indeed, in every detail, mata kamo sacrifice contrasted with pre-Christian sacrifice. Before mata kamo, pig sacrifices were offered to the spirits of the recently deceased (Ialepa) and demons (yama), not to the sun. If a person fell ill and it was suspected that a spirit had attacked the sick person, a pig was sacrificed. The nose of the pig was placed over a hole to allow the blood of the pig to drip into the hole as the spirit was invited to come feast on the blood and, once satiated, to leave. The illness was attributed to the demon's proximity, to the fact that the spirit had 'come'; feeding the spirit satisfied the condition under which the spirit would voluntarily "go," its withdrawal effecting a cure. Mter the blood of the pig or pigs had been allowed to drip in the hole, a stake was driven into the hole to gouge out the eyes of the attacking spirit. According to other accounts, a liquid was poured into the hole to seal off the passageway between the spirit world and the world of the living, sending the spirit on its way. These practices were called kola or ingape (see also Jacka, 2001). In every detail, mala kamo sacrifices were the obverse of indigenous sacrifices. During mata kamo, the pigs were hoisted up to the roof as a prestation to the sun, a creator deity rather than a demonic spirit, and their noses were pointed

upward (not downward) as the sun was summoned to claim the gift. Then the pigs were thrown down upon the ground. Luke's story of his participation in mata kamo is suggestive of the contrarian nature of mata kamo sacrifice. As Luke traveled to where the mata kamo ritual was being performed, a relative of his fell ill, and the ingape sacrifice was performed. A hole was dug in the ground, a pig was killed, and its nose was placed over the hole so that the attacking spirit could come and eat. As the ingape sacrifice was being performed, someone who had already begun participating in mala kamo

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came up and told Luke that he would refuse to eat any pig that had been sacrificed to an 'evil spirit' (yama) and that he was going to the sky instead. As a contrarian or reform ritual, mata kamo is today retrospectively regarded as preparation for Christian conversion. The missionaries saw traditional sacrifice as devil worship - indeed, yama and satane or Satan are used interchangeably today to signify demons - and forbade it. Viewed now - indeed, for the last four decades - as the prelude to conversion, mata kamo symbolism becomes prophetic of the shift from the worship of the demonic spirits now referred to as satane to the worship of God that lies at the heart of Christian conversion, in both missionary and local constructions of conversion. Simian expressed the theory succinctly, emphasizing the uses of water in both mata kamo and Christianity: 'The reason [tene J for the ritual was so that we would be baptised. The ritual itself was our first baptism.' Ipili speakers sometimes pair events as 'preliminary' (merely 'trying' or 'experimenting' [mandeke pi, makande pi], suggesting an anticipation of a future realization; traiim tasol in Tok Pisin) and 'actual' (angini; literally 'body'). Preliminary events anticipate or forecast actual or 'body' events, which then 'realize"2 or bring to fruition the prophecy. Mata kamo was 'merely trying,' someone told me; but with the coming of the white people, what was 'merely trying has now become body' (andipa angini gu loyale makande peya koni) (see Biersack, 1982b on this idiom). Another way in which the anticipatory nature of mata kamo is expressed is to call it kokoli. Kokoli is symbolic language that is used, for example, in magical spells. Kokoli is a system of 'veiled' (A. Strathern, 1975) signification in relation to which tangible objects and actual events stand as 'body': evidence of the signifier's intention. In Ipili magic, the words of the spell the parrot references in the washing spell, for example - symbolize the desired outcome, and any eventuation of that outcome is understood as the realization of the fantasy-like poetics of magical spells.

The Resurrected Body The most important connection between mata kamo and Christianity is surely the utopian status accorded the sky in both. What mission teaching snpplies that mata kamo teaching utterly lacked is a myth-based understanding of how the sky comes to be within human reach. Traditionally the sky was restricted to supernatural beings, while the earth was the human abode. Biblical lore as locally interpreted allows Ipili speakers to frame in mythopoetic terms the new, revolutionary possibility first posed by mata kamo - that the human condition might be ameliorated. Most if not all Ipili speakers know the Garden of Eden story and many of them have an interpretation of it. The following is the Garden of Eden story as it was recounted to me in 1995 by Maria, one of Luke's daughters. Maria is a devout, literate Catholic who reads passages of the Bible at Sunday services. Her story opens as Genesis opens, with a narration of God's creation, culminating in the fashioning of the very first man and woman.

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God decided that he wanted to make something like himself - a man and a woman H took ground and made a man. With the ground he made a man but it dl'dn't . e speakShbl 'd" ,moveor . 0 e ew WlU mto Its nostrils, and then it moved ... Then God he realized he nee~ed .to c~eate a woman. He needed to make a person to help Adam, do to some dh d wor WIth him, and so he created a woman. He took the rib of Adam woman The m h' ,an ema ea . an was very appy WIth her. Her bone and meat is mine her skin ~e~a~s~ds~ had been ma?e from his bone, meat, flesh, she was really his, he thought: o .0 . e two to s~y tn the good land. And they stayed good there. The ke t on p happIly eating everythmg good there. God said 'I P"ive you everything Wh Y t E . ' ry • atever you w tt h an 0 ea ,eat. xcept for thIS one tree. He gave everything except the tree' and then d~ff,went to t~e sky. The two loved God, and God loved them. God and hum;ns were of ~ erelnt. mInds, and th~re was no fear or shame. Adam and Eve lived without tcu ty, they had no pam. One day it was very hot and the two went to the base of the forbidden tree The wo~, went first and t~e man came behind her. A huge snake came. And this bi ~nake asked: ,You eat eve~g but not the fruit of this tree. Why?' And the woman sai~ to the snake. God forbade It. What's the reason for that? God said no. The snake said that God stays above. If you were to eat this fruit, you would become like God ' The ale limb d the tree and frui th . sn e c e an gave a t to e woman, and the woman ate it. It was sweet. She ate half d gave ~e other ,half to Adarn. But v:hereas the woman ate hers entirely, Adam didn't swallow his. Adam s half became stuck In his throat and became his Adam's apple . ,When God l~arned what had happened, he called out to Adam and Eve. The two didn t. re~po~d qUlckly; they hid from God. Then God said to the two of them 'Before yo~ dldn t ?lS?~ey, but now you have eaten the forbidden fruit.' The man said' 'I didn't do It; she dId It. And the woman said that she hadn't done it, the snake had do~e it And ~od asked ~e snake ~hy h~ had done it, and the snake didn't respond. Then God strid, '1 orba~e eatmg the fruIt ofthts tree. But you didn't obey me.' And Adam said '1 didn't d anything. Those two disobeyed.' ... But God was very angry with all thre' d h .~ that he wanted to gi~e them a punishment of very hard lab or. God told ~~:an ~:-at woman o~er there will bear children. You will make gardens and build houses Y~u will do very bIg wo~k and your back will ache. You will have a lot of pain - oill; then will :u :~. You w~ be .very hot, and after you have worked you will ache - and because of hS a ~r and ~am will you eat. So that that woman over there might sleep, you will build a . ouse, .you wIn work very hard, and you will travel oilly with difficulty I am'vin You this p.umshment because you disobeyed me. Woman, when you bear child gl gwill expenence t' d n1 ren, you . grea pam, an 0 y because of it will you eat. So that your children can eat y~~ Wtl1mound gardens and look after pigs and plant vegetable seeds, and you will not b~ a . e to ve purposelessly, without working. Come fetch firewood and mak tb . WIll work very hard I ". e ne ags, you ~ am gIvmg you tins kind of life. Go now to begin doing all kinds of k H w?r. ave ~at p~n. [And then God curses the snake, telling the snake that the snake WIll have t? li~e a ~ldden life in cold and dark places because the descendants of Adam anakndEvwillewill kill him whenever they see the snake, and telling the snake as wen that the have to do great work.] s e di . Then God withdrew to heaven. Before there was a loving communion between the ~In~dan d th~ ~uman, but now the bridge was broken. God happily climbed above an am an ve had broken the law and were confused. Those two would live i~ ~kness on the cold earth. Then the source (tene) of fear and shame came to them e~ were naked, and they covered themselves with tree leaves. Before the tw~ obtamed .fo?d freely (me), but now they would have to go home and make a arden there. ThIS IS the lot of humankind. Before Adam and Eve ate freely like the birJs, and

diffi

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they ddidn't .;,,~:~~~

th

had to

ow the food they ate, and they had to

~:sWdiff::ent [that i~ gender divided], and their thoughts were

repIo uce. entirely fined with this work.

In all versions of the Genesis story that I have heard, the f~l from gra~e is . d by the origin of sexual reproduction. The ImphcatlOn - exphclt III accompame . ... h is that Adaro and Eve - who once some versions of the story, Imphclt III at ers rt 1 K tini the man lived 'freely' (me), without pain and work - have become mo a. a , who participated in mala kamo at Konema, told me. d Adam and Eve for what they had done. He told them

:~n~~:~:~::~=~=~;~:I t:~.th;~tt~~:,h~~;::~/~~':a:t:~ ~~~a~: t~:t !~~~ the sky ground

graun up

t

0

.

Then the two experienced shame. God told them that they

would die.

at ani would they die but, as Maria explained to me, they would have to work.

~GOd toid Adam and Eve that they would be required to mak~ hou~e~dand ~:~~~~

and to look after pigs and that the woman would also have ;,~ ear c 1 ren. them "Your children will fight; you will have to find food. dh t f In the re-Christian cosmos, earth opposed sky and was the home an os 0 all species ~ife, mortal and regenerative, and the sky was a transce~d~ntd:~e;;~ . ·th divinit rather than humamty. The cosmos t a . assoc~~~edze:':.esonates p~ofOundlY with the Ipili pre-Christian cosmos. In Genes!s, myth g:t t' t I'de' the Garden of Eden as God WIthdraws to the sky, Adaro and Eve are sen ou s I hi

~~~:;ur~~~~ ~~e~:eo:h~~::;:~e~~eb~~:::~ i~~:~ ~~dn~:~:t:~ ~ei:~s ~:~:

0

of h";dship. In local understandings, the st?ry. accounts for the on °an order of 'outside' of which the earth was, and stIll IS, the cosrmc sym 0 : . embodied being in which work, death, and reproduction are unav01dab;eE~nkei~ as ects of a thereby cursed life. The expulsIon from the. Garden 0 en . p . h rt t the origin of human as opposed to dlvme eXIstence. tantamount, m so, 0 Ad's cosmos this If Genesis mythologizes the pre-Christian cosm?s as am . ' th . then opened up to the possibilities of Christ's cosmos. Broaching e cosmos Ifs ' bm'h death and resurrection, Katini went on: 'God said, "Later I matter 0 Jesus , , d th t I h e made and T thi son I will give the good groun a av , will give you my son. 0 d"' h n'" But why did God send his son to die?, . "Y 't at I will put this good groun m eave, Katini asked. Katini answered his own question t~".waY:d:G;d~~dGOdo~o~~a:ay th fruit" but they did eat it. Afterward human emgs le. t the ood ound leaving a bad ground of death behind. Jesus' death allow~ us 0 eg ~eath ' Without Jesus' death, our spirit would not go to heaven. WIth overcome . was set for the mata kamo-like efforts of baptism,

~~:'u:~~h a~~eth:~~:, to ascend to the sky. Adaro and in par~:ar EV~b~O~:~ evil into th~ world and lost the 'good ground' of the Gard~n 0 f brought with him to the sky. Christ paid for the transgressIon 0

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and made possible the repatriation of all 'good' people to that paradise. He bought, in short, the sky. The ascent to heaven will not happen in secular time, as mala kamo happened, but in sacred time: when Jesus returns to the earth and 'sorts' the 'good' people from the 'bad' people on a day of 'last judgtnent.' The centerpiece of the pre-Christian cosmos is the human body in all its suffering and fragility. In Christian mythopoetics this body is the postexpulsion body, the body that suffers, works, reproduces, and dies. The resurrected body restores, as it were, the status quo ante: the sexless, sterile, and also idle body of the Garden of Eden era. And so the resurrected body will be an idle rather than a working body. 'In heaven,' Lewarobo told me, 'we will all be given houses. We won't labor to build houses but our houses will be provided for us ... and we will be very happy with our houses. Here on earth we are ouly happy a little; in heaven we will be entirely happy.' Yakop Puluma, the SDA Pastor at Andita, described heaven in similar terms: 'In heaven we won't have to build houses; the houses of heaven are made by God. And we won't have to garden or prepare food either. In heaven we will eat of the tree of life.' That is (to interpret Yakop): we will live without having to pay for the privilege by dying. In pre-Christian imaginings, pollution and sharoe go hand in glove. The bodily zone that is polluted and polluting is the lower body, associated with coitus, reproduction, and defecation. All these activities are sharoeful and must be hidden from view. Moreover, the lower body itself, especially its sharoeful for-and-aft orifices, is concealed with clothing. According to local interpretations of the Garden of Eden story, this shameful body originated with the expulsion. 'Then the source of fear and shame caroe to them. They were naked, and they covered themselves with tree leaves.' The resurrected body is the God-created preexpulsion body, and it is blameless and shameless. 'In heaven we won't wear any clothing; there will be no shame,' Kauwambo, a long-time Kolombi resident and leader, told me. While I have received no good explanation for why mala kamo participants flaunted the taboos on intersexual congress, Nane Pasia of Andita did link the shame-free resurrected body with the bodies of mala kamo participants, suggesting that, even in the time of mala kamo, the possibility of a life beyond all reproduction and pollution was imagined. As created, Adaro and Eve were naked and unasharoed, and they were also chaste, Nane explained. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the snake asked Eve if she had ever had intercourse, and she said no, whereupon the snake took his long tail and penetrated Eve. Eve made the fatal error of saying that she had enjoyed herself, and after that Adaro and Eve had intercourse, and Eve conceived and bore children. Originally, before the expulsion, there had been no sexuality, and in heaven there would be no sexnality either, Nane told me. So, too, at the time of mala kamo: ascending to the sky would liberate participants from the world of sharoe lying below. As imagined, the resurrected body is a body that transcends the cosmic human fate described at the outset. Like the sky in the pre-Christian cosmos, heaven names the difference between a divinized, perfect, immortal world and the material world of the earth, with its various kinds of work - production, reproduction, exchange - that lies below. Heaven is utopia rpili-style - nothing more nor less

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than an escape from the cosmic yoke of earth-bonndedness - through a reduction of labor and an alleviation of suffering. The power of the idea of the resurrected body stems not from Christianity as such, I would submit, but from the tensions and resonances between Christian doctrine and pre-Christian views - tensions and resonances that make of Christ and other preachers of Christianity liberators on a cosmic scale. 10 heaven the burden of necessity will be lifted.

Conjuncture and Difference 'The Economics of Develop-Man in the Pacific' and its various companion pieces (Sahlins, 1988; 1992b; 1994; 2000) argue that, instead of being dominated or victimized by the capitalist villain, native cultures remain self-determining and self-perpetuating, even self-elaborating, in and through market participatio.n. In this, Sahlins throws down the gauntlet to political economists, who read cap1tahst .' penetration in fatalistic terms. But there is another model of change, one that Sahlms somel1mes appears to embrace and one that I suggested at the outset would prove to be the most fruitful. This model dispenses with the either-orness - endogenous or exogenous? reproduction or transformation? local or global? - of prior frameworks and examines the interactions between the indigenous and exogenous as these unfold III time. As the Ipili case so clearly shows, indigenous peoples not only enrich but alter 'their own ideas of what mankind is all about' (SaWins, 1992a, p.14) m the course of engaging with novel views. At the same time, foreign meanings can acqnire local significance only in relation to prior understandings. The world (in the phenomenological sense) that Ipilis now occupy - a world of bapl1sms and communions, holy books and holy words, blacks and whites, sky and earth, and gold mining, with all its promise and all its difficulty (Biersack, 1999; 2001b) -IS a world that has emerged through years of encounter with a signifying other. This world deviates importantly from the world of pre-Christian cosmology, but its significance depends utterly upon the manner of the deviation .. Christi~ity's significance for an Ipili-speaker lies precisely in the way that It pronuses a transfignred human condition. Without the pre-Christian cosmos, Christ's cosmos loses its power. In the event, what is important is not the indigenous or exogenous but, rather, the relationship between the two. Ipili modernity is the byproduct of the entanglements of that 'complicated intercultural zone where the cultural differences are worked through' (SaWins, 1994, p.385), of 'the interplay of the global and the local' (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1993, p.xiv; quoted in Eves, 2000, p.74). Such processes may result in cultural elaboration, but they may also result, as I believe I have shown for the Ipili case, in the appropriation but also indigenization of meaning, a double movement that accounts for the nonteleological openness ofthe historicity of the Ipili imagination. Sahlins' target in 'The Economics of Develop-man' is world system theory, a materialist theory that focuses on markets (including labor markets) and the production and circulation of commodities rather than on meaning, subjectivity,

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and the imagination (but see Taussig, 1980). World system theory is ancestral to transnational anthropology, with its emphasis upon capital and technology flows and (m Appadurai's neologism) 'financescapes' (1996, p.33). But transnational anthropology importantly departs from world system theory in locating transnatlOnal processes largely, although certainly not exclusively, in the human imagination. My topic here has been the history of the Ipili imagination, and I close WIth an attempt to find common ground between transnational and area studies. At first blush this argnment appears flawed. In its more polemical moments, transnatlOnal anthropology dismisses anything that smacks of area studies on the grounds that the contemporary world is an 'uprooted,' 'deterritorialized' world-onthe-move. In the versions of transnational anthropology that appear to connt the most, the emphasis is on literal deterritorialization - on migration and diaspora - as well ~s on the electronic transmission of messages and images on a global (satellite teleYlsual . or mternet) scale. '[EJlectronic mediation and mass migration' (Appadural, 1996, pA) evidence a 'disjuncture,' a 'general rupture in the tenor of intersocietal relations in the past few decades' (ibid., p.2), and it is this new world order that transnational anthropology studies. These arguments serve to marginalize the study of out-of-the-way places and peoples who are still ensconced in valleys, islands, or villages (see Mintz, 2000). In this context, New Guinea stayat-homes, with their quaint oldest-economy technologies, have seemed not at all 'here and now' (Appadurai, 1996, ch. 1), exemplifications of disjuncture and rupture, but an atavism of 'there and then,' irrelevant as such to a transnational anthropology. Of course, New Guinea is here and now - as here and now as all the so-called 'primitive societies' upon whose coevalness Fabian, in his own wellknown diatribe, so compellingly insisted (1983). To find common ground between Melanesian and transnational studies, it is necessary to question Appadurai's emphasis upon 'electronic mediation and mass migration' (1996, pA) as indicators of the presence of transnational processes worthy of that term. Cold media - the printed and spoken word; paintings and drawmgs; photographs; in the Ipili context, the white body itself, which suggests a superior, possibly (or so it was speculated in the 1970s) immortal body - do indeed creat~ 'interconnected social space[s]' (Gupta and Fergnson, 1992, p.14). They also mstill a sense of new 'possible lives' that beckons seductively toward metamorphosis. Indeed, over the years, Ipilis have come to imagine hitherto unimaginable lives precisely through such cold media (see Jacka, 2001 for a recent secular example), and fantasy (mata kamo or the Christian mass as theater, for example) has indeed become 'social practice,' entering 'in a host of ways, into the fabrication of social lives' (Appadurai, 1996, p.54). If we do not nnderstand this, we do not understand the enthusiasm for Christianity, development, and other salient features ofIpili modernity (cf. Robbins, 1997). Anyone who has traveled to the so-called third and fourth worlds knows about the 'bricks and mortar' circuits within which foreign ideas and values move creating 'ideoscapes' and 'mediascapes' in Appadurai's terminology (1996, pp.35~ 36): public buildings such as schoolrooms (LiPuma, 2000, ch.9), churches, banks, courthouses, stores, the anthropologist's house, and, ultimately, the private homes

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of all of those exposed to new ideas, new images, and new markets who talk about the news as they sit around the hearth in the evenings. This circulation is ubiquitous. It follows that under circumstances of globalization regional studies are perforce trausnational studies. But, by the same token, the dichotomy between transnational and regional ethnography is undercut. If we set aside electricity and migration as the diacritics of a transnationalized world and focus instead on the transcultural flow of ideas, however accomplished, then New Guinea and other like locales are directly relevant to transnational studies. There is one further impediment to linking transnational anthropology with regional studies, and that is the failure of some versions of transnation~l anthropology to recognize the constitutive role of cultural difference. In thIS regard, Sahlins' writings continue to be crucial for seeing in the flow the cultural mediations involved in border-crossings of objects and subjects. In her book Flexible Citizenship, Aihwa Ong tells us that she views 'transnationalism not in terms of unstructured flows but in terms of the tensions between movements and

social orders' (1999, p.6; emphasis added). While her particular interest is in the nation-state and (after Foucault) the 'goveruroentality' of populations and movements, I find her definition of the transnationalist approach - as neither topdown nor bottom-up but, as she puts it, 'horizontal and relational' (ibid., p.4) useful. 'Trans denotes both moving through space or across lines, as well as changing the nature of something ... transnationality .. , alludes to the transversal, the transactional, the translocal, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary behavior and imagination' (ibid., pA) as these are 'incited, enabled, and regulated' (ibid.) by external stimulants. Here Ong aptly describes my own horizontal or conjunctural project in these pages. But, more to the point, she suggests how 'the area-studies tradition' might 'be revitalized' (Appadurai, 1996, p.18) in ways that reconcile regional or area studies with transnational anthropology (cf. Wilson and Dirlik, 1995; Robbins and Barnford, 1997). To the extent that transnational anthropology is understood as the study of the displacement but also emplacement, the decontextualization but also recontextualization of people, objects (Appadurai, 1986; Thomas, 1991), and ideas, transnational anthropology concerns conjuncture rather than disjuncture as

well as difference. Indeed, the roots/routes word play that James Clifford has done so much with (1992; 1997) - the one referring to area studies and earlier epochs, the other to transnational studies and the contemporary - loses much of its force once we shift from a rhetoric of disjuncture to a rhetoric of conjuncture or, as

Clifford himself has suggested, to the study of the 'specific dynamics of dwelling/traveling' (1992, p.lOl). The history of Ipili constructions of the body offers a clear example of what could be called 'place-based' cultural history (Biersack, 2003; in press.). Here I accord the word place the distinctive meaning accorded it in the writings of Doreen

Massey (1993), Arturo Escobar (2001), Arif Dirlik (2001), and Donald Moore (1998) (see also Biersack, 1999, pp. 81-82). While some use place to refer to the local and all it would seem to entail (Harvey, 1993; see discussions in Dirlik, 2001, pp.19-20 and Massey, 1993), others define place as not the local, as not

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globality's other, but, rather, as something that is fundamentally interstitial. Thus, for Doreen Massey, '[W]hat gives a place its specificity is ... the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of relations, articulated together at a partIcular locus' (Massey, 1993, p.66). Place therefore signifies a particular and contingent network of transregional articulations, a spatiotemporally grounded site of local-global interaction. If, now, we imagine the where of place, the answer is clearly both locational and relational. Place is 'never simply local, sealed off from an outside beyond' (Moore, 1998, p.347), and to study place is to 'move from hermetic ally sealed sites of autonomy to relational spaces of connection and arti~ulation' (ibid.). Place has 'a flexible and porous boundary around it, without closmg out the extralocal, all the way to the global' (Dirlik, 2001, p.22; see also Raffles' definition of 'locality' [1999]). Hence the paradox: places are not deterritorialized but neither are they merely local. They are, as said, at once locational and relational - in short, conjunctural (Biersack, 2003, in press). A place-based approach allows us to understand the conjunctural roots of cultural productions such as Ipili Christianity as well as of the 'development' - or, to use Sahlins' neologism for my own purposes, the developman, that by-product of the mterplay of the local and the global - it motivates (Biersack, 1996; 1999). The argument would have then to be that cultural productions such as Ipili Chtistianity evidence reproduction in transformation and transfonnation in reproduction (see

Sahlins,1981). Redefined - as the study of conjuncture and difference in transnational transcultural spaces - transnational anthropology becomes not ouly compatibl~ with, but the key perspective upon, area studies in an era of globalization (a term that itself must be carefully defined to recognize the dispersal of sites and diversity of processes through which so-called globalization actually occurs). Place-based analysis (Biersack, 2003; in press.) leads us beyond the area/transnational studies dichotomy and toward a recognition of a world that turns upon 'the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization' (Appadurai, 1996, p.32) - a world that has in it, for example, Ipili Chtistianity.

Acknowledgements This chapter is based on research I conducted in 1993 and winter 1995 with Wenner-Gren

funding, from July 1995 to February 1996 with Fulbright funding, and in fall 1999 and 2000 with funding from Wenner-Gren and the American Philosophical Society. The research built upon foundations laid in research I conducted in the 1970s with funding from the. National Science Foundat~on. I gratefully acknowledge this support. In Papua New Gumea, I had wonderful aSSistance from Porgerans and Paielas. In Porgera, Stephen Hepworth, Father Edward Osiecki, Jeffrey Puge, Graham Taylor, Morep Tero, Lewambo, Father Andrew Sobon, Brother Rudy, Father Anton Somhorst, Kauwambo, Koipanda, and Kurubu Ipara have been most generous with their time and hospitality. In Paiela Lewambo Tendi, Maria, Luke, Simion, Nikolas Olape, Kauwambo, Nane Pasia, and Karnrl have bee~ particularly helpful in this research. (Sadly, Luke and Nane Pasia passed away in the year or two following my last conversations with them.) In Porgera, I should like to thank Pilato in

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particular, whose memory is phenomenal and whose storytelling is transfixing. I thank Lyn Coffin, Jerry Jacka, Bruce Knaufi, Ioel Robbins, Hans Reithofer, and Marshall Sahlins for their respective readings of various previous drafts. Frances Ingemann has always generously responded to queries about the Ipili language. In Papua New Guinea my research affiliation continues to be with the National Research Institute, and there I had excellent assistance and intellectual stimulation from Michael Laki and Colin Filer, and I thank both of these men. I should also like to thank the Institute for Ethnology at the University of GOttingen. Germany, and in particular Professor Birgitte Hauser-Schaublin and DIs. Elfriede Hermann and Wolfgang Kempf for inviting me to present this paper in summer 2003 and for their helpful comments upon it.

Notes For example: Akin and Robbins, 1998; Carrier, 1996; Eves, 2000; Foster, 1995; 1999; Friedman, 1996; Gewertz and Errington, 1991; 1999; Glasse, 1995; Knauft, 1999; Kulick, 1992; Lattas, 1998; LiPuma, 2000; Maclean, 1994; ~tasch, 2001; Stewart and Strathern, 2002; Thomas, 1991; Tuzin, 1997. 2 Several features of IpiJi social organization compound the problem of differentiating Porgerans from Paielas. As said, Ipili society is cognatic, and anyone person descends from multiple ancestors - some 'toward the mother' or on the mother's side and some 'toward the father' or on the father's side. A person is expected to visit or live with and support his or her father's and mother's kin. Many Ipilis have both Porgeran and Paiela ancestors, and they 'come and go' between the two valleys, realizing the cognatic ideal of sociality. For these in particular, it is meaningless to classify them as either Porgeran or Paiela; they are more aptly referred to (to use the local idiom) as 'in between.' Consider, for example, Lewambo, whom I have known for over 25 years and whose ideas provide sparkle to this chapter. Lewambo's multiple affiliations connect him in both the Porgera and Paiela valleys. As a Porgeran, he belongs to Angalaini, Maipangi, and Pulumaini lines. As a Paiela, he is a member of Tondopo, Puyato, Yokone, Wake, Masapa, and Kalua lines. In his movements and residential shifts, Lewarnbo has realized the residential ideal. I first met Lewarnbo in 1974. He was then a tultul in the Paiela valley - that is, a link in the chain of command from Australia to the 'native' subaltern and second in command to the luluai, who was also appointed by the Australian colonial administration. In 1974, Lewarnbo was living in the Paiela val1ey near the valley's only airstrip. Seven or so years ago he was living in the Porgera valley, at Mungalep, the seat of the Catholic Mission. At the time a fight within Angalaini erupted, and Lewambo's oldest son was killed as a result. In the midst of all that turmoil, Lewambo took a new and much younger wife and shifted to the southern end of the Paiela valley. My recent conversations with him have taken place at Kolombi, site of the Paiela airstrip, Mungalep in the Porgera valley, and, in the year 2000, Andita at the southern end of the Paiela valley. Because of his multiple affiliations, he is a landowner at each and every one of these places and has consanguineal as well as affinal connections at all three places. 3 The first Ipili to arrive in the United States did so as the guest of Alex Golub in 2000. Mr. Golub is a doctoral student at the University of Chicago who is studying the dynamics of landowner-company relations at Porgera. Alex and his guest went to Chicago, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Portland, Oregon. 4 Many anthropologists have discussed, either explicitly or implicitly, the centrality of the body in New Guinea ethnography. The literature on male initiation and other

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~ub~rty rites as well a.s on self~decoration, far too extensive to cite particular titles, me~tably concerns thIS centrahty. In addition, several texts have focused on New

Gumea constructions of the body and personhood per se (Knauft, 1999, pp.2l-88; Lambek and Strathem, 1998; A. Strathem, 1996; M. Strathem, 1988) 5 In l!e~aki~g the World, Stewart and Strathern report that so~ething like this SaCrIficIal, hfe-for-life principle exists among the Duna, who live west of Ipili speakers (2002, p.185). 6 Meg~itt stipulates that the cult innovators were Taro Enga, a group of Enga speakers who occuPy part of the valley of the upper Lagaipu [a.k.a. Lagaip] River ... Most of th~ Taro. hve ~nd garden on the southern slopes of the valley, between the Kera and MISyO tri~u~es of the ~agaipu, but others are settled on the north side' (1974, p.2), w~ere Yelmt (a.k.a. Yelm and Lyeimi, which is how Meggitt spells the word) is. W~es~ner and Tumu .speU Meggitt's Taro Tayato (1998), and they locate the Tayato prInclp~ly, as Meggltt does, on the southern side of the Lagaip (ibid., p.15 map 2). ~nga. dialects are spoken as far north as Yeimi (ibid.). My informants have mostly Identified the c~lt innovators as Oyomo, the Ipili word for Enga. At least one, however, .has satd that ~ey were Nete, not Engan. Wiessner and Tumu locate Nete speakers p.50 map 5' see also ib'd 2 1) Th' III 'dthe Maramulll and Yeimi areas (ibid., , 1 ., p. map • IS eVI e~ce suggests that the Yeimi area was, and probably still is, a bilingual border zone (Blersack, 1995a) and that actual identity of the cult innovators could have been ~~re complex than Meggitt's 1974 account suggests. Here I simply confonn to Meggltt s language and refer to the innovators as Engan. 7 ~at I translate h~re ,a~ 'sky' is usually stipulated as tawe toko, although atl kenga or ab~v~ the mountams IS the occasional synonym. 8 K~tml, who participated in the cult at Konema, an Ipili-speaking area west of the Palela valley, told me that this was the first that the people in the area had seen a pearlshell. 'We didn't know where it came from, and we thought that it had fallen from the sky.' 9 I hav~ recorded many names for the cult leaders. The names that have been most often mentIOned are Langate and Lung~ni. Wambilip is mentioned relatively infrequently. Other names that hav~ been mentIoned are Pawaiya, Kongema, Pepeyauwe, Naname, Kome, Aleka, and Tatyako - these names varying by subregion. It is unclear to me whe~er thes~ names belong to the original spellmen or to secondary leaders, men who p~clpated 1ll the cult and learned it and who then moved further into Ipili-speaking temtory and beyond, spreading the cult still further. Some have mentioned as well that the brothers'. mother, a woman named Naname (the two ns are velar), appeared with the brothers 1ll some areas a~d participated in the cult. According to Pilato, the father's name w~s Ane rather than Ain, as Meggitt (1974) renders the name. 10 Every pIg has a male and a female owner (anduane). The male owner cuts and fences the garden or gardens that feed the pig; the female owner mounds, tends, and harvests the garden or gardens, and she also feeds the pig. When a pig is killed and butchered the ~ale h0v.:ner r~ceives the lower jaw and the heart-lungs while the female owne; receIves t e mtestinal tracts and the anus. 11 According to Meggitt, the cult leaders advocated the abandonment of the kepele ritual altho~gh 'kaima pool rituals,' whereby communication with clan ancestors w~ establtshed: was allowed (1974, p.21). According to Wiessner and Tumu, the cult that they call (m the Enga language) mata katenge (Meggitt's Cult of Ain) 'demanded a.bohshing many of ~he "old ways," .among them the Kepele cult, Sangai bachelors' rItes [the Engan eqUIvalent of the Iplli omatisia ritual], sexual contamination beliefs and warfare' (1998, p.383). '

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

12 The verb angini gu la, 'to become body,' bears the implication of actualizing or realizing what had only been imagined in some vision of the future. Angini is sometimes used interchangeably with enekeya, a word I translate as 'real.' Ingemann glosses the verb as to 'bear fruit' (1997, p.9).

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Meggitt, Mervyn J. (1964), 'Male-Female Relationships in the Highlands of Australian New.Gu~nea,' in James B. Watson (ed.), New Guinea: The Central Highlands, Special ~ubhcatlon, American Anthropologist, Vol. 66, pp. 204-224. Meggltt, Mervyn J. (1974), 'The Sun and the Shakers: A Millenarian Cult and Its Transfonnations in the New Guinea Highlands,' in Studies in Enga History, Oceania . MOll?graphs, no. 20, Sydney, University of Sydney Press, pp. 1-56. Mintz, Sldney W. (2000), 'Sows' Ears and Silver Linings: A Backward Look at Ethnography,' Current Anthropology, Vo!. 41(2), pp. 169-189. Moore, Donald S. (1998), :Subaltern Struggles and the Politics of Place: Remapping ReSIstance In ZImbabwe s Eastern Highlands,' Cultural Anthropology Vol. 13(3) pp. 344-381. ' , Moramoro, Moseley, and Paul Coleman (1992), 'The Mount Kare Experience: A Case Study,' Paper presented to the PNG Mining and Petroleum Conference, Sydney, August 31 September I. Morgan, Chris (2000), 'The State at the End of the Universe: Madness and the Millennium in Huli,' in P. Stewart and A. Strathem (eds), Millennial Markers, Townsville Australia: Centre for Pacific Studies, James Cook University of North Queensland pp' 59-86. ' . Oug, Aihwa (1999), Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality Durham, Duke University Press. ' Raffles, Hugh (1999), "'Local Theory": Nature and the Making of an Amazonian Place' Cultural Anthropology, Vo!. 14(3), pp. 323-360. ' Reitho~er, Hans (2004), 'The Python Spirit and the Cross: Becoming Christians in a ~hghlands Community of Papua New Guinea,' Ph.D. thesis, University of Goettingen. Robbms, Joel (1997), "'When Do You Think the World Will End?": Globalization, Apocalyptlclsm, and the Moral Perils of Fieldwork in Last New Guinea,' in J. Robbins and ~. ~amford (eds), 'Fieldwork Revisited: Changing Contexts of Ethnographic Practice ID the Era of Globalization,' Special issue of Anthropology and Humanism, Vo!. 22(1), pp. 6-30. Robbins, Joel and Sandra Bamford (eds) (1997), 'Fieldwork Revisited: Changing Contexts of Ethnographic Practlce III the Era of Globalization,' Special issue of Anthropology and Humanism, Vo!. 22(1). Ryan, Peter (1991), Black Bonanza: A Landslide of Gold, South Yara, Victoria, Hyland House. Sahlins, Marshall (1981), Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press. " Sahlins, Marshall (1988), 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific sector of "The World System," Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology' Proceedings of the ' British Academy, Vo!. 74, pp. 1-5\. Sahlins, Marshall (1992a), 'The Economics of Develop-man,' Res, Vo!. 21, pp. 13-25. Sah1~s, Marshall (1992b), Anahulu, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Sahlms, Marshal1 (1994), 'Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the context of Modern World History,' in R. Borofsky (ed.), Assessing Cultural Anthropology, New York, McGraw-Hill, pp. 377-94. Sahlins, Marshal1 (2000), 'What Is Anthropological Enlightenment? Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century,' Annual Review ofAnthropology, Vol. 29. Stasch, Rubert (20ot), 'Giving Up Homicide: Korowai Experience of Witches and Politce (West Papua),' Oceania, Vo!. 72, pp. 33-52.

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Chapter 10

World: Myth, Mining, and Stewart, Pamela J ., and Andrew Strathem (2002), Remaking the G . W h' t n DC Ritiual Change among the Duna of Papua New Smithsonian Institution Press.

umea,

as mg

0,

."

..

Strathem, Andrew (1975), 'Veiled Speech in Mount Ragen,' in M . Bloch (ed.), Polltzcal Language and Oratory in Traditional Society, London, Acadennc Press, pp. 185-203. Strathern, Andrew (1996), Body Thoughts, Ann Arbor, UniversitY,ofMichigan Press. Strathern, Marilyn (1988) The Gender of the Gift: Probl~ms ~nth Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia, Berkeley, University of Califorma Pres~. . , Sturzenhofecker, Gabriele (1995), 'Sacrificial Bodies and the CyChClty of Substance, Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 104(1), pp. 89-109. .., Taussig, Michael (1980), The Devil and Commodity Fetishism, Chapel Hdl, Uruverslty of North Carolina Press. . Thomas, Nicholas (1991), Entangled Objects: Exchan?e, .Matenal Culture, and .' Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Uruverslty ~ress: Tuzin, Don (1997), The Revenge of the Cassowary, Berkeley, UruverSlty of Caltforrua

Press. I Aft h" V '1 J h (1995) 'All That Glitters: The Mt. Kare Gold Rush and ts ennat, m 'B~r:ack (ed.), Papuan Borderlands:

In

A

.

H~li, I?una, an.d i,!ili Perspectives on the Papua

New Guinea Highlands, Ann Arbor, Umverslty of Mlchigan Press, pp. 343-374. Wiessner, Polly, and Akii Turnu (1998), Historical Vines: Enga Ne~orks .of Exc~an?e, Ritual, and Waifare in Papua New Guinea, Washington, D.C., Sm1thsoruan InstItutIon . D Ai' Cult Press. Wiessner, Polly, and Aldi Tumu (2001), 'Averting the Bush Ftre ay: n~ R i ited' in E. Messer and M. Lambek (eds), Ecology and the Sacred: Engagmg the A:;h~opoiogy of Roy A. Rappaport, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, pp.

300-323. Id' Wilson, Rob, and Arif Dirlik, (eds) (1995), Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultura Pro ucfWn, Durham, Duke University Press.

On Humiliation and Class in Contemporary Papua New Guinea Frederick Errington and Deborab Gewertz

In this essay about contemporary Papua New Guinea, we consider Sahlins' (1992) view that '[t]o "modernize," the people must first leam to hate what they already have, what they have always considered their well-being. Beyond that, they have to despise what they are, to hold their own existence in contempt - and want, then, to be someone else' (1992, p.24). We must, thus, examine whether the generation of a 'global inferiority complex' (1992, p.24) accompanies modernization, wherein a people must 'pass through a certain cultural desert to reach the promised land of "modernization": [wherein] they [must] ... experience a certain humiliation' (1992, p.23). In other words, we should consider whether humiliation, as this view suggests, is an 'important stage of economic development' (1992, p.24) such that a people must become 'sufficiently disgusted with themselves' (1992, p.24) to wish to become more like us. Let us begin to anSwer these questions with some preliminary probing of Sahlins' position. First of all, it is important to note that the 'they/themselves' of whom Sahlins writes, while culturally various (including Mendi, Hawaiians, Fijians, Kwakiutl and Chinese), are all 'essentialized' in contrast with an 'us' in this significant regard: none, at least initially, subscribed to the Western cultural logic in which 'each person takes the betterment of himself as his life project, thus, [composing] a society of autonomous individuals preoccupied with private material satisfactions' (1992, p.12). Rather, at least when first confronted with the objects that the emissaries of such a Western logic came to offer, they rejected what Sahlins calls 'development' for what he aptly ternns 'develop-man.' Instead of using these objects for private ends, they selectively incorporated them so as to enrich local ideas of 'what mankind is all about' (1992, p.14) - that is, so as to derive personal satisfaction through fulfillment of obligations (and thereby enrich relations with kith and kin). Unlike 'we,' therefore, who oppose private satisfactions and social obligations and believe that '[w]hatever we do for others diminishes our selves' (1992, p.12), 'they' - certainly the Pacific peoples cited - believe that 'in doing things for others people constructed themselves' (1992, p.12). Sahlins notes that develop-man may in some cases last for centuries. Dnring this time, numerous changes will take place, but these get incorporated into local ternns. Consequently, he importantly argues that "'tradition" in modem times does not mean

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

stability so much as a distinctive way of changing' (1992, p.22). Yet, if develop-man does become development, Sahlins argues, it will be as a quantum leap, across a wasteland without meaning: rather than their own system subsuming the wider world, the wider world comes to subsume their own and, in so doing, discredits it as humiliatingly inadequate. Continuing with Qur probing of Sahlins' position, it is also important to note that his 1992 perspective articulates with criticism he makes in an earlier, 1988 paper (,Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of "The World System" ') of Eric Wolfs Europe and the People WIthout HIstory (1982). ~rgumg against the 'Marxist-utilist theory favoured by many world systematIsts (1988, p.3), SaWins rejects the position that 'culture is a reflex of the "mode of production," a set of social appearances taken on by matenal forces that somehow possess their own instrumental rationality and necessity' (1988, p.3). Instead, he suggests that "a mode of production itself will specify no cultural order - unless and until its own order as production is culturally specified" (1988, pAl. Sahlins, therefore, in his examination of history (especially of world capitalism), wishes to make variable, rather than automatic, significant changes in cultural systems (changes, as mentioned above, pertaining to modes of changing) relative to changes in productive systems. In other words, he wishes to account for the long~term perpetuation of local systems of develop-man, despite shifts (indeed transformations) in productive systems - especially shifts that elsewhere might be linked to development. Thus, if cultural changes are relatively independent of changes m the productive systems, one appropriately would look to cultural reasons for explauung those shifts that do take place between the cultural systems of develop-man and development. We are now in a position to understand the significance of humiliation, a

culturally registered experience, in Sahlins' model. 'Humiliation' not only fulfills the theoretical requirements of SaWins' 'culture-centric' position - it is the 'right kind' ~f impetus - but it also seems appropriate as the 'right magnitude' of imp~tus. In this latter regard, it would appear sufficiently permeatIng of life and destructive of sense of worth so as to push people into and across the cultural desert - the wasteland between distinct systems of meaning; it would appear sufficiently galling as to impel people into the quantum shift inherent in entirely remalting themselves. . (Two parenthetical observations: It should be noted that SaWms leaves relatively unprobed the reasons why humiliation comes about such that developman yields to development: other critiques aside, this necessarily becomes a problem for attempts to posit humiliation as generating process. It should als? be noted that Sahlins' view - that people in each develop-man culture share relalIvely coherent cultural logics through which they see the world and that they must be made to see themselves as those already participating in development see them before they are willing to see the world anew - is consonant with positions as politically various as Fanon's [1968], about the colonization of consciousness and Rostow's [1971] about the conditions necessary for economic 'take-off.') It has, of co'urse, become rather problematic, given contemporary discussions of mosaics, hybridities and the like, to view cultural systems, as SaWins seems to,

On Humiliation and Class in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

165

in noun-like rather than in adjectival-like terms - as entities rather than as processes. Correspondingly, viewing cultural differences as fixed and absolute - as essentialized - has become equally problematic. Not only has there been criticism of characterizing whole societies through such all-encompassing essentialisms as

Orientalism and Occidentalism (see, aruong others, Said, 1978; Carrier, 1995a) but of doing so through such (slightly) more particular ones as concerning gifts and courmodities (Thomas, 1991; Carrier, 1995b). Indeed, since SaWins' contrast between develop-man and development-focused societies appears to mirror that between gift and commodity-focused societies, the criticism already applied to the one set of contrasts would seem to hold for the other as well. In the face of this criticism (much of which was, to be sure, developed subsequent to Sahlins' writings cited here and could have once been applied to many anthropologists, ourselves included), Sahlins' 'geography' - the idea of a wasteland between cnltural systems which have remained fundaruentally (epistemologically) distinct, although in long-term interaction - becomes troublesome. Consequently humiliation as a prime mover - a force sufficient to impel a desert-crossing - loses

much of its theoretical imperative, its raison d' etre. Where does this leave us? It is still worth considering whether ideas of develop-man and development may remain useful, not for characterizing and

distinguishing among actual and entire cultural systems, but for describing locally and situationally relevant reference points within systems. Might, thus, interacting individuals ('dividuals,' as Strathern [1988] would have it) be develop-man or development-focused simnltaneously, or by turns? This, in fact, seems plausible: We have, for example, heard evangelically-oriented Chambri (with whom we have long worked in the East Sepik Province of Papu. New Guinea!) criticize one another for being, unlike Jesus, too privately self-interested, thus equating true Christianity with the develop-man values of sharing and cooperation; on the other hand, we have also heard them criticize one another for being, (again) unlike Jesus, too backwards, thus equating true Chtistianity with development values of monogamy, nuclear families and an individual work ethic.

And, even if the perspective that humiliation has althe causative role of impelling a shift from one essentialized system to another is flawed, might it still be worth considering whether 'hUmiliation' has useful ethnographic relevance - as, for instance, in describing how people evaluate themselves relative to others within systems in which develop-man and development are co-existing parameters?

It is true that humiliation does remain a continually relevant possibility in any system in which prestige is competitively based. (Thus, in an account that many Melanesianists could duplicate, Michael Young reported a Kalauna informant telling him of his anxiety that he might be presented with a faruously large pig - a pig he feared he could never properly reciprocate [personal courmunication].) Yet, though humiliation (whether by calculation or miscalculation) is an occasional product of Melanesian life (otherwise it would not have the status of something to be strongly avoided), it seems to us that it is only infrequently invoked: that pushing competition to the point that serious humiliation becomes likely rarely serves anyone's interests.

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

This is the case not only with respect to develop-man objectives, as in systems of egalitarian redistribution. (Ongka may have wished to become the 'biggest' Kawelka ever by giving the biggest moka ever, but he did not wish to humiliate either his supporters or the recipients of his pigs and pearl shells - and of his Land Cruiser, motorbike and Australian dollars [Strathern, 1979]). It is also true with respect to development objectives, as in displays of aflluence among Papua New Guinea's new elite. In fact, it seems to us that humiliation is rarely induced (much less accepted) because it is, in effect, so reducing - so diminishing - of self that people will be made to feel that they have nothing more to lose: among those WIth develop-man objectives, humiliation threatens to shift exchange into war; among those with development objectives, it threatens to shift adrmration, perhaps tmged with envy, into (potentially violent) enmity. Indeed, it seems to ns that what Sahlins has glossed as development systems, namely the world systems of contemporary capitalism, would have no chance of becoming instantiated in places like Papua New Guinea if they depended on the humiliation of develop-man to do so: although in a caste-based system (like that existing during the colonial era in Papua New Gninea) it may prove useful for certain people to be defined as utterly 'other' through humiliation,2 in a class-based one like that in existing contemporary Papua New Gninea, it is far more useful to disguise rather than accentuate differences in kind. . . We could, in fact, provide many ethnographic examples of efforts to aVOId inflicting humiliation - examples of how differences in kind are down-played or otherwise obscured by the affluent in contemporary Papua New Gumea (see Gewertz and Errington, 1999). Thus university-educated accountant, Valentine Kamburi - President of Chamber of Commerce of the East Sepik town of Wewak and the most development-focused Papua New Gninean we know - keeps many pigs back at home in his Boiken village for redistribution during traditional ceremonies and claims absolute continuity between what he calls the 'new economy' and the 'old one.' Proud of the fact he has been initiated, he d?scribes initiations as just like school examinations. He told us that: 'The more bnlhant the tougher and more intelligent - emerge as leaders. They engage m the final dance and wear special decorations, holding special clubs and spears. These would be the ones better able to lead in gardening and hunting, fishing and trading - they would be big men. Traditional initiations are like going to university.' As. a successful businessman Kamburi is (in his view) thus just like a successful bIg man. He speaks of the house he has built in his home village which, in a synthesis between the old and the new, looks like a native house from the outside, but has all the aCCQutennents of modernity inside. And, in response to our direct questions, he has insisted that people aren't jealous of him for having such a house because they expect it of a contemporary big man. In fact, they call him 'kiap bilong waitman and kiap bilong pies' (a leader among white men and a leader m the VIllage). They say this without cynicism, Kamburi says, because they are proud of him - proud that one of theirs has done so well. John Illumbui's story makes it clearer how such a businessman may actually interact with develop-man focused kin to affirm commonalities (see, also, Gewertz

On Humiliation and Class in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

167

and Errington, 1991, pp.11l-1I5). John, also a university educated accountant lives some distance from his fellow Chambri in their major settlements. Indeed: John rather rarely visits them because he wishes to avoid the torrent of requests he would receIve for money. Yet periodically he does come home: at the time we met him, he was in Wewak to celebrate the first communion of his sister's daughter. On the night of his arrival in Wewak, John held an all-night beer party for the older n::en ofthe Chambri Camp. He began by thanking them for the help they had given hin:: - m effect, attributing his development achievements to their develop-man aSSIstance. It was this help, he smd, that has enabled him to become a success. They responded that he was indeed acting as a young Charnbri should by showing gratitude to the senior men of the community with his 'little present' of beer and by pronnsmg to repay them all for their considerable help. This way, they continued somewhat darkly with allusions to sorcery, no one would be angry with him. Several then made more specific statements about the help he must repay: one said that he had come to see John and give him baby presents when he was born; another enumerated the names of those who had died since John had last visited implying that contributions to death expenses would be in order. John nodded dutifully at each reminder. Near the end of his visit, John told us that his stay was costing him at least KI50 (then, ~bout$200) per day. In fact, he had that morning missed his plane and Joked that hIS savmg account would be depleted by the time he could leave. His Chambri wife added (in English): 'These Chambri will finish you up entirely if you have any money.' We then asked John directly why he helped his relatives. He replied that they were his family and would become angry if he did not. When we persisted by asking what would happen if they did became angry, he said (also in English): 'They would kick me out of the family and if I did anything big they would not come and no one would see it. ' Despite John's Western education and business activities - despite a life that most Chmnbri regard as epitomizing the potentialities of development - he genuinely located fundamental aspects of himself in his interaction with develop-man Chmnbri. Yet, he was also careful to control the nature of his engagement with them Thus, as these two examples suggest, in contemporary Papua New Guinea, development-focused people can often arrange their lives so as to maintain develop-man connections and interests. While the reverse is, of course, less true _

those whose capacities are primarily develop-man-focused would likely find it very difficult to establish significant development capacities - there is presently in Papua New Gumea considerable ideological effort to convince such develop-manfocused that they are far from literal non-entities. Indeed, many of them feel enhanced by caterings on the part of the development-focused to their interests. Thus, those develop-man-focused may be told by national politicians that Papua New Guinea's strength as a nation rests on the strength of its 'traditional' cultures.

Moreover, in the context of tourism, they may be told that their 'traditional' cultures are income-earning resources - themselves, therefore, the path to devel~pment. Additionally, the develop-man-focused may also be told by advertisers that such frmts of development as Pepsi Cola and Amotts Biscuits are

168

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

On Humiliation and Class in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

fully compatible with, and enhancing of, 'traditional,' village-based lifestyles (Errington and Gewertz, 1996; Gewertz and Errington, 1996), Finally, they may be told that if they have not achieved development, it is not because they are a different kind of people or are ill-placed in an unfair system, but, rather, because they simply have not fully applied themselves (perhaps relying too readily on handouts, as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have recently been suggesting concerning the Papua New Guinean 'grassroots'), Importantly, those who are less than fully convinced by, or are otherwise dissatisfied with, this rhetoric - and many may be - nonetheless are more likely to feel envious and disgruntled, (They may thus resemble the disaffected Fijians described by Kaplan and Kelly [1994] in their criticism of Gramsci: both may, in other words, occupy an intermediate position in what had been presented as a political divide between those with a revolutionary consciousness and those with a false consciousness.)

169

describing themselves as backward (at least for the moment) d .

.

domg so dunng the post-mdependence 1980's. One villager told Kulick:

p

1960's (Erri~gton, 1974), but so did Kulick (1992) find

relatiV:n~:t~r;;:ep~~!e: g

[I]t',s like we want to come up like all European countries In the countries you ve an changed ... In the countries everyone lives well . And too ' . 'I anes you ve got all kinds car t of factories to make all kinds of things'. boats or "hi· s •ps or' aIrp or s ,or mo ors or money - whatever, all these factories are in the countries There aren t any here among us in Papua New Guinea. .

!~Pt~rtan~~y, h~wever, even this .Gapun statement, redolent as it is of colonial caste-like ~ a IO~S ~ps,

. an.

oes not n~cessanly represent an indigenous condemnation of develop. a er, at least to Judge from the 1960s Duke of York l I d

~~;~~I~eC,:~~~fi~ar;:I:iif no~wholly) from a frustration that d:~~O~-:~ ~~g~:!:

throu~h ~: a[q~~Siti~nD~~et~!i;;~~~~~ ~~a~bj::v: o~ eiuality with :otor~~~ney - was one form~lated in term of the embedded s~cial~~o~n~~~e~:;~

Europeans

be::me ~u~s to saY'bthe frustratIOn of the Gapun may be not that they are unable to fu th d lopeans, ut.tha.t they are unable to use European goods (as Ongka did) to r er eve op-man objectives.

Conclusion We certaiuly do not wish to argue that class - whatever the efforts to hide its injuries _ does not hmt in contemporary Papua New Guinea, Many of our Chambri friends especially those living in town for whom daily survival in a cash-based economy is an issue _ are recognizing - and upset in that recognition - that their children are not going to be remotely competitive with those of Kamburi or Illumbui, The Kamburis and the Illumbuis of contemporary Papua New Guinea, after all, aspire to educate their children abroad so that they might learn (among other things) to speak - as one of our middle class informants explained - 'a non-Melanesian inflected English which would allow them to become competitive in a world market.'3 Yet these friends, though certainly wishing they could command more material satisfactions (to say nothing of necessities), still take solace - either as sustenance or as sop - in the values of their develop-man knowledge and practices, In this regard, we might suggest in conclusion that it is the increasing number of those who find both developman unsatisfying and development impossible who are residing on a cultural wasteland, Having very little to lose, some of these may, as rascals, find the humiliation of others inherent in crimes of often seemingly gratuitous violence, including rape, a useful resource.

3

~~x~:~o~a~~!~a1~a!~: :~~:~~h~t dev~lop-man and .development can readily

itself becomes appealing to such men u~;rt=es t~he q(ue~TIon of why development Guineans) reco ize th 1.· Y ey an many other Papua New gn . at co Ontsts and first-world others have long disti .h d h ed eir ;d. superiority, both on an a ,, ' g elr nent hfe styles (Gewertz and Errington 1999) S h ~ rec~gmtion has ~ostered a view among the elite and others in Papua Ne~ Guin~a ~Cat eve opment ca~ Impo~tantly augment develop-man - that develop-man without the resour~e~ assocIated WIth development may be insufficient in itself . recogmtion does not support Sahlins' position that development the extent that develop-man becomes (totally) discredited and repudiated.

~o~~~~l::~e~:t:~orh

j':t

individui:~de

U:

beco~=o~:::~l:tl~

References ~~er, James (1995a), Occidentalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press amer, James (1995b), Gifts and Commodities La d RId : Carrier, James (1974) 'Indigenous Ide fO'd nT~n, oute ge;~:rm~ton,Frederick. C M ', . as 0 r er, lme and TranSItion III a New Guine E. argo ovement, Amencan Ethnologist, Vo!. I, pp. 255-268 a

t~

mngton, Frederick and Deborah Gewertz (1996) 'Th I d' 'd' , Notes 1

Before we began to collaborate in our work with the Chambri, Deborah made two independent trips to live among them, in 1974-75 and in 1979. Together we have

visited them five additional times: in 1983,1987,1994,1996 and 1999, 2

Some contemporary Papua New Guinea phrasings of local desire do convey a sense of humiliation relative to Europeans. These phra:;;ings, we ventme, reflect the persisting effects of caste-like, colonial encounters, wherein Europeans established differences between themselves and natives through an oft-reiterated rhetoric of differential development. Indeed, so effective was this rhetoric that not only did Errington report Duke of York Islanders

Papua New Guinea Modernity' American Anth~o

Fanon, Franz (1968) Black Sk'

Wh',

IVl

,,

,

UaTIon of TradITIon m a

po Oglst, Vo!. 98, pp, 114-126,

, ms, zte Masks, London, MacGibbon and Kee Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errin t (1991)· .. . Cambn'dg C b 'd U· . g on TWlsted Hlstones, Altered Contexts e, am n ge lllverslty Press. ' Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errington (1996) '0 P 'C d Pi ' G. "M d . " , ' n epsl 0 an ety III a Papua New 0 ernlty, American Ethnologist, Vol. 23, pp. 476-493 umea Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errington (1999) E 'Cl " The Telling of Difference, Cambridge, Cambridg:~!:~:rSi;~r~:sPapua New Guinea: K aplan, Martha and John Kelly (1994) 'R hink" ' in C I ·al p- .. , A . et tng ReSIstance: Dialogics of "Disaffection" o om IJ1, mencan Ethnologist, Vo!. 21, pp. 123-151.

170

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

KuJick, Donald (1992), Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction, Cambridge, Cambridge

Chapter 11

University Press. . h C b 'd Cambridge Rostow, Wait Whitman (1971), The Stages of EconomlC Growt, am n ge,

University Press. 'fi S t f "The SahUns Marshall (1988), 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacl c ec or 0

W~rld System,'" Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 74, pp. 1-5:.

Vol 21

Sahlins, Marshall (1992), 'The Economics of Develop-Man m the PacIfic, Res,

.

,

pp. 13-25. . Said, Edward (1978), Orientalism, Harmondsworth, Pengum. A dr (1979) Ongka London, Duckworth.

~::::~' M:ri; (1988): The O;nder olthe Gift. Berkeley, Universit~ of ~aHfornia Press. Thomas Nkholas (1991), Entangled Objects, Cambridge, Harvard Untverstty pr~~:rsit

Wolf, Eric (1982). Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley, Um

Turning to Violence: Hazarding Intent in Central New Ireland Karen Sykes

of

y

California Press.

The challenge by Sahlins to consider the advent of 'develop-man' in Pacific Island Nations is indicative of his continuing interest in the emergence of the possessive

individual in Oceania. This focus on personhood rather than structure only appears to be a new departure point for Sahlins in addressing the question of how people experience the modern. Instead, it more closely reflects Sahlins' continuing interested in the Hobbesian modern person, understood here as one whose individual expression of sentiment, as the possession or proprietorship of the self,

distinguishes his or her agency. If this is to be taken further to the analysis of political development in Melanesia, it is important to understand how people become political actors with the capacity to express volition and intention, as well as experience others will and purpose. For SaWins, as for Macpherson, the Hegelian theorist of Hobbes's political treatises (1963; 1972), modemity entails becoming possessive individuals with the intent and will to act towards a political goal, recognizing that they experience the structures that shape humans within their own relationships as the Leviathan. This paper will examine the event in which a group of men in central New Ireland elaborated key issues in their concept of the possessive individual, a feature of modernity that SaWins encapsulates in developman, and thereby laid the groundwork for advancing the common goal of creating a regional political identity. New Irelanders hazard their relationships in modem life, in part because their experiences of modernity converge in violent action. What those violent actions

mean, or what those violent actions do, concerns me for what they show about the emergence of the modem possessive individual. In 1993, the people of the Lelet Plateau engaged in a series of violent conflicts with people on the coast. This surprising development marked a departure from the nonna1 reputation of the New Ireland Highlands people as peaceful residents of the province. A long debate about the intentions of the Lelets and their neighbours in the Nalik and Notsi regions ensued in the weeks and months following the altercations. As I describe, that debate converged with actions towards the formalization of regional government and the measure of legal responsibility for the intentional exercise of the collective will in violence. In this context I explore the ethnographic dimensions of the emergence of the concept of develop-man as the possessive individual in Melanesia.

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Sahlins' Concept of Develop-man as the Possessive Individual My reading of Sahlins' notion of develop-man as the possessive individual comes 1 from my own understanding of how Sahlins addresses Hobbes He has. always been a subtle and critical reader of the early political philosopher. He chums that Hobbes himself understood the condition of Warre as being a distinct form of sociality. Warre is neither chaos nor asocial, as later readers of Hobbes have claimed (Macpherson, 1964; Tulley, 1988; Dumont, 1978). Other h~ve errone?usly read Hobbes through the foggy lens of the concept of the unconscIOUS m spIte of the fact that Freud's repressive hypothesis (and its critiques) are much later renderings of the nature of desire and aggression. Su~h misreading lead~ to the assumption that civilization advances against the posslblhty of collapse mto the state of nature, just as persons risk the swamping of the ego by the condltJ.on of infancy. It is important to recognize that Sahlins would remmd us that both states remain fundamentally social; each one provides a baSIC dIstmctton n;ad~ o~ ~e basis of sentimental attachment. Sahlins writes of Hobbes and Freud, ObjectlVlty is mediated and oriented by subjective want. Its test is corporate well being. Both [theorists1 refer to the same sensory economics of objectivity- not to mentIOn the same antithesis between this species of mdivldual ratIOnality and the cultural order." (1995, p.154). Sahlins claims that this distinction between the subject and the object marks an important movement in the development of the bourgeOiS consciousness. Here, personhood shifts from the world of desrres t~ the awar~ness of the desired world. For Sahlins this shift is the ground of expenence that IS the . location of a human consciousness in the relations that shape action. Sahlins's concern has always been to make the political and economic life of humans better understood. He is not a psychological anthropologist, nor one of cognition.' The old question of how the possessive individual emerg~s belongs to Sahlins' earliest work. In his first assessment of SOCIal strattficatton m PolY;D-es18, he confronts the possibility that practical rationality cannot wholly explam the political decisions made by Pacific Island peoples in the history of the~ nugrattons across the region (Sahlins, 1958). In his subsequent ~alYSIS ofp~htical types m the cultural evolution of Polynesia, Sahlins makes the slgmficant ~nslght that just as the complexity of hierarchical forms does not evolve from BIg M;m to Chief, neither does the possessive individual emerge from the 'noble savage through the history of migrations from Melanesia to polynesia(S~hlins, 1963: pp.302-3). This raises again a serious question first framed 1ll Sahlms early theonzatlOn of cultural evolution; namely, what is the nature of intentionaiIity in the ~acific such that the State never became a socio-political fonn until after colomahsm? Sahlms le~t cultural evolutionists to answer the great question of evolutionary theory m thelT own way and took up the problem of intentionality historically in his later work, Stone Age Economics (1972). Here we find Sahlins' analysis repeatedly demonstrates the absence of the concept of the possessive individnal m these 'originally affluent societies.' He shows us ~?W it is im~os.si.ble to exp~es,s aspects of possessive individualism within the politiCS of the spmt of the gIft, largely because intention cannot be hazarded in gift exchange.

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The question haunts Sahlins recent essay in which he reasons through 'how natives think, about Captain Cook for example' (Sahlins, 1995). He dismisses Gananath Obeyesekere's contention that 18th century Hawaiians might have reas~ned about history with ouly a pragmatic rationality (Obeyesekere, 1992, p.3). Sahh~~ reply to Obeyesekere remains consistent with his own earlier argnments. Hawanans would not respond to Cook as if he were the English emissary of the young EnlIghtenment State because their own political arguments did not imagine the structures of power to be constrained and limited by that political institution that was coterminous with political theory of possessive individualism (Macpherson, 1963). Sahlins is resolute on this historical point: Eighteenth century !fawau .was not a St~te an~ Hawaiian men and women understood political power m a vanety of ways. In this book and other contemporary work, Sahlins poses the old question of intentionality again, raising the possibility of asking it as the focal point for the analysis of historical (rather than evolutionary) social change. My concern here is how transfoffilations in personhood occur after the period of early encounter, elaborating the structure of the conjuncture such that develop~a~ ~ecomes the issue in modem Melanesia. How does acting as a possessive mdlV1dual come to have political force in the contemporary Pacific? For theories of contested sociality, this approach accounts for the human processes of the transfonnation of peaceable into violent relations, and vice versa (Harrison, 1993). For theories of political development it permits an analysis of how political actors come to know themselves as develop-man; whether they act according to legitimate structures of the State or according to their political awareness of experience. This chapter charts the processes by which New Irelanders come to believe that they possess vohtlOn and mtentlOn, aspects of what Macpherson and Sahlins define as possessive individuals.

Developing Possessive Individuals iu Ceutral New Ireland Before addressing the details of the following case, a very brief history of social development in central New Ireland highlights the key concerns. I am concerned to show how reside."ts of Central New Ireland come to see themselves as political actors WIth the will to develop that locale as a governable region. I do not intend to discuss the history by which the New Ireland resident is inculcated with the political values and emerges a modern person. Instead, I argue this development is best analyzed as the possessive individual as develop-man because it addresses how residents there understand their experience of wider regional structures through aspects of the person known as intentionality. More so, it demonstrates that aspects of personhood must be comprehended as the ground of such political d~velopment enabling a description of how those who live in the area imagine the dImenSIOns of the regIOn as the geopolitical range for demonstrating their mtentlOns. . . The ethnographic literature distingnishes central New Ireland as a region d,stinct from the north and the south. While all of New Ireland is matrilineal, only

1 174

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

the central region marks the significance of the moieties of Tangam and Malam (Tok Pisin for the small and great hawk) with the organization of funeral feasts and through the preferred arrangements of marriage. Its matrilineal clans of the Noatsi, Mandak and Barok line the east and west coast roads, with the Mandak central to the region and the Noatsi marking the northern border while the Barok mark the southern border. Each language group practices ceremonial exchanges at mortuary feasts, hosted by the children of one moiety to honor their father who belongs to the other moiety. The feasting cycle is nndertaken with the assistance of the father's own clan. Through their collaboration, especially at final feasts in the cycle, it had been the custom to display a nnmber of carved scnlptures known as Malaggans 4 Common to all of these arts was the fact that the material forms were destroyed at the end of the feast, while the images remained in memory. A fuller analysis of personhood as the ground of religious conversion might enlighten our understanding of develop-man as the means of New Ireland regional development. Although the political administration of the region changed several times from the late 19th century to the present several missions worked there, principally the Mission of the Sacred Heart and the London Mission Society, albeit following different plans of residence and Christian influence. The Catholics, as elsewhere in New Ireland bnilt mission stations near the largest villages on the borders of each of the language groups. The earliest converts to Catholicism came to live at the mission stations in anticipation that they should grow in faith by residence in these centers of Christian commnnity. The work of the Catholic mission was perceived to radiate outwards as if a light of faith illuminating the darkness of life in the village. By contrast, the Methodist mission left its work in the hands of solitary missionaries living in villages throughout the region whose effort was given to translating scripture into indigenous language and offering primary education to facilitate the study of the Bible. By contrast to the Catholic efforts to create small 'Cities of God,' they believed that the work of Christian conversion would be made through influencing people to develop in everyday daily life as the individual's ability to know God and his word better. The region of central New Ireland was further distinguished by the trading activities of the residents of Lelet whose travels set its boundaries. Lelet residents live in hamlets that cluster into four alpine villages numbering about 1000 people in total. They were renowned to the coastal villages both for marketing taro for ceremonial feasts and for marketing vegetables along the road, thereby making them significant players in the making of the region. Those aspects of possessive individualism that we normally think of as attributes of persons might be displaced onto other objects _ onto trucks for example. That desire might be seen to inhere in others' rather than in one's own wishes, thereby escalating the activity of trade so that relations expand maximally to cover the region itself (Sykes, n.d.). Here, I develop that argument further by examining how the Lelet men's attribution of intention to others' acts made it possible for them to turn to violence in their travels throughout the region, and to become the objects of others' violent acts. It is in turning to violence that they act as possessive individuals with the political imagination to mark the boundaries ofthe region of centtal New Ireland.

I \

Turning to Violence: Hazarding Intent in Central New Ireland

175

As a recognized r ti I . central New Ireland ~~s chaadunblt, a truSUb-dfriStrict station at Konos had administered . een e om German thr h th . the Australian colonial period _ includin g th ' oug. e Enghsh, until mdependence in 1975. In 1991 . 'al e Japanes? occupatlOn - endmg with divided between east and west ~~~::nCl and 1992 national elections the area was candidates for political offi . th constituencIes,. the east coast boasting twelve be running for more than o~: ;art; ~rovmcl~ election - many of whom claimed to were asked to con 'd .. a once. y 1993, the residents of New Ireland SI er orgamzmg thems 1 ' reciprocal relations to the nati a1 eves as commumty governments with governn::ent, rather than as a district administered by the rovincial 0 on g ti vernment. NatIOnal politicians reasoned that in order to ensure mort dem work of bureaucracy and o~:a co~e~c~:es it would be necessary to shift of the frP elected pohticJans towards local-level goverrnnent (LLG) d , an away om the pr . 'all I individuals in each province had exert d h°,:,mcl eve. where a few non-elected national independence to the present ~utt t~rr p~rsonal mfluence from the time of the growing power of provincial o' , e p a? also elmunated the problem of entirely eliminating them By g ~~ents VIs-a-VIS the national government by provincial rights of the North S~Olo%:~sthey closed future discussions of the th B' thereby changmg the terms for the resolution of the conflict betw Arm . een e ougamvIllean Revo1 ti natIOnal government and one of the national , . u onary . y, the partners, Further, they de-clawed an active government s mtematlOnal mvestment emergent body known as the Council of creature ?f contemporary P?litics, the destroyed its fighting power as a liti aI b New Gumea Islands Prenners. They ody able to artIculate distinct regional interests within the nation Th Plo fuc . . e p an rther disabled th '1 fr . e counCI om bemg the vehIcle (or even the familiar) fo th indirectly in national affairs. r e government of the North Solomons to act

Hazarding the Intent to Develop Central New Ireland

J

The impetus towards self-government be ins 'th d W1 an actual event. In late 1993, the young men of the Lelet Plateau in th the Nalik-Noatsi border. Then they t e an ak area burnt an ?ast coast village on f ore up and b urnt three bndges aI tlti I rQute rom the provincial capital of K' d " ong s so e New Ireland and announcing th. I avteng eclanng mdependence for central . elr p ans to open new trade .th N acts were unusual. Convention 1 ., W1 amatamu. The the Lelet highlighted both th~r o::ons about the Mandak sp~aking residents of They had won the choir comp ti't:stantht rehgIOslty and therr mdustriousness. e IOn e previous summe 'th 'b presentation of an old Methodist H 'I r W1 a VI rant successful growers and marketers ~ant to go to heaven.' They were the the East Coast highway wh th qUalIty vegetables and known up and down ere ey marketed 10 their ho . T me reglOn. hey were members of the central New Ireland d' tr' years that I had lived in the villages of ~e I~~ ~onncil :,r the province. In the three a eau no mg I had seen had predicted this turn to violence.

oj.n, ,

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

The events at the feast exploded into much more than an argument between two groups of men, the Lelet-Mandak and the Nalik, of Luapul village. An insult, the significance of which I will return to later, made the men angry. They responded to the perceived affront. The next day they left the hill tops to tra;el to the village of Luapul, burnt houses, killed pigs, cast sorcery on the adjacent gardens and homes. Its residents immediately abandoned the village. The next day, the bridges along the road were burnt, separating the North from the Central region of New Ireland at the Nalik-Noatsi border. The discussion of the events drew comntitrnents from the east and west coast Mandak to support the Lelet-Mandak in their campaign. The Noatsi living to the north of the Mandak, agreed to give unimpeded right of way to those vehicles traveling northwards to the N alik region. If things escalated between the Mandak and the N alik, they would reconsider their involvement, and promised to support the interests of the central region. At this a question was raised about the N alik support of the village of Luapul. Would the rest of the Nalik support Luapul? The simple answer came back from the Nalik. No. Luapul village's own neighbors said they had always been trouble makers and criminals (TP: 01 man nogut), they wearied of sorting out the problems of the Luapul villagers. The history of research on highlands warfare might apply to the islands context. As does Meggitt who claims that 'blood is their argument' Harrison points out that warfare is not simply an opportunity to emphasize that clans form along lines of blood. Warfare makes the clans by bringing them into visibility as forms and as substance. Hartison (1993) writes of the ethuo-psychology of war magic as the instrument that creates the clan as a social form by bringing forth aggressive action in men. It is not the case that violence is chaotic and unscripted; instead violence in highlands watfare requires the careful exercise of social relations themselves. The point that Harrison makes draws significantly upon Sahlins own, that the social relations which enable violent activity are always construed by the state as illegitimate and as chaotic by contrast to the allegedly legitimate exercise of violence by the state (Sahlins, 1968).

Intention, Will and Sentiment in the Time of Develop-man The Lelet men's decision to turn to violence in their effort to set boundaries for the region of central New Ireland helps one to underst~nd development through develop-man better. It was said that the fight began WIth a snub at a ceremomal feast. A man from the coastal village uttered the snub 'bush kanaka' (wild man, or hick) to a man from Lelet with reference to their faulty techniques of building the fire for the stone oven. It was said, 'Ouly a bush kanaka would build a fire like that at a ceremonial feast.' How the words were interpreted as a snub, rather than jocular comment relies upon the ambiguity of their meaning and the assumption that an injury to the sentiments was intended. One man to another spoke the words. If they were as simply put as they were reported, they may have elicited the feelings of shame at their callousness. However, the words' meaning were

Turning to Violence: Hazarding Intent in Central New Ireland

177

ambiguous and dissembled a reference to another situation; the end of a love affair between the WIfe of the friend of the speaker and the man from Lelet. Upon hearing ag~m the. same words entangled WIth the snub against his home he felt anew the pam of hIS loss. Shame that turned his face and eyes red became humiliation at the recogmtIon of the other man's intention to hann him. That intention to expose the adultery was coded in the quoting of his former lover's words. When returning to her husband, the woman had rejected him with a similar insult. . If the snub we.re to be addr.essed through the politics of shame, especially the pOlitIcs. of sustammg km relatIOns, then justice might be effected through the appropnate gIfting of pigs. The injured person might very well bring a pig to the door .of the offending party. In which case, the gift of a pig harbors a challenge. It IS Said that when a gift pig appears on at the doorstep, one must think very carefully mdeed. It suggests that an offense to the well-being of others has been made and that offense must be compensated. The appropriate way of compensating an offense IS the making of a feast m a show self-denial and self-mortification. The elaborate show of generosity is intended to ameliorate the offense to the other. Unlike th~se ,:ho w~uld argue these are competitive exchanges to establish prestIge It I~ Said that m such feasts a community re-establishes its sense of wellbemg, levehng out differences between its members. . Intention i~ apprehended amongst the Mandak through rhetoric of shame, whIch 18 not qUite the same as the sentiment contributors to this volume have called hUn:'hatIOn.. By the arousal of feelings of shame (TP:sem), it is possible to expose one s ~wn mtentIOns towards others. (One's own intentions are known through hazarding that one understands the intentional response of others.) Shame is felt when respectful relations are violated. It is felt and expressed in body fonn: stance, posture, averted eye~. Whe~e the ethos of respect is violated by the failure to pay respect, the pers?n nsks bemg understood as intending to hurt the feelings of the othe~ .. The pubhc attnbutIon of mtention to the disrespectful acts of the other huuuhates them and explains one's own feelings of humiliation. Humiliation is felt ~d expr~ssed in withdrawal from daily life, a retreat to the periphery of the VIllage, glVlng up food, the refusal to speak. These are all gestures interpreting the actIons of the other as intentionally lacking in respect. In this example, coarse and cruel words were sufficient to cause the drivers of the market trucks from Lelet to leave behind their trade and retreat to the village humiliated at the event. The hidden a~sumption in all of these assessments of politics in Melanesia is that the ceremomal exchange approximates a contractual agreement between members of a community who demonstrate their commitments to such a social contract by participating in the exchanges. The fallacy of such an argument lies in at least t:,o assumptIOns. Fust that there is recognition amongst the members of the commumty that. agreement can b~ reached. Second, that the means of reaching consensus 18 rational ,and pragmatic because it is to the social good of everyone else. If these assumptIOns are not critiqued the problem arises as to how to make ~ense of the. conflict which arises around feasts, or the conflict which participants ill ceremomal feasts presume to resolve. The full criticism of this problem

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Turning to Violence: Hazarding Intent in Central New Ireland

highlights the necessity of re-thinking when persons act as possessive individuals; and further, what kinds of social forms they make when they do not. As I have argned, humiliation is not shame. Humiliation is felt at the

region? Does the Lelet marketer intend to sell vegetables, or does he respond to a call from others as he sets out to trade in the region of central New Ireland. (Sykes, n.d.) Do the men III central New Ireland who now attribute intentions to others claim their own intentions in order to act towards different political regions? But: these are the questions that might be asked if their had been only an implicit

recognition of another's intention to cause one's own feeling of shame: Only the recognition of another's intentions makes it possible for a pers.on ~o cl~ t? own his or her own response to those intentions. In the act of attnbutmg mtentIon to another person's actions the person comes to recognize those aspects of

consensual agreement to create a region.

personhood, which can be called the 'self.' In such acts the concept. of the possessive individual comes into being as that notion of personhood by which one understands that the self is owned. Only then IS It possible to come to believe that one possesses a self, which can be humiliated through the actions of another.

Conclusions Here, a group of Melanesian men came to understand 'develop-man' as the

emergent form of personhood that recognizes desire, intention and will as distinct aspects of that subjectivity. This entailed examining a shift not from a condition of chaotic Warre to the State, but from relations which distribute these aspects of personhood onto other entities, to those which make the modern self proprietor of

Develop-man on the Road to Regional Development

Both the discussion of the advent of regional govermnent and the media attention given to the acts of bridge-buming were on the lips of national politicians at the cultural festival in Kavieng hosted by the provlllce that same month. Here the events of house and bridge-burning were interpreted as a surge of support for local against provincial govermnent. Although the provincial government was ho~ting the tourist festival of dance and Malaggan displays, former Pnme Miruster, Michael Somare speaking as a visiting National politician argned .that the youth should hold back their frustration with the political process of movmg to regIOnal government. The crowd at the festival displayed their anger with him in the stony silence that followed the address. By no means complicit with his claims, they were shamed as hosts of an international festival by his reference to their own troubles. Somare left the province the same day. . . ,. In retuming to the problem of violence and the creation of regIOnal political relations it wonld seem that the man from Lelet first had to believe he had been humiliat~d in order to act in violent anger. As I have argned, humiliation grows from the apprehension that the other man intended him to feel shame. The ambignous reference of the statement defied obvious interpretation and the credibility of meaning opens to the attributions of the listener. Without exegesIs, the words demanded response in order to comprehend and that response was violence. Sentiment and will are differently expressed, as they are among other

Melanesian langnage groups. To feel angry and to be a man of angry will are phrases that are differently used. In the first case, one can feel ~gry Without knowing that one is angry. In the second case, one knows th~t one IS angry and willfully acts out that sentiment as violence to the e~d of eliCiting a response from others. Such action requires that violent relations be made III a shared understanding of the contexts of action.

179

.

..,

The concept of the possessive individual that Sahlins explores ill his earliest work in 'Rich Man Poor Man Big Man Chief (1963) is necessary to his later work of understanding the character of regional relations in Stone Age Econo.mics (1972). What kinds of shifts of personhood are necessary to the effort of creating a

'develop-man.' The engagement of these notions occurs in social relations, not in

deep psychology. Like Sahlins it is possible to invoke Hobbes in considering this more fully. For Hobbes, the reasonable man suppresses his passions to advance the 11

11 ':1 ,.1

1 .

common good. For Sahlins following Hobbes, one might suggest that the developman. reJects v:hat he has III order to welcome what is new. It is a question that is contllluous With the larger goal of this volume, namely to explore the possibility that people must 'pass through a global cultural desert to reach the promised land of modernization' (1992, p.24). Concomitant with this proffered thesis of modernity, is the claim that forgetting or suppressing established cultural belief must occur. As he puts it, a people must become 'sufficiently disgnsted with themselves' to wish to be become more like us. I have been most concerned here to

discuss this as a shift in explicit and shared experience which pennits the advent of the political concept of possessive individualism. In so doing, I hope to illuminate the ways in which experience both grounds and elaborates human consciousness of

the wider structures that limit actions in the political theory of possessive individualism.

The implications of the argnment for understanding practical life as the ground of action are Significant. The concept of volition confounds the will with the act and the desire with the intent. SaWins makes mnch of the fact that social theorists following Hobbes and Freud have assumed that volition, as an expression of practical ratIOnality IS good because it satisfies needs. We might ask how we carry the argument forward to discuss how anthropologists might go about the analysis of pra?tlcal reason otherWise. Wagner has made the point that wanting something and thinking th~t you want something are different orders of knowledge (Wagner, 1992). In turmng to VIOlence, the actors must shift between such contexts of understanding. Their knowledge of wanting something - however inchoate that desire - is not the same as thinking that they want something, which entails expressing their sentiment and intention to themselves as their will. If lance consider that inte~tions of others might be hidden from me, and that I can only mfer what they rrnght be, then I must suspect our ability to convey intentions to

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

others. I cannot know my socially hazarded intention unless I know how it is received. By the same token, how I react to others will qualify their reactions and feedback into my own self-expression. 'It is fair to say then that the spontaneous and the reactive interpenetrate in a kind of general field in which the attributions of my intentions and others requires in either case a kind of self knowledge' (Wagner, 1992). To follow Wagner's argument, 'it is not that we cannot know our intentions in some final sense, but that we cannot know them directly' and must learn of them through the reflections of others. Others have argued that acts of violence are meaningful without exegesis (Gow and Harvey, 1990; Arextaga, 1997), follow a period of instruction in their technlques (Richards, 1994) depend on sorcery to transform convivial relations into belligerent ones (Harrison, 1993; Meggit!, 1983; Taussig, 1988) are meaningful with reference to rational political scripts (Scot!, 1995) or assert intransigent beliefs (Feldman, 1994). Not withstanding the insights of the above research the actual shift to violent action has remained more mysterious. All the more so because in violence the act of human will seems most powerfully expressed in the volition of the actors. I speak of volition, because it is the central concern for detennining accountability for outcome, both in the basic concepts of universal jurisprudence (Rosen, 1992) and in the theory of agency employed by anthropologists to explain collective resistance in social movements. (Kaplan and Kelly, 1993). My aim in the following analysis of a case from central New Ireland has been to show how some social structural aspects of regional political development come to be experienced as develop-man and attributed to the entities of volition, will and intention. The outcome of such attributions to persons is the consolidation of the firmer delineation of the region itself. That transformation of consciousness from the nebulous sentiments that dust actions with luminous meaning to the shared volition that moves groups to physically assert intransigent belief has been the concern of this paper. That shift in consciousness must hazard intent. By hazarding intent, people put themselves in conditions in which the ambiguous is made clear. That they make their political intentions obvious to themselves through reference to the intentions of others should not be a surprise. We reflect on our intentions towards others, an act which entails assuming that others also have motives or intentions. It is in this respect that we come to articulate intention in retrospect. In turning to violence, the Lelet men come to understand themselves as possessive individuals thereby bringing the region into being through considered violent activity. The oddity of this is that it suggests that the consensual relation is rejected in favor of the conflictual one, but not in favor of chaos. The key issue briefly described in this chapter has been the emergence of the understanding of the possessive individual in violent action, and the reciprocal activity of creating the region through the violent, but considered, actions of possessive individuals.

Turning to Violence: Hazarding Intent in Central New Ireland

181

Notes 1 2

3

4

Space prohibits the most interesting discussion of how Sahlins difti ers Macpherson's intriguing and controversial thesis. b' . Whereas that entails a better understandin of th

.h

. or confinns ..

WIt

c:nsciousness: this paper explores historicJly andec~~t:~:;o~:~t ;::~o~ m

~ e~se~~es a~ l~tentlO~al actors through reference to the intentions of others ome

~uman

0 see y, thlSrfilS ~ P10lnt upon which Sahlins and Obeyeseke find common ~greement a supe CIa way Both would ar th h .. ' mUltiple possibilities of h~w to interpret the~~cou:te~ :i~a;oaJ.~ns reasoned through

b~~~a

~~~;~ used the techniques of rattan rope binding and yet o~h~rs employ a host of

References

~::~~:,!. ~~:~)' s;,atteri~g Silenc~,

Princeton, Princeton University Press. Gow, P. ~1l(i P H ' o(,;;;~)ons ofVrole~ce, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. . . arvey , Sex and Vrolence, London RoutIedge

~::':e~~~~ (1~93~, ~~~~~Sk;{W;r;l\1",;chester, Univ~rsity of M';'chester Press. Clarendon Pre~s.

'

e

0

lflca Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford,

Macpherson, C. B. (1972): 'Introduction,' in Hobbes, T.C. 1972 (1651) Hannondsworth, Pengum.

Leviathan,

Meggitt, M. (1983), Blood is Their Argument, Palo Alto, Mayfield Publishing

Rosen, L. (1992), Other Intentions, Santa Fe School of Ameri R h · . I S!fi' can esearc. Pr~ss. . , acta trail cation in Polynesia, Seattle, University of Washington

Sahlins M (1958) S

Sahlins, M. (1963) , o 'Por Man, Richman, BIg-Man . Chief' Political Types M I . and Polynesia' Corn t' S d' . . e aneSIa Sahli M ( ' . para lve tu zes In Society and History, Vol. 5, pp. 285-303 .ns, . 1968), Tnbesmen, Englewood Cliffs, N.l., Prentice-Hall. . Sahhns, M. (1972), Stone Age Economics New York Aldi Shli ne.U . a ns, M(1 . 976), Culture and Practical"Re Ch' Sahlins M (1995) Ho N,' T' ason, lCago, mversity of Chicago Press. U~iver~ity of Chlcag~ pre~~.ve hmk, about Captain Cook for example, Chicago, m'

Sykes, K. (n.d.), 'Possessive Individualism a d th S . New Ireland' n e natcher: DIsplacing Desire in Central Taussi M ' paper pres~nted to the AAA meetings, Washington, D.e. 1997. g,. . (1988), Shamamsm, Colonialism and the Wildm Chi U' . ChIcago Press. an, cago, mverslty of

wag~~~~to~9:~~c~:o:i';;:i~:;~i:~:~:;age and Social Power amongst the Usen Barok, Wagner, R. (1992), 'Hazarding Intent', in L. Rosen (ed.), Other Intentions, Santa Fe, SAR.

Chapter 12

Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio: Kastom as Culture in a Melanesian Society! DavidAkin

For decades Kwaio people from the mountains of eastern Malaita in the Solomon Islands have been loudly declaring their disdain for foreign and modem ways. Today, rather than despairing over their community's inability to become adequately modem, these Kwaio are more likely to express humiliation at their failure to remain fully traditional. They typically contrast themselves unfavorably, not with progressive neighbors, but with their own venerable forebears, 'the big people of the past.' These concerns are long-standing and have been made explicit in regular community meetings to 'straighten out kastom' by drafting legalistic codes of behavior that emphasize rigid interpretations of ancestral taboos. Kastom is a Melanesian Pidgin word (from English 'custom') that, at its most basic, refers to ideologies and activities formulated in terms of empowering indigenous traditions and practices, both within communities of varying levels of inclusivity, and as a stance toward outside entities. Kastom has long been an influential

concept in Melanesia, especially in island Melanesia, where it has been a key political concept and symbol for well over fifty years. In this paper I explain how kastom has meshed with aspects of Kwaio culture to profoundly change peoples lives.

More specifically, I examine changes taking place in and around certain behavioral taboos, particularly those related to menstruation and other bodily functions of women. Many Kwaio believe codification and related kastom activities have transformed how people think about these and other taboos, bringing them and their violation to the forefront of local conceptions of cultural decadence. Since the 1940s, this has contributed to a fundamental transformation of Kwaio ancestral religion that people perceive to be beyond their control. That is, they suppose that the spirits of their ancestors have noted their worries and humiliations voiced in kastom oratory and discussion, and that' the spirits

themselves have reacted by working through their descendants, priests, and diviners to 'straighten out' Kwaio society. The ancestors have responded to their

descendants' new ways of thinking and talking about taboos by enforcing them

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

more strictly, demanding sacrificial purificatory pigs for sometimes minuscule

violations. As a result, people sometimes find their attempts to selectively relax taboos or engage in modern pursuits stymied by vigilant, loving ancestors.

The Kwaio case exemplifies how anxieties at encroaching modernity (as locally conceived) can lead people to elaborate - rather than abandon or simply reify _ ancestral traditions, as objectified kastom is transfonned, extrapolated, and absorbed into everyday religious practice. More importantly, as I will explain, it shows how this can occur through subjective processes that transcend the realm of overt cultural politics that has preoccupied so many anthropological studies of Melanesian kastom. In concluding the 1992 paper that anchors this volume Marshall Sahlins draws a distinction between 'tradition' as 'a distinctive way of changing,' and what he calls 'the culture movement,' that is, people's self-conscious attempts to shore up their weakened indigenous cultures (p.25). It was common at that time for anthropologists to equate cultural 'self-consciousness' with 'inauthenticity,' or to assert that cultural

revitalization ideologies, particularly at national levels, primarily reflected and served capitalist hegemonies (e.g., Babadzan, 1988; PhilibClt, 1986; Keesing, 1989a). These approaches have been effectively critiqued elsewhere (e.g., Jolly, 1992; Linnekin, 1992; and Sahlins himself, 1994a). While this paper speaks to those issues, I am more

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..: the New Melanesian Ethnography (after Josephides, 1991), highlights fundamental differences between ~~lanesian ~d Western presuppositions about social reality; that is it argues f?r the. n:co~tion of radical alterity, of cultural differences on a scale, say, of the Dumonhan distInction between homo hierarchicus and homo aequalis ... The other approach, th~ New. ~elanesian History, highlights similmities between Melanesian and Western SOCIal realities: .similarities generated out of shared histories of colonialism and co~merc~ ... [Its practitIoners] eschew the attempt to explicate alternate ultural d sOClallogtc h . c o r e r s or s or any suc umtary, organic conception of 'other cultures' ... (1995a, pp.2-3).

Foster argues that although the two approaches have developed in tension neither necess~ly precludes the other and that indeed both are crucial to a 'New MelanesIan Anthropology' that can adequately address contemporary Melanesian SOCIel1es (see also Thomas, 1992b; Jolly, 1994, p.54). Nowhere has this divide been more apparent than in studies of kastom, where m~ch of the terram has been dominated by approaches of New Melanesian HIstonans (though many works are ahistorical). In many writings, not ouly is kastom deCIdedly not ~ expre~sio~ of alternate cultural orders, it is culturally

emp,?,. Keesmg se; this ~one m hIS mtroduction to the volume 'Reinventin TraditIOnal Culture (Keesmg and Tonkinson, 1982), the seminal work of kast g studIes: om

interested in SaWins' broader theoretical approach here and elsewhere concerning

'develop-man,' particularly his stress on the importance of understanding culturally grounded patterns of change within the global system (e.g., 1992; 1994a; 1994b). This analytical perspective has been lacking in most studies of cultural movements in the Pacific, a subject to which, I will argue, it can be particularly well-suited. As Sahlins observes (1992, p.25), postruodern scholars have typically analyzed these movements and their associated ideologies as ironic 'essentializations' of local

cultural orders rather than as creative and dynamic expressions of them. This tendency has been particularly notable in anthropological writings about Melanesian kastom activities such as the Kwaio codification projects. In the early 1990s the late Roger Keesing captured a common sentiment when he wrote: '1 confess to having become rather tired of the debates about kastom, authenticity and cultural nationalist discourses in the Pacific. Our disciplinary inclinations toward liberal angst and fuzzily romantic relativism have been compounded with the rhetoric of postruodernism to the point of self-mystification and auto-paralysis' (1993, p.588).2 Many of his colleagues were similarly anxious to move on to other issues, and although work on the topic continues there has

been a gradual decline in interest in kastom studies within much of Melanesian anthropology since its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. This is unfortunate because in the meantime kastom ideologies have remained important and continued to evolve in diverse Melanesian communities, and to affect people's lives in deep and subtle ways. In other words, many Melanesianists have wearied of what is a blossoming subject matter, and we might well ask why. We can look in part, I think, to a problematic division of labor within contemporary Melanesian anthropology. Robert Foster has contrasted two distinct analytical approaches in the field:

Kastom ?ot only illustra~es the process of mystification; it shows how abstract symbols can .d~nve power prec~sely because of their vagueness and vacuity. That urban sophisticates and mountalO pagans can find meaning in kastom attests to the potency of contentless symbols ... Their very abstractness and lack of precise content allow a consen~us that would otherwise be impossible ... in contempormy Vanuatu kastom is somethmg evetyone can share a. commitment to because it is vaguely conceived, undefinable, and open to such dIverse constructions (1982b p 299' see Tonkin

1982).3

' .,

son,

Subsequent writings on kastom, particularly local-level studies, did not always pre~ent It as. bemg s~ barren, and sometimes explored its variety in different

settmgs, but It was typIcally analyzed as an instrumental political symbol and selfC?nSCIOUS externalizatIOn, as relfied, idealized, or somehow artificiaL There have

smce been some fine cultural (not simply local-political) analyses of kastom IdeologIeS (e.g., Jolly, 1982; 1994; Larcom, 1990; Lindstrom 1982' Linnekin a d P?yer, 1990; Scott, 2001; White, 1991), but, to quote a retro;pectiv~ piece by pIOneers m kastom studies, " ... liter~ture on custom for the most part has remained suspended at the level of rhetoncal constructions deployed in national and mternal1~nal arenas" (Lindstrom and White, 1995, p.206)4

1:0

MY.Intent here is in no sense to denigrate this kastom literature, one that has

greatly mfluenced my own thinking. Kastom has been usefully and at times bnllIantly analyzed as a rhetorical political creation at both regional and local levels. My argument, rather, is that by so focusing our analyses on this aspect of kastom, we ~ave ourselves r~ified it n:ore than have Melanesians. By severing kastom from Its cultural moonngs, we dIstort its meanings at all levels, and we are

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

left with understandings that are, to borrow a Sahlins pbrase, 'culturally insufficient' (1994a, p.380). The dearth of cultural meanings, complexities, and insights that such analyses reveal is perhaps the main reason many scholars have tired of kastom as a topic of study. The problem is not simply that we should give greater attention to the deeper cultural roots of different kastoms, though this is important. What is also required is a clearer recognition that kastom and culture are highly interactive, each continuously shaping the other over time. Antbropologists have for the most part examined only one side of this relationship. That is, with our attention so focused on the objectification of culture as kastom, we have neglected the concurrent subjectivization of kastom as culture. The two processes are constantly in play, making it impossible to fully understand either by itself, and indeed it is sometimes problematic to starkly differentiate kastom from culture s except as analytical constructs. It is crucial here to recognize the significant differences among, and dynamic relationships between, kastoms evoked at nested local, national, and regional levels (e.g., Tonkinson, 1993; Jolly and Thomas, 1992, p.243). Broader regional kastom and kastom-like ideologies and movements, although they do typically incorporate concerns and agendas of national political and other elites (e.g., Philibert, 1986; Babadzan, 1988; Foster, 1995h; Jorgensen, 1999; Ernst, 1999), typically must play off fields of diverse kastoms with complex local denotations that are already in place and continuously unfolding. This differentiates these ideologies from purely nascent ones disseminated from a central source outward to culturally diverse audiences, where ambiguity of content may be more essential to gairting widespread followings (see, for instance, Fernandez, 1965; Tonkinson, 1982). As with most ideologies, reasonable men and women can and often do differ concerning specifics of kastom, and regional leaders and their followers - again as in most broad-based ideological and political movements - sometimes employ ambiguity to sidestep divergent and potentially divisive local conceptions of kastom. But this must not mislead us into thinking that such local conceptions are absent from or unimportant to kastom-related activities and how they evolve. Indeed, their presence and great force are precisely what make kastom such a powerful political symbol at multiple levels of inclusiveness (e.g., Akin, 1999b; see Larcom, 1982, pp.332-33; Lindstrom, 1997, p.415). Turning all of this on its head, a less obvious but potentially just as serious a problem with acultural depictions of kastom is that they can mislead those conducting ethnographic studies of 'alternate cultural orders' in local communities into believing they can safely iguore kastom. This is problematic because in many places kastom ideologies have been subtly entangling with aspects ofJocal cultures that we scarcely associate with identity politics. In some parts of island Melanesia this has been going on for decades within both Christian and non-Cbristian communities. Kastom is not a mere essentialization of these cultures, it has become a visceral part of them and of their 'culturally specific modes of change' (Sahlins, 1992, p.22; 1994a, p.380). In the brief analysis that follows I highlight this particular aspect of kastom in Kwaio life. A general exegesis of Kwaio kastom would demand consideration of a much wider range of cultural, political, and

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Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio

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historical is,sues. 6 My mor~ mode~t ethn~graphic agenda is to sketch one process through which kastom has mtertwmed WIth and radically transformed daily Kwaio hfe, and to assert that neither can be fully understood apart from the other. More broadly: I offer the Kwaio case in argument that more anthropologists need to take kastom Ideas and practlCes far more seriously as integral, generative components of the local cultures that are producing them.

Talk About Some Things is a Problem Uncle J.ohn scrat~ed the earth deeply with a long rusty nail, "[the Preacher] knowed about sm, 1 ast hIm about sin, an' he tol' me' but I don't know l'fhe's 'ght H fill' . d'fh!hi ' n . esaysa e as snme 1 e nks he's sinned." Uncle John's eyes were tired and sad. "I been secret all my days," he said. "I done things I never tol' about" (The Grapes of Wrath

~~~.

'

Kwaio have long defined themselves as a community that adamantly rejects moderrnty, and defin~d modernity itself as a flagrant rejection of commmtity. Appalled by the seerrnng asoclahty of Westem society, they fear that encroaching foreIgu ways. are loosenmg the tIes that bind them together. The need to prevent commuruty dIssolutIon IS the gr.ounding theme of Kwaio kastom ideology (Akin, As already . own f19%). '1 . . noted, . KwalO express dismay and humiliation at therr ill ures to mamtam a SOCIal and cultural integrity that they ascribe to the past. Self-condemnatIon at per~eived cultural decadence has long been common throughout the Island .of Malmta. But most Malaitans, including the majority of KW3l0, have come t~ VIew many of theIr ancestral traditions as anachronistic, at least as they can be practIced today. They have therefore abandoned their ancestral spirits and land to become coastal Christians and to pursue new, more modernist identities (th?~gh many Cbristians still promote kastom in political, economic, and other nonreItglOus cont~xts, including codification efforts, and an enduring ambivalence about the ancestors IS ofte~ palpable; see note 18). Mountain Kwaio alone have remained ancestors, and their anxieties about cultural and commumy 't fully devoted d" . to thelr ., IsmtegratIOn have mspued them to try to invigorate ancestral ways. Most notably, for several decades they have worked to codify ancestral taboos and other rules into what they call 'kastom laws.' These taboos, and the meetings held to work on them have. become k~y symbols of identity and solidarity across the larger non-Cbristim: Kwmo commumty, ~ community that did not so exist in precolonial times. However, KwalO conserv~tis~ is not as straightforward as it appears. As in so many places, most people mamtam multiple and often contradictory perspectives on new a~d foreign ways. Here I want to contrast two of these, and the dynamic relatIOnship b~tween them: The fIfSt perspective is that of the traditionalist message of kastom pohllcal rhetonc: modem ways and foreign influences must be firrnl rejected kept .of Kwaio. This should be accomplished tbrough and farr:'ly self-dlscIpline and, failing that, tbrough compUlsion via strict commumty enforcement of ancestral and other kastom laws. Such unbending

~d

~ut

individu~

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

exclusionary arguments energize political meetings and their associated codification work. The second perspective is a more pragmatic and flexible one maintained by most Kwaio outside of public kastom settings. Here, we find people more ambivalent about new and foreign things and the degree to which they want to selectively reject or engage them. The same people who in kastom meetings advocate inflexible, conservative doctrines display considerably more moderate

views in their day-to-day lives. Thus all men enjoy trips to towns and plantations and commonly portray them as valued rights of passage for younger men, and everyone expresses admiration for and appreciation of imported commodities.

Most important to us here, people believe that they can contextually bend, mitigate, and sometimes even ignore taboos laid down by their ancestral spirits, and this was fhe case even before the colonial period. Outside of kastom settings, Kwaio conceive of their relationship with modernity as a dynamic one, somewhat personal but also subtly negotiated wifh fheir owo ancestors and ofhers in their immediate communities.

189

Ho~ is this occurring? There is no political coercion by kastom leaders here. In practIce no one presumes, uninvited, to tell specific individuals outside their

owo congregations how to attend to their ancestors and their taboos.' As already noted, each ancestor enforces taboos somewhat differently among its descendants and most interpretive religious decisions are made by priests for then: co~gregations, or within fhe tiny hamlets and hamlet clusters, or privately by mdlVlduals. Most mature men have some priestly duties and would forcefully resist any attempt by the larger community to dictate their owo religious conduct. Alfhough some who work on kastom codes would like to see fhem enforced in fact Kwaio codes have always been primarily symbolic statements.' In other wo~ds the religious kastom aspects of codes discussed and drafted in fhe meetings hav~ no legal'teeth.' In what follows, I want to explain how the ideas of community kastom

meetmgs have nevertheless reached into people's lives and changed their behavior

and how, contents of fhe formal codes have become fhe stuff of common religiou~ practlce. This despIte WIdespread unhappiness with some of fhe rnJes, and the absence of community-wide enforcement. We will see that fhe real teeth of kastom laws are not so much legal or political as they are moral and emotional.

Let me pause to stress that these two perspectives should not be juxtaposed as 'ideal' and 'real' models of behavior. Following my main argument, this dichotomy is problematic here. For one thing, the two perspectives each generate

To understand this we must first appreciate the emotional nature of Kwaio ancestors and their relationships to their descendants. For Kwaio, the dominant loci

different 'real' behaviors within distinct social contexts. Moreover, as we shall see,

of en:0tions are social relationships, both positive and adversarial, and displays of

the two are not fully discrete - public moral discourse on fhe one hand, and what some might perceive as simply practical reason on the other, merge on a more subjective plane as the latter is socially constructed through Kwaio cultnral idioms. The more flexible stance that individuals evince outside of kastom settings reflects an atomistic religious structure - within the Kwaio cognatic descent system individuals maintain selective relationships with distinct, sometimes unique constellations of ancestors. The various spirits enforce diverse rules in different

ways among, and only among, fheir particular descendants - although some general rules are enforced by them all - and spirits differ significantly in how they expect their taboos to be followed in contemporary situations. No overarching aufhority has ever standardized religious behavior across Kwaio, and this acephalous structure facilitates innovation and experimentation by, and diversity between

emo~on are most con~picuous when these are strengthened or disrupted. Particular emotlo~s

are appropnate to. certain kinds of relationships and can, by their very expresslOn, defme them (White, 1990). Kwaio ancestors, too, are conceptualized in highly relatlOnal terms, and an ancestral spirit acquires its power and most vital m~~nings as ~ nexus of its descendants' interrelationships. The most prominent spmts ar~ ancle~t o~es ~ho link large numbers of people across the K waio region and receIve sacnficIal pIgS from many different priests in extensive networks of sacrificial shrines.

Given that Kwaio emphasize fhe relational nature of both ancestors and emo~ons, it is no s~rise t~at ancestors themselves are conceived to be hyper-

emotlonal. They swmg passlOnately from one sentiment to another, particularly when theu hvmg descendants obey or disobey fheir taboos and perform sacrifices and other ntnals for them. These descendants should also experience strong

individuals and groups; ancestral rules can be interpreted and followed in dissimilar ways without undermining the overall religious system (see Akin, 1993, .. . pp.732-95; 2003, p.383).

partic~larly appeals for their help or absolution, are judged effective only if th~

Yet certain ancestral taboos, indeed, the very ones most emphasIZed m KwalOwide kastom codes, have in fact become stronger throughout the Kwaio mountains.

emotlonal br~akdowo when sacrificing purificatory pigs recognizes that his

Those engaged in codification projects have employed strict interpretations of these taboos to signify the continued vigor of the mountain community as a whole. Although most community members perceive these interpretations to be onerous or even unreasonable as religious practice, they believe they must follow these

particular taboos more rigorously than before, even as fhey relax ofhers. As a result, many Kwaio believe that kastom ideas and activities, particularly those surrounding codification, are having a significant and sometimes burdensome impact on their lives.

emotions when they engage them, and ritualized communications with ancestors

SPIT1t. mduces appropriate emotions in the speaker. The priest who experiences no re~atlOnship WIth his an~estors is still amiss. A curer who recites his ancestral spells WIthout tears knows hIS treatment will bring no recovery. When Kwaio discuss anc~stral taboos they often intellectualize them, sometimes in exhaustive legalistic

detrul; but they commonly address the spirits themselves as they would a small child overwhelm~d wifh sorrow or anger - with gentle promises or stern scoldings. Even when emotIOnally wrought themselves, people in these interactions measure

their words carefully to keep fervent ancestors under control. ,

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Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio

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191

endI:: ~:l:o~:~p:~~:tep~~i~~,:!e:,.~nd pote~cy of kastom meetings with their enforcement in the communit . o~s an the need for theIr more rigid

Ancestral spirits also monitor their descendants' private thoughts aud emotions as these develop in everyday life and they enforce their taboos partly in reaction to these. Two aspects of this are particularly relevant to us here. First, for many taboos, ancestors define violations according to how descendants perceive their own actions. Thus if a person is ignorant of having committed a violation, their ancestors will often ignore it. Moreover, if they quickly forget having committed a qnestionable act then their aucestors may well forget it, too. If the person dwells upon the action, however, unable to eliminate worry from his or her consciousness, the aucestors will eventually, in all likelihood, regard the act as a violation, and respond accordingly. A Kwaio friend explained it to me this way:

thesekmeeting~

~;t!:~~ot:~::e~~:~s~~~n~7s~:!e~o~~~::~o~ps

:::ntlat and i:: eves too part m kastom meeti h l' collectively harps on these taboos Kw ~gs :n a Ive). As the commuuity th determine to enforce them more ri' aIO n.. at ancestors take note and I' gorously. This IS revealed in the hamlets as famili k e~ see exp anatlons for their misfortunes aud discover through di' ti possessIOns, dreams, and other means that ancestors are . vma ons, previously inconsequential. angry WIth them over acts . d"d . Enernii is not just ancestral attention to the The problem £o~ m IVI uals like talk of k as t om meetmgs' from th . ' " m kastom ideas and rhetoric . . , '. , elr. reguI ar mnnerSIOn

u:

0;vn

Sometimes even if a man doesn't worry about a violation, his ancestor will still punish him. But other times, if the man just thinks, 'So what?' then nothing will happen,., Maybe the ancestor thinks the same thing, 'Hey, so what? It's unimportant, why should I say anything about it?' Maybe the ancestor will think that way and won't punish him ". But suppose an ancestor has forbidden something, and you've done it anyway, and you just can't get it off your mind, 'That was a bad thing I did,' And then tomorrow comes and you're still thinking, 'That was a bad thing I did,' Well, when that happens, you won't be the only one thinking that. Your ancestor is thinking it along with you,

certain ~C~w~°tha~ mdlvlduals fi~d It I~~reasingly difficult to disregard or forget o elr own and their famihes that they once ignored with im . F pumty. These same acts are becoming serious taboo viol ti this is all these acts have ever been . a ons, .or many younger Kwaio, everyday religious practice has blurred- ~h~:lne separatmghkastom ideology and them cd' . onger term, t e causallmk between related ':bol~:~~~~~e~Ot~~~:;~~. as has occurred most notably with menstrual and

As concerned as ancestors are with what goes on in their descendants' private thoughts, they worry even more about transgressions that become social knowledge. When religious matters, especially taboo violations, are publicly discussed, the ancestors are all ears. Public harping about particular behaviors is known as !atalaa, and can result in once-innocuous practices becoming dangerous violations. Let me illustrate this with the explanation my friend Enemii ('Enemy') gave to me of how Atoifi, a Seventh Day Adventist mission hospital on the coast, became off-limits for non-Christian men because of widespread talk, both in and outside of kastom meetings, about its maternity ward. Kwaio ancestors strictly prohibit any male contact with childbirth:

Transforming Women's Taboos ~~es~ ~::d we might c~me by W:O or three shell money valuables, or pigs, and we raise viofa~ons ar~Ybe th~y II have pIglets, but women's taboo violations will spoil them all

~;!~~:~r~i:~!!~~:~~i:?~£~~~~1: ~Th'hee~:;:Sj~n~~; ~:~o~ ~~: ~:ep~~n:r:: s.

ese VIO alions rum our lives,

When we were growing up there were not man Oh thin There were so few violations that the shrin b' gs were so good before! went there with a i h' d es wou ecome overgrown, and if a priest sacrifice But in thePti~ese hj.ave, to cdlear away the undergrowth before he could , we Ive In to ay no woman is better th h L' an any ot er .. , we just sit around committing violation no violations; let me tell you about sili~n : me tell y~u about the past when there were them for mortuar feasts wh . .we had pIgS or shell money we would use or our children kd w en our elders ~led, we would spend them on our siblings to use toward their ownh~::: ie::~~n dIed, they would leave behind shell valuables

id

Many people are afraid of Atoifi Hospital. That's because [when it first came] everyone talked about it: 'Oh! That place down there is really bad!' If the people hadn't said anything then it would have been an right. But with so many knowing, of course everyone talked about it. 'That place is bad down there! [Babies are delivered] inside!' We said, 'It's a foreign thing, why are you all making such a fuss over it?' But some of the women hadn't seen many foreign things and when they saw what was happening at the hospital they said, 'That's a bad place down there. You men can't go there any more.' So we just had to swallow it, and now even I don't go into the

;:~~o!~~:: ~~~e~~~i~:~e:y:~~~ ::~~:. ~~~a~::.~, l~y ~ohman, ~;en if she is a

hospital.

th . . , e ng t ... ome women, because you don't ever h b nothin ever h ear a ou: em comnnttmg VIOlations, you might think her mi~-50S, l~~~~~s to them, but things are happening to them all the time (Babala, in

That's one thing about our kastom: talk about some things is a problem. Talk spoils things, inflates them into something important. Even some small thing, people get to talking about it and suddenly it's big, Even some little thing, say some small taboo violation. we just think, 'It's a small thing, just keep quiet about it.' Sometimes if we just keep our mouths shut nothing will happen ... But if people start talking, 'Oh! That was a bad thing you did! This man did a bad thing!' then it gets seen [by ancestors].lO

Kwaio ancestors today are int 1 . female bodily wastes (menstru:~s:I~O~o~cerned With enforcing taboos that regulate , eces, unne, and vonnt) and childbirth, and

l

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

that specify their containment within demarcated areas in the lower reaches of each hamlet. Here I will gloss these rules as 'women's taboos.' In Kwaio these are more strict, easier to break, and more often brought to bear than in any society I have found in the Melanesian literature, where we encounter very few cases of women actually violating such taboos. In Kwaio, by contrast, community problems, especially serious male illnesses, are systematically blamed on ancestral anger at particular women having violated specific taboos. One difference in the Kwaio system is key here: in most Melanesian societies with rules of menstrual segregation. a woman must relocate to a menstrual area as soon as she notices her period beginning. But if a Kwaio woman is in her hamlet clearing or garden when she begins to menstruate, she is too late; a serious violation has already occurred. This raises the possibility of accidents, and indeed makes them inevitable. As I will discuss in a moment, this is a relatively recent development, and in the past Kwaio women's taboos more closely resembled those reported from other Melanesian societies. If a Kwaio woman reports an accidental violation to the men of her family, for example that she has accidentally urinated in her sleep or menstruated in the family house or garden, she staves off ancestral anger - a fonual confession is made, the house or garden permanently abandoned, pigs are sacrificed, and the spirits mollified. Such voluntary reporting and orderly repair is the common scenario. But sometimes when someone is ill diviners discover that a particular woman, or some woman unspecified, is concealing a transgression, usually accidental, for which the illness is ancestral punishment. An investigation ensues, in most cases resulting in a confession by the woman or women found to be involved. These confessions are mostly contrived by the accused, sometimes while under protracted, intense verbal interrogation by men and other women. Afterward, the woman is stigmatized to varying degrees depending upon her willingness to confess and the number and seriousness of violations she is charged with hiding over time. By contrast, women who quickly report violations and thereby head off aocestral punishment are rarely criticized and may be praised as good, responsible women. Nevertheless, all of these women are thought to place a great burden on their communities. A violation, either reported or discovered by augury and interrogation, necessitates the abandonment of any house or garden where it occurred, and sacrifices of many pigs. While it is important to emphasize that women sometimes participate in divinations and investigations concerning supposed offenses by other women, from a Kwaio perspective, and according to strict Kwaio notions of liability, these episodes leave women socially indebted to men - women's violations damage relations with ancestors, and men provide most of the pigs, labor, and rituals to repair that damage. In cases of detected concealment, both the costs of repair (including illnesses that result) and the indebtedness increase. This scenario of female taboo violation and male repair is ubiqnitous, and it powerfully shapes the general position of women visa-vis men in Kwaio society. It also operates more specifically to mold dyadic hierarchical relationships between individual men and womenIl At their core these taboos and their observance are very old - there were menstrual huts and taboos in Kwaio before Europeans entered the scene - but the

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routine violations of today are not part of an enduring religious tradition. In the not-too-distant past, women's violations, both reported and discovered, were extremely rare. Most women lived their entire lives without committing a single violation, or at most one or two that they reported. Before British military rule was imposed in 1927, the rare woman accused of hiding a serious violation was sometimes killed (e.g., Keesing, 1982a, pp.225-27; Western Pacific High Commission, 1920). Even during the early decades of colonial rule it was qnite uncommon for a woman's error to spoil a house or garden, and word of the event would spread qnickly throughout Kwaio much like news of an important person's death does today. Women's violations first became a regular problem only in the mid-1940s. Today they are chronic, affecting every hamlet and nearly every woman, and in some areas they have continued to escalate. Why has this change occurred? The reasons are complex and a full · IS ".Lar beyond the scope of this paper. 12 Key, however, is that women's expIanatlOn taboos have emerged as a central concern of kastom political ideology and activities, which, not coincidentally, also began in the mid-1940s. During the anticolonial movement known as Maasina Rule, Kwaio left their scattered mountain hamlets and bnilt large communal 'towns' near the coast. A paramount activity in the towns during 1946 and 1947 was the discussion and codification of kastom laws. The goal was to produce codes to present to the British government, and to apply within the community as rules of proper living under a new social order. 13 Codes occasionally mentioned women's taboos, but, because of extensive Christian parti~ipation and leadership in the movement, ancestral taboos were somewhat muted (e.g., Akin, 1993, pp.886-98; Keesing, 1992, pp. 119-21; Laracy 1983, pp. 138-49). To the consternation of many non-Christians, especially women themselves, some women's taboos were even waived in the towns to facilitate regular interaction with Christian compatriots there. Ironically, many older Kwaio still date the beginning of Kwaio cultnral decadence to this historical moment, the initial flowering of kastom activities (e.g., Keesing, 1987, ppAO-4I; 1992, pp.119-21). In 1946, there was a rash of aberrant behaviors among non-Christian women in one of the Maasina Rule towns. These took the form of spirit possessions, with symptoms that included suicides, and, for the first time in Kwaio, an epidemic of women violating women's taboos. The phenomenon spread 'like the wind' to other movement towns throughout eastern Kwaio, and was blamed on foreign sorceries or imported female spirits (buru, see Akin, 1996; n.d.a). I will not delve into the dynamics of this here, but it is noteworthy that many women were unhappy in the Maasina Rule towns, and at least some of these behaviors can be interpreted as a form of protest (per Lewis, 1986). Maasina Rnle was dominated by men, and women were relocated away from their homes, the social and spatial context within which they enjoyed the most status and power. In the towns they were controlled by sometimes bullying movement policemen (called 'duties') and enjoined to labor in the movement's expansive communal gardens; they could not visit their own hamlets or gardens without pemrission, which was often denied. In the mountains, senior women had controlled younger women partly through overseeing proper

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observance of taboos, and, as I have noted, many women were distressed when these were relaxed in the towns. In any case, soon thereafter the non-Christians returned to their mountains and in 1948 government troops began destroying Maasina Rille's coastal towns around Malaita. The center of Kwaio kastom activities shifted to the mountains and during the 1950s such activities became predominantly a non-Christian, even anti-Christian undertaking (see Akin, 1993, pp.383-406; see note 18). Once this occurred, ancestral taboos emerged as key symbols of kastom and of mountain Kwaio identity, and became more prominent in kastom codes. As Christians became a primary target of kastom rhetoric, women's taboos, in particular, were destined to become pivotal because Christians had long infuriated bush people by opeilly and systematically violating these taboos in their coastal mission villages. These violations were a classic case of what Thomas has called an 'inversion of tradition' (1992a; see also Keesing, 1994). Beginning in the 191Os, Christian leaders had selected certain practices as definitive of 'heathen' life, and instructed followers to disregard them. Christians widely refused to pay brideprice or compensation (Akin, 1999b, pp.52-54), to attend mortuary feasts, or to give ancestors ritual first fruits when gardening their land. Starting in the 1950s these refusals were angrily highlighted in new kastom rhetoric and codes being fonnulated in the mountains. But always it was the Christian flouting of women's taboos that was seen as the most heinous and dangerous of their transgressions - these taboos now came to be a touchstone of kastom discourse and codes, and they remain so today (see e.g., Keesing, 1989b). Part of one such code is 14 reproduced in figure 10.1. Women's taboos moved to the center of kastom activities not only as antiChristian symbols, but also because of what was perceived to be a growing need for their more rigorous enforcement. That was because after Maasina Rule, back in the mountain hamlets, the new problem of taboo violations that had started with the possessions in the towns persisted and multiplied - more and more women reported violations, and divination increasingly revealed ancestral anger over umeported, hidden violations.

Figure 12.1: The beginning of a Kwaio kastom code drafted in 1981 (The code contains no comparable section of taboos exclusively concerning men) Translated by the author 1. This place of Kwaio was founded on TAGl [loosely, law, or kastom]. TAGl divides the inside of houses. The upper part of the house is taboo [e abu]. Women cannot step over the fire hearth, it is taboo. Women cannot sit in the upper part of the house, it is taboo. Women cannot sit on bark seats belonging to men, it is taboo. Women cannot drink men's water, it is taboo. Women cannot climb up on shelving in the house, it is taboo. Women cannot curse things in the house, it is taboo. Women cannot urinate in the house, it is taboo.

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Women cannot urinate in the hamlet clearing, it is taboo. Women cannot curse their fathers, it is taboo. Women cannot curse men, it is taboo. Women cannot eat things that men eat, it is taboo. Women cannot climb up to the men's house, it is taboo. Women cannot eat food from the men's house, it is taboo. Women cannot go into the shrine, it is taboo. Women cannot eat food from the shrine, it is taboo. Men cannot just walk into a shrine of high sacrifice; outside men and women cannot go there, it is taboo. 2. Women cannot curse pigs, it is taboo. 3. Things from the house cannot enter the menstrual areas, it is taboo. Things from the menstrual areas cannot enter the house, it is taboo. Menstruating women cannot enter the house, it is taboo. Menstruating women cannot eat things from the house, it is taboo. Women cannot step over things in the house, it is taboo. And they cannot touch men's things, it is taboo. 4. As of now women cannot wrap themselves in calico in menstrual areas. If you, any woman, does this in a menstrual area, there will be a fine of $1.00. 5. And no matter the house, women cannot wear calico in the house, it is taboo. They can only wear calico while working. 6. Tagi forbids giving birth in the house. And birth is also taboo in the menstrual area. Do you Christian women just give birth in the house? And you do not cleanse and shave your body after giving birth? You Christian women who give birth like that and do not properly shave your heads after birth, you cannot go into 'itini [heathen] areas, or to Ngarinaasuru [a meeting center on the Sinalagu coastal slope where both bush people and Christians sometimes congregate], it is taboo. 7. Incinerating afterbirths down there at Atoifi Hospital is taboo. You cannot do that anyrnore, it is taboo. 8. Women cannot steal, it is taboo. Menstruating women cannot eat pork, it is taboo. Menstruating women cannot eat yams, it is taboo. Women cannot plant yarns in menstrual areas, it is taboo. Women cannot eat bananas, it is taboo. Women cannot eat men's betelnuts, it is taboo. Women cannot eat betelnuts in menstrual areas, it is taboo. Women in the menstrual area cannot yell up to the house, it is taboo. Men cannot have sex with women who are menstruating. Women cannot cut firewood in menstrual areas, it is taboo. Women cannot sing at night, it is taboo. Women cannot plait bags at night, it is taboo.

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I

revealed in divination. Ancestors often do miss or ignore mistakes, with one crucial exception: today it is said they always notice all violations involving women's bodily substances, even the most minor ones. Women must report to men every infraction or possible infraction. It is apparent that this idea is

relatively recent (probably from the 1950s), that in the past women treated menstrual and related rules much like people do other taboos. That is, they typically ignored minor violations, and also any unexpected beginning of their menstrual flows in homes or gardens, unless ancestors protested, at which pomt

they reported the error. Diviners rarely asked about women hiding violations since this was so rare, and also because prior to British rule the consequences of discovering such concealment were so dire.

197

a young girl, Meri, was seen by her father in a dream to have concealed something,

As described in the previous section, Kwaio often ignore minor or borderline taboo violations, sometimes even serious ones. If, say, a taboo word

is uttered, or a forbidden food eaten, people commonly follow a 'wait and see' ar 'don't-ask-don't-tell' strategy. If ancestors have noticed the error it will be

Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio

and sh~ qUIckly confessed to a urination error and a minor fecal error, both from

I

some tnne before. Meri was a model child and I asked her mother why she had not reported these incidents right away. She explained: She heard ~e tell ab0.ut before, when, if a girl hadn't menstruated yet, even if she had such ~ accI~ent nothin~ happened. Only when a girl started menstruating did we have to sacnfice pIgS to fix things that happened to her. I had told Meri about my sister Sara who, wh~n she was about .Meri's age, woke to discover she had urinated in her sleep, but nothmg ever came of It. I told Meri about that and she trusted in that. But in the past things ~ere one way, and now they're another. [DA: What do you mean?] Because now If even a small girl has a violation they'll sacrifice pigs to fix it. But in the past when I was younger [she is about forty], even an older girl like Suusana here [a bystander about age ten], if something happened it was nothing .. " But now it has c~anged because people make such a big thing of kastom. It's as if even the smallest thmg, people have to make a big deal out of it.

When women began to run afoul of taboos in the Maasina Rule towns these violations became a new, feared source of illness and misfortune, and, over time, seeking out women's violations became central to divination inquiries. As diviners

Individual men and women recognize that kastom discussions codification and

increasingly discovered that ancestors were afflicting people in anger over unreported violations, women began to report incidents they fonnerly would have ignored or left nndeclared. Another related process was also at work: innocent women pressured into confessions attempted to explain their situation, and also diminish their culpability, by admitting to negligible or borderline infractions. In this way, acts once innocuous or ambignous were credited with having angered ancestors, came to public notice and

about and followed. People see the connection in more recent and obvious taboo

discussion, and evolved into serious offenses. Thereafter, more women dutifully reported them. Some acts not considered violations even twenty years ago are now said

to anger ancestors, and more exacting taboos are continually being created. More violations mean more questions about women during divinations, more false accusations and confessions, more voluntary reporting, and so on in a spiral of intensification as

taboos serpentine and slip out of control. l5 This is an important aspect of the process through which the Kwaio system of women1s taboos has become so much more onerous

and prone to violation than those elsewhere in Melanesia. In Kwaio today, almost all women commit some violations. Nearly all have been accused of concealing them, and some are so accused - and confess - chronically. Today, unlike during Maasina Rule, violations are no longer necessarily linked to foreign spirits or sorcery. Rather, over time, as violations have continued to spiral, it has come to be said that women violate taboos because it is in women's nature to do so.

Key in this process have been the Kwaio ideas concemingfatalaa (public talk) discussed earlier: As women's taboos have moved to the center of kastom discourse and codes, both because of the perceived need for increased enforcement and as anti-Christian symbols, women's violations or imagined violations have

moved to the fore of people's thoughts, worries, and conceptions of moral propriety. This is reflected in what women report, what people suspect, and what diviners discover. Some women today recognize this process at work in the subtle

and gradual tightening oftaboos still occurring around them. For example, in 1996

public fatalaa have contributed to changes in how ancestral ;aboos are

th~ught

changes that personally affect them, such as those forcing them to shun the Adventist hospital or teach their daughters differently. However, they do not perceive the cumulative, systematic impact these political and interpretive processes have had on women's taboos over the fifty-odd years since Maasina

Rule. Th~y know women's violations once were rare and now are rife, but they do not perceIve the. link between this larger shift and kastom activities, or recognize the degree to whICh taboos themselves have changed. Kwaio seek answers rather in a decaying moral character of today's women, or in ancestors angered and

frustrated by their descendant's laxity in following their taboos in the modern world (e.g., Keesing1989b, pp.200-1; 1992, p.119), or, most often, people throw up theu hands III theu own frustration at the lack of any explanation at all. Kwaio are perplexed as to why so many more women are violating taboos now than in the past, and the problem is emblematic of a perceived cultmal dissolution they feel powerless to counter.

Codification of kastom has, as Jocelyn Linnekin once predicted, here contributed to a more ngorous observation of affected rules, but it has not, as she suggested, led to a replacement of fluid cultural attributes with rigid, unchanging ones (1990, p.163; see also ~com, 1982). Indeed, the codification process, come together with Kwaio conceptions of SOCIal agency, has itself helped propel a dynamic processes that has generated new rules with new meanings, and a myriad of unintended and unrecognized consequences (see Akin, n.d.a, ch.5)16 Most obviously, these changes have increased the ancestral religion's iroportance as a locus of gender-based ineqUality. A woman's ~tatus today is based significantly on her ability to fully control semi-voluntary and mvoluntary b~dily functions. Mistakes are inevitable, and real and alleged mistakes leave women md~bted to the men who must repair the damage they cause (see Akin, 2003, p.388, passnn). That women are incapable of adheriog to the strict taboos on their

-,.I

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own is clear from their constant violations. That some women will endanger their

Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio

199

The root of K waio aoxiety at encroaching modemity is the fear that their society is bemg undone. Kastom meetings, with their attention to maintaining ancestral ways, have long been the principal events that bring together people from throughout eastern Kwmo. These meetmgs are themselves performative acts which, by their

families by concealing violations is revealed in divinations aod the confessions they elicit. Therefore, women must be policed by men, aod also by other women. Most Kwaio men do not consciously, disingenuously exploit the aocestral taboo system to punish individual women, but, in the final aoalysis, that system is a more potent meaos of male control thao ever was their past monopoly on violence. To employ violence against a wife or kinswomao one generally had to vilify her for corrumtting some social offense which was often impossible. But in the scenario of taboo vlOlatton aod reparr women' need not be culpable, or even guilty of ill intent, only liable for ao involuntary bodily accident. The resnlt is that men bave acquired a more subtle, but more effective control over a wider raoge of women thao in the past. And because women today cannot adequately control their bodies, it is incumbent upon men to more fully control women for the sake of the entire community.17 The radical escalation of women's taboo violations has had other less obvious but no less important ramifications. For example, it has contributed significaotly to reconfiguration of the religious structure, particnlarly how many ancestral spmts people maintain active relations with. The more ancestors one sacnfices to, the

1mposed upon them by watchful ancestors. But if one supposes that there are no

more pigs are required to repair every hamlet taboo violation - one or two for each

ancestral. spirits, or that their reality emerges from within the social relationships

spirit _ aod priests can aod increasingly do perform rituals to terminate ?r suspend interactions with selected spirits (Akin, 1993, pp.799-800). Th1s m turn 1S traosforming the overall social structure of living people as constituted by shared

by t~e1T hvmg descendants in their divinations, dreams, and spirit possessions. As

ancestral relationships. Increasing violations have also affected the size, expense,

aod deployment of pig herds due to the more frequent need for purificatory sacrifices (Akin, 1999a, pp.129, 251). Even housing styles have changed - why work to build sturdy structures that likely will have to be abandoned prematurely due to a woman's violation there? One could go on; there is hardly ao aspect of K waio life that has not been somehow affected. Any study of K waio culture today that disregards the integral role of kastom ideology and its impacts in everyday life will necessarily be partial or flawed. Any consideration of kastom in contemporary Kwaio life that ignores local understandings of sociality, emotions, causality, and agency will be similarly wanting.

Conclusion: Ancestors, /(astom, and Community

very occ~rrence: have effectively denied the disintegration of the larger mountain

commumty (Akin, 1996, p.170). Since the mid-1940s most kastom codes have been produced within this fr~e, and they have been conceptualized at least partly as collectIve statements of reslstance to community dissolution. However, as I have tried to sketch here, kastom meetings, their rhetoric and codes not only enhan~e social aod political cohesiveness aod strength - something

few Kw:"o would wiJlmgly abandon - they also ripple through other aspects of KwalO hfe, and the thoughts of individuals. Today stringent kastom codes and talk do not just deny commuoity disintegration, they have come to symbolize commumty 1tself. As such, the codes have acquired a degree aod maoner of moral agency un~ticipated even by their authors. Some Kwaio see this process as being ?ut of theIr control, since it has resulted in increasingly oppressive taboos being

they n:amfest, then the taboo interpretations attributed to them are in fact generated KwalO all but tell us - and themselves - it is they, in their inability to vanquish kastom concerns from their thoughts, to compartrnentalize one from the other who

are imposing new strictures upon themselves. It has become impossible for th~m to maintain an essentialized kastom as 'a thing outside the individual' (Borsboom and

Olto, 1997, p.2). Since the decline of Maasina Rule, kastom politics in the Kwaio mountains have been significaotJy shaped by anti-modem and anti-Christiao sentiments and has increasingly focused on ancestors and their taboos as key symbols. 18 Thi~ has c~ange~ the. very. ~atu;e of ancestors. In the past, there was no conception of a smgle KwalO religIOn across the area. Rather, distinctive composites of ancestral

spirits and their taboos distingoished individuals and commuoities across the r~gion, highlighting diversity, division, and structures of complex cross-cutting

hnkages r~ther th~n any overall unity. They still do this. But today 'The Ancestors' as an undifferentiated group have also come to symbolize the whole of mountain Kwaio society, a social entity that had no conscious existence as such until the

While collective events do, indeed, bring together disparate persons, it is not to 'make' them into social beings. On the contrary, it may even be argued that such de-

pluralized, collective events have as much an amoral, antisocial character to them as do autonomous persons who go their own way (M. Strathern, 1988, p.13). The greatest problem in coming from an oppressed group is the power the oppressor has over your group. The second greatest problem is the power your group has over

you (Stee1e, 2002, p.36). Enacting customs and using them as symbols of cultural autonomy in the face of colonialism are quite different matters (Keesing, 1985, p.36).

colonial era. Kwaio now belong to a new public and cultural order to which their ancestors belong also. As members of this greater order, people have themselves defined its morality largely in terms of ancestors and their taboos, thereby investing It WIth an emotional force it would not otherwise have, one not easily ignored.

Beliefs of K waio individuals that they are losing their interpretive autonomy to the pubhc morahty of k~stom reveal a painful irony: kastom is generating a new form of socml ho~ogene1ty, the very thing kastom ideologues have always resisted m the enc~n:passmg order of government, in the engulfing global economy, in the smgle Chnstian God. They have long feared that Kwaio forms of social distinction and structure will be overrun by these broader modem identities and collectivities,

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but in formulating their resistance to these around a unified kastom front, they find

they have created a new homogenizing force of their own, one acting from within. When ancestors attend kastom meetings, their spirits listen to the rhetoric about people's modern laxity in observing taboos, and the spirits think, 'Those are bad things they're doing.' Whether these ancestors are real or exist ouly in Kwaio imaginations, one thing we can be sore of is that their descendants are thinking the same thing along with them, and that they find it difficult to leave those thoughts at the meeting house door. Neither can Melanesianists abandon kastom there if they

hope to understand its meanings and significance for those who create it.

Notes 1

Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

I have benefited from comments by Sandra Bamford, Ben Burt, Jim Hagen, Shah Hanifi, Dan Jorgensen, Lamont Lindstrom, Mike Scott, Iolene Stritecky, and Geoff White. I owe special thanks to Terre Fisher, Wallace and Peggy Akin, IoeJ Robbins, and Don Tuzin, and I am grateful to Jon Bialecki for assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. Help from Kwaio individuals is not cited here so as to protect confidentiality, and all the Kwaio names are pseudonyms. The paper draws on over sixty months of research with Kwmo since 1979, most recently during 2004 funded by the Melanesian Resource Center at the University of California, San Diego; from 1995-1997 by National Endowment for the Humanities (grant FB-32097-95), National Science Foundation (JNT-9504555), and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (5800); and in 1987 and 1992 by The East-West Center in Honolulu. An earlier version of this paper was published in 2004 in the journal Anthropological Theory, Vol. 4(3), pp.299-324. 2 Keesing was likely tired due in part to recent hostile exchanges with Hawaiian activist Haunani Trask and others over issues of tradition and authenticity (e.g., Keesing, 1989a; 1991; Trask, 1991). 3 This 1982 portrayal of kastom as semantically empty was critiqued by White (1993). Keesing responded that his analysis had been intended to address only kastom as a symbol of broader regional identities (1993, p.590). However, in later writings about Kwaio he often depicted local kastom as 'compartmentalized,' kept separate from everyday life (e.g., 1992, pp.204-6; 1994; see also 1968). Compartmentalization is a useful analytical tool but, as this paper makes clear, it can distort reality when applied too broadly and literally. Keesing closed his Mankind paper (1982b, p.300) by asserting that 'spurious kastom' did not differ radically from 'genuine culture,' but this clashed with much of his argument there and in other writings. I argue elsewhere that island-wide and nationalistic kastoms, too, can be semantically rich (Akin, 1999b; n.d.a). 4 Jolly's 1994 book is particularly relevant to what win follow in this paper in that she highlights gendered aspects of kastom in neighboring Vanuatu. My critique of acultural approaches does not of course hold for studies of Melanesian 'cargo cults,' an extensive literature notable for its invisibility in most writings about kastom despite much topical overlap (though see Hennann, 1997; Lindstrom, 1993; 1997; Otto, 1992; and Schwartz, 1993, for some exceptions). The disinclination of most kastom studies to employ cultural approaches has impaired their authors' ability to draw upon ideas developed in cargo research.

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5

The Kwaio ~ase pres~nte~ here complements Thomas' more general argument that we must reco~m~ !he hist~ncal. pedigrees of various 'ethics or cultural predispositions' (e.g., egahtanamsm, reCIprocIty) now stressed in many Pacific societies as they .. ' , were 'subst ti· d" . an VIze m OPP?SItion to perceived European ways (1992b, p.81, passim). As wIll b~ see~, the geneSIS of key aspects of Kwaio kastom ideology can be understood partly m this way. What I am most interested in here, however, is the degree to which an~ pr?cesses through which, kastom ideas have subtly permeated and transformed da~ly hfe far beyond the realm of kastom politics and identities, setting off chains of untntended ~d unrecogni~ed consequences that Kwaio today do not trace back to these oppOSItions, and WhICh they understand primarily outside of such oppositional frames. 6 For broader considerations of Kwaio kastom start with Keesing 1992 d Aki 1993 I am .currently finishing a book manuscript about the history of kasto': ideol~g' ies o~ Malatta (n.d.a). 7 I use the :erm 'congregation' loosely here to refer to those who together sacrifice pigs to a specific ancestor through a particular priest. The Kwaio religious structure is far mor~ complex than .1 can impart in this paper, and most people give ancestral pigs to mu~ti.ple ancestors VIa several different priests (see Keesing, 1982a). 8 Strikingly, no code has ever been fuUy implemented. For a discussion of why ki C0kin~es have failed to materialize, and complexities of codification more gener:; s~: , 1993, pp.514-52. ' 9 I refer here not to an 'outsider-oriented discourse' of rules produced on behalf of myself as an ~throp~logist, but rather to Kwaio talk of abstract rules amon themselves both I~ ~ubhc meetings and private talk. Explicit rules, both ancestral an~ :~::~r, ar;:d le~~Ist~c an~yses of them - of their subtle shades of meaning, of 'gray , . o. nntigatmg CIrcumstances, of comparative case histories, of rule contradIct:ton~ - are a core aspect of K waio life, both in abstract theoretical discussion a~d. the. working out of actual cases. Here, it becomes difficult to sustain Bourdieu's disttn~tlOn between 'learn?d reconstructions of the native world and the native expene~ce of that. world, (1977, p.18, passim), between the explicit and the unconSCIOUS. As thIS paper shows, the former both emerges from and flows into the latter. 10 ~?l1~see' is often used to mean to 'know' in Kwaio, paIticularly for ancestors (see 1 l~On, 1997;. M. ,Strathem, 1988, pp.108-9). Enernii actually ends the quote's first part y speclfymg the two-story hospital' - because women walk on the floor b and a women's toilet is upstairs, it is thought even more dangerous for men to en~e:;:~ ground floor. 11 Of course, objectively, women labor to raise men's pigs as well as their own d ~om~n must work to help replace abandoned gardens. Within hamlets a wo~ s v~olatlOns m.ay ~s.o leave her indebted to other woman who contribute' purificator pIgS or f0:telt a JOtntly owned defiled garden. Women's illnesses are much less likel~ than ~en s to be blamed on another woman's taboo violation however For an analY~ls of the relationship ~etween women's taboos and women'~ statuses Kwaio that differs. markedly from nnne, see Keesing, 1987 and 1989b (cf. Akin, 2003). 12 ~or analYSIS of oth~r aspects of the rise in women's taboo violations, and an extended ase study, see Akin, 2003. A book manuscript on the topic is in preparation (Akin n.d.b). ' 13 For a history of kastom's development out of colonial concepts of 'custom' see Aki 1993 and n.d.a. For a good overview of the Maasina Rule movement see Laracy, 198;'

A

in

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Ancestral Vigilance and the Corrective Conscience in Kwaio

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

14 The early emergence of women's taboos as a key symbol in Christian-traditionalist conflict is a fascinating history, but in this paper I am concerned with later processes, as the taboos became central to kastom ideology and as, subsequently, kastom ideology began to transform religious practice. However, given past discussions of inverted traditions (e.g., Thomas, 1992a; 1992b; SaWins, 1993), I should reemphasize that menstrual taboos were important in the ancestral religion before Christianity arrived; this was one reason early Christian leaders selected them for systematic violation. In the fIrst Christian villages women's and other taboos continued to be followed, but that began to change, say Kwaio oral historians, after a 1909 visit by evangelical missionary Florence Young (see Young, 1925, pp.198-200). 15 In many areas this trend is reversing and a correction of sorts is oc~urri~g through ~e spread of imported magics that mitigate women's and other taboo Vlolatlons (see Akin, 1993, pp.658-60, 884-85; 1996, pp. 159-61; 2003, pp.396-99). .' 16 It is crucial here to make an analytical distinction usually absent from dISCUSSIOns of the impacts of codification, particularly regarding whether or not it 'freezes' once fluid and dynamic rules. That is, we must distinguish between the actual deployment and enforcement of legal codes, on one hand, and the process of codification on the other. This is particularly important in Melanesia, where some groups have invested tremendous energies, often over many years, in discussing and drafting kastom or similar codes, but only rarely have their efforts culminated in working sets of laws. ~e latter might sometimes result in rules that are more rigid. However, the codi~catIOn process can thrust rules that were once routine, mundane, or comfortably ambtguous into a dynamic and volatile public political realm. There, th~ rules take on ~ew an~ extra-legal meanings - both objective and .subj~ctive - whtc~ may r~sult t~ t~e1f radical transformation. The change and amplificatlon of women s rules III Kwato IS a striking case in point. It bears note, too, that analysts often fail to recognize the dynamism and fluidity of rules even within formal operating codes, especially codes that are highly charged politically. . 17 This material raises intriguing questions not addressed here. Most obVIously, what deeper changes in Kwaio society might explain men's inclination to enfo~ce women's rules more tightly? To begin understanding this we must explore such things as how other forms of male control such as violence and arranged marriages have fallen away, how foreign and 'modem' things have come to be defined as appropriate only for men, the political impact of systematic taboo violations by Christians in open defiance of their traditionalist rivals, and ideas that Malaita has been 'feminized' by colonial rule (see Akin, 1996; n.d.a). Moreover, why do so many women support and police a tabo? system that appears to subjugate them, and might some ~omen empl~~ taboos to therr own advantage? Here, we must examine how female ntual and polItical po,:er, ~oo, has declined, leaving these taboos as one of the few realms where women still WIeld potent if sometimes covert fonns of agency. To complicate ~atters sti~ further, men, too suffer in many ways when they discover that female relatives have VIolated taboos. Ob~iously, these complexities are beyond the scope of this paper. See Akin, 2003, and n.d.b, for fuller discussions of these points. 18 Malaitan Christians were heavily involved in kastom politics during and after the postwar Maasina Rule movement, and they have recently become more assertive in local kastom endeavors. Kastom ideologies remain influential in many Christian communities throughout the island, exhibiting both similarities to and differences fro~ those discussed here. The ambiguities and ambivalences so apparent among mountam K waio regarding kastom can be stin more striking among Malaitan Christians (rich examples are found in Kwa'ioloa and Burt, 1997; see Akin, 1997). Now, as open

203

ancestor worship - once seen as a potent threat and rival to the various Christianities _ has disappeared from most of Malaita, for many Christians the tensions between their religion and kastom have eased, leaving them freer to openly engage kastom activities and ideas (see Akin, 1999a, pp.127-30; 1999b, pp.52-54; n.d.a).

References Akin, David (1993), Negotiating Culture in East Kwaio, Malaita. Ph.D. dissertation. Ann Arbor, University Microfilms. Akin, David (1996), 'Local and Foreign Spirits in Kwaio, Solomon Islands,' in Jeannette Mageo and Alan Howard (eds), Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind, New York: Routledge. Akin, David (1997), 'Review of Michae1 Kwa'ioloa and Ben Burt,"Living Tradition: A Changing Life in Solomon Islands,'" Australian Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 8(3), pp. 342-43. Akin, David (1999a), 'Cash and Shell Money in Kwaio,' in, David Akin and Joe1 Robbins (eds), Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh Press. ' , Akin, D~v~d (!999b), 'Compensation and the Melanesian State: Why the Kwaio Keep Clamnng, The Contemporary Pacific, Vo!. 11(1), pp. 35-67. Akin, David (2003), 'Concealment, Confession, and Innovation in Kwaio Women's Taboos,' American Ethnologist, Vo!. 30(3), pp. 381-400. Akin, David (n.d.a), 'Malaitan Kastom: The Living History of an Ideology.' Book manuscript in preparation. Akin, David (n.d.b), 'Good Women and Bad Women: Changing Taboos in a Solomon Islands Society,' Book manuscript in preparation. Babadzan, Alain (1988), 'Kastom and Nation Building in the South Pacific,' in R. Guideri F. Pellizzi, and S. Tambiah (eds), Ethnicities and Nations, Houston, Rothko Chapei and University of Texas Press. Bonnemaison, Joel (1994), The Tree and the Canoe: History and Ethnogeography of Tanna, Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press. Borsboom, Ad and Ton Otto (1997), 'Introduction: Transformation and Tradition in Oceanic Religions,' in Ton Otto and Ad Borsboom (eds), Cultural Dynamics of Religious Change in Oceania, Leiden, KITLV Press. Bourdie~, P.ierre (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, Cambridge UmversIty Press. Ernst, Thomas (1999), 'Land, Stories, and Resources: Discourse and Entification in Onabasulu Modernity,' iri Aletta Biersack (ed.), Ecologies for Tomorrow, American Anthropologist special issue, Vol. 101, pp. 88-97. Fernandez, James. (1965), 'Symbolic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cult,' American AnthropologIst Vo!. 67(4), pp. 902-29. Fl?ster, Robert (1995a), Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia: Mortuary Ritual, Gift Exchange, and Custom in the Tanga Islands, New York, Cambridge University Press. Foster, Robert, (ed.) (1995b), Nation Making: Emergent Identities in Postcolonial Melanesia, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. Gillison, Gillian (1997), 'To See or Not to See: Looking as an Object of Exchange in the N~w Guinea Highlands,' in, Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy (eds), Rethinking Vrsual Anthropology, New Haven, Yale University Press.

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Larco~, Jo~n (199~), 'Custom by Decree: Legitimation Crisis in Vanuatu,' in Jocelyn Ll~neki~ and Lm Poyer (eds), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific, Honolulu, Uruverslty ofHawai'i Press. L~wis, I. M. (1986), Religion in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Lmdstrom, Lamont (1982), 'Leftamap Kastom: The Political History of Kastom in Vanuatu,' in Roger Keesing and Robert Tonkinson (eds), Reinventing Traditional Culture: The Politics of Kastom in Island Melanesia, Mankind special issue, Vol. 13(4), pp. 316-29. Lindstrom; Lamont (1993), 'Cargo Cult Culture: Toward a Genealogy of Melanesian Kastom,' in Lamont Lindstrom and Geoffrey White (eds), Custom Today. Anthropological Forum special issue, Vol. 6(4), pp. 495-513. Lindstrom, .Lamo~t (1997), 'Custom Remade,' in Donald Denoon et al. (eds), The . Cambndge HIstOry o/the Pacific Islanders, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Lindstrom, La:nont ~d Geoffrey White (1995), 'Anthropology's New Cargo: Future HOf1zon~, m Ri~hard Feinberg and Laura Zirnmer-Tamakoshi (eds), Politics of . C~lture In the PaCific Islands, Ethnology special issue, Vo!. 34(3), pp. 201-9. Lmne~, Jocelyn (1990), 'The Politics of Culture in the Pacific,' in Jocelyn Linnekin and Lm Poyer (eds), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific, Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press. ' Linnekin, Jocelyn (1992), 'On the Theory and Politics of Cultural Construction in the Pac~fic,' in Margaret Jolly and Nicholas Thomas (eds), The Politics of Tradition in the Pacific, Oceania special issue, Vol. 62(4), pp. 249-63. Linnekin, JoceJyn and Lin Poyer, eds, (1990), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific Honolulu, University ofHawai'i Press. ' Otto, Ton (1992), 'The Ways of Kastom: Tradition as Category and Practice in a Manus Vill.age,' in Margaret Jolly and Nicholas Thomas (eds), The Politics of Tradition in the Paclfic, Oceania special issue, Vol. 62(4), pp. 264-83. Philibert, Jean-Marc (1986), 'The Politics of Tradition: Toward a Generic Culture in Vanuatu,' Mankind, Vo!. 16(1), pp. 1-12. Sahlins, Marshall (1992), 'The Economics of Develop-man in the Pacific' RES Vo!. 1 pp 12-25. ' , ,.

Hennann, Elfriede (1997), 'Kastom versus Cargo Cult,' in Ton Otto and Ad Borsboom (eds), Cultural Dynamics of Religious Change in Oceania, Leiden, KI!LV P~ess. . Jolly, Margaret (1982), 'Birds and Banyans of Sou~ Pentecost: Kas:om 1~ Antl-C~l?rual Struggle,' in Roger Keesing and Robert Tonki~son (ed~), Rem~e~t1ng Tradiuonal Culture: The Politics of Kastorn in Island Melanesia. Mankznd specIal Issue VoL 13(4),

pp. 338-56. .. Jolly, Margaret (1992), 'Specters of Inauthenticity,' The Contemporary Pacific Vo!. 4(1), pp. 49-72. Jolly, Margaret (1994), Women of the Place: Kastom, Colonialism and Gender in Vanuatu,

Langhome, Pa., Harwood Academic Publishers.. , .. ... Jolly, Margaret and Nicholas Thomas (1992). 'IntroductIon to 'TIle PohtI~s. of Tradlti~~ ill the Pacific,'" in, Margaret Jolly and Nicholas Thomas (eds), The PolitIcs of Tradition in the Pacific. Oceania special issue, Vol. 62(4), pp. 241-48. Jorgensen, Dan (1999), 'Generic Tradition, Legibility and the Politics of Identity in a P~pua New Guinea Mining Project,' Paper presented at the November Amencan Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Chicago. . . . Josephides, Lisette (1991), 'Metaphors, Metathemes, and the Constructlon of SOClallty: A Critique ofthe New Melanesian Ethnography,' Man, Vo!. 26, pp. 145-61. . Keesing, Roger (1968), 'Chiefs in a Chiefless Society: The Ideology of Modem Kwruo Politics,' Oceania, Vo!. 38, pp. 276--80. Keesing, Roger (1982a), Kwaio Religion: The Living and the Dead in a Solomon Islands Society, New York, Columbia University Press. Keesing, Roger (1982b), 'Kastom in Melanesia: An Overview,' in, R?~er Keesing ~d Robert Tonkinson (eds), Reinventing Traditional Culture: The Polttlcs of Kastom ID Island Melanesia, Mankind special issue, Vo!. 13(4), pp. 297-301. Keesing, Roger (1985), 'Kwaio Women Speak: The Micropolitics of Autobiography in a Solomon Islands Society,' American Anthropologist, Vol. 87(1), pp. 27-39. Keesing, Roger (1987), 'Ta'a Geni: Women's Perspectives on Kwaio. Soc~ety,' in, M.arilyn Strathem (ed), Dealing with Inequality: Analyzing Gender RelatIOns zn MelanesIa and Beyond, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. . . Keesing, Roger (1989a), 'Creating the Past: Custom and Identlty m the Contemporary Pacific' The Contemporary Pacific, Vol.1, pp. 19-42. Keesing, R~ger (1989b), 'Sins of a Mission: Christian Life as Traditionali~t Ideology,~ in Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre (eds), Family ~nd Gender .m the ~acifi-.c: Domestic Contradictions and Colonial Impact, Cambndge, Cambndge Umverslty Press. Keesing, Roger (1991), 'Reply to Trask,' The Contemporary Pacific, Vo!. 3(1), pp. 168-69. Keesing, Roger (1992), Custom and Confrontation: The Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. . Keesing, Roger (1993), 'Kastom Re-examined,' in, La~on~ Lindstrom and Geoffrey White (eds.), Cnstom Today, Anthropological Forum SpeClalISSUe, Vo!. 6(4), pp.5~7-96: Keesing, Roger (1994), 'Colonial and Counter-Colorual DIscourse III Melanesia, Cntlque of Anthropology, Vo!. 14(1), pp. 41-58. . . ,. Keesing, Roger and Robert Tonkinson, (eds) (1982), 'ReID~entmg Tradit10nal Culture: The Politics of Kastom in Island Melanesia,' Mankind SpeCial Issue, Vol. 13(4). Laracy, Hugh (1983), Pacific Protest: The Maasina Rule Movement, Solomon Islands 1944-1952, Suva, Institute of Pacific Studies. Larcom, Joan (1982), 'The Invention of Convention,' in Ro~~r Keesing an~ Robert Tonkinson (eds), Reinventing Traditional Culture: The Pohtlcs of Kastom m Island Melanesia. Mankind special issue, Vo!. 13(4), pp. 330-37.

Sahlins, Marshall (1993), 'Cery Cery Fuckabede,' American Ethnologist Vo!. 20(4) pp 848-76. ' ,. Sahlins, Marshall (1994a), 'Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modem World History,' in Robert Borofsky (ed.), Assessing Cultural Anthropology New York, McGraw-Hill Inc. ' Sahlins, Marshall (1994b), 'Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of "The World Sy~tem'" in Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley and Sherry Ortner (eds), Culture, Power, HIStory: A Reader in Contemporary Social History Princeton Princeton University Press. ' , Schwartz, Theodore (1993), 'Kastom, 'Custom,' and Culture: Conspicuous Culture and Culture-Constructs,' in Lamont Lindstrom and Geoffrey White (eds), Custom Today. Anthropological Forum special issue, Vo!. 6(3), pp. 515-40. Scott, Mich~el (200?), Auh.enu~: Land, Lineage, and Ontology in Arosi (Solomon Islands). Ph.D. dissertation, Umverslty of Chicago. Steele, Shelby (2002), 'The Age of White Guilt, and the Disappearance of the Black Individual,' Harpers Magazine, Nov., pp. 33--42. Steinbeck, John (1988) [1939] , The Grapes of Wrath, New York, Penguin Books. Strathern, Manlyn (1988), The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia, Berkeley, University of California Press.

1

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· h0 1as (1992a) , 'The Inversion of Tradition,' American Ethnologist, Vol. 19(2), Thomas, Nle pp. 213-32. Thomas,

I . al D'

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~ichol~S (1;:;:~tic~~u!~~a~::i~:~~:S ~;dN~~r~;J~n~~acificlS~~:ieti~s:

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H,'story and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology, Berkeley,

University of Californi~pre.s:~al Identit and the Problem of Kastom in Vanuatu,' in

Rob~rt (19 82), TNo':anson (eds)YReinventing Traditional Culture: The Politics Roger Keesmg and R. '. . (4) 306-15

Tonkinson,

fKastomin Island Melanesia. Mankind specIal Issue, Vol. 13 • ~~. ffr' Wh'te o 'U derstandin "Tradition" _ Ten Years On, m Geo ey 1 Tonkinson, Robert \19 93 ), (n ) Cust;m Today Anthropological Forum special issue, eds tr and Lamont LInds o m , • Vo!. 6(4), pp. 587-96. . . , Th C t mnorary Pacific, . Kay (1991) , 'AnthropologiSts and Natives, e on e r Trask, Haunam-

west~~lp~~g:~i~~~::Ussiofnth(1?20!'tPap~~c~:ls:::: ~~s::! ;:~:~o~~~~~~o:~ and Susu for the murder elr er. 0

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(1990) 'Emotion Talk and Social Inference: Disentanglmg m an a sa. ' Whttes' 1 eo el:lands' 'in Karen Watson-Gegeo and Geoffrey Wh~te (~ds), Disentanglmg: o omon , .' . :fi d St £ d Umverstty Press. Conflict Discourse in Pacific Socletles, Stan or 'L' ~ Of . . a Solomon Islands White, Geoffrey (1991), Identity Thro~gh l!istory: lvmg St ones m . N Y k, Cambridge Umverstty Press. ''Three Discourses of Custom,' in Lindstrom and White (eds), Cnstom Today, Anthropological Forum speclallSsue, Vol. 6(4), pp.

Whit;O~Zffre;~19g;),

Afterword

L~on~

YOu::'F!orence (1925), Pearls from the Pacific, London, Marshal! Brothers Ltd.

Geo:;~~

Frustrating Modernity in Melanesia Robert J. Foster

'Humiliation' is a necessary stage of economic development not sufficiently appreciated in the textbooks. The role of disgrace is critical, for in order to desire the benefits of "progress," its ingenious articles, all indigenous senses of worth, both the people's selfworth and the values of their own objects, have to be depreciated. This inferiority anthropologists discover everywhere, it is the father of desire. The self-contempt of the peoples is the prerequisite of their modernization. Especially of its more advanced phases: the move from a selective to an eclectic relation to the World System, thus from indigenization to Westernization, develop-man to development (Sahlins, 1989, p.28).

The chapters in this volume address Marshall SahIins' claim that the non-Western societies drawn into the world-historical process of modernization necessarily suffer humiliation. Local appropriation of the West yields to appropriation of the local by the West - a submission motivated not by externally imposed coercion, but by internally felt self-loathing. Just as the children of immigrants once became American, 'the peoples' become modern by learning to be ashamed of their parents. There is characteristic insight in SaWins' insistence that modernization entails for the peoples not only a political, economic and/or cultural crisis, but also an ontological one. Indeed, it can not be otherwise, especially given that for the peoples the categorical distinctions and practical separations among politics and economics and culture are not self-evidently meaningful. The crisis of modernity engenders skepticism about a whole mode of existence; it is a crisis of well-being or of how to be well in the world. But there is also provocation in Sah1ins' claim; for it is fonnulated in uncompromisingly all or nothing terms: Their ontology or Ours; and with brutal finality - an irreversible leap from one particular cosmology into the (putatively) universal World System. No matter how many hundreds of years of entanglement between the West and the Rest - open-ended conjunctures of the domestic and the foreign, endogenous and exogenous - there still comes a moment of 'radical rupture' (Biersack, this volume), a clean break between Our Modernity and Their Tradition. From indigenization to Westernization, 'develop-man' to 'development,' the peoples thus enact their own great transformation, moved by self-contempt to forsake Tradition and pursue Modernity. The authors in this volume largely accept and expand upon Sahlins' insight, but they resist his provocation. They question whether Westernization or indigenization happens in toto; they seem to say that in Melanesia, at least, it's not an ontological

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matter of all or nothing. Josephides, for example, argnes that 'wholesale barterings' of one kind of self for another are more the stuff of Faustian legend than Melanesian (or, for that matter, Western) social interaction. She adopts instead a 'gradualist' perspective on shifts in self-identity, tracing a dialectical process of selfconstruction through which an individual attempts - tentatively and with unanticipated results - to engage others in an act of moral evaluation about the appropriateness of his

Of

her behavior. As external orientations change in response

to historical changes (pacification, missionization, schooling, etc.), successive generations of individuals gradualJy try out new strategies of self-constructi~n. Consequently, 'modernising changes are appropriated pIecemeal, and modernIty

itself is constructed locally through people's experiences, their frustrations, aspirations, extensions, and perceptions of what is external' (Josephides, chapter 7). Other authors suggest a predisposition in Melanesian concepts of personhood and modes of social organization for dealing with the hybrid experiences generated by the conjunctmal exigencies of capitalist colonialism. Silverman outlines a model of selfhood - reminiscent of what Strathern and Stewart call the 'relational individual' - which explains how Eastern Iatmul can pursue the ideals of individualism associated with development without jettisoning or denigrating the sociocentric values associated with develop-man: 'This non-schizoid yet hybrid self is able to incorporate, rather than results from, the disjunctmes of modernity' (Silverman, chapter 5). Dalton (chapter 6) similarly contends that Rawa speakers live in existential comfort with the idea that the human condition entails an irreducible element of alienation, pain and uncertainty - a recognition that enables

them to laugh periodically at their current predicament. Alternatively, Biersack argnes that Ipili speakers have always faced outward - a culture of import/export given because of its 'inherently open and dynamic' forms of sociality to 'experimentation and innovation in intercultural contexts' (Biersack, 1998. p.4; see

also Biersack, 1995). In any case (with the possible exception of the Urapmin), the emotional experience of Modernity in Melanesia seems not to be bound up with the outright abandomnent or replacement of Tradition. Rather, this experience is part and parcel of the way in which modernities - small 'rn,' plural - emerge as 'by-products of local-global interactions in which the local and the global reciprocally reinforce, disturb undermine and open up each other ... ' (Biersack, chapter 9). In other words, 'it's conjunctmes all the way down. All this will not come as news to Sahlins. Indeed it is as if Sahlins' momentary lapse into 'despondency theory' (Sahlins, 1999) has allowed the authors here to remind him of what he has so often said otherwise about the cultural heterogeneity and vitality born of modernization, namely, that the cultures of the people are a constitutive part of modern life. Having made this disclaimer, I want now to recover Sahlins' dualisms, not only for rhetorical purposes, but also to highlight some of the dilemmas that the production of vernacular modernities creates for Melanesians (and to acknowledge thereby that these dualisms have entered the discourse of Melanesians about themselves). Put differently, Melanesians reject the limited choice between either being more like Themselves or being more like Ourselves. Their historical

Afterword - Frustrating Modernity in Melanesia

209

entanglement with the West affords possibilities other than all or nothing: maybe both, maybe neither. This first alternative - choosing both (explicitly identified by Gewertz and Errington) - entertains the possibility of being Us and Them simultaneously or by turns; the second alternative - neither - entertains the possibility of being something or someone else: neither develop-man nor development, but a transcendent negation of their opposition achieved through creative synthesis. I want to suggest that each of these alternatives comes complete with its own ontological aoxieties. Broadly speaking, these aoxieties concern the desire to be free from desire. But whereas in one case - the alternative of neither - this is a desire to be free from one's own desires, in the other case - the case of both - it is mainly a desire to be free from the desires of other people, whether one's own kin or one's

own ancestors. In concluding, I will broach the question of what these chapters say about the emotional experience of modernity in Melanesia, and how what they say enables us to revise Sahlins' insight into the tragedy of development.

*** Is it possible for Melanesians to be more like Ourselves and more like Themselves simultaneously or by tmns? Gewertz and Errington, Silverman, and Akin illustrate different ways that Melanesians live uneasily with a positive response to this question. This response stems from what Sahlins (1992, p.24) hopefully calJs 'a selfconsciousness of the indigenous culture' - an affinnative self-consciousness that

potentially resists the injuries of hmniliation. The Chambri man John Illumbni, a university-educated accountant, recognizes the competing demands of development and develop-man. Both sets of demands engage fundamental aspects of his selfhood: development enables him to do big things; develop-man validates the bigness of these things. John tries to manage these demands by spatially separating them: develop-man in Wewak; development in Moresby. He performs in his air shuttle between Moresby and Wewak a passage between ontologically different domains - domains labeled elsewhere in Melanesia bisnis and lwstom. The Boiken man Kamburi pursues a similar strategy, I think, despite his own self-representation as a synthesis of old and new, develop-man and development. Kamburi's house looks like a native house from the outside, but contains all the essential modern comforts inside. Here is another attempt to mark and manage separate domains, doing with walls and a probably locked door what the distance between Moresby and Wewak accomplishes for John Illumbui. Gewertz and Errington point out how both these men work to control the way that they are engaged by the imperatives of develop-man. They attempt to maintain boundaries in order to escape the surveillance of others and perforce the desires of others: village relatives and clients intent on their own projects of becoming more like themselves. Kamburi and Illurnbui are thus typical of a segment of Melanesians - urban dwelling and wage laboring - who struggle to

r!,

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II

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Afterword - Frustrating Modernity in Melanesia

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

reconcile the competing demands of capital and kin, of living in what Sahlins (2000) has elsewhere described as a 'translocal society' or 'multilocal culture.' Their bi-ontology, if you will, is difficult to sustain; for many other people, of course _ as Gewertz and Errington duly note - it is not even an option (a point to which I will return presently). By contrast, Silvennan reports an apparently more .successful cas.e of managi~g the relationship between development and develop-man, ID fact, of puttrng the latter m the service of the former. Thus Linus Apingari and Henry Gawi oversee the operation of a lodge built to accommodate paying gnests drawn to the Sepik by the prospects of cultural tourism. In so making bisnis out of kastom, the two Tambunum villagers seem anything but humiliated by their Tradition. Whether such use, ~f kastom is one more instance of how the minority of 'development-focused people m Papua New Gumea ideologically massage the concerns of the majority of 'develop-man focused' remains to be seen (Gewertz and Errington, chapter 10). However, it is clear that the prec.se balance of Tradition and Modernity, kastam and bisnis, is not easy for everyone to [md: Njumwi lacks status because he seeks authority in sources outside of Tradition; and Silverman's two village brothers lack income for their tradestore despite their posted appeal to local notions of self and desire. . . . The Kwaio seem to be dealing with a different dilemma. But I wonder .f .t .s not too much of a stretch to see them as also engaged in analogous exercises of boundary maintenance and management. That is, Kwaio attempt to maintain the boundary between kastom and non-kastom in their spatial separation from coastal Christians. And within their mountain home, they attempt to maintain the boundary between enthusiastic public affIrmations of kastom and mundane private accommodations with 'foreign things,' including foreign conventions about gender

relations. What's apparently at stake here is some degree of control over the 'hyperemotional' ancestors' desires for Kwaio to live according to the code of kastom. Like lllumbui and Kamburi, I suggest, Kwaio attempt to escape the surveillance or vigilance of others, namely, the ancestors. But this is no easier for Kwaio th~ it is for lllumbui' s wife to escape her Chambri kin - kin whom she sees as threatemng to consume her with their demands. That is, just as lllumbui and his wife fInd it difficult to control the terms of their engagement with develop-man, so Kwaio fInd it increasingly difficult to control the terms of their engagement with the ancestors and ancestral kastom, on the one hand, and foreign things, on the other. (The Bumbita Arapesh also worry about their relationship with their dead kin, but Bumbita wonder if their lack of foreign things rather than their accommodation with foreign things signifIes the rejection of the ancestors [Leavitt, chapter 4 The Kwaio present a case of the revenge of develop-man. IllS as .f the domam of kastom evolved as part of Kwaio collective opposition to cultural devaluation by colonial a~d Christian authorities, now threatens to expand anti-Modern sentiments into the most intimate aspects of daily life. Kwaio - women more so than men - are fInding it harder to escape ancestral vigilance, which is another way of saying that they are fInding it harder psychically to realize in practice the possibility of being simultaneously both more like Themselves and more like Ourselves. Instead, beset by escalating breaches of kastom, Kwaio recoil at an aberrant image of their old

p.

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selves - like Themselves on a bigger scale, but not a better one. Ironically, they find themselves in a position similar to that of the Urapmin who embraced Christianity and the promise of development with enthusiasm: caught by their own initiative in a self-perpetuating loop of moral violation and ritual expiation.

*** Is it possible to transcend the binary opposition of develop-man and development and pursue through creative synthesis something wholly new? The classic literature on cargo cults - as well as Biersack's account of 'utopia Ipili-style' and Robbins's description of Urapmin apocalypticism - demonstrate how often Melanesians have answered this question with an optimistic and rnillennial yes. I think that we can understand Hageners, and maybe even Huli, too, as engaged in this sort of answer. Strathern and Stewart tell us that at least a generation ago, Ongka recognized the competing demands of develop-man and development, which he called 'custom' and 'law,' respectively. Ongka advised his fellow Hageners to keep both. In the event, (his has proven impossible: custom has been steadily eroded by the effects of law, that is, the effects of growing inequalities associated with the uneven social distribution of commodities and capital. This failure at boundary maintenance or biontology has prompted a turn toward charismatic Christianity, an effort at constructing a new mode of being, a new vision of society. But while this turn is apparently destructive of custom, especially of big-man customs such as polygamy and marriage payments, it is not manifestly productive of law - of development in Sahlins' sense: the churches, for example, decry the pursuit of autonomous individual wealth and condemn excessive consumption. The new society envisaged here is a creature of neither develop-man nor development; it is the creature of a new and total Christian world that is built out of the ongoing historical confrontation of custom and law, develop-man and development. By and large, the anxieties recognized in this new Christian world are anxieties about one's own ability to regulate one's own desires. Hageners, like Urapmin, seem to be modernizing their subjectivity through inward looking techniques of self-survei11ance. The social life of emotions is being atomized. Frustration/anger (popoklJ and jealousy/envy (wolik) are denied legitimate social expression; shame (Pipif) is now understood as a solitary individual's humility before his or her God rather than as a social index of debt, prestige and status competition. But whereas the Urapmin discipline and punish themselves for the purpose of withdrawing from the world (and hence development), Hageners are led back into the world through the communal activities of the churches themselves. And once in the world again, their modernizing project is put at risk. Indeed, it would seem that charismatic Christian ritual is now becoming customized: religious leaders are reproducing in their baptismal feasts the features of old time moka exchanges. Thus Ru-Kundil confesses to have presmned 'that since he was now involved in the church that he would not have to spend his time negotiating moka preparations.' As it turns out, he now 'spends his time negotiating preparations for church activities.' These activities include ensuring an adequate supply of pigs, and attracting and transporting

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supporters to public events that foreground the social or relational dimension of Ru's personbood. My point bere is not to celebrate the cunning of develop-man - the local subversion of world-historical modernization. I want only to observe another moment in the continuing history of Hagen modernity, a modernity fashioned out of active attempts to conjoin develop-man and development. Wbat the Hagen case unambiguously demonstrates, I suggest, is that trying to stabilize such a conjunction is as equally futile and as equally hard on personbood as Kwaio efforts at boundary maintenance or Uraprnin 'Spitit discos.' Consider the Rawa case. As Dalton points out, Rawa speakers now inbabit a staguant syncretic mix of develop-man and development from within which they can both perceive their own limitations and criticize those of white people. On the one hand, they exploit intennittent income from coffee sales 'to enbance their sociocenttic selves' through acts of maguanimous giving and sharing - expenditures of life energy that define kin but foreshadow death. On the other hand, they lanaent how the market regime promotes inapoverishment and selfishness, a way of life with fewer opportunities and diminished social contexts for giving and sharing. If Rawa speakers protest this double-bind by referring to themselves as 'lazy' (les), it is not then a sign of self-deprecation or humiliation but a critical assertion of difference. Unlike white people, Rawa speakers require the prompting of social contexts - bridewealth payments, development projects, church activities - in order to act autonomously; and unlike white people, Rawa speakers refuse to accept as nattnal the goal of transcending human relatedness. Huli, like Hageners, worry about their own barely under control desires, desires intensified by the pronounced visibility of foreign things. They attempt to regulate these desires, however, not by eliminating them through self-abnegation, but by obviating them through strategies of avoidance and concealment. When these strategies fail - and they must fail, given circumstances that favor the publicity of desirable things and perforce the social inequities that attach to these things - people feel and act madane - frustrated and resentfnl. Madane - the feeling-state - is not a problem; but unacknowledged madane is. That is, acknowledged madane implies that the solution to one's own problematic desires can be found in other people, others who recognize and act upon their obligations and connections to oneself and who therefore satisfy one's desires. To the extent that Huli imagine miuing companies and national politicians to act in this way, Huli entertain the possibility of synthesizing develop-man and development, of bringing foreigners and foreign things within the purview of an indigenous moral ideal, that is, into a relationship of reciprocity. This is not an uncommon vision in cargo movements - recall, for example, Burridge's (\995) discussion of how Tangu could imagine their future moral relationship with Europeans (at least the good ones) in terms of equivalent siblingship; or Leavitt's discussion of how the Bumbita Arapesh insist on seeing Europeans as intimate caregivers. and thus as morally bound to cooperate and not to compete - to render help, not humiliating defeat. The possibility entertained by Huli is similarly millennial. Hnli, unlike either Hageners or Urapmin, have mainly put the burden of transformative synthesis not on themselves, but on the politicians and businessmen whom they encounter. It is the

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politicians and businessmen who must cooperate in acknowledging and healing madane (perhaps Jnst like Huli were said to require the cooperation of Christian missionaries in sununouing the next mbingi or world renewing catastrophe). Failure to cooperate gives madane free reigu; and while madane is not entirely a good thing, those who provoke it usually ask for it. Wardlow speculates, however, that the intensification of madane anaong Huli might be a prelude to the sort of humiliation that Sahlins seems to have in mind. Rampant madane undennines its legitimacy as an appropriate social response, and leads to the realization that peruaps one is not after all connected to others and others not morally obliged to oneself. In such a world - a world of socially autonomous individuals - madane becomes one's own problem, not somebody else's; madane becomes in short humiliation. And it is this realization that enables some Huli to see the current si~tion ..; their own fault, the product of their own original sin - a sin that can be redeemed only by puttmg aSIde madane and submissively remaking oneself in the image of obvionsly more powetfnl oth~rs. Perhap~ the Hnli future will be like the Bumbita present, in which people are qU1te willmg to adnnt theIr moral failings and do what they are told if such deference will overcome the threat of permanent humiliation. Sykes, in her discussion of Lelet violence, takes a similar observation in a different direction. She too equates humiliation with the recognition of one's disconnection from others. Su~h a recognition reciprocally implies the possession of a self, a self that makes one potentially an agent endowed with volition, but also an object of the volition of others - including deliberate efforts to humiliate oneself. This recognition, however, does not promote submission and docility. On the contrary, it promotes a ttnn to violence a violence that qualifies both the aggressor and the aggtieved as discrete autonom~us individuals with unshared antagonistic intentions. Put otherwise, it is in the violence that ensues from humiliation that Lelet construct each other as modem persons.

*** Sykes's view might lead us to the dismal conclusion that retaliatory violence is second only to evangelical Christianity as the practical means available to Melanesian ~e~ for modernizing themselves: small wonder that group conversions of raskols (cnn."nal gang members) to Christianity are now a staple of public life in Papua New Gumea. In any case, her analysis usefully reminds us that the chapters in this volume talk as much about frustration as they do about humiliation as much about about seething resentment as abject self-contempt. If we are going to emotions and modernity, I propose that we start there; for, perhaps, as Gewertz and Emngton conclude, these are the emotional correlates of living in a place where development is impossible and develop-man unsatisfying - a world of neither development nor develop-man, but not the transcendent world many Melanesians hopefully imagine. As the Lelet remind us, one can hardly expect that all Melanesians would greet the demand that they 'must become what they are nevertheless not yet capable of becoming' (Dalton, chapter 6) with the languorous r equanimity of Rawa speakers. The chapters in this volume offer several examples of frustration and resentment, testimonies to the injustices of the current historical conjuncture.

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The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia

Lewambo struggles with the failure of develop-man, blaming the young Ipili men of today for selfishly wasting newfound wealth, including mining revenues: (Paraphrase) ... Many of my generation have died off. There are a lot of knowledgeable men in your generation, but what do you have to show for it ... We don't see your hand. We will die without knowing what your work is. Whatever money you may have sent us has been misplaced. We haven't seen it. And there is no work being done. We all [here particular names were supplied] worked hard, and we are dea~ or.dying. We. gard~ned. grew food; we carried sticks, trucks, rollers to make the rurstnp. I was Just lIke a chopper because I carried everything into the Paiela valley. But we haven't seen the fruits of our labor ." You people know Tok Pisin [an English based lingua franca] and English and you eat everything [that is, consume rather than give], You ,are not compassionate toward us , .. You give us your back, and you play cards and drink beer

(Biersack, 1998, p.17). Lewambo here directs his ire at one particular wayward son, but the indictment encompasses an entire generation of young men - formally educated and employed _ who have detached themselves from marriage-based kin networks and escaped the moral obligation to compensate the sacrifices of their progenitors. Like many of the Melanesians represented here (and several of the authors), Lewambo POInts to new forms of social disconnection: haves disconnected from have-nots (a concern shared with Chambri and Huli); and seniors discounected from juniors, a version of the disconnection between dead ancestors and living descendants that worries both the Kwaio and the Bumbita Arapesh. For Lewambo, these forms of disconnection amount to the end of his own futuristic project of realizing heaven (heven) on earth, that is, of realizing the illness-free leisured existence of white people (now also associated with prodigal Ipili youth). The eclipse of relationality, as Lewambo sees it, has left him prey to his own urgent desires, his own dre",,:,s of slipping free of 'the cosmic yoke of earth-bonndedness - through a reduction of labor and an alleviation of suffering' (Biersack, chapter 9). Lewambo's bitter accusations echo in the memorable outburst of Leavitt's Arapesh friend, Seriwen: We were just sitting here following our customs and all of a sudden yo~ Europeans come in and say, 'You have to fonow us .. .' We listened to you and we tned to follow it. We do everything you told us to, we dig toilets, we make graveyards, we plant coffee, we throwaway an our customs, And then what happens? ". all we're doing is tramping through the bush, trying out our own knowledge and our own power. All we want to do is follow what you have told us and live the way you live.

Here the indictment is delivered not against the junior generation, but the senior one, that is, against Europeans (white people) figmed as indifferent. uncaring parents. In this sense, it too indicates the failure of develop:man: the u~Wllh~gness of white people to participate in a complementary and nurtunng kin relation Wlth the Bumbita. But it perhaps more pointedly indicates the failure of development - the failure of the very sort of assimilation that Sahlins takes as the hallmark of

215

modernization. For the Bumbita, the problem is not that they are becoming European - 'living the way you live' - but, rather, that their own limited 'knowledge' and 'power' prevents them from doing so. Seriwen's speech asks us to reconsider the role that Sablins proposes for humiliation in the modernization process; for Seriwen' swords - unlike some of the other instances of self-deprecation documented in the volume - surely do reveal deep humiliation. This humiliation is the product of unsuccessful efforts to imitate Europeans; it is not, then the precursor or impetus to developmen~ but, rather, the consequence or corollary of development It is the emotional correlate of the dawning realization that assimilation might not after all be possible. Here is another case of what Memmi diagnosed as the 'colonial sitoation,' in which the colonized 'can never succeed in becoming identified with the colonizer, not even in copying his role correctly' (1965, p.124; see also Bhabha, 1994 on mimicry). Forget Independence: in Setiwen's postcolony ofPapua New Guinea, even if assimilation into a European lifestyle is no longer blocked by the active rejection of the colonizer, it is certainly rendered improbable by the unequal distribution of matetial means. Faced with the failure to become white by digging toilets and singing hymns, many Melanesians resentfully suspect that Europeans hid the tme source of superior knowledge and power. Some Melanesians thus take up alternative mimetic procedures - often glossed as cargo cults - seizing control of the pedagogic tools deployed by church and state in order to remake themselves, 'but within a framework of copying that users1 magic, myths, rituals and poetic resemblances to capture the personbood, practices and possessions of whites' (Lattas, 1998, p.xxv). Lewambo's frustrated desire to escape 'an imperfect, finite life oflaboting, suffering ... an interminable cycle of death and birth' (Biersack, this volume) ought to sound unbappily familiar to us. As Sablins (1996) himself has pointed out, a certain frustration and resentment are also the emotional correlates of life after the Fall in the developed West, specifically, of consumer behavior inflected by 'Judeo-Christian cosmology: The tragedy of such development is that it never delivers what it promises: for in a world of merchandise beyond all means, every consumption decision becomes at the same time an acceptance of limitations, a source of frustration (Gell, 1988, p.49). Development must then fail in order for it to continue; and this sustainable failure condemns the developed person to being a perpetually needy consumer. Even so, I doubt that Melanesians like Lewambo and Seriwen will find solace in the thought that We feel Their pain.

References Bhabha, Homi (1994), 'Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial Discourse,' in The Location of Culture, New York, Routledge, pp. 85-92. Biersack, Aletta (1998), 'Liminal Lives: Ipili Develop-men,' Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association Philadelphia December ~~ , " Biersack, Aletta (1995), 'Introduction: The Huli, Duna and Ipili Peoples Yesterday and Today,' in Papuan Borderlands: Huli, Duna and IpiU Perspectives on the Papua New Guinea Highlands, A. Biersack (ed), Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, pp. 154.

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Burridge, Kenelm (1995) [1960], Mambu: A Melanesian Millenium, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Gell, Alfred (1988), 'Review article: Anthropology, material culture and consumerism,' JASO,

Index

Vol. 19(1), pp. 43-48.

Lattas, Andrew (1998), Cultures of Secrecy: Reinventing Race in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press.

Memmi, Albert (1965)[1957], The Colonizer and the Colonized, New York, The Orlon Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1989), 'China reconstructing or vice-versa: Humiliation as a stage of economic "development," with comments on cultural diversity in the modem "world system,'" Paper presented at the SOAC Congress, Seoul, Korea.

Sahlins, Marshall (1992), 'The economics of develop-man in the Pacific,' Res, Vol. 21, pp. 3-25. SaWins, Marshall (1996), 'The sadness of sweetness: The native anthropology of Western

cosmology,' Current Anthropology, Vol. 37(3), pp. 395-428. Sahlins, Marshall (1999), 'What is anthropological enlightenment? Some lessons of the twentieth century,' _Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 28, pp. i-xxii. Sahlins, Marshall (2000), "'Sentimental pessimism" and ethnographic experience; or, Why culture is not a disappearing "object,'" in L. Daston (ed.), Biographies of Scientific Objects, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 158-202.

acculturation 27 agency 6, 16, 88, 96, 180 indigenous 7, 9,10,15 local 14, 131, 136 Akin, David 15, 183-206 alcohol 129 Algonkian Indians 38 alienation 63, 108, 111, 113n5, 208 American Indians 34 ancestral spirits Bumbita Arapesh 75,80,81,84, 210 Kwaio 183, 187, 188-91, 196, 198,199-200,210 anger

B umbita language 77 Christian transformation of 130 Hagen 211 Huli 57 Kewa 121 Melpa 69n5 violent 178 see also madane anthropology indigenization of Western

objects 27 kastom 184, 186, 187 'New Melanesian' 185 psychological 83 transnational 153-5 Apingari, Linus 92, 210 Appadurai, Arjun 153, 155 area studies 153, 154, 155 Aristotle 23 artifacts 93-4 Asianization 66 Australian Baptist Missionary Society 47-8 authenticity 8, 184

Bakhtin, Mikhail 95 Barzun, Jacques 108 Bateson, Gregory 88, 94, 97nlO, 98n11 Bau 30, 31, 33 betrayal 57, 58 Bhabha, Homi 64 Biersack, Aletta 13-14,135-62,208, 211,214,215 'big men' 28-9, 116, 129, 131-2, 166 the body 138-9,140,148,151,154, 157n4 Bourdieu, Pierre 119, 201n9 brideprice Christians' refusal to pay 194 Hagen 125, 129 Huli 57, 58, 62 rpili 140,142 Rawa 107 Bumbita Arapesh 12-13,74-84, 110,210,212,213,214-15 Burridge, Kenelm 212 Cakobau 30, 33 cannibalism 32 capitalism 5,25, 116, 135, 166, 184 China 38 coercion and destruction 39 develop-man 10, 23, 35, 103, 104,108 global capitalist market 54 moka exchanges 127 self-determination of cultures 152 Tambunum 85, 91, 93 technology 26 Wolf hypothesis 115 world-systems theory 9