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CambridgeNew York Port Chester Me/bol/me Svdne)'

EDITIONS DE LA MAISON DES SCIENCES DE L'HOMME

Paris

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"'''-:.::-0'- ami Editions de la Maison des Sciences de I'Homme54 Boulevard Raspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06

© Maison des Sciences de I'Homme and Cambridge University Press 1991

First published 1991

Printed in Great Britain at Redwood Press Ltd, Melksham, Wiltshire

British Library cataloguillg ill publicatioll data

Big men and great men: personifications of power in Melanesia.I. Melanesia. Social structureI. Godelier, Maurice, 1934- II. Strathern, Marilyn305.0995

Library of COllgress cataloguillg ill publicatioll data

Big men and great men: personifications of power in Melanesialedited by Maurice Godelier' and Marilyn Strarhern.

p. em.Includes bibliographical references.I. Political anthropology - Melanesia. 2. Political leadership - Melanesia.3. Power (Social sciences) - Melanesia.I. Godelier, Maurice. II. Strathern, Marilyn.GN668.B541991306.2'09995-dc 20 90-1312

ISBN 0 521 390184 hardbackISBN 27351 0350 1 hardback (France only)

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Contents

List ofillustrationsNotes on contributorsPrefaceAcknowledgementsMap

-""/ IntroductionMARILYN STRATHERN

PARTI

1 From great men to big men: peace, substitution andco~petition in the Highlands of New GuineaPIERRE LEMONNIER

2 Great man, big man, chief: a triangulation of the MassimJOHN LIEP

3 Soaring hawks and grounded persons: the politics ofrank and gender in north VanuatuMARGARET JOLLY

PART II

'-">4 Punishing the yams: leadership and gender ambivalenceon Sabarl IslandDEBBORA BATTAGLIA

5 Great men and total systems: North Mekeo hereditaryauthority and social reproductionMARK MOSKO

page viiIX

Xlll

XVll

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1

5

7

28

48

81

83

97

v

VII

226267

261263

88100101103111

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5357

page 26336565

Non-competitive and competitive forms of exchangeRegular male grades in South PentecostCentral actors in rank ceremonies in three regionsRelation between labour and values accruedAn invidious but revealing comparison

Hypothetical transformation of a great-man systeminto a big-man systemA representation of the three political typesThe im, or household dwellingThe mal, or men's houseLeadership: models reconstructed across time andsocial categoriesQuadripartite tribal structureQuadripartite moiety structureQuadripartite subclan structureQuadripartite gender structure

Maps

Map of Papua New Guinea3.1 Vanuatu3.2 The distribution of the graded society

1.13.13.214.114.2

2.13.1a3.1b4.1

5.15.25.35.4

Tables

Figures

Illustrations

1.1

VI Contents I:

l6 The cryptic brotherhood of big men and great men in Hahita 115

DONALD TUZIN

I:7 Complementarity and rivalry: two contradictory principlesin Yafar society 130 IIBERNARD JUILLERAT

11;[1.'

8 How Oro Province societies fit Godelier's model 142 ~ I

~I

ERIC SCHWIMMER\1jjr

PART III 157 I-::y 9 The fractal person 159 I

ROY WAGNER I10 The flute myth and the law of equivalence: origins of aprinciple of exchange 174GILLIAN GILLISON

~'/ 11 One man and many men 197MARILYN STRATHERN

12 'Interests' in exchange: increment, equivalence and thelimits of big-manship 215RENA LEDERMAN

13 Post-Ipomoean modernism: the Duna example 234NICHOLAS MODJESKA

14 Big men, great men and women: alternative logics ofgender difference 256DAN JORGENSEN

PARTlY 273

-'/ 15 An unfinished attempt at reconstructing the social processeswhich may have prompted the transformation of great-mensocieties into big-men societies 275MAURICE GODELIER

Bibliography 305Index 321

xu Notes on contributors

Tambaran (1980), and co-editor, with Paula Brown, of The EthnographyofCannibalism (1983).

Roy Wagner, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, haspublished on the Daribi of the Papua New Guinea Highlands (The CurseofSouw 1967,Habu 1972, and Lethal Speech 1978) and on the UsenBarokof New Ireland (Asiwinarong 1986). His two works of anthropologicalcriticism are The Invention ofCulture (1975) and its sequel, Symbols thatStand for Themselves (1986).

Preface

The societies of Melanesia have been a constant stimulus to anthropological theory. No other region of the world has had quite its sustained impacton the discipline - and one that in recent years seems if anything to begathering momentum. Yet Melanesianists have been curiously reluctant to

extend their own syntheses to the region as a whole. That requires a localtheoretic, and theoretical contributions tend to come either in the form ofprogrammatic articles or as a selective and thus domesticated frameworkfor ethnographic monographs. Although several collected essays haveappeared, some notable, these generally pose an ethnographic problemthat is then worked out through the various localised contributions. Whathas been lacking is debate that starts with theoretical issues common to theregion. This book does exactly that.

Its orjgin is a workshop convened in Paris in 1987 by Maurice Godelierand myself to consider a thesis initially developed in Godelier's comparisonof the Baruya from the so-called Highlands fringe with societies from thecentral Highlands of Papua New Guinea. His monograph, The Making ofGreat Men, draws its theoretical inspiration from a semi-outsider's earlyattempt at synthesis, Marshall Sahlins's seminal yet necessarily abbreviated comparison of Polynesia and Melanesian chiefs and big men. Sahlinsmakes the figures of prominent men paradigms for entire polities. In effect,Godelier argues that within Papua New Guinea differences between entiresocial systems are made evident through such personifications of malepower. He offers a pivotal contrast between the figures of big men and whathe calls great men. Chapter 8 in his book, 'Great men societies, big mensocieties: two alternative logics of society', sets the agenda. The workshopintended to find how far the correlations which Godelier formulated soclearly in his own work held elsewhere in Melanesia.

Anthropological understanding of the region has for long been dominated by conventional distinctions between the Highlands and Lowlandsof Papua New Guinea, and between the apparently egalitarian nature of

XIII

these societies and their seaboard and island counterparts who have chiefs,systems of rank and graded societies. These quite radical differences havealways been an embarrassment to any attempt to describe Melanesia as awhole, not least in their echo of Sahlins's particular Melanesian/Polynesiancontrast. It was important to include Lowlands and island societies in ourpurview, and the volume extends Godelier's ideas geographically andculturally.

The results were productive, and in the best sense a surprise. The dimensions along which we sought to differentiate societies turned out in manycases to be discernible axes of differentiation within societies. At the sametime, unexpected similarities appeared. The conventional distinctionsbetween Highlands, Lowlands and island societies were not the barriers tocomparison they seemed. This raises a significant challenge to traditionalmethods of cross-societal enquiry in general. It is not just that typologiesare revealed to have limits, but the systemic nature of the differences andsimilarities between these societies question our understanding of culturalforms. The recent orthodoxy that cultural regions such as 'Melanesia' aremere artificial fabrications of the anthropologist does not allay it. Rather,it is as though these societies invite us to make contrasts that they then replicate on various scales for our edification; as though a gross differencebetween 'Polynesia' and 'Melanesia' were also being acted out in front ofour eyes between the tiny islands of the Massim. The invitation is replica tedwhen it also looks as though the very opposition between big men and greatmen societies can be found - as in one notable case documented in this book- within a single set of siblings.

A 'Melanesian' perspective merely stops the replication at one point. Thejustification for doing so lies in one resultant insight. The triangulation (bigmen, great men and chiefs) that informs many of the contributions hereappears as the effect of dislodging the original terms of a binary contrast.But the third term is not so much dialectical outcome or mediating compromise or segmentary product as a remainder, what is left over after a twoway comparison is completed. Chiefs compared with big men leads to thediscovery of great men; big men compared with great men uncovers 'oddmen' who are neither, and so on. It would be trivial to suggest that 'more'instances would obviate the strategy. The interesting question is what inthese societies elicits the analytical strategy from us. The book consequently makes no apology for privileging two terms (big men/great men)since any such pair would have similar analytical effect. It has, however,taken us (as anthropologists) the breadth of our regional scope to perceivethis.

MARILYN STRATHERN

ManchesterJune 1989

This is then no ordinary set of conference papers whose coherence has to bejustified after the event. The individual chapter~ of this volume offer a progressive and sustained argument which takes the reader through a sequenceof positions, culminating in Godelier's reformulation of his original thesis.The strength of this enterprise can be attributed to three things.

First, the problems which the book addresses are not narrowly conceivedas simply concerning styles of political leadership. The contributors havebeen chosen for their wide spread of interests - although all have first-handfieldwork experience in Melanesia, they are also known for their writingson political economy or kinship, or gender relations, or the analysis ofritual and the exposition of symbolic forms. Secondly, they comprisescholars who have contributed to recent debate, the more senior beingincluded because of current rather than earlier work, and the more recentlypublished because their ethnographic writing has evolved in the context ofcontemporary issues. They bring a sense of the questions that should beconcerning anthropologists in the 1990s, though these are not merely foranthropological edification. The reformulations offered here realise a particular kind of commitment to the peoples of this region; for the scholarthere is no terminus to the work of understanding. One does not stop withthis or that model- because the effort of comprehension must not stop. Itis hoped that this commitment will be conveyed to the reader in the way in which the different chapters carry one another's ethnographic insights.Finally, although Godelier's work opens and closes the book, this is farfrom an act of homage. On the contrary, almost every chapter takes significant issue with Godelier's original ideas; together they are the un-makingof his theory of great men. But the critiques are positive, not negative, andcrucial to this has been his own participation in the debate.

The focus which Godelier's work originally presented has not been onlydecomposed but recomposed. In order to convey that sense of movement,the book adopts an unusual format for edited collections. The conventional'theoretical-introduction-plus-ethnographic-cases' formula simply makeseach an appendage of the other. Here, by contrast, following a briefexplanatory introduction, the chapters are carried forward by their ownmomentum. The rubric at the head of each are in the editors', not theauthor's, words.

xvPrefacePrefaceXIV

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Acknowledgements

The workshop held at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and which gaverise to these papers was made possible by the generous assistance of theMSH and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; ourgratitude, evident then, is repeated here. We appreciated the company andcontributions of Shirley Lindenbaum at the time. Individual chapters havebenefited from the incisive comments of the Press's (initially anonymous)readers, Christopher Gregory and Michael Young. Our thanks are collective. Nicholas Modjeska undertook to have the map drawn, for which wemust thank the Audio-Visual Services Unit at Macquarie University,Sydney. However, only Marilyn Strathern knows how much we also oweto Jean Ashton in Manchester for her processing of the manuscript.Editorial misjudgements remain Strathern's.

XVII

Introduction

MARIL YN STRA THERN

One of the figures that Melanesia has given to world ethnography is that ofthe big man. Yet the prominence of this figure in certain societies of theregion has been inevitably juxtaposed to its absence from others, or to thepresence of chiefs or forms of rank that thereby seem aberrant. In supplyinga specific counter-type, however, Godelier's 'great man' does more thanelaborate a political typology. It leads him into specifying the conditions ofsocial reproduction, and thus a general basis for societal comparison.

Big men are produced in systems that promote competitive exchanges,the transfer of women against bridewealth, and war compensation procedures that allow wealth to substitute for homicide. Great men, on theother hand, flourish where public life turns on male initiation rather thanceremonial exchange, on the direct exchange of women in marriage and onwarfare pursued as homicide for homicide. Beyond these institutions, then,lies a difference that Godelier locates in the fundamental way in which mentransact with one another. In his words, the relevant question is whetherexchanges between groups and individuals depend on a quest for nonequivalence, and thus incorporate principles of calculated disequilibriumor unequal exchange (as in the substitution of human lives for wealth; orwhether they rest on principles of equivalence and on mechanisms designedto restore equilibrium (wealth for wealth, life for life). The implications, heargues, go beyond the nature of exchange. Where things substitute forhuman life, the reproduction of social relations (including relations of kinship) comes to depend upon the accumulation of material wealth. Thisfeature of big-men systems is absent from great-men systems. There, sincethe circulation and redistribution of wealth is not an essential factor insocial reproduction, it is not essential to relations of domination betweenpeople and local groups. Domination is achieved through the ritual andother powers that great men have at their disposal, and through a maleideology promulgated in initiation rites that sets men's general poweragainst women's.

Godelier looked to the Papua New Guinea Highlands societies with their

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2 Big men and great men

prominent big men for comparisons with the great men he found on theircultural borders among the Baruya. In doing so, he has created a new centreof theoretical interest, complementing that of the recently denoted Mountain Papuans (J. Weiner 1988). In turn, to see big men from the perspectiveof great men gives these formedigures a different cast. The differences donot disappear; rather, we re-perceive their nature. This is of some significance for general anthropological theorising about the nature of sociality.

The big man had been taken as prototypical of a type of group organisation, so that his presence or absence elsewhere classified the societyunder review. Godelier's break with this mould has accomplished several

things:1 it has given a name to a figure prominent in people's presentation of

themselves, but quite different from big men; typologies can no longerproceed along the presence/absence axis, with an embarrassed nod at'chiefs';

2 it has broken with the Highlands-centric definition ofwhat is interesting,namely the activities of groups, and the public occasions on which they

appear;3 it has broken with the assumption that big men are above all political

leaders and that to describe their activity is to describe political life.For in tending to equate the activities of big men with group structure,Highlands anthropologists have also tended to endorse a long-standing setof assumptions in Anglophone anthropology at large, namely the equationof groups with social structure and of politics with society.

This proclivity has had profound consequences for the analysis of sociallife. And evidence from the Papua New Guinea Highlands has seemed tosustain it to the last. Quite apart from the inroads of alliance theory, orfeminist anthropology, or studies of the political economy, or even anappreciation of those other Papua New Guinea societies where ritual ratherthan ceremonial exchange orders relations between men and where myriadother counterindications show how big-men systems are far from typical ofMelanesia as a whole, that figure ofthe Highlands big man has appearedirreducibly concrete. For the first time we are in a position to re-assess thenature of these central systems through the very construct which hasseemed to give their group structures such distinctiveness and solidity.

It is intriguing that much the same could be said of the 'chiefs' who aretaken as so characteristic of many seaboard and Massim peoples. From theperspective of the difference between big-men and great-men societies, thisbook offers an approach into these other Melanesian systems, as it doesinto those which appear either to produce no such figures at all or - as inthe ranked grades of Vanuatu - to produce multipliers of them.

r)

Introduction 3

Texts, these days, do not survive without subtexts. A number of controversies run through these pages. One concerns an established debate overthe admissibility of historical reconstruction and the necessity for hypotheses about evolution and social change. Some of the contributors wouldhave liked to have seen a resolution. Indeed, they present far more materialin the way of suggestive critique than Godelier deals with in his conclusion;instead, that returns us to the specific problematic with which the bookbegan. There is also an editorial shaping to the collection which forms asubtext of sorts. The chapters are arranged so as to indicate two other controversial issues, raised briefly in the preface.

If the historical debate is anthropologically well established, the genderdebate is perhaps less so. An explicit question is raised against the unthinking gender that we take to be so self-evidently male in the figures of big menand great men, and an implicit one against the accounts of social systemswhich would epitomise sociality in such a gendered form. There is a strategic parallel here with the anthropologists' MelanesialPolynesia conundrum, where the 'regions' are more frequently contested (e.g. Thomas1989a) than the axes of our contrasts. It was implied that the internalscrutiny of one of them (in this book, Melanesia) could offer an indirectcommentary on their analytical pairing. In a similar but more direct way,gender configurations from this part of the world allow us if we would butlook - and against wisdom acquired from perspectives elsewhere - to consider indigenous analysis of male-female relations through the apparentlysingular personifications of one sex alone.

A new debate is also adumbrated. It comes from an old one: the natureof the comparative enterprise. But here what is opened up are questionsconcerning comparability that definitively eclipse decisions about units ofanalysis and dependent and independent variables. They touch on generalfeatures of human practice in the reproduction and replication of social/cultural forms. They come through our analyses as the chaotic reappearance of shadow problems on the borders of our purviews that seems toimitate or repeat the very problems we set out to encompass. So the sameproblems may appear 'within' our units of analysis as seem to lie right'beyond' them. The result is a sense of bifocalism. By way of example: onthe one hand a difference between restricted and generalised exchangeappears to contrast entire societal types, yet on the other to exemplifyclusters of attributes coexisting within a single system. Thus a global comparison of societies is faced with the chaotic knowledge of internal differentiation within anyone, and any fine internal discrimination is faced withthe magnitude effect of radical global divisions that make their co-eval


operation seem a logical impossibility. Yet our analyses yield this insightwith reluctance. For as a conclusion it is itself an analytical rather than atheoretical critique; and one with which anthropological theories of humanorganisation have yet to deal.

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PART I

Godelier's schema are applied to three areas of Melanesia - the Papua New GuineaHighlands, the Massim on Papua New Guinea's seaboard and the islands of NorthVanuatu. From each of the overviews it emerges that both big men and great menand in some cases chiefly styles can be found within the same region.

5

CHAPTER 9

The fractal personROY WAGNER

Wagner re-opens the Highlands material via his own Austronesian perspectivefrom New Ireland. He poses a question about the different kinds of anthropologicalunderstanding that have been brought to the depiction of great men and big men.Big men have been seen as exemplars of sociological activity, as mobilising socialforces, for they appear to change the scale of men's actions from an individual to agroup dimension by virtue of the numbers they command. But great-men systemsforce us to comprehend a pre-existing sociality, and a pre-existing totality, of whichany aggregate can be only a partial realisation. This totality is neither individual norgroup but a 'fractal person', an entity whose (external) relationships with others areintegral (internal) to it. However diminished or magnified, the fractal person, keeping its scale, reproduces only versions of itself. The great man thus represents the'scale' of his culture rather than a scale-change to accommodate anthropologicalattempts to ground it in principles beyond itself. Ifwe have here an indigenous socialscience, the question becomes how then to conceive big men from the point of viewof understandings of this kind that great-men systems are able to elicit from thewestern social scientists.

We are indebted to the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci for the notion ofhegemonic ideas (1971), of concepts that have come to be taken so muchfor granted that they seem to be the voice of reason itself. Such ideas are notsubconscious or out-of-awareness for the same reason that their validity isnot subject to question; they are the very form taken by our consciousnessof a problem or issue. Hegemonic ideas, then, are no more subject to proofor disproof than are Kuhnian paradigms, for in both cases entering the discourse is tantamount to replacing the question of whether things work thatway with one of how they work that way. Hence anthropologists with aninvestment of research interest in the hegemonic motif, say, of the necessarily social dynamics of human thought, might be expected to fault andmisunderstand a challenge to the motif in terms of its failure to provide aconvincing 'how', without perceiving the irrelevance of their objections.

The opposition of individual and society, a product of western jurisprudence and political ideology, is not merely coincidental to the hegemony of'social' thinking, but identical with it. It is based on the necessarily ideal,and practically unrealisa ble, notion of the 'social concept', and the necessarily substantive, physical and material, notion of the person as object.

159

Thus the ideal of 'corporateness', an ostensible merging of individuals intoa single social 'body', becomes, in its failure to achieve complete realisation,a substantive group of individuals. And the notion of a totally integrated'culture' of collective representation within the individual becomes, in itsfailure of realisation, a mere 'culture-concept', an ideal. The point is notsimply that a flawed and unrealistic opposition of thought and substancereproduces itself as measurable social fact, that social groups and idealisedcultures are mass-produced as a map of socio-cultural variation and problematics. It is, more importantly, that a naively hegemonic dependenceupon individuality and plurality underlies and articulates the manner inwhich idealised concept and substantive object are brought into play. Thisdependence makes the fact-and-problem-producing failures of concept tobe fully realised, of substantive object to the conceptually tractable, seemlike stubborn fact, seem to be the very fabric of social reality.

Thus to make a statement such as 'no society works perfectly', or even'the reason no society works perfectly is just that its members expect it todo so' is to describe the expectations of anthropologists themselves ratherthan those of their subjects. For what is described is the manner in whichsocial scientists work to make their subjects interesting, statistically variable and problematic. It is by no meansdear that the subjects think of themselves in this way, or think of their social interactions as interesting becausethey,can be mapped into paradigms of social groupings and individualvariability.

The idea of a social mechanism or that of the individual as its naturalresistance did not grow indigenously in Melanesia; it was brought theretogether with other mechanisms by self-conscious 'individuals'. And so theproposition that a society might work or not work is the same sort of surprise in indigenous terms as that an automobile engine should work or thatit might not work. But the failure of an automobile engine, or of the societyof western construction, does not entail a complete overhaul of ourassumptions about mechanics; it entails an overhaul of the engine, themodel, before the mechanics get to work. A hegemonic of individual/society mechanics, with its underpinnings of the particular/general, shiftsautomatically from questions of 'why?' into questions of 'how?'.

Hence a discovery that, at least for some Melanesians, the part/wholedistinction and its systematic entailment is inapplicable, does not automatically imply that those Melanesians belong to a race of mathematicalwizards. If such a discovery suggests that the individual problem- andperson-producing failure of social concept, and the system-producingfailure of individual autonomy, are wrongheaded constructions of the

Neither individual nor group

The anthropologist has often been obliged, even pleased, to constructsocial forces out of the evidence of a big man assembling, say, his resources~or a moka. As longas hecan be seen to be making a kind ofsolidarity, help109 the group to happen, the imputed sociology has an immediate andobvious realisation. The question posed by the idea of the great man is thatof what to do when society and its solidarity are already in place. Then, ofcourse, the big man's efforts have to be reconsidered or re-entitled· he is not

. 'enactlOg the answer to a sociological question, because that question hasalready been answered. But if we should suggest that he is realising his ownindividual aspirations, the projection of western political economy hasanother easy answer. Sociology is then seen to emerge from the conjointeffects of individual compet\tion.

Anyone who has ever tried to determine the definitive locus of

161The fractal person

wrong 'engine', this may simply mean that Melanesian thinking is tooelegantly simple, rather than too complex, for western expectations. Anengine with no moving parts at least avoids the nemesis of friction. And friction may well be the effect that social scientists have mistaken for socialleverage.

Or so at least the received conception of the big man would suggest: anemperor of social friction who uses society against itself to reinstate theessential individual at the top of the heap. In his .identification of thephenomenon of the great man, Godelier posed a profound challenge to ourunderstanding of Melanesian societies. Introduced as a type or anotherkind of leader, the great man provides a counter-example to the big manthat familiarity and overuse have inflated far beyond Sahlins's (1972)sophisticated characterisation. But typology alone can only trivialise thechallenge, which takes its weight and authority largely from the context ofBaruya ethnography. For The Making of Great Men proposes a vividantithesis to the self-excusing notion of 'loosely structured' societies thathas entertained ethnographic speculation for many years. The larger challenge is that of a more holistic manner of thought than that implied in structure, and the great man is its holistic counterpart.

Is th~ ~ig man his equivalent in another kind of society, a more open,com~etlt1ve and loosely organised one? Or is this type-casting of the bigman itself the error of another way of approaching society, and thereforenot a typological contrast at all? Let us consider an ethnographic locusclassicus.

Big men and great men160

'individual' and 'corporate group' in the planning and making of thesecompetitive exchanges, fairly soon realises that individual and group arefalse alternatives, doubly so implicated because each implies the other. It is,after all, difficult or impossible to define the successful (or unsuccessful)maker of moka as either individual or group, because the big man aspiresto something that is both at once. One might say that the Hagen big manaspires to the status of great man - that the moka produces variantexamples, equally valid however successful or unsuccessful, of the greatman. It is a matter of the realisation of something that is already there, asthe pigs and shells are already there.

Would it make any difference, then, to argue that the status and thesociety are never really there, that the image is always realised for the firsttime, or even that it may never be realised at all? None whatsoever. Hagensociety is there or not there whether or not the moka is realised, the big manremains a' big man regardless of the form of his achievement. If this werea matter of 'making' society, then the failure of a moka would make adifference.

I have borrowed an illustration from Hagen society (d. chapter 11),and purposely made our normal projection of motivation and agencyinto its actors oblique and difficult for a very specific purpose. This is todevelop, in the course of this essay, Marilyn Strathern's concept of theperson who is neither singular nor plural. In introducing her idea, Strathern(1990) borrowed from Haraway (1985) a most ingenious applicationof the classic science-fiction term 'cyborg' - the integral being who ispart human and part machine. For my purposes, and for reasons thatshall become apparent presently, I shall re-entitle the concept as that ofthe fractal person, following the mathematical notion of a dimensionality that cannot be expressed in whole numbers. I shall not be concernedwith the degree of fractality here, the terms of the ratio or fraction, butsimply define the concept of a fractalperson in contrast to singularity andplurality.

Although the idea of fractality may appear abstract, it is in fact no moreso than singularity or plurality, or statistical analysis. Its effects arealtogether familiar to the fieldworker - as the problem, for instance, of thebig man's aspirations being at once individual and corporate. It is thatproblem, apprehended as a solution. It lies at the root, too, of what is commonly misconstrued as the 'extension' of kin-terms, exemplified in theSiane usage (Salisbury 1964) whereby any daughter of a unit to which theclass of 'father' had given a bride becomes a hovorafo ('father's sister'sdaughter'), a potential spouse. As Salisbury correctly deduced, father is notnecessarily identified with a so-called primary kin term here, and is neither

singular nor plural. The term has a fractal implication, equally applicableto both situations.

A fractal person is never a unit standing in relation to an aggregate, or anaggregate standing in relation to a unit, but always an entity with relationship integrally implied. Perhaps the most concrete illustration of integralrelationship comes from the generalised notion of reproduction andgenealogy. People exist reproductively by being 'carried' as part of another,and 'carry' or engender others by making themselves genealogical or reproductive 'factors' of these others. A genealogy is thus an enchainment ofpeople, as indeed persons would be seen to 'bud' out of one another in aspeeded-up cinematic depiction of human life. Person as human being andperson as lineage or clan are equally arbitrary sectionings or identificationsof this enchainment, different projections of its fractality. But then enchainment through bodily reproduction is itself merely one of a number ofinstantiations of integral relationship, which is also manifest, for instance,in the commonality of shared language.

Is this not, then, a mere generic, a mathematical fiction like the 'modalpersonality'? It would be indeed if I were concerned either to generalise orparticularise the relation between general and particular. But integralrelationship is not a matter of general and particular, nor of how one ofthese might be made over into the other. The argument is not one of comparative reality or practicality, but rather one of how one's realities or practical iss4es are situated with respect to relationship. The only issue thatneed detain us is that of how Melanesians themselves would seem to situatethem.

The issue requires evidence, and the best evidence I can think of pertainsto the way in which Melanesians indigenously speak of, order and conceptualise existence as identity. This entitlement of existence is quite simplythat of naming, for it is after all names, rather than individuals or groups,that 'go on high' in the moka, that command awe, attention and responsibility in the Kula, that serve, as 'big' or 'small', for the identities of what weare predisposed to call groups -lineages, clans or whatever. Regardless oftheir range of denomination, whether personal or collective, names are butnames, but it is a name that is at once the individual and collective aspiration of the big men. A Daribi friend once observed, 'When you see a man,he is small; when you say his name, he is big'.

The example I shall use is that of Daribi naming. A Daribi name, nogi, isalways an instantiation, and also a simplification, of the relation designated by the participle, poai, of the verb poie, 'to be congruent with'. Twopersons, or a person and a thing, that share a name are tedeli nogi poai, 'onename congruent'. Two beings that share the same kind of skin are tedeli tigi


----,IiIII The fractal person 163

164 Big men and great men The fractal person 165

ware poai, 'one epidermis congruent'. Anything designatable by a wordstands in a poai relation through any conceivable point of resemblance.Furthermore any two persons or objects that each share any conceivablepoint of resemblance with a third, are related as poai through that third.Poai is univers'ally commutative, and because a poai relation can simply bebestowed, through the giving of a name for whatever reason, it is also universally applicable. Poai eats the world, and it also eats itself. For when aninfant goes unnamed for an intolerable period of time after birth, usuallyout of fear for undesirable consequences of naming, it will acquire thedesignation poziawai, 'unnamed'. The infant acquires an immediate poairelation with all things unnamed (non-congruent), but, of course, sincepoziawai is a name, it acquires another with all things named.

The infant, in short, becomes an embodied hinge between the world ofnames and that of unnamed things. And though poziawai is by no meansuncommon as a name at Karimui, this is no reason to accede to one patrolofficer's private musings that the Daribi are a prime example of negativethought. For it turns out that the designation poai is virtually as popular asa personal name. Unhinging as these examples may prove, they serve todirect our attention to the social recognition of the name, the only real gripafforded the Daribi on an otherwise frictionless surface.

Essentially, any recognition or bestowal of a name is always the fixing ofa point of reference within a potentially infinite range of relations, a designation that is inherently relational. As an instantiation of poai, it alwaysimplies, through that relation, something that is both less (one of manypotential relations) and more (a class, a range of objects or beings) than theperson designated. A man, for instance, named for the cassowary, canclaim such words as tori, kebi and ebi as his names, since they are all equallynames for the cassowary. Also, since the cassowary is poetically and colloquially the ebi-haza, the 'cassowary-animal' through its non-avian proclivities, the man could well claim haza, 'animal', as a pagerubo nogi, a(somewhat droll) basing-name or nickname. And if, as is usually the case,the man was named for someone else, or someone else is named for him, thename is always a section, like the conceptual person or body, taken from agenealogical chain and implicating that chain.

Hence the particular points of convergence that other Melanesianregimes of naming may share, or may not share, with Daribi naming aresomewhat beside the point. As long as words are polysemic (and naming,of course, makes them so), and people relate by reproduction, any systemof identities developed by sectioning and referencing such a relational fieldis intrinsically fractal- apparent differentiation developed upon universalcongruence and interchangeability. And since denomination is our surest

map or model for the apprehension of identity, the case for the indigenousconceptualisation of fractal units is manifest. It is 'individual' and 'group'that are arbitrary, imposed and artificial.

The concept of currency, money that demands accounting in terms ofsingularity and plurality, is likewise a non-fractal imposition upon a regimeof exchange based on sectionings taken from human productivity andreproductivity. Pigs, pearl shells, axes, bark cloaks are already relationaland implicated in the congruence that underlies the remaking of humanform, feeling and relationship. Shells and shell wealth (which Daribi thinkof as 'eggs' through which human beings reproduce) are engaged in thereciprocity of subjectives involved in display and concealment, just as axes,meat and other adjuncts of production and reproduction place human sustenance and replication in reciprocal exchange. When such relationalpoints are treated as representational, as commodity-aggregates on themodel of currency, or when the currency substituted for them is takenliterally, integral relationship is denied and distorted. Minus the congruence that keeps the scale of their essential unity through all permutations ofcategorisation, names become merely representational categories of socialdesignation and classification. And minus the sense of their essential unitywith body and life-process (in their subjective as well as objective enhancement), items exchanged become the mere 'wealth objects' of a like categorisation - a 'representation' of human values through utility, a 'classification' of utilities through human value.

Money, as the cutting edge of the world-system, entails the counting of aresource-base. Where the resource is itself relational, the commodity, so tospeak, of relation, it will exert its own reflexive effect upon the terms .ofassessment. Hence bridewealth and childwealth inflate prodigiously in theattempt to make assessment into a form of relating, spending representational literalism in the service of what is fundamentally a rhetoric ofassertion.

Is the 'economic' image of the big man merely the effect of this rhetoricwhen magnified via the literalising commensuration of objects and theirassessment? Thus our very image of the big man inflates him through theimputation of his own inflation, whereas his distinctive indigenous attribution is as a rhetorician (Reay 1959: 113-30). For ultimately the finalarbiter of money as well as law and court cases, ethnography as well asindigenous status, is talk. And talk, a concept that is generally inclusive oflanguage for Melanesians, is by no means the same thing as description,assessment, information or language itself. It is the medium of their fractality, that which expands or contracts the scale of recognition and articulation to fit all exigencies, making language equal to all occasions by


j1~

making those occasions over into talk. Hence talk is like a poai relationintrinsic to thought. Law and money, singular and plural, individual andgroup, even ethnography, aresupposed to be the places where it comes torest, but talk about law and money, even ethnography, never rests, and talkitself, as Goldman's recent study of Huli rhetoric exemplifies (1983), neverdies. This is the fractality of the Melanesian person: the talk formedthrough the person that is the person formed through the talk.

Neither singular nor plural

When the arbitrary sectionings cut from the whole cloth of universal congruence are taken literally as data, they become the social categories thatwe identify as names, individuals, groups, wealth-objects and informationbearing sentences or statements. Taken at face value this way they lose anysense of fractality and merge with the western hegemonic of social ordersconstructed of substantive elements, cultural systems made of representational categories. This does not mean that the fractal possibilities of scaleretention are not there, for they are evidenced by the poai relation and itsmany equivalents. But it does carry a strong guarantee that the indigenousawareness and use of these possibilities will be discounted, overlooked ormisread as rustic attempts at social construction.

To put it into the structuralist terms that have become an argot of thesocial anthropologist's craft, the possibility remains that social and culturalphenomena might be collapsed along a number of axes to yield scaleretaining understandings of unsuspected elegance and force, the generalising forms of concept and person that are neither singular nor plural. Thiswould implicate Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal dimensionality, perhaps thegeneral case of holography, as a 'fractional dimension' or dimensional'remainder' that replicates its figuration as part of the fabric of the field,through all changes of scale. Fractality, then, relates to, converts to andreproduces the whole, something as different from a sum as it is from anindividual part. A holographic or self-scaling form thus differs from a'social organisation' or a cultural ideology in that it is not imposed so as toorder and organise, explain or interpret, a set of disparate elements. It is aninstantiation of the elements themselves.

The phenomenality of meaning provides an apt parallel; there is no suchthing as 'part' of a meaning. Though we may well persuade ourselves,through grammars, sign-systems, deconstructive ploys and the like, thatthe means by which we elicit meaning can be eminently partible, the meanings so elicited do not and cannot have parts. It is not simply a matter of thecliche about wholes being greater than the sums of their parts, for if a mean-

ing has no parts, there is no sum to compare with the totality. One might aswell conclude that the whole is less than the sum, for it is only one. When awhole is subdivided in this way it is split into holographs of itself; thoughneither the splitting nor its opposite amount to an 'ordering' function.What we call an 'order' belongs to the world of partibility and construction.

This calls to mind a more extended Melanesian example, that ofMimica's remarkable study of the conceptual mathematic of the Iqwaye,an Angan-speaking people who live near Menyamya. Mimica (1988)describes an essentially recursive counting system, which includes only twonumbers, one and two, and is computed on the digits of the hands and feet.A crucial facet of the mathematic is that digits are understood to be assimilated to the final number reached, a holistic sense of sum or totality forwhich Mimica borrows the German term Anzahl (1988: 102). Thus, forinstance, the five digits of the hand become 'one', in the sense of 'one hand',because they are assimilated to the final 'one' in the series 'one-two-onetwo-one'. 'Ten', the 'one' at the end of the second hand, is also, of course,'one~, except that this is hand number two. The feet are likewise differentiated ('one foot', 'two feet'), except that the unity at the conclusion of thesecond foot becomes, oddly enough for an even number, one: 'two hands,two feet: one man'. Then we start again with the first finger of the first hand,counting it as 'twenty', or 'one man' instead of 'one finger'. When we havecounted tyventy of these twenties, or 400, the Anzahl is once again 'one', asis 8,000 and so forth.

In fact, infinity is also 'one', not so much through some privileged accessof the numeration, but simply because it is always counted on the body,which always closes on one. But the reason for this also closes with cosmology, and with the kind of universal congruence or integral relationshipevidenced in the poai relation and in genealogy. According to Mimica(1981), the Iqwaye cosmos was originally embodied as a single man,Omalyce, folded in on himself, with his fingers interdigitated between histoes and a penis/umbilicus connecting abdomen and mouth. Only when theligament was cut, and Omalyce unfolded, did plurality/reproduction, aswell as the fingers and toes on which to count plurality, come into existence.It should not be a surprise, then, to learn that numeration and genealogyhave the same congruent basis for Iqwaye, that they characteristically nametheir offspring (in order) for the digits of the hand.

Now suppose that a western demographer came to make an accuratecensus of the Iqwaye. No matter what number might be reached, and nomatter how painstakingly and accurately the census is carried out, it willinvariably be deficient by Iqwaye standards. For the Iqwaye totality, the

168 Big menand great men The fractal person 169

Anzahl instantiated by Omalyce, includes also all the Iqwaye who havelived in the past, and all those to be born as well (Mimica 1988: 74). However high the number, it will ;llways be less than the number embodied byOmalyce, which is, of course, one. Each Iqwaye person, then, is a totality,Omalyce instantiated, but any number of them is less than that. ForIqwaye, in other words, counting/reproduction keeps its human scale,which is by no means comparable to the abstraction of western number.

The holography of reproduction grounds another extended example,that of the Gimi of the Eastern Highlands described in chapter 10. InitiallyGillison delineates this holography through a kind of metonymic conflation of the contained foetus with the penis contained in copulation. Likethe penis, the foetus has an opening at the top, the unclosed fontanel,whereas the mouth is covered by a membrane (Gillison 1987: 177); thefoetus 'grows' in the womb as the penis swells and erects in the sexual act,and it 'eats' the proffered semen through the fontanel (Gillison 1987: 178).But the substance it eats flows from the head of the father, himself amatured 'foetus' and thus a penis, down through his urethra, so that the'head' of the foetus eats the metonymic 'head' of the father. Gimi note thatthe entire male body becomes flaccid, penis-like, after intercourse.

A man is, then, a penis with a penis; but so is a woman, according toGillison, save that her penis is within her body, even before impregnation.For Gimi understand that a female foetus is impregnated by its father as itis formed, that 'the means. by which the Gimi female is conceived and madeto grow inside the womb are the same as her "impregnation" ... [s]he iscongenitally pregnant with her father's dead child' (Gillison 1987: 186).This incestuous miscarriage is her internal penis, to be displaced by themonthly visits of the moon's giant penis, causing a bloody discharge of themiscarried substance, and then by that of the husband or lover, instantiating itself metonymically as another foetus.

The set of substitutions constituting a woman's internal penis, from theholographic foetus within a foetus to menarche to that of impregnation andpregnancy, is also the coming into being of legitimate procreation and kinrelationship out of its incestuous opposite. Its social legitimation in marriage has a familiar ring, for along with the bride and her implicitinternal penis, her father secretly bestows an 'external' penis. This takes theform of a hollow bamboo tube filled with cooked meat, with an outlinedbut uncut 'mouth hole' that is decorated with a pattern also tattoed aroundthe bride's mouth before marriage (chapter 10). The groom must removethe cooked meat and give it to his wife to eat, then excise the mouth-holeand play the tube as a flute. A 'penis' that is a female 'foetus' already pregnant with substance from the bride's father, the tube has been 'fed' through

its 'fontanel', the hole in its end, whereas its embryonic mouth is stillcovered by a membrane. And it is identified with the bride when cut, vaginafor mouth-hole, and was made by the bride's father as a replica of his ownflute, its 'mother', which he plays in his own men's house.

The appropriate recompense for this externalised pregnant foetus is areturn payment made upon the birth of a child, for the child's head. This is,returning to the beginning of the example, the metonymic 'head' of thefather again, though like the bamboo tube it carried a number ofequipotentanalogic strains, all divergent facets of a single motif. In Gillison's words:

Gimi kinship is created, in other words, by an arduous process of differentiating onelife-giving thing. This 'thing' is either alive and moving upward as seminal fluid orkilled and flowing downward as menstrual blood, but it is always derived from andsynonymous with the Father's penis. (1987: 198)

It is important to keep in mind that the arduous process of differentiationis as much a part of the holography -like the penis that makes itself a foetusto replace another foetus within an enlarged 'foetus' - as the motif itself.This can be seen in a third example, taken from my work among the UsenBarok of Central New Ireland (1986). Barok constitute each of theirexogamous matrimoieties in terms of the relation between them: a moietycontains the nurturance of fatherhood proffered by the other, and begets,penetrates and nurtures the containment of the other. It is this relation,rather than the moieties themselves as social bodies, permutated throughthe transformation of the feasting cycle, that gives legitimacy to all transfersof status or property.

Barok orang, traditional feasting leaders, say that two things are replicated over and over in everything they do, kolume and gala. Kolume iscontainment, as the womb contains a foetus or the earth a corpse, and isconcretised ritually in the stone-walled enclosure of the taun or men'shouse. Gala is the elicitation of inception and nurturance, as the penispenetrates to fertilise or the knife to distribute, and is realised ritually as arooted tree. But this imagery itself, an iconography that Barok call iri lolos,'finished power', is the kolume, containment, of the whole, as feasting, theelicitory process by which its meanings are realised, as its gala. The Barokterm for feasting is 'cutting pig'.

It is the relation between kolume and gala, then, that both constitutes themoieties and relates them. Understood in the broadest sense, kolume as acontaining iconography, gala as the elicitory protocol of feasting, however,it is clear that each of these modes is in turn constituted by the relationbetween them. For the iconography contains images of both kolume andgala, each of which is, through the action of the other, further resolvable


into kolumelgala. Thus the ground within the taun enclosure is cut by atree-trunk (the threshold log of the men's house) into feasting and burialspaces, whereas the upright tree-trunk is cut by the ground into a subterranean (burial) and an above-ground, fruit-bearing (nurturant) half. Andthe protocol of feasting begins with a kolume of feasters surrounding thefood, and proceeds to the gala ofcutting the pigs and consumption - a basicformat to be enacted in either a kolume (closed) or gala (open) variant.

The relation kolumelgala 'keeps its scale', as the mathematics of fractalswould have it, regardless of the level of magnification. Kolume and gala arefractal motifs that, very much like genders, stand between whole and partso that each can equally encompass the total relation. The clinching demonstration comes in the transformational final mortuary feast, the Una Ya('base of the tree') Kaba. The tree-image of gala is inverted, the pigs for thefeast arrayed atop the burial section, the roots; atop the pigs, in the positionof the tap-root (the tree's 'apical ancestress'), the winawu, or neophyteorong stands. Kolume and gala are shown to be equally effective if theirroles are reversed, and thus identical; a single image is made of the apicalancestress's encompassment of the people from the past and the winawu'sencompassment of them in his future potential. In a sense, the winawu is agreat man, an encompassing rather than a statistical leader, who outflanksmemory from a future position.

The three examples of holography are drawn from different languagefam'ilies and represent different geographical locations in Papua NewGuinea. There is considerable evidence that the phenomenon iswidespread. A notable instance is Mosko's study of the Bush Mekeo(1985); chapter 5 shows that for them, as among the Barok, a single relationreplicates itself throughout a ritual format. But if holography has a significance in this discussion, it is not as an ethnographic phenomenon but ratheras a mode of understanding.

Neither part nor sum

In no case is the holography a matter of direct presentation; it is not perceived in the material so much as it is re-perceived as the sense of indigenousintention to show phenomena in their self-constitution. Thus the Iqwaye'make people' in counting, and likewise for them making people is acounting-out, or instantiation or re-numbering of Omalyce. The Gimifemale embryo is already pregnant with a holograph of her father's penis,with the transitivity of replication that, via its transformations, becomescontinuity. The gala of Barok ritual feasting elicits and nurtures the containment of its own relation to kolume, and hence of the moiety relation-

ship, which becomes the simultaneity of memory and reproduction.Nothing is built up and nothing dissected in these examples; they areneither construction nor deconstruction, but simply a further replication offractality in the ethnographer's understanding. One might say that theindigenous holography is re-interpreting the anthropologist's ideas, and inthe process re-interpreting interpretation itself.

Reperception implies that the holography will not be apparent in thekind of organic thought that distinguishes kin terminology as 'social' (or'cognitive'), factionalism as 'political', horticulture as 'technological', orthat postulates an integration of groups, functions or categories into alarger social fabric. The crucial element is the fractality that prevents thedifferentiation of part from whole, that keeps the imageries of understanding from collapsing into the individuals, groups and categories that constructionism bundles into wholes greater than the sums of their parts. Thusit matters very much that we follow the indigenous modalities here, theanalogic cross-sections through which the whole grows itself. Without theinstantiation of the Anzahl, and a special sense of the body, Iqwayan counting is but a mathematical mistake; ignoring the transitivity of its impregnation and the transformations worked upon it, Gimi reproduction is justa neat set of native categories, and missing the exacting protocols of feasting, Barok kastam is merely a Durkheimian solidarity-feast, a happeningthat could take any number of other forms.

The hqlographic totalisation of the conceptual world evidenced in thesethree examples amounts to a recognition of personal fractality through therealisation of its relational implications. As such, it is not a 'construction'or even an 'interpretation' on the plane of explanation, for it is notmobilised as a forced uniting of disparate elements, a realisation of meaning via the unaccountable methodological magic of scale-changing.

A big man, in the standard and inflated anthropological cliche, becomesthe organiser of sociological 'force' in his agglomeration of others' debts asstatus, whether this status is seen as that of an integrator or simply a powerbroker. He undergoes a personal magnification when he changes from anindividual to a sociological scale. What is often termed the sociology ofsmall-scale societies produces its object as well as its solutions through themeans of scale-change, the successive grouping of individuals and individuation ofgroups. Each facet of the assumed social structure or organisationinvolves such a shift - from individual or household to lineage or village,from lineage to phratry or society, region to areal integrate. And once thisprinciple is established as basic, as an analytical strategy, with the big manas indigenous integrator and scale-shifter, a rationale for change of scale aslegitimate theoretical strategy is fixed in place. Special terminologies are


pressed into service to focus attention on the form of reduction or scalechange intended - behavioural, psychological, symbolic, economic or ecological. The result is that as many forms of heuristic 'order' are attached tothe subject as scale-changing heuristics can be imagined: that once systemand order are assumed to be what society is doing, the anthropologist isgiven carte blanche to propose alternative heuristics.

Indigenous forms of thought and action thereby cease to be their ownsubjects in the process of becoming many subjects, a virtual kaleidoscopeof scale-shifts. At the core of this strategy is the hegemonic dogma of thedisparate and distinctive quality of the individual in relation to any form ofgeneralisation or grouping, any system, that might be applied. It underwrites and guarantees systematising as the basic task for anthropologist aswell as subject.

But the evidence presented here indicates that for some Melanesianpeoples at least the forms of social and cultural conceptualisation keep theirscale through all ritual and pragmatic permutations. For in such a fractalor scale-retaining conceptualisation the concept itself merges with thespace of its conceiving, and there is nothing to be gained by remapping thedata onto artificial and introduced scalings. If most social and culturalproblems depend upon the western hegemonic for their very imagining,this suggests that the exigencies of living and thinking in many Melanesiancultures are rather different than social scientists have understood them tobe.

The task of the great man, then, would not be one of upscaling individuals to aggregate groupings but of keeping a scale that is person andaggregate at once, solidifying a totality into happening. Social form is notemergent but immanent. If this cal1s to mind Louis Dumont's powerfulevocation of holism in the Hindu caste system, with its fractality ofBrahmanic unity, it also resonates with Marriott's concept of the 'dividual'person - the person, like the society, that is whole and part at once.

In the end we come down to a question of pieces that are cut differentlyfrom the fabric of experience than we might expect them to be. Fractalitydeals with wholes no matter how fine the cutting, and it is for this reasonthat I have insisted on the themes of scale-change and magnification. Forthe issue of great men and big men is ultimately one of magnification. Thebig man as a product of ethnographic inflation is the result of statistical andsociological magnification, an apparent gatherer and disperser of persons.But the fractal conception of a great man begins with the premise that theperson is a totality, of which any aggregation is but a partial realisation.The totality is, in other words, conceptual rather than statistical. The great

m~n, non gender-specific, is great as a particular instantiation or configuratlOn of a conceptual totality; one can have kinds of great men as one canhave variants of a myth.

Godelier's study of the Baruya has given us a number of eloquent exemplifications of this point. But I should like to close with a final example fromthe Usen Barok of New Ireland. The Barok orang, beginning as a neophytewinawu, is a leader of feasting, articulator of the cycle through which theholographic totality of iri lolos is made manifest for all to witness. Indeed,the Kaba feast, in which the manifestation is realised, can only be held'because the orDngwishes it, and for no other reason'. Put more simply, theorang 'kills pigs' for the cutting-of-pig that defines feasting. The umri, thetraditional Barok war leader, 'kil1s men' for another kind of feasting, thatof theararum taun, a 'closed' or kolume variant of the public feasting cycle.Ararum feasts, held in a space defined by the convergence of feasting andburial functions, are restricted to salup, men formally defined as alreadydeceased by having undergone their mortuary feasts while stil1 alive. Theyare already ancestors, great men like orang and umri, and thereby variantsof a single myth or holography.


"marry their sister, commit incest, and have no need of any other womanin order to reproduce life" (Godelier 1986a: 158). The Gimi 'law of equivalence' and rules of marriage allow men and women to achieve this desiredimpossibility, I suggest, to 'get back' or 'keep' the Parts of Themselves they'exchange away', to renounce a Sister or Brother yet to acquire a "sister"or "brother", 'overturning' the mythic Past but 'reinstating' it in new terms.In Gimi social life as I describe it, reciprocity is the most immediate formnot only of 'integrating the opposition between the self and others' (LeviStrauss 1969: 84) but also of creating that opposition as if it did not, or neednot, exist; as if "the joys, eternally denied to social man, of a world in whichone might keep to oneself" (1969: 497; original emphasis) could beattained as the very essence of the social contract.

NOTES

1 Throughout the text, inverted double commas are used around words or phrasesactually uttered by the Gimi or another author. Inverted single commas indicatethat a word or phrase is meant symbolically rather than literally, as part of myinterpretation of the Gimi meaning. Gimi say appears in the text only when it isfollowed by the actual words of an informant which aptly summarise the viewsof others or by my summary of direct quotes from several informants. The sameliteralness is invested in phrases such as one man explains or one woman compares. My own interpretations are indicated to be such.

In recording and discussing Gimi myths and informants' exegeses, I capitalisemythic characters, key objects and organs as a way to distinguish them from ordinary kin categories, ritual actors or artefacts. By capitalising the mythic personae,I represent them not merely as 'ideal types' but as condensations or abstractionsof the incestuous fantasies that Gimi attach to primary relations and that, according to my interpretation, they enact and 'undo' through ritual.

2 The following account of events inside a men's house is a compilation of reportsby Gimi men of four initiations that occurred during the period of my fieldwork.Many informants' comments and explanations were inspired by tape recordingsmade by David Gillison, a photographer and ornithologist.

CHAPTER 11

One man and many men

MARILYN STRATHERN

If Gimi substitute parts of themselves for other parts at different moments in time,we should be looking more generally at how people substitute one set of relationsfor another. And if it is persons who embody relations, it follows that 'persons' canappear as substitutes for or as though they were composed of other 'persons'. Thisis true equally of great men and big men, but to different organisational effect.Baruya initiation sequences and Hagen marriage arrangements provide a crosssocietal contrast that enable us to see these persons figured as the outcome of different perspectival strategies. Each is a focus for the way people think about themselves, but where (Baruya) great men present an external world as it appears fromwithin a body of men, (Hagen) big men present an image of how such a body mightlook from the outside. This chapter also suggests that it is perspective which makesthe difference between perceptions of equivalence and non-equivalence in transactions. There are consequences for competition (chapter 1) and increment (chapter4): great men in a non-equivalent relation to a body of men add their powers to thoseinternally equivalent among themselves, whereas the big man, equivalent to a clan,adds non-equivalent external wealth to it.

In taking big men or great men as a focus for analysis, Melanesianethnographers are not simply pinpointing a phenomenon of interest. Theyhave been presented with a phenomenon of interest, so tha t their interest inturn must include the focusing activity of their Melanesian subjects. Forprominence is the chief characteristic of the two figures. Each seems anepitome, a concentration of characteristics, making visible what other menmight be; he therefore stands out. At the same time, in the sense in which allmen might think of themselves as big men, all men stand out; whereas greatmen seem to distribute specialist functions between themselves, and individually stand out by virtue of a particular competence.

Ethnographic description regularly gives certain 'institutions' or socialconditions prominence. Whether we embark from the perspective of overseas trade or inland garden magic, analysis then proceeds by demonstratingthe 'principles' that govern the interconnections between them. This was,of course, Godelier's procedure in elucidating the making ofgreat men. Theconduct of male collective life and marriage arrangements form the basisfor his own comparative interest in the presence or absence of a principle ofequivalence in exchange transactions. The institutions that enable big men

197

198 Big men and great men One man and many men 199

j

1I1.Ij

to dominate by their transactional generosity also mean that men generallyin these societies are able to treat others in a manner great men reserve onlyfor outsiders (1986a: 173). The difference is conceived as logically irreducible. Hence great-men and big-men systems in this comprise 'alternativelogics of society' (1986a: 162).

If big men or great men are indeed a focus in people's lives, figures whomthey regard as prominent, we might ask what form indigenous analysiswould take. It is unlikely to take the form of the singling out, classifying andcorrelation of institutions typical of anthropological procedures. WereSabarl (chapter 4) or North Mekeo (chapter 5, and Mosko 1985) to bebelieved, or for that matter the Gimi who have just been described (chapter10), it may well proceed by decomposing or undoing these figures to revealthe elements of which they are composed. But whereas the anthropologistwould in turn see these elements as corresponding to social correlates orcultural parameters, indigenous exposition would show that the figures ofthese men contain or are contained by and thereby encompass furtherfigures: the man is composed of other men.

The man is composed of other men in a double sense. On the one handboth big men and great men exemplify or replicate certain qualities whichall men might claim - so that prominence in collective life, whether in ceremonial exchange or initiation ceremony, gives public life a definitivelymas,:uline cast. To so act is seen to be a capacity which males collectivelyevince. They thus present men to themselves in an exaggerated, masculineform, as Godelier persuasively demonstrates for Baruya. On the otherhand, and like all persons (d. M. Strathern 1988), each man also figures acomposite of heterogeneous relations, derived from and containing withinhimself the capacity for diverse relations. Men's capacity thus includestheir ability to enter into relations with different others. The effect of theserelations is to particularise individual persons by virtue of their specific ties.If big men or great men encompass this diversity within, then perhaps theymanifest as a characteristic internal to themselves what each man may alsoconceive as a possibility inherent in the creation of any external relationship.

These assertions about indigenous analysis are intended to point out thatwe already have certain commentaries to hand, though do not usuallyregard them as such. We might think of such analyses as making evidentpeople's inner capacities - revealing their ability to act thereby reveals therelations of which they are, so to speak, composed. Indeed, my exogenousanalysis of such commentaries is forced to collapse the conventionalanalytical difference between persons and relations. Put abstractly, we

could imagine persons as relations, and vice versa. Itmay help the reader tokeep this equivalence in mind in the subsequent account.

Where the ethnographer seeks for a correlation between institutions orprinciples, then, the Highlander may well be seeking evidence of people'seffectiveness in interaction with others. Both the enactment ofcollective lifeand the creation of particular relations through marriage and other transactions could be considered scrutinies of this kind. Godelier is absolutelyright to place such emphasis on them; they 'analyse' the capacities whichbig men or great men encompass.

My suggestion is intended to underline a specific set of differences betweenbig-man and great-men systems. For it becomes obvious that the prominence of the two figures is not the same kind of prominence. They are notcomposed of the same kinds of men.

The big man presents a singular form; whatever the heterogeneousrelations of which he is composed, these are internal parts of a figureimagined as a unity. Great men, however, may be constitutionally divided(seen to contain a pair of characteristics), and comprise among themselvesthe several parts of a collectivity of great men whose specialist and heterogeneous powers cannot be reduced to a single form. The singularity of thebig man and the multiplicity of great men prompts comparison with otherimages such as the pig in Vanuatu (chapter 3) with its many references topersons i.n various stages of differentiation.

Now if social life (indigenous 'analysis') consists in making the internalcapacities of persons visible, then it rests on techniques of revelation whichmust also continually externalise and thus re-present these capacities innew forms. The singularity of the big man is shown to contain within itthose multiple heterogeneous relations which enable him - or his clan - to

make more relations. For example, the capacity to act as 'one man' inrelation to one's exchange partners can be seen as a displacement or substitution for other relations already there, such as those of domestic kinship. One form ('clansman') thus appears out of, and here as a transformation of, another form ('affine'). Hence the converse that A. Strathern(1988: 195) notes for Hagen big men, that the 'centre man' can also appeardecentred. The possibility seems absent from the Mountain Papuan Foi hecites in contrast. As far as great men are concerned, the emergence of a specialist great man from an ordinary man is focussed on the development ofan individual person, as is the emergence of fathers (men) from sons (boys).Against the multiplicity of specialisms, the ordinary man/great man retainshis masculinity, a singular form transformed from within.


,j1

I1

1I

Taking Wagner's point (chapter 9), I try to apply a similar understandingto both big men and great men, for they are both totalities of a kind. Yet inso far as they are not composed of the same kinds of men, then differentsequences of substitutions suggest divergent 'analyses'.

From the perspective of a great-man system, it is people's capacity tosubstitute non-equivalent items that becomes diacritical of the big-mansystem. The significant question which Godelier poses in his book is the difference it makes when gift and countergift do not have to be identical (awoman for a woman, life for life) but may be mediated through wealth (andd. Modjeska 1982). If we follow the aesthetic proposition that forms canonly be made to appear out of other forms, it is clear that we need to dosomething like an indigenous analysis ourselves on those identical ('equivalent') forms. What relationships do they reveal within them? We shouldnot expect that the points at which people replicate identity (woman forwoman, man for man) and the points at which they substitute one figurefor another (wealth for women, fathers for sons) will be the same in the twocases.

There are three observations. First, we have to ask what figure it is thatthe big man or great man composes. Out of what forms does the single formof the man appear? The concrete image of the individual does not necessarily imply the same kind of 'one-ness' in both types of prominence.SecC?ndly, if forms appear as transformations or analogies of others, andthus as substitutions for them, it is not surprising that we have difficulty inholding constant the correlates of big-men and great-men 'systems'. Yet weshould not be misled by the coexistence of seemingly radical differentmodes of action, or rather, should take them not as obstacles to our comparisons but as constitutive of them. I illustrate the point with reference tomarriage in a big-man regime (Hagen) and the dual values of equivalenceand non-equivalence that flow from affinal transactions. Finally, equivalence and non-equivalence are more profitably understood as comparisons of relationships than of things. The possibility of such comparison isintrinsic to Melanesian perceptions ofsocial action; an act is definitively thesubstitution of one relationship by another. The transformation of personsthus comprises the aesthetic form action has made visible.

This chapter accordingly pursues one of the contrasts between theBaruya, as Godelier describes them, and the big-man system of MountHagen in the Western Highlands, as amply described by Andrew Strathernas well as myself. The contrast is not to be captured as the presence orabsence of a principle of equivalence in transactions, but rather as the pointat which equivalence is or is not asserted. What in Hagen makes wealthexchangeable for women is the perceived analogy between this particular

clan's different productive efforts as opposed to that one's. It is the clanswho are equivalent. In Baruya, it is the brides who are equivalent, andhomicides may well be analogous to brides in this regard (d. M. Strathern1978a). Perhaps what makes one woman similar to another is men'semphatic capacity to differentiate themselves internally: affines are distinguished by a mutual relation of inferiority and superiority (d. Godelier1986a: 173). These relations transform into sisters and wives what otherwise takes a singularity of form; 'women' appear equivalent in all respectsbar their marital orientation, the social direction, so to speak, they take.Their 'equivalence', we might say, manifests the difference that men'sactivities make to this direction.

I briefly consider some of the ways Baruya initiation creates inequalitiesbetween the members of a single male body, and the consequent nonequivalence to men's transactions. The capacity for men of the wholeBaruya tribe to so differentiate and transform themselves is a capacityembodied in the collectivity of great men. Hagen marriage transactionsprovide some evidence in turn for their own supposition that competitionbetween clans arises from their equivalence. A consequence is the perception of clans as singular units, and the Hagen big man simultaneouslystands out from and stands among other men as a homologue ofsuch a unit.

Fathers from sons

As a point to which he returns in chapter 15, Godelier likens the Baruyacross-generational transmission of semen between men in the context ofinitiation to generalised exchange in marriage practices. There is a counterpart transmission of milk among women.

For those who somewhat mechanically contrast societies characterized by therestricted exchange of women with generalized exchange societies, as if the formerwere ignorant of the principle on which the latter rest, the example of the Baruyaclearly offers a means of rectifying their view. Although the Baruya prefer the principle of restricted exchange of women in order to establish relations of kinshipbetween lineages and individuals, they apply a kind of principle of generalizedexchange of sperm between all the men not belonging to the sphere of the exchangeof women in order to establish manhood and male domination. Both principles ofexchange thus exist in their thought, but are applied to distinct areas of their sociallife. (1986a: 54-5)

Godelier does not accord the same analytical weight to restricted andgeneralised exchange as he does to equivalence and non-equivalence intransactions; yet not only do 'alternative logics of society' seem to be atwork between societies, on the former dimension they seem to be at work


within the one. The phenomenon is endemic in Melanesian studies, as thefirst chapter as well as others in this book attest. 'It is almost as if counterpoised anthropological models appear together in the actors' reality'(Lederman 1986: 65; author's emphasis). She notes how Mendi prestationsswitch in the course of the same event from a Hagen-like group display ofwealth to the clamour of a Wiru-like dispersal among individual exchangepartners. The phenomenon is of interest in the present context.

It is not that we interpolate difference (alternation) where none exists inindigenous thought, but that we misrepresent the nature of the differenceby conceiving of it as irreducible (as logic). Radically contrasting models ofinteraction within the one society may in fact dissolve into one another.

Now attempting to map principles or institutions on to one another - thismarriage practice on that marriage practice - awkwardly suggests that different types should not really occupy the same space. Or else, as Tuzin(chapter 6) suggests, that we should try to identify a metalogic. But if oneform can only appear out of another, then Melanesian aesthetics give ustheir own cue. As Godelier remarked, principles 'coexist' in people'sthought. We can conceive of different modes occupying the same time in ananticipatory sense. If one leads to another, then one is presaged by, or contained by, the other, their difference also a matter of the sequencing ofmoments. Alternation is in the first place a temporal phenomenon. Wemight recall the sequencing of the divergent fates ofIlahita siblings (chapter6), which myth makes visible as dramatic opposition. I put the point inmore general terms.

Social action is made visible through the general aesthetic device whichpresents the enactment of a capacity as a movement between conditions.Tuzin's earlier observation, for instance, on the relationship betweendomestic and ritual life in Ilahita is pertinent: while the 'felicity of domesticrelations must constantly contend with ritual prescriptions designedspecifically to undermine marital and filial attachment ... in practice thesecodes have a ready tendency to invade each other's domain' (1982: 351-2).Battaglia (1985) notes apropos the ritualisation of feeding relationships onSabarl that symmetry and asymmetry in affinal relations, far from classifying different types of kinsfolk, are points in a life-long process whereby onebecomes 'covered' by the other. Relations may be regarded as at oncereproducing and subverting others. 'The men's cult', writes Jorgensen(1983a: 63) of Telefolmin, 'obviates domesticity by substituting its ownmetaphorized version of kinship, which it eventually dissolves.'

Indeed, if we look more closely, what seems true of the differencebetween restricted and generalised exchange seems in turn true of the difference between equivalence and non-equivalence in transactions. Each

appears as a transformation of the other. Consider the temporal languageprovided by the form of Baruya initiation.

As cult members,Baruya men regard themselves as united. Yet this solidary male body evinces its unity through internal differentiation. Withinthis sphere, a man is nourished by the equivalent substance that nourishedhis nourisher, although there is no direct reciprocity between persons. Onthe contrary, the lack of equivalence between the persons of the seniors andjuniors is there created through their internal relations of domination andsubordination.

Every asymmetrical, superior-inferior relationship between the donorsand recipients of semen can thus be interpreted as part of a wider cycle inwhich those who give nourishment acknowledge the fact that they havebeen nourished in the past themselves. All unmarried men, Godelierobserves, help the sons of men already fathers to grow. They thus give backwhat they themselves in turn received from those older men who grewthem. But the return could not of course be made until these men had leftthe men's house to father the sons who are the new initiates. Transactionsthus separate the men. The transmission of semen takes place between persons who are definitively separated by the intervals of the ceremonies between the men who were formerly initiated and their juniors who arecompleting their own initiation, and thereby due to become fathers, byinducting the sons of these men into the ceremonies. The induction anticipates the same transformation of these sons into fathers themselves. Donorand recipient are rendered distinct by their place (their time) in thesequence. And in a society where sons grow into fathers, and the growth offathers is shown in their sons, it is particular sequences that separate theparticular persons of parents and offspring.

Yet again, if we look more closely at the 'equivalent substance' it is notas homogeneous as first seems. While in one sense it is the 'same' malesemen that circulates through the generations of initiates, we also knowthat it can appear in two forms, male and female. Its external analogue iswomen's milk. More than that, the one may also be seen as encompassingthe other, in the sense that milk appears as semen in female form (and if theparallel with Sambia holds [d. Godelier 1986a: 52] then semen may becognised as milk in male form).

Whether boy or girl, a person is thus nourished by two substances. Onecorresponds to the material they in turn will be capable of transmitting; theother comes to them in a transformed state. Timing again keeps particularcontexts apart. From the boy's point of view, he drinks 'milk' at one stageof his life, 'semen' at another. But the result is to endow him in dual form;he both grows as a consequence and is provided with a transactable entity


with which he can grow others. The same is true of the girl, whose last drinkof milk accompanies her preparation as a receptacle for semen, and hereventual parturition. The sequence thus indicates a substitution of onerelationship (in the boy's case, men's relations with women; in the girl'scase, women's relations among themselves) by another (men's relationsamong themselves; women's relations with men). If equivalence and nonequivalence can be translated into equality and inequality, these values aresimilarly substituted for each other. Peers (equals) among themselves, theyoung men claim future superiority (an unequal relationship) over allwomen; for her part, the bride-to-be is required to put aside her (relativelyequal?) feminine relations with women in acknowledging the claims of afuture relationship of conjugal subordination.

Far from being an embarrassment to men's purpose in male initiation, Isuggest that the dual composition of the sexual substance - its male andfemale form - is crucial. For the possibility of making cross-sex relations isinstrumental to the accomplishment of these ceremonies. It is only throughthem that the son will finally give evidence of fatherhood.

But that is in the future. In the meanwhile, not only is the initiate grown,his skin raised, but he himselfmust grow the body of men of which he willbecome part, as the Sabarl child grows the mother (chapter 4). Increment isimagined here as a result of encompassment; the body of males containwithin themselves something which makes their outer form swell, namelyth~ 'female' offspring they enclose, in much the same way as Baruya see apregnant woman swelling with a 'male' (semen-fed) foetus. If the person ofthe Baruya initiate is an increment to the body of men, then the 'boy' (son)to be 'man' (father) must first come as an addition to them, and thus not aman. How is this accomplished? The initiate is detached from a nexus ofdomestic cross-sex relations - not detached from women so to speak butfrom men's relations with women; this androgynous being is departicularised, reduced to a single measure, first in female form (female to the maleseniors) and then in male form (the senior who inseminates juniors in turn).In this second unitary state, he is ready for marriage. The first state anticipates the second; as Herdt (1981) would say, the one is preparation for theother. For a male can re-engage in cross-sex relations with females outsidethe cult ins'ofar as he has already shown the productivity of their analoguewithin - in the counterpart 'cross-sex' relations he has had with malesthere. Meanwhile, the substitutions of female for androgyne, and then malefor female, within the cult, appear from a view outside as the substitutionof the one kind of man (father) for another (son), and thus as an enlargement or replication of same-sex relations among the body of adult men.

The term increment recalls the wealth which comes to a Hagen man's

skin through ceremonial exchange. The donor detaches a part of himself('male' or 'female' depending on context) which returns to his person asprestige through a decorative manoeuvre that imagines the opinion ofothers as a gleaming accoutrement of his outer body. It is added to his person. The recipient remains the external figure who becomes the source ofthe return gift. With reference to Battaglia's critique (chapter 4), in Baruyainitiation, by contrast, the donor detaches a part of himself (semen) thatreturns to him not as a personal adornment but as the assimilation of therecipient to his enlarged identity as a member of the whole Baruya tribe.Now Hagen ceremonial exchange is conducted with socially differentothers (invariably beyond the subclan if not clan). What is conceived as anall-male body thus increases through the addition of attached wealth asparts that are not equivalent to the whole. Non-equivalence lies less in thevisible absence of likeness between items than in the social separation oftheir origins. Indeed, it is the exchanges that keep the origins discrete, thatdefine the fact tha t incoming wealth is 'different' from wealth produced bythe recipient clan. The incoming wealth is not isomorphic to the recipientbody, cannot be assimilated as an aspect of its own singular identity, andtherefore appears as an addition. The difference may be represented as theaddition of female objects to the male body. Conceived as a wealthproducing entity each clan is an equivalent entity; whereas to conceive oneas producing wealth for another creates them as non-equivalent. I nowwish to suggest that at a certain stage Baruya initiates are also socially differentiated from their seniors. This perception of non-equivalence betweensenior and junior is crucial to the effectiveness by which the one grows theother.

Godelier describes the kwaimatnie objects which give certain great men(ritual experts) the right to perform initiation ceremonies. The objects arepaired, like flutes elsewhere in the Highlands, into male and female. Theysymbolise the fact that no lineage can itself turn boys into men, inGodelier's phrase, but requires the cooperation of others. In the ceremonies, the kwaimatnie-man thus stands to the initiates as a source of differentiation between the lineages that produced them. He mediatesbetween Sun and Moon, indicating the separation that has to be sustainedbetween the social origins of the initiates' mother and father. For Baruyadifferentiation takes a weak form in group terms. Marriages often occurbetween closely related units who have replicated their unions over thegenerations, and rather than by reference to group origins, the separationis minimally presented as between male and female or between elderbrother, younger brother (sun and moon). Both axes of differentiationappear in the ceremonies. The intervention of the kwaimatnie makes the


junior initiate socially different from his male seniors (younger to older).He is simultaneously presented as the (female or androgynous) product ofmale-female interactions, to be absorbed by their male body in a nonequivalent state to them.

Concomitantly, standing against this body of homogeneous Baruyamale 'children', with their red headbands, all of them sons of the sun, thekwaimatnie-men thus hold in themselves heterogeneous capacities, their'divergent kwaimatnie substances, the pair that is also a couple. Theyincrease and multiply men. Kwaimatnie-men appeal to the fact, as Godeliertells us, that both fathers and mothers want their sons to grow. Thecoupling that anticipated the son must also anticipate the father.

To summarise the sequence of the substitutions: one sexual substancedisplaces another in time, the all-male body of men substitute theirrelations with the initiates for the initiates' relations with their mothers, thesenior boys, of course, anticipating the relations with their wives to come;the kwaimatnie-men who oversee the rituals then substitute for the efficacyof the senior boys' inseminating acts the efficacy of their paired male andfemale objects. Although the end result may be claimed as replication - thebody of men (sons of the sun) has grown through growing men (fathers-tobe) within itself - there are crucial times when neither the novice initiatesnor the ritual experts are isomorphic with or equivalent to the body ofmales in their all-male form.

,If we regard Baruya as enacting two 'logics' of sociality, these are nottypes in a taxonomic sense; they are momentary stages or performances,always appear as two - action being visible as movement between alternating conditions.

Each condition is known only through the form it takes; it has to have acertain appearance. The aesthetic conventions (the 'forms') are those ofgender, so it looks as though time and again the alternation is betweensame-sex and cross-sex relations. The difference can be generalised as thatbetween collective (same-sex) and particular (cross-sex) action. I wouldassert that the perceived equivalence or non-equivalence that we maydiscern in people's dealings with one another - whether in the objects theyexchange or in their own persons - is an exemplification of this aesthetic.

A clan and its brides

If one form appears out of another - the Baruya male appears out of amale-female entity (the novice androgyne, the kwaimatnie couple) - it isalso the case that one form may be regarded as a version of or analogy forthe other. Thus initiation ritual as a whole not only transcends domestic

values but also recreates them internally. A single transaction may capturethis re-versionary process, as Maclean's (1985) analysis of Maring bridewealth makes clear.

The one event mobilises both a balanced exchange between men of thetwo allied clans, the bride's kin making an immediate return payment to thegroom's, and an unequal exchange predicated on domestic kin relations(specifically the brother-sister tie), where the bride's close kin receive a netsurplus. Maclean argues that the political and the domestic are 'but twomoments in the single process of reproduction'; moreover, 'while politicaland domestic relations clearly appear as interdependent in Maring marriage, they also clearly evoke each other in an antagonistic way' (1985:119). Balanced reciprocity between clans is, he says, necessarily mediatedthrough the main protagonists, who are personal kin in asymmetricrelations with one another; conversely, these domestic relations are sustained through unified clan relations. The brother's specific relationshipwith his sister is juxtaposed to his general relationship with the other malesof his own clan. Each (set of relations) thus anticipates the other, in thesense that the brother cannot dispose of his sister without mobilising hisclansmen, and clansmen depend on the specificity of the domestic tie whichgives them an object to dispose. The collective event pivots on a particularmarriage.

These contradictions may meet in one person. Maclean stresses the subversive element in the competing nurturant relations a woman has with herhusband and her brothers. The reproduction of clans is dependent on themaintenance of close personal relations with affines (1985: 119) and the'moment at which the conditions of reproduction appear unambiguouslydominant in relation to the conditions of production at the same time produces the conditions of their own subversion' (Maclean 1985: 125).

But Maclean's contradictions are also alternations; the one condition isstaged or revealed in relation to the other, and thus entails a specific perspective. The contrast between the Maring brother's relations with hissister on the one hand and with his clan brothers on the other depends onthe direction, so to speak, in which he is oriented. From the point of viewof domestic relations, partners appear as equals; from the point of view ofclan relations when they transact with one another as donors and recipients, they make patent their inequality. The oscillation between the equivalence of exchange partners who enter a relationship which convertsmutual benefit into self-benefit and their differentiation as unequal donorand recipient is a question of perspective.

Since a relation can only 'appear', that is, take a recognisable form, if itis seen to come from another relation, such sequencings are sometimes


presented in indigenous analysis as though what were at issue were twotypes of sociality, and I have suggested that the difference between them iscommonly generalised as that between collective and particular relations.We might imagine each in turn as affording its own perspective.

Each mo~ent of sociality requires the other for its visibility, being eithera version or a transformation of it, existing as the other's counterpart, ashaving happened or about to happen, as anticipated or encompassed. Yetfrom anyone person's point of view - that indeed being what constitutesthe one person's point of view - only a particular sequence will have takenplace. This is true whether the person is a group or an individual. We mightsay that from a collective perspective, female agnates are equatable withfemale spouses, or wives displace mothers, or milk is the same as semen,while from a particular perspective, a man's wife is not his mother/sister,and a child is nourished first by a woman and then by a man. It is nocontradiction really that the collective Hagen clan can be seen as composedof diverse, particular relations; at the same time, those relations ofdomestickinship eclipse clan identity by virtue of their own canons of mutuality.Indeed, each relation may perpetually seem to interfere with the other, foreach suggests a counterpart position outside that from which a person isacting at the moment. Following the Maring case, I take marriage arrangements to make the point.

:While Hagen marriage is always organised in such a way as to preventthe repetition of unions with affines, so that there are no debts set up bymarriage, no prior claims on brides, no betrothal and no sister exchange,men can present themselves as though clans were exchanging sisters, asthough there were debts between them, as though the one owed women tothe other.

Marriages are arranged between sets of kin bound in particular relationsto one another; their asymmetry is sustained by an unequal exchange ofwealth. But the whole operation is conceived quite differently from theperspective not of the lineage or subsubclan that negotiates the wealthtransfers but from that of the clan. From this latter perspective, oneexchange is seen to fit into a pattern of exchanges and one marriage tocontribute to the reciprocal marriages between clans in which men confront one another in unitary, collective form. But there is more to thisdivergence than simply a narrower and wider view of relationships. I wouldargue that one type of sociality is being used as an analogy for the other.Insofar as persons hold both perspectives at once, each is capable of appearing in the other's form, with the other's attributes.

When a collective person such as a Hagen clan draws on the idiom ofwoman-exchange to imagine its relations with other clans, it is not aggre-

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gating individual events into a whole. It is borrowing a particular aestheticform. For the purpose of deploying this idiom is to recall the asymmetricaland particular relations that exist between close kinsmen and affines, thatis, to borrow an image of non-equivalence. This is then re-deployed in interclan relations as though equal clans could be made unequal by the kinds ofmarriage transactions between them. It is not just the women which mencount; the number of wealth transactions is significant, and prestige isawarded the wife-takers (bridewealth-givers) rather than wife-givers(bridewealth-takers). The appropriated marriage idiom is thereby recastinto an idiom appropriate for inter-group rivalry, namely competitiveexchanges of wealth.

Analogy works both ways. The close kin who negotiate the marriage,and who set up relations of non-equivalence between themselves as affines,draw in turn on the idiom of clanship. Determining the spouse accordingto the rules of clan exogamy will bring in other clan relations as relevant tothe negotiations, that is, they politicise an otherwise domestic transaction.The divergent perspectives of the affines becomes transferred to thewoman's own inclination in the matter and the way she perceives that eachside has discharged its obligations. Affinal relations between the men, incontrast, rapidly become homogenised into the mutual perspectives ofmoka partners, as though their same-sex tie overrode the cross-sex reasonfor the relationship.

In adopting or anticipating the viewpoint of relations yet to be enacted,people can both look out from and look in on themselves. It is that focusthat creates the possibility of perspective. Perhaps the big man provides afocus from which, as a body of men, the Hagen clan views itself from theoutside, how it appears from the position of its affines and enemies. If so,kwaimatnie-men (and other great men) perhaps provide a focus fromwhich Baruya males view the world outside their body, as a position thatexists within. For where the Hagen clan can only unite itself in externalmarriage transactions with other clans, the Baruya tribe is able to divideitself and differentiate internally between the marital interests of its variousmembers. The singularity of the one image and the multiplicity of the otheris self-evident.

One will, many powers

Let me return to Godelier's interest in non-equivalence. The substitution ofwealth for persons is an instance of the general process of sequencing thatturns one kind of person (relation) into another. The point to pursue hereis that the turn does not occur automatically. Melanesian agency is


indigenously construed as the attempt to transform relationships - to usethe products of the household for clan affairs; to turn (patri) clan sisters intomen's wives or, elsewhere, the work of (matri) clan brothers into yams andchildren. Consequently the agency we tend to attribute to big men as selfinterest, political aggrandisement or striving for prestige is inadequatelylikened to possessive individualism in so far as that misses the transformation of the big man himself.

Out of the many intentions and orientations that a man entertains in hismind, the big man presents a single purpose, literally 'one mind' in theHagen idiom. The transformation of 'many minds' into 'one mind' constitutes an attempt to focus sequences of action upon the self. His single purpose thereby attracts the regard of others. We might say that the perspectives of these others are being oriented, aligned. As Munn has written ofGawa: 'experience is being formulated in terms of a model ofchoice, for theactor is regularly confronted with ... possibilities whose realizations (i.e.in one direction or the other) are being grounded ... in the determinationsof the personal will' (1986: 273). What each does for himself, the big mandoes for the clan, and there is a further effect of that single purpose. Asthough they were the outcome of his own will, he becomes the self that particularises events.

A Hagen man takes action to turn his far-flung affinal network into avalue for his agnates, to make one kind of relation appear from the vantagep~int of another. For this action to be visible, he must himself appear as adifferent kind of person. Here lies the significance of wealth; the big mancreating himself 'wealth' also creates his person in another form. His affinesare seen by his clansmen as sources of wealth for the clan, a switch in perspectives that he presents in different aspects of his own person - ties ofdomestic kinship have become avenues for ceremonial exchange. Theswitch is of course in the first place a substitution not of things but ofrelations.

Now if one relationship consequently appears as the outcome ofanother, then that other stands to it as cause or origin, as affines are seen asa source of wealth that enables the Hagen clan to make moka. Hence theparticularising effect of enactment; to be the cause of another's acts is tohave acted at a specific, prior moment in time. A debt causes a freshexchange because of the occasion of the recipient-to-be's previous gift as adonor, and that particular sequence is in temporal terms irreversible. Conversely, a clan can only have had a collective effect in its external relationswhen it acts to particular intent. I have argued that Hagen men routinelypresent symmetrical inter-clan connections as though they were based onthe particular asymmetries of domestic kinship.

Indeed, non-equivalence between clans is crucial to the effectiveness bywhich the one is perceived to 'grow' the other. Growth, manifested as prestige, requires dependency on exchange partners and men act to elicit thiscondition for self-increment. The recipient must be coerced to receive, to becast as the cause of the relationship (the debt which must be met), and thusa contributor to the donor's growth. Hagen clans, taking a perspective onthemselves as independent, equivalent agents, equally entertain the perspective by which they seem unequal and dependent upon one another.This is not an incidental contingency of competition, but a contrived aesthetic manoeuvre. Polarisation into unequal donor/recipient relations isas important to their sense of productivity as the long-term equalisingoutcome of eventual reciprocity. That other clans similar to one's ownalso contain one's future wives itself contains both perspectives in oneImage.

Independent, separate clans thus engage with one another to their analogous profit by coming together on both a same-sex and a cross-sex basis.Parity is evinced in the exchangeability of the objects at their disposal, thatis, their capacities to exchange are equivalent. At the same time, transactorsmust be polarised into a temporal non-equivalence. A gift can only beextracted from its source if it is detachable from it, and a source is createdby actions that took place at another point in time. To force others intobeing the prior cause of activity is, as Munn observed, to force them to takea perspective on oneself. And one clan enters into a non-equivalent relationwith another in creating a focus for its particular achievements in the figureof one man.

The Hagen big man presents the entire clan as a homogeneous collectivity. He is its capacity for unity. At the same time, in so far as his single figure is created out of all the diverse interests of individual clansmen, he turnsthese particular interests into collective ones. But he is not merely the conduit through which an internal relation is substituted for external ones(individual householders, embedded in their own matrilateral-affinal networks, becoming a body of clansmen). I have suggested that the fact thatcollective unity is represented as the outcome of his single will or mind alsoenables the clan to then act as a particular and productive other in itsexternal relations. This particularisation is evinced in the specific events ofpolitical history and marital alliance. Thus through its external marriagerelations, the Hagen clan produces two types of members - male (brothers)and female (sisters and wives); the possibility of the clan appearinginternally in a collective state is achieved through privileging one of thesetypes and eclipsing the other. By externalising its female components, theclan emerges as singular and as male, and thus transformed.


Lederman remarks for Mendi (chapter 12), that the coherence of the clanin unitary action is a deliberate achievement. Pace Godelier, it is not thatthe big man concentrates within his person diverse functions that amongthe Baruya are distributed among many. All that is concentrated, so tospeak, is the will to act. And that can only exist in the singular. The big manrepresents no group; the group exists in the fact that many wills are seen tohave composed into one will, one action, and thus one man.

What then are we to make of the Baruya? The body of Baruya men createwithin themselves the difference between many men, between male andfemale cult members, and between the great men who contain multiplepossibilities within their persons. Instead of eliminating multiple possibilities in favour of one, they are sustained in their multiplicity. Thus theholders of kwaimatnie are joined in an unequal relationship between theguardian of the ritual and his helpers; and the warrior is never equalto hiscounterpart; he will meet an enemy in single combat from which only onewill emerge.

The figures of the Baruya kwaimatnie-men, shamans, warriors and soforth do not stand as one man. They are not isomorphic with a male collectivity. On the contrary, they have transformative functions that dividerather than unite the body of men, decompose it into its separate elements.The kwaimatnie-men hold objects that are both male and female; maleshamans have female counterparts who mediate between differentm~taphysical worlds; warriors contain within conflicting qualities ofloyalty and betrayal, protection and despotism; and male hunters pursuea female cassowary. In other words, these figures embody differencesthat are not reducible to unity. There can be no single great man. Bigmen and great men do not contain within themselves the same kinds ofrelations.

In Hagen, the one man is likened to one clan, is its homologue, showingin his transformed person the way in which multitudinous and diverse particular (kinship) relationships can be eclipsed in the pursuit of a single purpose. At the same time, these very externalised diverse interests contributeto the big man/clan's growth and must be harnessed. A clan adds theserelations to itself. The Baruya counterpart to this 'one man' is not really thegreat man; it is the whole body of initiating and initiated men. The sons ofthe sun show that among their collective selves they have the internalcapacity, hold the power, to transform cross-sex into same-sex relations,sons into fathers and back again, for incremental effect. The contrastbetween the two cases might be imagined as what is taken for granted asrequiring action.

The unity of Baruya men as an entire collective body is achieved by the

simple stroke of building a single house in the habitation of which socialdifference is initially eliminated. Its bones are the posts, its skin the thatch.Difference is externalised - into enemies, women, non-Baruya. Unity beingtaken for granted in this context, multiplicity is subsequently broughtinside - by the great men - to create those productive and particular internaldivisions that will grow this one body. The men divide into older andyounger, hosts and immigrants, owners and non-owners of kwaimatnie,those who are loyal and those who betray, and above all into male andfemale. The external world thus becomes encompassed so to speak withinthis internal one.

The Hagen clan, on the other hand, always keeps the external world at adistance, because it wishes to gain from its extra-clan contacts accoutrements for an outer skin which would not otherwise be visible. Since theseappendages in the first place originate in what it has previously detachedfrom itself (wealth, women), the clan's taken-for-granted state is multipleor heterogeneous: unity is achieved, made to appear, on spectacularoccasions. Clan unity becomes the result of action so to speak rather thanits precondition. It appears as the acts of an agent, as the successful transformation of one state into another.

In sum, the Hagen big man, standing in a relation of equivalence to thebody of male clansmen, enhances the possibility of the clan claiming a distinctive non-equivalence in relation to analogously composed bodies. Forhe is both more than and less than the clan. The clan is enhanced in only oneof its forms, as a singular rather than a composite or heterogeneous body,and thus it is a homogeneous transformation of it which enters into particular relations with others. Great men stand in a relation of non-equivalenceto the body of Baruya. They contain both between and within themselves adiversity of capacities; given the homogeneous capacity of Baruya men intheir collective state, the great man differentiates between categories ofmen in order to substitute for an external relationship with females orenemies an internal male heterogeneity. That external relationship appearswithin the body of men as a division of powers between cult participants.Under such circumstances, there can be no distinctive external engagementon a clan-like basis.

The argument turns on a single point. If we are interested in the figuresof the big man or great man, then we are interested in what people construeas a focus of activity. The place that focus will have in the 'logics' of different social lives cannot be predicted from the form itself, that is, from theappearance of prominence. Grounded against different assumptions ofwhat can be taken for granted, they manage somewhat different perspectives of the person. That person is, of course, a fractal person (chapter 9). I


have considered two presentations of it. One is a figure who holds withinhis own will a precariously demonstrated capacity for unification in theface of external relations, while the other is one conduit among many whohold between them the powers necessary to accomplish equally hazardousinternal divisions.

CHAPTER 12

'Interests' in exchange: increment"equivalence and the limits ofbig-manship

RENA LEDERMAN

From the perspective of Mendi, however, also emphatically a big-man society, it isthe unities of Baruya and Hagen - rather than Hagen and Mendi - that corne to lookmore alike. This chapter effectively re-challenges any simple correlation betweengreat men/big men and equivalence/non-equivalence in exchange strategies. Lederman examines Mendi notions of increment: mandatory incremental gifts areembedded in kinship transactions in such a way as to produce generalised exchangestructures which enchain people through personal rather than clan relations. Competitive exchanges, by contrast, concerning clans acting as groups, work to strictaccountability in terms of equivalence. This interplay between personal networkand political group demonstrates that the collective or unitary appearance of'groups' has no special finality. If big men represent these units, they only representtheir own efforts in making them appear. Lederman both details the politicalrealities of personal and group action and reintroduces the issue of historicalextrapolation between different social forms in the Highlands.

By presenting 'great men' (along with the social order which producesthem) as typical, Godelier has effectively removed the 'big man' from hiscentral, definitive place in Melanesian ethnography to a new position ofrelative peripherality. At least as much as other recent revisions of theclassical ways anthropologists have played the region (e.g., B. Douglas1979), that disorienting turn has created new openings in the act of closingolder ones.

In this chapter, my intention is to explore a few responses to that movement, on behalf of the big man. On the one hand, I am concerned to clarifythe interests that have been brought to bear in creating the big man's relative position in the comparative politics of the region. On the other hand, Idraw on my own ethnographic experience with the Mendi, a central Highland people, in order to reveal yet another set of interests. Following fromthe last chapter, Mendi ethnography enables me to engage one dimensionof the difference Godelier (1982; 1986a: chapter 8) has identified betweenthe 'alternative logics of society' associated with great men and big men: thedistinction between 'equivalent' and 'non-equivalent' exchanges central to

the contrast between Baruya 'sister exchange' marriages and marriages

215

PART IV

A reformulation of the original questions with which this book set out.

273

CHAPTER 15

An unfinished attempt at reconstructing thesocial processes which may have promptedthe transformation ofgreat-men societiesinto big-men societies

MAURICE GODELIER

Godelier presents his reformulations as an attempt not to encompass or sum up thefindings of the previous chapters but to open again some of the questions he posedat the outset. At the same time as bringing us back to these, he brings us back to dataconcerning the material conditions of social forms. He pays fresh attention to thesocial correlates of warfare, competition and the significance of kinship structures,in hypothesising the mechanisms of transformation between great-men and bigmen societies and the interest that chiefly societies have for understanding thisdevelopment.

Yet this final chapter does indeed summarise an aspect of our endeavour.Godelier reminds us of the distances between explanatory practices. Anthropologists concerned with the evolution of society perceive different principles of socialorganisation as an affront to logic, and thus as a theoretical problem. On another'level', as their idiom has it, they perceive social representations as the (alienated)objects of communication by which people construct society as an object. What wehave perhaps learnt from Melanesians, from their social-science-fiction Godeliermight call it, is the axiomatic nature of their assumption that forms must necessarilyappear out of other (different) forms. It would be as a version or corollary of thisthat persons must appear to others as other than themselves. Great men, big menand chiefs are all visible 'others' of a kind.

In chapter 13, Modjeska chides me for stopping half-way through myanalysis. He felt that, once I had established the existence of two almostcontradictory social logics, that of great-men societies and that of big-mensocieties, and then suggested that they were part of a vast and as yet unreconstructed system of structural transformations, I had not dared to consider these two logics as stages of an historical evolution in the course ofwhich, influenced by the arrival of the sweet potato, the former evolvedinto the latter. In his eyes, I was satisfied with having got as far as one couldexpect with a structural analysis. That is, I could safely assume that thesetwo logics belonged to the same group of structural transformations thatcould also be considered to belong to a wider set of transformations which

275

276 Big men and great men An unfinished attempt 277

one day might be extended to include societies based on rank as well as thechiefdoms of Melanesia.

But the facts, or in this case the ideas, do not exactly correspond toModjeska's perception of them. In order to shed light on the problem, I goback over the various stages of my reasoning.

It is true that I had first attempted to show that a social logic existed inPapua New Guinea which was as yet unrecognised, as all the light had been- wrongly - trained on the big-men model of society. This was the logic ofgreat-men societies, of which the Baruya became one example, whose onlyadvantage was that I knew them better than others and that they providedme with an opportunity to isolate this new general type.

Next, it had seemed to me that the logic of power in these societies contrasted in many ways with that of big-men societies, but that these twocontrasting logics seemed, by their very opposition, to form two poles of avast system of structural transformations, and that, consequently, theremust exist examples of societies which fell between the two extremes, combining certain features of both. I suggested that the Maring, to whomStrathern refers in chapter 11; or the Gahuku-Gama, among others, mightbe located in this middle zone.

I had then advanced the hypothesis that the development of competitiveexchanges and of production in view of these exchanges might havefostered the transformation of great-men societies into big-men societies.And so I did not stop, as Modjeska has taxed me with doing, but passed thehalf-way mark, since I suggested that these two logics could be consideredto be two stages of an evolution which corresponded to an as-yetundiscovered socio-historical process. Among the economic and socialtransformations which may have contributed to the transformation ofgreat-men societies into big-men societies, I mentioned, moreover, theeffects of the introduction of the sweet potato; but I did not adhere to thethesis that this produced a veritable 'revolution'. I believe that the introduction of the sweet potato merely intensified and accelerated phenomenawhich had already developed in other traditional agricultures based ontubers such as taro and yam. There is, therefore, no reason to see my notholding the introduction of the sweet potato to be the starting point forradically new social transformations as proof that I refuse to speculate onthe socio-economic processes which, well before the 'sweet potato revolution', could have brought certain societies in Papua New Guinea closer toproducing a new type of great men, one who would tantalise and symbolisethe new social structures: the big man. The simple truth is that, consciousof the difficulties, I merely called attention to this possibility without taking

a stand on it. As an indication of the theoretical difficulties, I pointed outthat the process of generalising the exchange of wealth for women, or forthe death of a warrior or other negative events, covered a far wider areathan simply Papua New Guinea. This is a fundamental question of generalinterest, one moreover that Levi-Strauss raised at the end of his ElementaryStructures ofKinship. It is also a question which concerns not merely, noreven mainly, the analysis of kinship relations.

Now it is my intention to turn to that exercise of reconstructing imaginary socio-historical processes. However, I must make it clear that I amaware that I am reporting on something that is more of a failure than asuccess. But, after all, is not a semi-failure also a small success?

The components of the two logics

It is necessary to reiterate here the essential components of the logic governing great-men societies and to state what makes it a true logic. I see it asbeing based on the existence of relations of correspondence between threeelements of social life: kinship, power and wealth.

I assume that in societies where the principle of the direct exchange of ;ftwomen dominates the production of kinship relations, one must alsoencounter systems of male (and sometimes female) initiation calling moreupon powers that are inherited or ascribed (ritual powers in particular)rather th~nmerited or achieved. These systems of initiation function as theplace where the entire society undergoes integration; they are the institution by which society represents itself as a whole, and where its constituent hierarchies - among men on the one hand, between men andwomen on the other - are legitimised. In as much as, in this logic, a womanis exchanged for another woman, the death of a warrior compensated bythe death of an enemy, there is no need nor place for a direct link betweenthe production of wealth, the production of kinship relations and the production of society as a whole.

My hypothesis attributes a leading role to the nature of kinship relations.This is for me the starting point for understanding the system of social logic(with initiation serving as a sort of mainstay of male power, each man beingobliged to exchange a sister to get a wife); it is also the mechanism forintegrating all groups -lineages, clans, villages - which make up the societyand for representing them as a whole with respect to neighbouringsocieties, be they friends or enemies.

Following the same line of reasoning, I assume that, when kinship -+relations are found to depend primarily on the exchange of women for


wealth, there should be a development of some system of social integrationand forms of male power centred on a sprawling system of competitiveexchanges which tie local societies into one regional, intertribal network.These local groups are represented by big men, who symbolise theircapacity to produce and/or amass wealth and to redistribute it. In this sociallogic, there is no longer a place or a need for the big male initiations, as menand women are both controlled by their (unequal) access to wealth, andespecially to the exchange of live pigs. But, to the extent that male power isstill partly based on the expropriation of female power (the sources ofmen's life and growth, or of the reproduction of pigs), one finds in thesesocieties male cults open exclusively to young bachelors as in Duna, orfertility cults for married men only as in Hagen. In my opinion, the first constitute a type of society situated somewhere between the great-men and thebig-men types.

But two more remarks are needed to clarify the similarities and differences between these two logics. The first concerns the nature of kinshiprelations, the second, the nature of the principles of equivalence which prevail in these societies.

In both the great-men and the big-men societies of Papua New Guinea,the descent groups which contract marriage relations and which are reproduced by them are usually not totally exogamous units. It is often possibleto marry a distant relative from the same clan. This contrasts sharply withexogamous moiety systems such as the Bush Mekeo (chapter 5). In these

f systems, alliance is based, as among the Baruya, on the exchange of women;but because of the strictly exogamous, closed character of moieties andclans, kinship relations provide, in a more or less mechanical and objectiveway, a first general framework for integrating all descent and residencegroups. Kinship cannot play this role, however, if the descent groups arepartially endogamous, half-open, half-closed, as in the case of the Baruya.

#; For example, among the Baruya, when several brothers and sisters fromthe same lineage segment are of marriageable age, each brother must marryin a different direction from the others, and none may reproduce hisfather's or his father's brother's marriages. These prohibitions reveal adeliberate intent to block the formation of closed groups which wouldregularly exchange wives from one generation to the next, groups whichwould operate as exogamous moieties required to exchange women witheach other. This practice of multiplying marriages in different directions,which change with each generation, results in kinship groups beingintricated in a complex manner without their ever being integrated into acommon overall framework. Such a framework does exist in great-mensocieties, but it is provided by the initiation system.

A second remark necessary to the clarification of these various social log-ics concerns the nature of the principles which guide exchanges. In greatmen societies, the principle governing exchange dictates that the realitiesexchanged must be equivalent in quantity and quality. A woman isexchanged for a woman and the death of a warrior compensated only bythe death of a warrior. The first principle of exchange, then, is that therealities exchanged must be of the same nature; and the second, that thequantities must be the same. In big-men societies, on the other hand,women are exchanged for wealth (pigs, shells, feathers), and the realitiesexchanged no longer need to be of the same nature. This opens the way fordifferences in the quantities of wealth given or received, for deliberatelyunequal exchanges whose aim is the non-equivalence of goods given orreceived. Somewhere between these systems of exchange there is room for ia middle term which combines the two, a system in which the realitiesexchanged are of different natures (women for wealth, for instance, as inbridewealth), but in which the exchange does not give rise to competition,nor does it obey the principle of non-equivalence of the quantities of wealthgiven or received.

Baruya provide an example of a group combining the two principles oficequivalence; Hageners combine the two principles of non-equivalence; andBena-Bena, Gahuku-Gama or even Duna can be seen to illustrate intermediate combinations.

Other consequences of marriage differ according to whether descentgroup; are exogamous or not and whether kinship groups are closed, openor semi-open. In societies based on exogamous moieties, such as Mekeo,the whole tribe is one big endogamous group, and their enemies can nevermarry in. In great-men societies, such as Baruya, it is possible - in times of tfpeace or in order to make peace - to exchange women with enemies andturn some of these into allies by marriage. Matrimonial alliance becomesthereby a potential means of dividing the enemy tribe and preparing thesecession of the enemy brothers-in-law from their native tribe and theirfuture absorption into one's own. At the same time, systematic use of theprinciple of direct exchange of sisters, in the framework of a multi-villagetribal group which is integrated by a common general system of initiation,tends towards endogamy on the tribal level and even more strictly on thevillage level. Moreover, village endogamy may be sought deliberately, as inthe case of Telefolmin described in chapter 14, who practise the exchangeof women.

At the opposite pole, big-men societies tend to show a preference formarrying members of neighbouring friendly, or even hostile, tribes. By contrast with endogamous tribes, in big-men societies the overall group, a

Marriage and initiation

I have analysed the structural contrast between great-men and big-mensocieties, highlighting only the dominant features of the way they function.

'tribe', tends to behave like an exogamous group which receives its wivesfrom neighbouring groups, who may be either allies or enemies and who,in any case, are their partners in competitive ceremonial exchange. Thus,when going from societies which practise the direct exchange of women tothose which exchange women for wealth, the social and geographical distances separating Ego from his potential matrimonial allies undergo considerable extension. These allies may come from inside the tribal group, oreven the village, they may come from inside or outside the village or group,or they may tend to come almost exclusively from a distance, and sometimes a great distance if the alliance is contracted through regional networks of competitive exchange.

One last remark on kinship: in great-men societies, the donors of womenare superior to the recipient. In big-men societies, the converse is true: thedonors of wealth, who are the recipients of women, tend to be superior tothe donors of women. This contrast forces us to take a new look at how theprinciple of direct exchange of women works and to look more particularlyat one important aspect, the role played in this exchange by gifts of wealthand services.

The starting point is the fact that a man who receives another's sister inmarriage incurs a debt that nothing can expunge. This debt can be counterbalanced only by giving a woman in exchange. But the countergift does notcancel the first debt, it merely balances it. Among the Baruya, the recipientof a woman is the lifelong debtor of the donor. And this indelible debt iswhat motivates the constant flow of gifts - both wealth and services - thatthis man will bestow upon his brother-in-law and his allies, a flow whichincreases as his wife gives birth to children.

On a theoretical level, this is an essential point: the principle of directexchange of women in no way excludes the exchange of goods and servicesbetween allies. Quite the contrary, it includes the obligation to return goodsand services for the woman received. Must it then be supposed that, whencircumstances cause a group to abandon the direct exchange of women, thetraditional obligation to give goods or ser.rices in return for the womanreceived persists or becomes thereby the only condition of this exchange,transforming a secondary, complementary feature of the direct exchangeof women into a first principle, of general application: the obligation to paybridewealth in exchange for a woman?

But this is a reductionist approach, and the reduction prohibits correctlystating the problem of the conditions and processes for the transformationof a great-men society into a big-men society, if such a transformation everhappened in the first place. From our present position, there is only one wayof formulating the question, and to my mind it is a theoretical dead end,leading nowhere.

Under what conditions does the principle of exchanging women forwomen become transformed into the principle of exchanging women forwealth? According to this formulation, the transformation consists in themutation of a principle. This raises two questions. The first is theoretical:can one principle change into another? The second is factual: does asociety's functioning rest on one or on several principles? Let us leave thefirst question aside for the time being and deal with the second by turningto ethnographic data on the Baruya, whose example will, I believe, help usstate the problem correctly.

The Baruya in fact make use of two principles of exchange when con- *"tracting a marriage. On the one hand, they exchange women for women;this prevails within the tribe, but is also practised with neighbouring enemyas well as friendly tribes. On the other hand, they exchange wealth forwomen, practised with more distant tribes with whom Baruya wish toestablish or strengthen trading relations. This type of marriage is calledapmwetsalairaveumatna, or 'get-together-salt-to-get-a-wife'. Here,Baruya used to exchange a given number of bars of salt and lengths ofcowry beads for a woman. It is interesting to see that this principle cameinto operation with groups located beyond a circle of neighbours livingmore or less next door to the Baruya. Within this circle of neighbouringtribes, political alliances were unstable and today's friends were liable tobecome tomorrow's enemies. But outside this zone of turbulence, Baruyafound themselves confronted with strangers who were virtually nonenemies, and therefore potential friends, with whom they wished to establish or strengthen friendly and lasting trading relations.

The Baruya also practised, on separate levels, two types of exchange, ~which Levi-Strauss has dubbed 'restricted' exchange and 'generalised'exchange. In the sphere of kinship relations, direct exchange of sistersbelonged to the 'restricted' type. Also of this type was the rule of patrilateralcross-cousin marriage, which applied whenever the gift of one woman wasnot balanced by the countergift of another. One of the daughters of thewoman given in the preceding generation had to marry one of the sons ornephews of the man who had given her mother in marriage. By contrast, inthe system of male initiation, the circulation of semen - the exchange of lifesubstances among initiates - belongs to the logic of generalised exchange.

281An unfinished attemptBig men and great men280


The donors of semen are the older boys; the recipients, the younger. But theyounger boys do not give their substance back to their elders. Therecipients are not at the same time donors, and thus the life force circulatesdown from one generation to the next, along an unbroken chain of virginboys who are linked by relations of elder to younger and more initiated to'* less initiated. Generalised exchange of semen does exist, then; but notgeneralised exchange of women. To return to a point made in chapter 1,what is present in initiations is not present in kinship relations.

But there is a hierarchical connection between kinship relations andJ initiation, for a man cannot marry unless he has been initiated. Kinship

relations are not autonomous. The production of a complete social individual is based on the subordination of kinship relations to politicoideological relations which are more extensive, integrating individuals andgroups into a whole capable of reproducing itself. One condition is essential if male power is to become established and reproduce itself; the worldsof men and women must be separated, and men elevated above women ina world governed by virginity with respect to women and by homosexuality.

Taking a closer look at forms of power, Baruya can once again be seen tocombine two sorts of power: inherited or ascribed and merited or achieved.Among the first are the magico-religious powers operating at the centre ofall big initiation rituals (of men, women, shamans). In the second group areto be found the powers of great warriors (aoulatta), great horticulturalists(tannaka), shamans (at least those, making up the majority, who do notpossess the sacred objects and formulas required for initiating othershamans), cassowary hunters (the cassowary is seen as a kind of wildwoman who haunts the forest) and the makers of salt, the principal articlethe Baruya exchange with their trading partners.

'*- It must be pointed out here that the Baruya tannaka is a great gardener,a man who has several wives and whose gardens are large and well tended.He has the means to raise numerous pigs, although does not necessarily doso. This person, then, possesses some of the attributes which elsewherewould make him a big man, a man who produces or personally amasseswealth and redistributes it in the course of competitive exchanges for hisown greater glory and that of his group. If Baruya tannaka produces morethan ordinary men, this is in order that other lineages may dispose of hisproduction in times of war, whence his prestige. It may be said that he livesin the shadow of the warriors without taking part himself in hostilities.He is polygamous, whereas a great Baruya warrior should not havemany wives; for having many wives means lots of children and having toclear large garden plots to feed them. The great warrior spends his time

laying ambushes and standing armed guard over groups of women as theygarden.

The Baruya do, however, encourage masters of rituals to take severalwives; these are men who have inherited from their ancestors the sacredobjects and ritual lore. They never have trouble finding a wife, even if theyhave no sister to exchange (they will give one of their daughters from thenext generation). They will always be offered wives so that they may havechildren and the ritual lore be handed from one generation to the next, inthe collective interest of the group. Moreover, in the midst of these warliketribes, these men do not go to war or, if they do, stay behind the lines; theyare protected for fear they may die before having passed on their secret. Themasters of kwaimatnie are the most important, the greatest men in thetribe. Their name is supposed to be kept secret from enemies and neighbouring tribes. They are the heart of the tribe, its secret foundations. Thistype of great man is just the opposite of the big man, who strolls up anddown in front of a long line of pigs tied to their stakes, calling out the namesof those who have given the animals and of those who will receive them. Abig man shows himself to all the tribes involved in this competitiveexchange, and his name is on the lips of everyone.

Care must be taken, when using the terms inherited and merited powers,not to give the false impression that only those powers acquired throughmerit are the object of competition and that this does not apply in principleto thos~ which are inherited. While it goes without saying that no one isrecognised as a great warrior unless he has killed a number of enemies, itdoes not go without saying that a man can successfully claim that hislineage, and he himself as their representative, are the only ones whopossess the objects and lore necessary for performing initiations.

Among the Baruya, the lineages descended from the original conquerorsall possess sacred objects and play different and complementary roles in theinitiation ceremonies. But, with the exception of one of the original lineageswho betrayed their own people and helped the Baruya take over the landsof the tribe which had welcomed them, the other lineages subsequentlyintegrated into the Baruya tribe are not supposed to possess kwaimatnieand play no role in the apparatus of initiation. In reality, however, theintegrated segments claim that they too possesssuch objects, secreted awayby their ancestors but which could come to light tomorrow were the political configuration that is the Baruya tribe to crumble.

But even within the conquering lineages who exhibit their kwaimatnie,their use is a subject of rivalry. Certain segments which provide the masterof ceremonies with assistants sometimes demand tha t one of their men takehis place. Most often the ploy falls through, but once again everything

The comparison of systems

I now return to that line of reasoning which assumes that there exist twoseparate periods corresponding to two sets of conditions which aresupposed to lead to the transformation of great-men societies into big-mensocieties. The analyses proposed in the second part of this chapter are basedon the following facts:1 Widespread use of the principle of exchange of wealth-for-women, the

custom of bridewealth, is found in those societies in which the production and redistribution of pigs has become highly developed, not inorder to contribute to competitive exchanges among local groups but forthe performance of ceremonies for ancestors and spirits. The Duna(chapter 13) are an example. They have no competitive exchanges or, ifthey do, these are not a dominant institution. Now Duna have a sort ofbig man, the wei tse. Consequently, the existence of a competitiveexchange network is not the pre-condition for the emergence of big menlike great men.

2 Furthermore, the development of competitive exchanges seems tobecome a dominant fact only in some societies and under some con-

depends on the rapports de force within the Baruya tribe and how muchcorrosive pressure marriage alliances with enemy groups can bring to bearon tribal political unity. Political unity symbolised by the tsimia - the ceremonial house built for initiation, veritable symbolic body of the tribe thatbrings together all the lineages and all the villages - is built on an ensembleof latent or declared tensions which have been overcome or suspended forthe time being.

In this case, the ethnographic material on the Baruya provides us with anexample of a society based on the simultaneous interaction of severalprinciples. Some are dominant; others are equally essential, but playasecondary role. The transformation of great-men societies into big-mensocieties cannot be a problem of one principle turning into another, but ofa change in the relation of dominance between the two. Since Baruya practise both principles of exchange, the problem is to imagine what processesmanaged to extend the field of action of the exchange of women for wealth;what processes brought about the extinction of the exchange of women forwomen. We are again confronted with the problem of imagining the conditions necessary to alter the relationship between two already existingprinciples. One expands, while the other recedes. What begins by no longerbeing prescribed, ends by being proscribed, a point that recalls Lederman'sdiscussion of Mendi (chapter 12).

Means ofdistribution: Baruya

Baruya use three means of transferring and circulating goods, which wewill call 'commercial exchanges', 'redistribution gifts' and 'substitution/compensation gifts'.

Commercial exchanges are based primarily on the production and redis- :'ftribution of salt extracted from plants and processed by evaporation intocrystallised bars. Planting the salt cane in fields, irrigating and cutting thecane are man's work, performed by the owner of the salt field. Filtering thesalt is usually men's work, but nowadays, as the men are often away, theowner's wife or his daughters may do this job. But crystallising the salt,building the salt ovens, and such remain men's work and calls for a specialist. Baruya trade their salt for bark-cloth capes, stone blades, bird-ofparadise feathers, cowry necklaces, charms and sometimes even piglets; it

285An unfinished attempt

ditions. If any light is to be thrown on these conditions, we must followLemonnier's example (chapter 1) and identify the various forms competitive exchange may assume. There are three possibilities: in somecases, donors compete with each other in giving, but they are not incompetition with those to whom they give; in other cases, donors do notcompete among themselves, but with those who receive; combining thesetwo forms gives those cases in which donors compete both among themselves and with those to whom they give.

3 Finally, whatever may be the form of competition, a distinction must bemade between competition among friendly groups and that amonghostile groups. Hagen (chapter 11) represents the upper limit on thegraduated scale of social space occupied by competition. Hagen donorscompete among themselves and with those to whom they give, and theyprefer to vie in gift-giving with hostile groups rather than with groups ofallies. Therefore, having seen that the functions and importance of thebig man are more highly developed in societies in which competitiveexchange prevails over other means of redistributing wealth, we mustseek the reasons behind both the dominance of this form ofexchange andthe development of the big man's attributes.But competitive exchange is only one of several means of redistributing

goods and wealth. Its importance is to be appreciated by measuring thespace it occupies with respect to all the other forms of redistribution andcircul~tionof goods coexisting within anyone society. This leads to a comparison of the several means of redistributing goods in Papua New Guinea,and we start with the Baruya, who are a good example of a great-mensociety.

Big men and great men284


can thus be exchanged for goods as varied as charms or the means of production or destruction, and can be an essential element in sealing politicalor matrimonial alliances. Trading expeditions to neighbouring tribes or thewelcoming of outside trading partners are initiatives undertaken by men.For the exchange value of salt rests on one essential fact: salt contains amagical force. It nourishes human liver, the site of this force, and is anessential support of all ritual acts and initiations. To produce salt andexchange it, for the Baruya, is to produce a magical force and redistributeit within their own group or in neighbouring tribes.

The items Baruya obtain by trading salt are put into circulation withinthe tribe either as 'redistribution gifts' or as 'substitution gifts'. These giftsare made at critical times in the lives of individuals or the group: birth,initiation, marriage, death, suicide, war, sacrifice to spirits, intertribalalliance.

Goods obtained through accumulation and redistribution includequantities of food (taro, sweet potatoes, greens, game), clothing (bark-

*" cloth capes, aprons), adornments, feathers, shells and salt. Let us take theexample of game. When a woman gives birth, her husband, brothers,brothers-in-law and other male relatives go hunting and send a large portion of game back to the birthing hut, where the woman is sequestered. Sheeats part and redistributes the rest to the women and children of the village.Even more important are the gifts of game made by the initiated men to theboys undergoing the rituals marking the various stages of initiation. All thisgame-giving clearly means intensified hunting; the big collective initiationsmobilise hundreds of men, who go out for sometimes two or three weeks inorder to amass the huge amounts of game that will be cooked andredistributed at the ceremonies marking the close of the initiations. Womenparticipate in these big hunts by carrying into the forest the many sweetpotatoes needed to feed the members of the expedition. They may alsosometimes be used in the course of the hunt as beaters.

Game is, then, essentially a product of men's work and is the object ofredistribution among men and women, on the other hand, at differentstages in marriage, birth and so on; and between men and boys, on the otherhand, during the big initiation ceremonies. But, in the course of these ceremonies, great quantities of other goods are also amassed and redistributed: taro eaten at the initiation meals; clothing made by the women,which they give to the young initiates among their kin; and so forth. Thereis some rivalry as to who will give the most food to a newly initiated relative.And the young initiates take pride in the thickness of their pubic aprons, forthe thicker it is, the more women, kin or in-laws, worked on it.

Substitution gifts are precious objects which are exchanged as a compen-

sation or a substitution for someone's life. Compensation and substitutionare the main functions of this form of gift-giving. Here are some illustrations. As we have seen, Baruya sometimes exchange salt and other forms .*"of wealth as bridewealth for a woman when contracting ail alliance withtrading partners. Moreover, when a woman is murdered or when someonecommits suicide, the tribe presents the maternal lineage with salt or, today,money to compensate the death and to prevent the spirit of the deceasedfrom taking revenge. Or when a deadly conflict between two segments of alineage forces one of them to seek refuge with allies and request integrationinto their lineage, a ceremony is performed in the course of which the alliesmake a present of a 'bridge' of salt and other forms of wealth to the lineagewhose members they are about to absorb. This gift also confirms the factthat the individuals who have left their original lineage have, in so doing,lost their rights over their ancestors' lands and belongings.

In this category ofgifts might be classed the presents given a shaman whohas rid someone's body and mind of attacks by evil forces. Although ashaman never makes an explicit request, he drops hints to the person he hashealed as to what he would like: bars of salt, bark-cloth capes - not quitethe same thing as payment for a service but almost. A final form of substitution is practised rarely; in certain cases of severe epidemics or series ofmysterious deaths, shamans perform a ceremony during which they burythe leg of a pig killed for the occasion. This rare example of an offering toevil spirits implies a sacrifice.

The example gives us an opportunity to clarify the function of pigs inBaruya society. The exchange of live pigs is also rare. Sometimes Baruyawill exchange a piglet for some bark-cloth capes, arrows ela borately carvedby a neighbouring tribe or even for a stone adze. Or - not a gift but ratheran exchange of services - a woman often entrusts one of her sisters orfemale cousins with raising a young sow from which she will get back halfof each litter. Such a reciprocal exchange lessens the risk of losing pigs todisease. Most pigs, however, circulate in the form of cooked meat. Thesegifts of meat go on constantly between blood relations and in-laws. Porkrarely figures in ritual initiation meals, with the possible exception ofceremonies which took place in times of war. In this case, it was dangerousto go hunting because the forest was full of hostile groups. And so thefamilies of the boys about to undergo their first initiation would kill a pigand donate it to be cooked and shared at the closing ceremony of the firststage initiation (mouka).

Each Baruya family raises pigs which it withholds from the consumption 1circuit for several years. A woman usually looks after three or four adultpigs and five or six piglets. From time to time, especially when the herd gets


big, two brothers-in-law, with their wives' consent, each kill two or threegrown pigs. The deboned pigs are all baked whole in one big cooking-pit;when the pit is opened, the meat is taken out and shared. A portion of theliver is sent ,to the village men's house for the initiates. The rest is consumedexclusively by men. The men quarter the pig, and then make up lots, usuallytaking into consideration the recommendations of their wives, who areconstantly telling them to whom they must send pieces of meat. The meatis distributed to all the in-laws, who redistribute it in turn.

These exceptional pig killings are done at the instigation of the families*'alone, and serve a.bove ~ll their ~"':~ in,terests. They are not, however, without some connectIOn with male mitiation and the symbolic practices whichgo into the making of the men's domination of women. These connectionsappear in the portion of cooked liver that is given to the initiates living inthe men's house as well as in the fact that the tongue and the internal organsconsidered impure by Baruya, are reserved for the women. But the primar;purpose of these redistributions of meat is to confirm marriage alliancesand blood ties. Thus, when the parents of a little boy who is not yet initiatedwant to let the family of a little girl know they would like her to be theirs~n's f~ture bride, they send them portions of cooked meat each time theykill a pig. If they are accepted, these repeated gifts commit the families to afuture marriage alliance.

1" 'It must be stressed that the Baru~a raise a goodly number of pigs andwould be perfectly capable of creatmg adequate material conditions forpromoting competitive exchanges of live pigs. But they do not do sobecause it is not a social necessity. On the contrary, they emphasise thecirculation of game, a resource whose access is restricted to men and whichtests their powers in the spheres of magic and hunting, two attributes ofmale superiority. The same is true for salt, the production of which dependson the know-how and magic of the salt-makers.

Competitive gift-giving among the Baruya does exist, however. Givingmore, game, more adornments, more aprons, more taro than others bringsprestige to the donors. But this prestige is not transformed directly intosocial power, into authority over others. And it is significant that, whenBaruya families kill a dozen pigs that they have saved up for the occasion,they are very discreet about it. They cook the animals and redistribute thepieces out of the sight of onlookers. And, in the village, everyone pretendsto be unaware and takes care not to be around when the cooking pit isopened and t~e pieces divided. Those who have a right to a piece expect it,but no one will come around for it. In short, there is no social basis norspace in Baruya society for the creation and development of competitiveexchanges of live pigs.

Means ofdistribution: Duna

Duna stand in marked contrast to the Baruya. Following from chapter 13,I also refer to Modjeska's earlier ethnography (e.g. 1982), which I examinein the light of the preceding distinctions between commercial exchanges,compensation/substitution gifts and redistribution gifts.

In their commercial exchanges (yoloya), Duna trade pigs for axes, salt,shells, magic formulas and even land. They keep this type of exchangeseparate from transactions implying gifts as a substitutefor human lives ordeaths, such as bridewealth or compensation (damba) for the death ofallied warriors killed in battle.

As far as marriage is concerned, Duna recognise two co-existing principles of exchange: the exchange of wealth for women and the exchange ofwomen for women. The latter is sometimes practised between two menwho not only exchange bridewealth, but give each other their sisters inmarriage. But just what is the principle of bridewealth? For the Duna, thepayment is made up of four sows and some ten smaller pigs to which areadded lengths of shells and other precious goods. Sometimes one of the pigsmay be replaced by shells. The gift is received by the bride's family and isredistributed by her father to the men who gave him the pigs to make up thebridewealth for his own marriage.

Modjeska raises some questions about the meaning of this bridewealth,since among the cognatically inclined Duna, men do not have exclusiverights over women's work or over their children, and protest that they donot exchange pigs for the sexual relations they have with their wives. But,in fact, Modjeska recalls that the Duna expression 'to eat the wife's vagina'means the redistributing of the wife's bridewealth pigs among the men. Itis true that children 'belong' to the maternal as well as to the paternal line,and that each spouse has the right to use the other's lands. But one gets theimpression that Duna have a marked tendency to prefer and to consolidatethe relations men share with each other through the male line despite thecognatic principles that govern their world of kinship. This could explainwhy Duna reject any direct and immediate correspondence between thegoods paid as bridewealth and rights over children or women's work. Theonly thing they are prepared to recognise explicitly is that they have rightsover the bridewealth that will be paid to each of their daughters. They do,however, claim the right to do as they see fit with the pigs raised by theirwife and, should the occasion arise, those raised by their mother and sisters.

The production of pigs for bridewealth is, then, one sphere in which thereis a certain amount of male competition. In contributing to the bridewealthof a friend or relative, for example, they are not only investing in the future


but also reap immediate prestige and gratitude. Yet accumulating pigs isalso a necessity in order to intervene in contexts that go well beyond marriage: ancestor sacrifices and compensation for allied war dead. I brieflyrecall these various forms of circulation of wealth.

War siphons off some of the pigs produced by the Duna, as pigs are givento the family of each warrior - friend or ally - who dies in battle. Compensation (damba) is extremely high, up to thirty pigs per death, and no one is·exempt from this obligation. Let us pause here and note that the warriorswhose death receives compensation are allies, not enemies. One wonders ifthis compensation might not be fulfilling two functions at once: silencingthe lamentations of the deceased's kin, but also, and perhaps above all,warding off their anger and keeping these allies from becoming tomorrow'senemies. Left alone, the situation could easily revert to an eye for an eye anda tooth for a tooth; the uncompensated death of an ally would be repaid notwith wealth, but with the death of one of your own warriors. In this sense,the damba is both a compensation and a substitution: a gift of wealth tocompensate the death of an ally today and to prevent a death of your owntomorrow.

The practice of paying compensation for war dead is, along with malecontributions to the bridewealth of a brother or a friend, one of the bases,perhaps the main one, on which a man becomes a big man; for no war canbe declared unless some man undertakes to place his pigs at the disposal ofhis group for the compensation of the deaths the battle will entail. This manmust, of course, be wealthy (anoa kango) and be able to count on contributions from other members of his local group or groups with which he isaffiliated. This means that he must know how to amass personal wealthand, when the time comes, have access to the wealth of others. When thisman commits his pigs to the war effort, he is called wei tse: the 'foundationof-the-war' man. He is also a warrior, perhaps even a great warrior, but heneed not be a 'fight leader'. He must, of course, be able to convince, and sohe is a good speaker. When two or three wars have been crowned with success, a wei tse becomes a anoa yaka pukuo, a 'man-with-a-name'.

For the Duna, then, war played an essential role in the emergence of bigmen to the extent that the principle of equivalence, warrior-for-warrior,death-for-death, did not obtain, and wealth was used as a substitute fordeath, and so for human life. Duna apply the same principle of nonequivalence of the nature of realities exchanged when they give wealth forwomen, thereby acquiring the rights over the wealth this woman'sdaughters will bring in when they marry.

On the theoretical level, the important point is that war and the ensuingcompensatory payments form a basis for the emergence of a big man with-

out competitive intergroup exchanges proper, since damba payments forwar dead do not involve a payment in return. Compensation/substitutiongifts did exist, but they were never connected into a chain of competitiveexchanges. And yet wei tse lived in a state of competition among themselves, the most visible symptom of which were their constant mutual accusations of sorcery. Moreover, if we pursue Modjeska's line of thought, theDuna never waged war, as was sometimes the case with the Baruya, withan eye to conquering part of the neighbour's territory. War was used toavenge insults, accusations of sorcery. One gets the impression that warwas almost an excuse to compensate the allied warriors killed in battle.

Yet marriage- or war-related gift-giving were not the only Duna paths toprestige and authority. A man could also become a 'man-with-a-name' bycompleting the three steps of the Kiria cult, a panlocal cult in honour of theancestress of the Duna: this woman left the land of Ok in search of a pig;everywhere she slept along the way, she marked the spot; there the Dunalater erected houses for her worship, Kiria. I would like to make a fewremarks on the Duna cult system such as Modjeska has reconstructed it forus here. Modjeska has himself compared this system with the symbolic andreligious world of the Baruya as it can be seen in male and female initiationand I comment on this point as well.

The Duna religious world is made up of a combination of threeensembles: the Kiria cult, the worship of spirits and ancestors (auwi) andthe Palena cult, reserved for young bachelors. The first two appear to beinterc;nnected, since the officiants of the local auwi cults are liruali, laststage initiates of the Kiria cult. The Kiria supplied a framework for ideological integration and the creation of 'ethnic' solidarity among all Duna,the equivalent of the Baruya initiation system, symbolised by the tsimia.

It should be noted - and this points up differences between Baruya andDuna practices in matters of worship, war and marriage exchanges - thatBaruya see themselves as a separate group, opposed to other local groupsof the same language and culture, and that these local groups are notlineages, villages or parishes, as in Duna social organisation, but moreencompassing ensembles which I call tribes. Now, Duna have no tribalreality of this sort, no collective identity midway between the local group,village, lineage and the Duna society as a linguistic and cultural whole. TheDuna as a group have no common material and political interests, whereasthe Baruya do. What is expressed in the Kiria cult is merely the ideologicalunity of all Duna, and the common interest all Duna men share in monopolising access to their common ancestress, the mythical woman from theland of Ok, thereby excluding from the cult all Duna women.

What strikes me, in the Duna world, is the struggle between their


cognatic principles and practices and institutions whose function - ideologically and socially - is to restrict access to supernatural powers and theancestors for men only. These efforts seem to result in a very strong tendency to construct, within a cognatically organised world, lineage-likegroups or quasi-lineages which go through males. This is why the Duna saythat only men become the ancestors whose spirits protect or threaten theirmale or female living descendants, a thesis in direct contradiction with themyth which tells that all Duna descend from an original woman.

Unlike the wei tse, whose repeated gifts in support of wars make him a'man-with-a-name', the liruali of the Kiria cult also becomes a 'man-witha-name', but this name is known only to the Duna. The liruali is, then, theequivalent of the Baruya great man, master of the male initiation ceremonies, owner of a kwaimatnie (the sacred object which makes men growand ensures fertility), a man whose name must be kept secret from neighbouring tribes.

In order for a Ouna to join any of the various cults, he must volunteer oneor several pigs; this practice does not exist among the Baruya, since everyone, without exception, must undergo initiation, rich and poor alike. In theKiria cult, the pig-giving stops there. But this is not at all the case for theauwi cults, which occasion massive pig kills and widespread redistributionof the meat, shared out equally among the male and female descendants ofthe ancestor being honoured and appeased.

For the Ouna, the fertility of the earth and women, the growth of menand pigs, result from, are grounded (tse) in the active support of the ancestors, which can be withdrawn at any time. Socially difficult situations arisewhen the local group ancestor has something against his descendants andbecomes angry and aggressive. Spirits and ancestors behave somewhat likecannibals. One myth tells how, in the beginning, the ancestors used to sacrifice human beings to their own auwi; today, however, their descendantssacrifice pigs to them. So, for the auwi ceremony, all descendants of theancestor thought to be at the root of the trouble gather and each contributesa pig to the sacrifice. As a result, a goodly number of the pigs produced bythe Ouna, far from going into bridewealth and compensation for war dead,sources of prestige for big men, are redistributed in the absence of any competition at all.

Finally, we must turn our attention to the last component of the Dunaideological world: the Palena cult, which fulfills a series of functions alsofound in the Baruya initiation system. Young men voluntarily join themaster of the Palena cult, a man who remains a life-long virgin because ofhis privileged relations with a female spirit believed to have mastery overthe fertility of pigs and the land, and to drive game into hunters' traps.

These young men spend a year in the forest, avoiding all contact withwomen, before returning to communal life.

A comparison between this cult and Baruya initiation sequencesimmediately reveals differences and similarities. First the differences:bachelor cults recruit volunteers; the Baruya initiations are mandatory. j:Seclusion from women lasts several months for the Ouna; it lasts nine or tenyears for the Baruya. The cult masters who celebrate Ouna ceremonies maybe outsiders, Huli for instance; masters of Baruya initiations must be members of the tribe and their functions are hereditary. They never receivematerial compensation for performing their duties, but this brings prestigeand social advantages. As for the similarities: three essential aspects oftheBaruya initiations can be found in the bachelor cults, as well as in Hagenand other fertility cults. They stem from the fact that in these rituals menlearn that women are the source of certain powers (a woman-spirit, thewoman ancestor, the women who became the star Venus), but that they arealso the source of pollution, of the destruction of men's powers, especiallythrough sexual relations. By separating men and women for a period,initiations and cults accomplish three purposes. They teach men to over-"*,come the duality of the female world, source of life and death. The make itpossible for them to appropriate or (imaginarily) control women's powersand add them to their own, thereby constructing the ideology of men'ssuperiority over women and the superiority of male cosmic forces overfemale. Lastly, they comfort and deepen male solidarity.

Comparing the symbolic worlds of Baruya and Ouna, it seems as thoughseveral structures which the Baruya see as being fused into a single ideological and ritual whole are separated by the Ouna. The former bring aboutthe ideological and political unity of all local groups by using the same institutions: initiation which constructs and legitimises men's superiority overwomen. For the Ouna, the two functions are separate; the Kiria cult ensuresthe first, the Palena cult the second. Both societies stress the importance ofyoung men keeping their virginity in order to appropriate female powersand establish male superiority. Duna, however, do not link male virginityto homosexuality, which is forbidden. Perhaps, if we are to interpret thepresence or the prohibition of homosexuality, we should look at the detailsof the Baruya and Duna kinship systems. For, inthe cognatic Ouna system,the child is inevitably a result of the mixing of paternal and maternalsubstances, and semen cannot be regarded as the only, or even the main,source of the child's life and vigour, as is the case for the strictly patrilinealBaruya.

If it is true that the Ouna apportion to two separate cults the functionswhich the Baruya integrate into a single system, why do they do so? Once


again I feel we should look at the kinship relations and especially at whetherthe driving mechanism of marriage is the direct exchange of sisters betweenmen or bridewealth.

In Baruya culture, the direct exchange of women between men supposesan ideological and social coercion exercised directly on the person of thewoman. It seems to me that this requires the construction of a collectivemale force to stand behind the individual man whenever he must exchangeone of the women he controls directly (his sisters or daughters). This collective force is what is created by male initiation, which builds a solidarityamong men that overrides any existing differences or opposition there maybe among lineages or villages. But this collective force is also an ideologicalworld, a world shared by women as well as men. And in fact this sharing isbrought about by female initiation. This is the door through which theworld of male domination enters female consciousness, adding the weightof this sharing to the other economic, social and physical forces which mencontrol.

The first principle of Duna marriage is the exchange of wealth forwomen. This principle, which is of only minimal importance for theBaruya, is not practised within the group but with outsiders, and profoundly modifies the conditions of men's social control of women and theelders' of the younger. The control becomes to a certain extent indirect,since direct control over access to wealth means indirect control over thosewho might use it to produce or reproduce social relations. It is this newsocial force, the role played in social relations by wealth, that I feel makesit less important to construct a mechanism of male domination through aninstitution which must be imposed on all young people, namely initiation.

Competition and the mechanisms of transformation

Having come this far in my comparison between Baruya and Duna, severaltheoretical points strike me. Looking at the Duna, we have seen an enormous increase in the importance of the production and circulation of pigsfor social purposes, since they are used to found kinship relations, to makepeace and hence war, and periodically to re-establish the unity and identityof local groups by sacrificing to the founding ancestors. The increase in thesocial importance of pigs may well have been the driving force behind theextension of the principle of exchange of wealth for women and the nearextinction of direct exchange of women.

Now what social mechanism might provide the link between the extinction of the direct exchange of women and the extension of the use of wealthfor social purposes, and in particular wealth accumulated in the form of live

An unfinished attempt 295

or dead pigs? One hypothesis would be that, given the division of labour inNew Guinea, extension of pig production implied an increased workloadfor the men, but even more for the women. As the use of pigs for social purposes spread, men's power came more and more to rest on their capacity tocontrol the work force of women and to deprive them even more completely of the social use of the products of their labour.

This would seem to point to an extension of polygamy or its generalisation among 'apprentice' big men. For although direct exchange of sistersdoes not forbid polygamy, it does impose serious restrictions. It is out of thequestion for a Baruya man to exchange all his sisters for himself, leaving hisbrothers with no means of obtaining wives. But this is only a relative objection, since a Baruya man may take a wife without giving a sister, promisingto give one of his daughters instead. Whatever may be the case, once theequivalent to a woman becomes a certain amount of wealth that is produced, as is the case of pigs (produced) versus game (not produced), thenthe limits of polygamy implied by the direct exchange of women are overcome; and this is accomplished by social mechanisms which make it possible for a few men to concentrate more wealth than others. For having morewives requires amassing more wealth. But these mechanisms also set otherlimits on the unequal access men have to the use of wealth as an equivalentof social relations.

Something bothers me in this theoretical argument, however; in order fora man to take his first wife in a bridewealth society, he must be able to dispose of the products of the labour of women to whom he is not married: hissisters, mother, female cousins or the wives of his brothers and friends. Thisis true regardless of the importance of polygamy in his society. Modjeska'sdata points in this direction, as he cites the case of one big man who hadnine wives, and in another place stresses that Horalienda big men are rarelypolygamous. Whether there is a link between amassing wealth andpolygamy, then, remains up for discussion.

In any case, I want to state my position on the weight kinship relationsmay have in transformation affecting social logics. I do not believe that theextension or the extinction of a kinship system can be traced to causes orforces within the system. These causes and forces make their appearance inother spheres of social life, in economic or other transformations, whichalter the social differences within the group or bring it into conflict withneighbouring or enemy groups over use of the surrounding environment. Iwould be more tempted to look among the mechanisms linking wealth andsacrifices, or wealth and war, for an explanation of why one kinship systemceases to prevail and another takes over. But to date, these mechanismshave barely been glimpsed.

-------------------------.1

The foregoing analyses seem to be heading in this direction, however.For, in the Duna case, we have the example of a society in which the production of pigs has undergonf: vast expansion, not because some system ofcompetitive exchange is fostering the emergence of big men; but because,alongside thebridewealth needed for matrimonial alliances, war and thecompensation required for political alliances and, even more important,sacrifice to the ancestors - the renewal of the spiritual alliance between theliving and the dead, humans and spirits - imply the consuming of this typeof wealth. .

It follows, therefore, that big men can indeed appear before there is anysystem of competitive exchange and that kinship and war are sufficientconditions for their emergence. But it must also be pointed out that, alongside great men who look very much like big men, are Duna great men wholook like Baruya masters of initiations, except that the latter inherit theirsacred powers whereas there seems to be no proof that the secrets of theDuna cults are transmitted hereditarily. Modjeska does suggest, though,that at an earlier time the Duna probably had lineages which were thehereditary 'owners' of the magic elements of the Kiria cult. At this level, theBaruya and Duna systems of power can be seen to bear some resemblancewith one another.

I see an irreducible difference, however, in the contrast between the Dunawei tse, who derives his fame from using his wealth in the service of peace- and hence war - by compensating allied war dead, and the Baruyaaaulatta, whose renown stems from the number of enemy warriors he haskilled in personal combat. And behind the Baruya aaulatta stands thetannaka, the great and often polygamous gardener who puts the productsof his garden at the disposal of all, but in order that the fighting may continue and not to compensate the death of allied warriors.

The question is, then, under what circumstances a man can derive famesimultaneously from killing enemies by his own hand and using his ownwealth to compensate the death of friendly warriors. Lemonnier has shownthat this twin figure of the warrior-wealthy man who uses his wealth in theservice of peace, the wei tse, can be found in many Papua New Guinea societies, and particularly in the Eastern Highlands. He sees this twin figure asa type of 'leader' midway between the Baruya great man and the Hagen bigman. In this hypothesis, the Duna belong to a widespread group ofsocietieswhich combine aspects of both great-men and big-men societies.

But big-men societies seem to be more rare than I had thought. Theirscarcity would seem to stem from the fact that in these societies there aretrue working competitive exchanges which, by means of gifts and countergifts, confront members of both the same tribe and different tribes within

the same regional network. The emergence of competitive exchangesremains far me a fact which needs explaining. But it already seems clear thatit is this that prompts the expansion of the big man's functions and instateshim as the dominant, if not unique, figure of social power. Indeed, it is asthough the birth and development of these systems of competitiveexchange not only eliminated once and for all the principle of directexchange of women, but caused the rituals and cults which ensured theideological integration of the group to lose importance. The colonial peacewas probably not entirely responsible for the flourishing competitiveexchanges that can be seen in Enga and Hagen.

Competitive exchange seems, then, to be a peculiar phenomenon, notone that caused the big-man figure to emerge but was probably the condition for his pre-eminence. The problem is to discover what conditionsdetermined the appearance and development of the giving of gifts andcountergifts (equal to or greater than the gifts) which combined into a seriesof practices to form a system within which a struggle for prestige andauthority might be carried on among individuals as well as among localgroups.

We have no solution to this problem. All we can do for the time being isto formulate it in terms which provide for continuity with the foregoinganalyses. It seems to me that the emergence of these systems implies, first ofall, that the conflicts within a local group and the power struggles whichdepen9 on inequalities in the production or accumulation of wealth can nolonger be contained by making sacrifices to abstract powers, ancestors,spirits held to be responsible for conflicts among the living. Competitionwithin the group must have once been much more highly developed thanthat observed in Duna society, where in times of crisis a large proportion oftheir wealth is destroyed in ancestor sacrifices.

But what could lead to the growth of competition within a group andbring its members to prefer circulating pigs in contests of gift and countergift to the periodical destruction and ritual consumption of pig-wealth?Perhaps all possible references to ancestors or spirits must have disappeared in order for explanations of conflicts to be sought among theliving. But it should be remembered that, in great-men societies like theBaruya, the presence of ancestors in the lineage carries little weight and isnot a major factor in interpreting the causes of conflict among the living.Another prerequisite might be a growing interest in seeking wives, andtherefore allies, outside one's local group or tribe. What are the mechanisms which might encourage a preference for marrying out of one'sgroup rather than looking within, the inverse of B)c\lya or Telefolminpractice? The problem is still to understand how the development of



[rL

competition within groups leads to the institution ofcompetitive exchangesystems between local groups or tribes.

One remark must be made here: although these systems constitute a formof peaceful struggle using economic means, the latter have not done awaywith warfare, 'and could not have done so. They exist parallel to war; butto the extent that war is a threat to the wealth and the men involved in theexchange, it endangers their functioning. It could be assumed, then, asintertribal competitive gift-giving gained ground, warfare progressivelybecame a subordinate activity and finally encountered a social limit to .itsdevelopment.

But if competitive exchanges both restrict warfare and partially replaceit, it may be legitimate to wonder if they were not developed for that purpose, to restrict warfare by replacing it. One would then have to presumethat, in certain societies where big men already made gifts of pigs to contract marriage alliances or to preserve politico-military ones, pressure to

engage in war had increased to such a degree that the problem arose of finding a partial substitute. This pressure would have then to be maintained,providing the permanent driving force behind the development of networks of intertribal competitive exchange.

Or, following a different line of reasoning, one might imagine anotherprocess which would provide an equally convincing explanation of whynetworks ofcompetitive exchanges persisted and developed beyond the circumstances and pressures responsible for their birth. For the principle ofunequal exchange which governs these competitions implies that, oncethey have appeared and have become embodied in a network conjoiningnumbers of individuals and groups, they automatically begin reproducingthemselves by the giving of gifts and countergifts, and escalation leads totheir spread. These networks would then follow the logic inherent in theirfunctioning and become independent of the conditions of their origin; andit is therefore not necessary that pressure to make war be maintained at thesame level in order to explain their persistence and expansion. Whatevercircumstances may have surrounded his birth, it is clear that the emergingbig man acquired a definitive advantage over the great warrior or the greatmagician and could afford to no longer be a warrior, choosing instead to bean orator, a manipulator of men and a financier.

Yet this whole line of reasoning assumes that we have the answers to twoquestions: the first, for what reasons did the pressure to make war increasein certain societies; and the second, why was the response not simply tomake more war? It can be assumed that an increase in warfare would haveendangered other aspects of social life and conflicted with other interests.But which ones and how? It is up to us to imagine these answers, taking as

our starting point the social logics and representations of several PapuaNew Guinea populations. This answers the second question. But whatabout the first; what, in those societies in which big men warriors alongwith other great men were important figures, and in which the productionand the circulation of pigs were already closely tied to the production ofkinship relations and of politico-military relations among groups, couldhave been the reasons behind an increase in the pressure to make war?

Perhaps the time has come to talk about the introduction of the sweetpotato. It must be kept in mind that, while its introduction does not explainthe appearance of big men and the structures they represent, it must certainly have amplified the mechanisms which had long since developed inconnection with pre-sweet potato economies. How much credibility can beaccorded the causal chain a number of authors, from Watson to Modjeska,have imagined and which I summarise as follows?

According to these authors, the sweet potato initiated the developmentof more productive agricultural methods and facilitated the expansion ofboth human and porcine populations. It also enabled local groups toexploit a wider spectrum of the ecosystem and to live in greater numbers inthe higher but colder valleys. These phenomena were followed by increaseddeforestation in some areas, which resulted in a relative falling-off ofgame,or less availability because animals were driven back by the expansion ofcultivated land. And yet these resources were the traditional source of thefeathers, fur or game needed in the ritual exchanges within the tribe or fortrading purposes.

This situation is supposed to have brought more groups or groups whosenumbers had increased into the most deforested zones, and forced them topractise more intensive forms of agriculture. In short, all these mechanismscould have added up in one way or another to putting greater pressure ongroups to police their territories. That could have been the reason for theincrease in the amount and intensity of warfare which forced them to produce more wealth in order to compensate the warriors from neighbouringallied tribes who died in common battles with other neighbours. Now therelative drop in hunting resources would not have eliminated the social,cultural need for the feathers and furs used in the ritual ceremonies markingthe differences in social status, social distinctions between individuals andgroups. But it could have stimulated intertribal commercial exchanges andforced people to rely more heavily on pigs as a medium of exchange, sincethey were already used as a substitute in the case of bridewealth, or as compensation to keep the peace.

In short, these various processes might have prompted certain societiesto carry the social use of pigs yet a step further and employ wealth to


compensate not only the death of allied warriors but that of enemy warriorsas well. Perhaps, as chapter 1 suggests, it was only when groups began paying compensation for dead enemies that true competitive exchanges wereinstituted among tribes, each group being tempted to make peace in orderto ask its ~nemies for ever greater compensation for the loss of warriors,while undergoing similar pressure from the other side.

These are the broad outlines of the context which may have been thebreeding grounds of an upheaval in social logic, a fundamental transformation with respect to great-men societies: the fact that the donors of wealthtend to become superior to the recipients. For the practice of competitiveexchanges meant that a logic founded on the principle of direct exchangeof women or, where this was not the custom, one founded on the principle of equivalence in the nature or the quantity of the terms of exchangewas gone forever. We have seen that in Baruya society donors of womenare superior to recipients, and the debt incurred by the gift of a womancan only be counterbalanced by an equivalent gift in the other direction.On the other hand, when donors of wealth outrank recipients, therecipients-of-women/donors-of-bridewealth have it over the donors ofwomen.

Of course, with the generalisation of the use of pigs to reproduce agroup's internal structures as well as to ensure some of its ongoing relations~ith neighbouring groups, pig production along with that portion of theagricultural activity it entails must have increased. It is easy to see that, inthis context, women's work took on an even greater importance, while itbecame even more necessary for men to exercise direct control over theproducts of this work, since they are the ones who circulate the pigs amongthemselves and derive prestige and power from the circulation. Now, inclassless societies, once the appropriation and circulation of wealth havebecome the condition for the production of social (kinship or political)relations, it is no longer necessary to exercise direct or collective controlover individuals as physical entities. It is enough to control their access tothe wealth. In this context, the disappearance of the great male initiationand the simultaneous relative spread of female autonomy would makesense.

It is undeniable that the appearance of truly competitive exchanges ofwealth tending to fall into intertribal networks covering an entire regionboth depended upon and precipitated thoroughgoing socio-economicchanges. It is here that we see the value of Kelly's (1988) recent thesis: thatthe transfer of live pigs, as in the big competitive exchanges in the Highlands, depends on these animals having been hand fed so that they willremain with their new owner and not return to their old territory. This also

assumes that these pigs are no longer half-wild, that they do not have towander the forest to complete the ration of food the women give them everyevening (as in Baruya villages). Now for pig husbandry to become moresedentary and the animals tamer, agriculture must provide the means.Whatever the case may be, there is still a question as to which, among thesocio-economic transformations that went along with the development ofbig competitive exchanges, are the causes and which are the effects.

Finally, I shall propose an hypothesis which seems to place together themain points developed above. Competitive exchanges should reach theirfull development when and where the following social processes existand combine into a single mechanism: competition within and betweenlocal groups give more than their recipients are presumed to be able tocountergive; preference for marrying outside your own local group andchoosing your wife among enemy groups as much or even more thanamong allied groups; and compensation for the death of both allied andenemy warriors. Hagen is one society in which all these processes werecombined.

We have now corne to the end of our social-science-fiction attempt atimagining the mechanisms which might have transformed great-mensocieties into big-men societies. Our first hypothesis was that these transformations could have taken place only in societies in which marriage didnot depeIld on the existence of totally exogamous kinship groups. If this istrue, the analysis of North Mekeo (Amoamo) society, which is ideallydivided into exogamous moieties, should provide a counter-example andthus validate our experiment.

From reading Mosko's analysis of Mekeo (chapter 5), we see that it combines the two principles of exchange of women and exchange of wealth inan original way to establish matrimonial alliances. But this combinationseems to be possible only because the exchange of women is not a direct andsimultaneous exchange of sisters. In fact, we have a society conceived astwo exogamous patrilineal moieties, each of which is in turn divided intoclans which alternate exchanges of women with each other.

By rule, a man or his sister (real or classificatory) of clan A (moiety I)whose mother was of clan D (moiety II) is required to marry a person ofclan C (moiety II). And reciprocally, a man or his sister of clan C (moietyII) whose mother was of clan B (moiety I) must find his or her mate amongmembers of clan A (moiety I). Other members of clans A and C whosemothers originated in clans C and A, respectively, will have to find theirspouses among persons of clans D and B. Nonetheless, this does not resultin a direct exchange of woman for woman.

It is as though, on the overall moiety level, marriage were based on thedirect exchange of women, while on the clan level, and between lineageswhich intermarry, what is practised is not the direct exchange of womenbut the exchange of goods. In order to marry a woman from C, a man fromA must pay bridewealth made up of live pigs, shells, dog teeth, bird-ofparadise feathers, clay vessels and, today, money. The bridewealth is puttogether by the clans of the young man's father and mother and paid to theclans of the girl's father and mother. The clans of the young man's parentseach compete to contribute the most to the wealth to be given the bride'sparents. But the clans should complete their exchanges for this marriagebefore a man C (whose mother is of clan B) might marry a woman A (whosemother was ofclan D). If two men, A and C, did exchange sisters at the sametime, or if the second marriage occurred before the exchange of bridewealthfor the first was complete, then there would be no bridewealth at all. It isfor this reason the Mekeo prohibit direct and simultaneous exchange ofsisters. On the tribal level, then, it is as though marriage were based onbalanced exchanges of women and wealth between moieties, while on theclan level, the alliance is based on the principle of bridewealth and the competitive exchange of goods for women.

This example demonstrates once again that a single society may combinethe two principles of exchange, here on two separate levels, which generateat the same time a balanced exchange of women (on the global level) and acompetitive exchange of wealth between individuals from different clans(on the local level). The point recalls Strathern's discussion in chapter 11,except that in the Hagen case the global 'balancing' exchange can also beseen as competitive.

Two other aspects of Mekeo social organisation are equally importantfor our theoretical analysis: the absence of initiation involving the youngpeople of the whole tribe, initiations existing at a local, i.e. lineage and clanbased village level; and the predominance of inherited powers over achievement or merit. These powers stem from political and ceremonial functionswhich are divided among the four lineages comprising each clan: thepowers of the chief of peace, the sorcerer of peace, the chief of war and thesorcerer of war.

But what becomes of Mekeo younger sons or those who do not exercise

Moieties

Bb Dd

303An unfinished attempt

an inherited function? Are they able to gain prestige and authority by theirown merits, become big men? What must they do? and in what areas? It isobvious that my questions are prompted by Tuzin's analyses of HahitaArapesh (chapter 6). Faced with a society divided into ceremonial moietiesin which sacred powers are inherited exclusively by the elders of the clan,Tuzin suggests that there are two roads to power: that of the elders, whoinherit and who are the equivalent of the Baruya kwaimatnie men or theMekeo chief or sorcerer; and the other road, that of the younger brothers,who must leave and make something of themselves and who can at bestbecome a sort of big man.

In addition, the fact that Mekeo have no system of collective initiationseems to tie in with the fact that their kinship system alone suffices tointegrate the entire society into a whole capable of reproducing itself, sincewomen are exchanged exclusively within the tribe, between the twomoieties comprising it. This society never marries its enemies, just as itnever makes peace with them. The situation is like neither Baruya norHagen, nor even Duna. Male domination among the Mekeo is still linkedwith initiation, but they are local ceremonies, performed in the villages; andwhile they temporarily separate the boys from the girls, there is no femaleinitiation. Finally, power rests on inherited functions, but these are splitinto pairs; they undergo an abstract division in order to integrate all clansand lineages, in short all otherwise equivalent kinship groups of the society,into a h~erarchically ordered ensemble, since the functions associated withpeace dominate those associated with war. From one point of view, thisdivision of functions into hereditary, complementary, hierarchical, makesthe Mekeo a sort of chiefdom with no (paramount) chief, as on Kiriwina.

From another point of view, the Trobriand Island chief looks like both asuper big man and a super great man (d. chapter 2). In the big-man role, heis the principal partner in the competitive Kula Ring exchanges. Like theBaruya great man, master of initiations and heir to the sacred ancestralobjects and powers, he has the power to multiply resources and make themen grow. The figure of the Kiriwina chief would seem even to fuse the twologics which in the Highlands are separated. And compared with Mekeo,the Trobriand chief's clan seems to concentrate functions and powerswhich, in other cultures, are divided among the clans that comprise thesociety.

From yet another point of view, a comparison between Papua NewGuinea great-men or big-men societies and the hierarchically orderedsocieties of Vanuatu analysed by Jolly (chapter 3) reveals yet another logic.In the more stratified societies of Vanuatu, men who have reached theupper ranks of the secret societies are highly respected and enjoy such

Cc

II

Aa

Big men and great men

Clans

302

i'304 Big men and great men

power that like the Polynesian Chief of Tikopia they may temporarilyforbid other members of society the use of such vital resources as the landor the sea. But on Vanuatu, access to secret societies requires first of allaccumulating and redistributing or sacrificing pigs whose productiondepends primarily on the work of men, unlike the big-men societies of theHighlands. For in Vanuatu, pigs are raised to produce not only pork, butthose famous precious curved tusks which subsequently enter into otherexchanges. Pigs are, then, both living beings and precious objects. This isperhaps why raising them is men's rather than women's work.

Having run my course, I have one last question. What possible logic canlead to someone regarding a pig, a shell, a curved tusk as the equivalent ofa human life; the life of a woman, of a warrior, of a living being threatenedby man-eating deadmen, in short, the preferred support for exchangeamong human beings, on the one hand, and between the latter and the gods,on the other?

It is not possible to replace human beings, living or dead, by objects orliving things without first reifying social relations. In order to understandthe logic behind these substitutions, then, we must pry open the black boxof the psychic and sociological mechanisms which transform concrete relations between human beings into abstract relations between realities theyimagine. For social relations to become reified, one precondition must befulfilled; people must alienate themselves by their representations, theymust become strangers to themselves by their thought process, they mustuse thought to institute distances which separate them within their society.But by alienating themselves by means of thought, people also producetheir social self, since they produce some of the concrete organising principles of their society, their reality. What can it be, then, that drives personsto invent themselves by becoming alien through thought and alienatedwithin society, trapped between representations which become fetishesand social relations which become things?

Translated by Nora Scott

1I

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Index

abutu (Kalauna, competitive exchange),40,45,46

achieved status, 28, 32Afek,254affinal relationships (Mendi), 221,

224-5, 228, 232nnaffines, 24; (Duna), 238, 242,251agency (Hagen), 210; (Mendi), 219, 229agnates, 239, 242; female, 222, 224, 225,

228; male, 221, 224, 228, 231agriculture, 24, 236, 239, 240,251agricultural surplus, 240alliance, 19-20, 30, 38, 40; (Duna), 235,

242,253; groups, 218, 225, 229,231

ancestors, 236, 245-50, 254, 284, 294,295,297

Anga, 15ff., 267, 270; also see Baruyaanoa hani (Duna, man active in

exchange), 242, 244, 253anoa kango (Duna, wealthy man), 243,

244,253aoulatta (Baruya, great warrior), 231,

282,296articulation (with capitalism), 144, 155ascribed status, 28, 31-2, 33, 39asymmetrical relationships, 218, 223,

227,229; see increment; balance, lackof autonomy

asymmetrical structure, 31,34,35,37,38,40,43,44; relations, 202

Austronesian, 34, 35, 41, 45; affinities,77-8; Austronesian vs non Austronesian,98

authority, 28, 39,41,97-114Awa,27n

bachelors (Duna), 245, 246; cults, 247,252

Baktaman,llff.

balance, 207,216, 220, 227, 228; lackof, 221, 227; see equivalence

baptism, 236Barok, see Usen BarokBaruya, 275-304, 173ff., 29, 32, 45, 99,

108-11,113,115-16,132,198,234-6,238-9,243-52,257,261,263-4,266-70; compared withMendi,215-16,217,222,223,226,227-8,232n,233n

bau a (Kaluli, 'initiation'), 245Bena-Bena, 11ff., 279betrayals (Baruya), 236, 239big man, businessman-like qualities of,

219; contrasted with great men,28-33,38,41,42,44,142-55,212-15,218,219,220,221,225,231,238-43,248,251,253; publicperformances of, 228, 223, 225-6,228,230,231

big-manisation, colonial process of, 46,47

big-manship, 216, 222-3, 226, 230,232n; and collectivity, 221, 230, 231

big-man societies, 28-34, 37, 38,41,44,46,47,97,98,99,104,108,109,110,112,113; kinds of, 216, 221,223,224-6,231-2,238,241,250-1,254,275-6,280,303,304

birth order (I1ahita), 118, 122-3, 128n,129n

blood (Mekeo), 100, 102, 104, 107-9,111,112

bridewealth, 11, 15, 104, 105, 106, 112,165,217,222-4,237,252,277,280,281,288,294,302; and reciprocity,229; as sister-exchange, 229; (Daribi),165; (Gimi), 174-96; (Hagen), 206-9;(Telefomin), 256, 262-6

brotherhood, idiom of, 229

321

322 Index Index 323

brothers, see siblingsburial, see mortuary'business', 219, 220

Captain Cook, 232ncargo cult (Yafar),' 130,132,133,135,

138-9; movements, 248cash economy, see commoditycassowary, food taboo on, 250; in myths,

247categories, analytical, 99,100,106,108,

113categories, comparative, 97-8, 99,

112-14chief, 28, 29, 32, 34-8, 44, 46,142-55;

(Trobriand) paramount chief, 303;(~ekeo)ofpeace,ofwar,302

chiefs, chieftainships, and chiefdoms, 29,33-5,37,45,47,97,98,101-4,107,109,112,113,114;Polyne~an,304;

without (paramount) chief, 303, withchief, 276, 303, 304

Chimbu, 9ff., 240, 241; see SimbuChristianity, 235clan events (~endi), 221, 223,224,225,

228,229,230,231, 233n;andexchange network relationship of,225-6,227-32

c1anship (Hagen), 206-9, 210; (~endi),215,220-1,224; as problematic, 226,230-2; see collectivity, agnates

classification, 97, 98,112,113-14climate, 251cognatic kin, 243collectivity, 199,229, 233n, constituting

of, 228-9, 231; as male, 224,232colonialism, 37, 41, 46, 76, 246colonial control (Duna), 235, 243commemorative distributions, 236commodity economy, 37, 46, 217, 219,

237,238,240comparative approach, 7-27, 55, 66ff.,

161-3,197,216,219,221,223,226,231-2,238,251; method, 216-18

compensation payments (Duna), 235-8,242-3,253, 254-5; (~endi),224,225,229

competition, 7-27,130-41,215-16,220,226-7; see increment, 294, 301;between donors only, 285; betweendonors and recipients, 285

complex structure, 29, 31, 32, 36, 38, 40,41,43-6

conception, 13; (~ekeo), 106-8, 109,111-12,113; (Telefolmin), 266-8

confederacy, 147control, of cult objects, 236, 246; of

material resources, 243, 254; ofsymbolic capital, 254; of symbolicmeans of reproduction, 250-1

cross cousin marriage, see marriageCrow system, 31, 38Crow-Omaha systems, 31, 38cult, 11, 14; houses, 246; objects

(Baruya) kwaimatnie, 236, 246-50;(Duna) auwi, 236, 245, 246, 247,250; kiria (see under kiria), palena(see under palena), regional, 247,252; secrecy in, 247; see male cult

cultural capital, reproduction of, 245,249; elaboration, 242; factors inhistory, 239; repro-duction, 245

Damene Cultural Centre (Huli), 254Dani,llff.Daribi, 11ff., 159-73death, as basis for compensation pay

ments, 237,242; due to warfare, 243de-conception (~ekeo), 107-9, 111,

113d'Entrecasteaux Islands, 38, 39descent, 34, 38, 39, 41-4,148,150,152;

by sex affiliation, 152; groups:partially endogamous, 278;residential, 278; matrilineal, 34, 35,38,41,42; patrilineal, 39, 100-10,112

detachability, of wealth from the body,252

development, political, 216-18, 226,231-2

devolution, 31, 34,44,45, 77discipline, self-imposed in production,

252discourse, field of, 242disenchantment, 236, 248, 252-3distancing or displacement, social

process of, 242, 254; see substitutiondivision of ceremonial labours, 241dominance, 217; material and symbolic,

238,254; and subordination, ingender relations, 249, 252, 254;habitus of, 236

domination (~ekeo), 110-12, 113; ofmen over women, 288, 293, 294, 295,303

donors/recipients, of women, 280; ofgifts, of wealth, 211, 300

dualism, asymmetrical, 34, 35; (~assim),31,40-1,42,44,46; (Vanuatu), 72;and dual organisation (Yafar), 130-3,138,140,141

Duna, 11ff., 230, 231, 234-55, 259-61,279,284,289-90,292-4,296,297

East Ambae, 55, 59-61, 66ff., 75Efate,79nelder/younger brother (Yafar), 130, 133,

137-8; (Hahita), 115-29; (Baruya),205-6

elementary structure, 29, 31embodiment, 251-3enchainment, in rituals, 246, 248enchantment, 235-6, 247,253Enga,220, 226, 243,245,247,256,

258-61, 297; ~ae, 9ff., 140, compared with ~endi, 221, 230, 231;Tombema,9ff.

EngalHagen region, 239equality, 201; loss of, 240; principle of,

242; and inequality, 7-27,143,146equivalence, 8ff., 29-32, 35, 38, 40, 43,

45, 46, 215, 220,222, 226-7; amongaffines, 232nn; and increment, 230-1;(Gimi), 174-96; ~endi notions of,226; see balance

ethnocentrism, 112ethnographic present, 238; wri.ting,

218-20Etoro,25euphemism, in misrecognition of history,

236; in ritual representations ofhomosexuality, 245

evolution, 28, 29, 31, 32; and devolution,48, 77; social, 216-18,226,231-2; ofHighlands sopcieties, 7-27, 239, 241,254

exchange, 174-96 passim, 217, 219,220,236-9,245,252,279,298,302;affinal, 237, 251; breakdown of, 226;ceremonial, 205, 217, 223, 224,225-30, 233n, 280; competitive,16ff., 215-16, 237, 238, 250,280-300; commercial, 285; direct,30-2,38,41,222; direct vs generalised, 99,102,104-10,112,201,278-9,281,289,302; enchainmentof, 242, 243; enchanted, 247;equivalent, 202, 215, 220, 222,

226-7,237-8,252,254; of food andobject wealth, 86, 88-90; gameanimals in, 250-1; generalised, 36,215,225,252,281,282; incrementin, 242; inequivalent, 202, 216, 220,223,237-8,242,250-2,254;(Massim), 29-32, 34, 36-46; obligations, 242; precolonial, 242;restricted, 242; of sexual fluids, 251,281,282; social field of, 242; symmetrical, 242; transformation inlogics of, 251; temporality of, 226-7;value, 258-61 (~ekeo),100; (Sabarl),85,86,94-5; (Telefolmin), 256,259-63,269-70; (Vanuatu), 68-71;(Yafar), 131, 139-40, 141

exchange networks, 215, 220, 221-2,223,226-7,229,230,232;andb~

manship, 228; and clans, 225-6,227-32; see 'finance'

exchange partnerships, 12,215,221-4,225, 227-8, 230, 231,232n

exegesis, indigenous, 235exploitation, 219, 226

family conflicts, 254father-son conflicts, 254feasts, 29-30, 36, 39-40, 43'finance' (~endi), 217, 219, 222, 223,

224,225-6fight leader (Duna), 243, 253; see warriorfilial relations, 199-206,243Foi,199food, 29, 30, 39-41, 43-7; ritualisation

of, 202; (~ekeo), 103-4, 108, 112Fore, I1ff.friendship (~ekeo), 105, 106, 108funeral distributions, 253; see mortuary

game; see huntingGahuku Gama, 11 ff., 276,279garden ritual (Massim), 29, 35, 37, 39,

42,44gardening (Duna), 240, 250, 251;

(Telefolmin), 263-6; (Baruya) seetannaka

Gawa,210gender(~ekeo),100, 104, 106, 110-12,

114; (Sabarl) androgyny, 90-4, innarrative imagery, 93-4; relations,85-90,91-3,95-6; (Telefolmin),256-71; (Vanuatu), 48-80; (Yafar),130,133-6,140

324 Index

gender inequality; see under dominancegift (Baruya) redistribution of, 285, 286;

substitution/compensation, 285, 286,290,292,300; gifts/countergifts, 288,297,298; (Duna) field of exchange,242; organisation, 248; production ofsocial relations, 236; strategies, 237,251

Gimi, 168-9,174-96,180,198Goodenough Island (Nidula), 28, 31, 38,

39graded societies, 246, 247, 250; as

reification of rank, 50-1; in northVanuatu, 48-67

great man, contrasted with big man,28-30,32,38,39,41,45,49,66,78,142-55,215,218,220,222,223,231,238-42,248,251,257,263,270; discovery of, 236, 252; (Baruya),282,296

great-man societies, 97, 98, 99,104,108-13,251,254,275-6,280,303;system, 29, 31-4, 40, 42, 45, 47

group boundary maintenance, 243;descent, 242, 243; intergroup affairs,248; local, 242, 246-7, 250

Gururumba, 11ff.

habitus, 248; inulcation and reproduction of, 236

Hagen, 197-214; 10ff., 140, 162-3,219,239,240,242,243,256,258,261-3,270-1,279,285,297,301; comparedwith Mendi, 215-34

hat (Vanuatu, opposite of kon), 58-9Hawaiians, 232nHawaiian system, 40hereditary leaders, 240; power of, 243;

status, 28, 31, 97-114hewa ingini (Duna, 'sun's son'), 253hierarchy, 7, 34-8, 41, 43-5; male (see

also under dominance), 247Highlands of Papua New Guinea, com

parative analysis of, 7-27historical change and analysis of, 237~8,

241, 251-2, 255; process, 217-19history, generic connection in, 254;

(Baruya),236holography, 166-71'home production', 223homosexuality, and male virginity, 282,

292,293,266-7; ritualised, 245,266-7

Horailenda parish (Duna), 243, 246'house' societies, 142-55huqe (hungwe, hukwe) (East Ambae,

graded society), 59-61Huli, 167,230,231,245,246,254,

293hunting, 212, 245, 252; game, as product

of men's work, 286; as gift, 286; anddeforestation, 299; (Telefolmin),264-5,271; (Yafar), 130, 131, 132,136

hypergamy,34

Ida (see Yafar, Yangis), 131ideal type, 28, 34, 97, 98, 99, 112-13,

206Ilahita Arapesh, 115-29, 130, 131, 137,

202,303incest (Duna), 226, 228, 235, 253increment, 91-4; 204-5, 211-14, 216,

219,220, 223-6, 228-9, 230; andreciprocity, 227-9, 230-1; andwomen's interests, 230-1; principleof, 237; see moka

inequality (see also dominance, hierarchy), 23, 201, 217, 219, 228, 240,256-8, 269-70; gender, 258-61,266-70; reproduction of, 252

inflation, 37initiation, 11-12,277,283; (Baruya), 15,

201-6,236,238,246,247,250-2;female, 294; male, 293, 294, 300,303; (Duna), 237, 245, 248-52;(Gimi), 176-80, 187; (Massim), 30,32,41,42; (Mekeo), 97, 99,100,108-10, 112, 113; (Mendi), 232;(Telefolmin) male, 266-8; (Yafar),131,141

integration, 209, 277, 278,282,283,303; ideological, 292, 297; social andritual, 203, 241, 248

internal duality and external unity, 142,148

'interest', see incrementIpili,245Ipomoean revolution, 142-55,238,251,

276Iqwaye, 15ff., 167-8, 170Irian Jaya, 135, 138

Jale, 11ff.

Kaluli,245

r!!i

Kalauna (Goodenough Island village),39,40

Kamano,18ff.Kapauku, 1Off.Katutubwai (Sabarl story of), 93-4Kaupi,15ff.Kewa, lOff., 221kiria pulu (Duna cult), 246-50, 252, 253,

254; kiria anoa, 253; leaders of,247-8

Kiriwina (Trobriand Island), 34-9, 41,43-7,303

knowledge (Oro), 145-6, 148; (Yafar),132,133,136,139,143

kon kokona (Vanuatu, having sacredpower), 58, 59, 64

Kuk,240kula, 38, 39,43,163Kunai (Ilahita Councillor), 118, 126,

128nkwaimatnie (Baruya, ritual objects),

205-6,236,246-50,283,292

labour, household, 223; values, 222;(Duna), 252; (Telefolmin) men's,262-6; women's, 258-61, 262-4,267,269,271

leaders, leadership, 237, 239-45, 251-3;configurations of, 237, 239-42;despotic{239-41, 243; warrior/wealthy man, 296; (Mekeo), 97, 98,99,110,112,114; hereditary, 98, 99,100,101-4,106,108,112; (Sabarl),big man (guiau), 83, 85, 88, 95;big woman (yova suswot), 85, 88,95; director (tologugui), 83, 85, 86,88

legitimisation, 236, 249-50, 252; ofgreat men, 238

linguistic relatedness, 98liruali (Duna cult leaders), 247local groups (Yafar), 132, 133, 134-7,

138,140logics, social, 200-1, 206, 212, 215, 217,

237,238,256-71,275,276,278,295,300

Longana (East Ambae), 52, 53, 54,59-61,70-1,74-5,76

'loose structure', 143,221Louisade Archipelago, 38, 41Lus, Sir Pita, 126

Mae-Enga, see Enga

Index 325

magic, 243, 253; (Ilahita), 119, 126magico-symbolic production of social

relations, 236; and gift-economicpower, 236

maki (Vao, graded society), 56-9male, bachelor cults, 291, 293; control of

in initiation cult, 250; dominance,250; domination in New GuineaHighlands, 49-50; (in Mekeo), 99,108-13; (in Telefolmin), 264, 266-8;creativity, 230; hierarchy, 249;interests, unity of, 246; versus female(see also gender), (Mekeo), 97,107,109,110,112

mali (Duna, dance), 243Maring, llff., 207-8, 276market, 218-20, 232; see commoditymarriage (Baruya), 279, 297,298,301;

(Hagen/Maring), 207-9; (Massim),31,34,38,40,41,43-6; (Mekeo), 97,100,102-10,112-14; (Oro), 143,150,151; (Telefolmin), 261-3;(Yafar), 130-1, 140, 141; crosscousin, 31, 36, 38,43,147,150,162,190; and sister exchange, in or bycontrast with: (Baruya), 278, 288,290,294,302; (Duna), 250, 252;(Ilahita), 121-4, 127n; (Massim), 31,40,43; (Mekeo), 106; (Mendi), 215,217,222,229; (Oro), 147, 150; seebride-wealth

maternity and paternity, 55Matoto, Tairoro despot, 19matriliny versus patriliny (North

Vanuatu), 52-4; (Highlands), 13marsupials, in Duna mythology, 245; in

exchanges, 251Marxian models, 254Massim, 28, 31, 33, 34, 37-9, 41, 42, 45,

46material reproduction of society, 238medium (Yafar), 131, 132, 139Mekeo, North, 97-114; 198,278,301,

302,303Melpa, see HagenMendi, 10ff., 212, 215-33, 284misrecognition,236mobility, inter-group, 243modernism, post-Ipomoean, 237, 252moieties, (Barok), 169ff.; (Baruya), 278,

301,302,303; (Mekeo), 101, 102,104,105,107,112; (Yafar), 130,131,132,133,138,140,141

naming (Daribi), 163-5Nambweapa'w, story of, see mythologyNidula (Goodenough Island), 38-41,

43-7Nondugl,22Non-Austronesian, 41North Mekeo, see MekeoNorth Vanuatu, 48-80; diversity of

politics, rank system, 48f£., 199

Oedipus complex, 247,254Ok, 270, 291Oksapmin,254Omaha system, 31, 38, 40Omarakana (Trobriand Island village),

36,37,39Ongka, 219, 252oral traditions, 235oratorical skills, 242-4; (Duna) anoa

hakana 'orator', 253Oro Province, 142-55

327Index

shells, 240; (Daribi), 165; (Telefolmin),265,271

Siane, 11ff., 162siblings (Hahita), 123, 128n; logical

opposition between, 120-1, 123-4,125-6; kin terms for, 124, 128n;succession of, 124-6, 127

Simbu, compared with Mendi, 221; seeChimbu

Sinclair, J., 243, 253sister-exchange, see marriagesoaring hawks as metaphor for high-

ranking men (Vanuatu), 48, 58, 78social, capital, 241; change, 126-7, 127n

, 128n; control, 252; evolution, 142,154-6; fields: 154,241,251; of discourse, 242; of exchange, 242; ofmarriage, 254; of political power,236; of production, 242; magicomythico-ritual, 235, 237, 242, 254;integration, 248, 277; organisation:(Duna), 242, 245, 254; (Mekeo), 97,99, 100-4,106-7, 112,113;supralocal, 246-8; reproduction: 163,(Duna), 237, 238, 250, 253; (Mekeo),97, 101,108,109, 112, 113, scale,159-73,249

social logics, see logicssorcery (Duna), 243, 253; (Mekeo), 98,

101-4,107,109; (Mendi), 227;(Yafar), 131, 135

South Pentecost (Vanuatu), 52-4, 55,61-6,69-70,73-4,75-6

sponsors in graded society (Vanuatu), 56,59,63-4

spirit, 235, 236; women, 245stratification, social, 240, 243, 249; see

also hierarchy, rankStrickland River, 254substitution, of persons/wealth: 7-27;

(Mendi), 216, 218, 222, 2;23, 225,227,229; of relations, 174-96,206;see bridewealth

succession, 28, 42,101Sudest Island, 38surplus production, 239sweet potato, see Impoean (post- and

pre-)symmetrical structure, 31, 36, 44symmetrical relations, 202,210; see

balance, equivalence, exchangesymbolic capital, 236, 246, 254sympathy group, 147

Sabarl Islanders, 83-96, 198,202sacred power (Duna), 241, 249; sites

(Duna),247sacrifice (Baruya), 287, 294, 295, 297;

(Vanuatu), 56, 58-60, 62-3, 67; seecult, ritual

sagali (Trobriand, mortuary feast), 36,38,40,42,45

scale, social, 159-73, 249secrecy, in cults, 247segaiya (Sabarl, mortuary feast), 86f£.sem onda (Mendi); see clanshipsemen, transactions, 201, 203, 237;

exchange of, 281, 282semiotic, construction of the body of the

world, 251-2; entropy, 235; malaisein culture, 235; reproduction, 235;construction of social relationships,255

secret societies, 303, 304semi-complex structures, 36, 40, 41, 43,

44,46senior vs junior (Mekeo), 101, 105, 112;

see elder/younger brothersettlement, permanent, 239shaman, (Baruya), 238, 247shell money, 43, 46

rank, 29, 34-6, 38-9,41,44-7,276,303

ratahigi highranking man of East Ambae,60

rationality, 155,241rationalisation of society, 237reciprocity, 30, 31,38,43,220,222,

226-7,228,232,255; among affines,232nn; and brideweaoth, 229; andincrement, 227-9, 230-1

redistribution, 225, 227, 231reification of social relations, 304regional parameters, 144replacement, 227, 228representations, as source of alienation,

304; become fetishes, 304residence, 242; residential mobility, 243ritual (Baruya), 283, 303; (Duna),

234-55; (Gimi), 174-96; (Massim),31-3,35,39-42,44-6; (Mekeo), 99,102,112-14; expert, 29, 31, 40;(Baruya), 283, 292; (Duna), 245; seecult, sacred, sacrifice

rivalry, see competitionRossel Island (Yela), 28,38,41,43

person, 229; and thing in Vanuatu,exchangeability, 49, 55, 67, 75-6;fractal, 159-73, 195,212; -hood(Sabarl), physical, 87, 90, spiritual,87-9,94

personal gift relations, see exchangenetworks

pig, 14f£.; (Baruya), 287, 294-5, 297,298; (Massim), 29, 30, 40, 32;(Telefolmin), 259-63, 269-71;(Vanuatu), 56, 58-60, 62-3, 67,199;see tusked boar

pig festival (Mendi, mok ink), 217, 223,224, 225-30, 233n

Plains and Mountain societies, 142-55political alliances (Mendi), 218, 225,

229; dominance, 250; types, 116-17,126-7

Polopa, 12f£.Polynesia, 97, 98; chiefs in, 218population density, 242; growth, 249; of

tribal groups, 249post-Ipomoean development of com

petitive exchange, 250; modernism,77,252; historical period, 249,252

power (Duna), 248; field of political,236, Oedipal symbolism in, 247,sacred, 236; secular and ritual, 245; inwealth/kinship/status nexus, 243,251; inherited or ascribed, 277;inherited or achieved, 277; male, 278,282,295; female, 278, 293; sacred,magic, religious, 282, 303

pre-colonial period, 235, 236pre-Ipomoean period, 248, 299prehistoric artifacts, as cult objects, 236prehistory (Vanuatu), 79-80prestige goods, 34production, and exchange, 258-66; 238,

252; and circulation, 238; disciplineof, 252; domestic, 243; exchange,241; relations of, 254-5; technicalfield of, 242; (Mendi), 217, 220, 225;and value, 223; forces, developmentof, 241, 250, 254-5; (Vanuatu), Vao,68-9; South Pentecost, 69-70; EastAmbae,70-1

public events, see clan eventspublic and domestic domains, 50

quadripartite structure, 35, 39,42quartipartition, 97,100-1,103,104,

106

Index

palena anda (Duna, bachelors' cult), 245,246, palena aua ('owner' ofbachelors' cult), 246, 253

Paliau,128nPapua New Guinea, national

sovereignty, 237parish (see also group, loca!), 243, 247,

249; cults, 245paradoxical features, 142-3,207,217,

220,230payback killings, 238, 254; see

vengeancepeace, 7-27,100,101-4,112

moka (Hagen, ceremonial exchange),10f£., 31,162,163,209,210,219,220,223,226; see increment, 237,242,247 I

Mountain Ok, see Okmoral order, 254mortuary, distributions, 12, 15-16,236,

253; exchange (Mekeo), 97, 100,102,103-4,106,107,108,109,112,113;feasts (Sabarl, segaiya), 86;prestations, 216, 218, 224, 225; rites(Massim), 36-8, 40, 42, 43

mythico-ritual field and strategies, 235,237,254

mythology (Duna), 246-8, 254, 245-7;(Ilahita), 122-3, 128n; (Yafar), 134,136,137; (Gimi), 174-96

326

"

I

Ii

~'.II"I'

328 Index

taboos, food, 264-5,271; (Telefolmin),269

Tairora,18ff.Tambaran (Ilahita, men's cult), 119-20,

126, 128ntannaka (Baruya, great gardener), 282,

296technology, development of, 242, 251tee (Enga, ceremonial exchange), 237,

242,247Telefolmin, 256-71; 202,251,254,279Tembinei (Ilahita, 'great man'), 118-21,

124, 125, 128nTikopia, 98, 304Tolai,219Tombema-Enga, see Engatotal systems, 97, 98, 99,100,104,105,

106,108,110,112,113,114,242,253

totemism (Yafar), 131, 133, 140trade, 34, 35, 39, 45transformation, 11,23, 76ff., 152,208,

210,211,276,281,284,285,301~6f

rank (Vanuatu), 76; see substitutiontribal identity, 249; organisation, 100-2,

107,109,112, 248ff.; unity, 211-13,246-9

tribe (Raruya) definition of, 291; unity of,291,303

Trobriand Islands, 28, 34-5, 37, 39, 41,98,303

tsimia (Baruya, cult house), 246, 248,249

Tumbudu River, 246tusked boar (Vanuatu), 56, 59, 60, 62,

67twem (Mendi, exchange partnership), see

exchangetypological methodology, 115-16, 126,

159-61,241

use value, 258-61Usen Barok, 159-73Usino, 17ff.

valuable, 30, 32, 35-7,40,41,43-5;(Duna), 237; (Sabarl), 83-96;(Telefolmin), 264, 265-6, 271

Vanuatu, see North VanuatuVao, island of (Vanuatu), 55, 56-9, 65ff.vengeance, 7-27; (Duna), 237, 238, 254violence, 7-27; (Duna), 240, 242, 243,

246,247

wage labour, see commodityWaina (Umeda), 131warfare, 7-27; (Baruya), 290, 291, 295,

298,299,302; (Duna), 236, 238,242-5,252; cessation of, 253;endemic, 239; frequency of, 243;leadership in, 253; pre-colonial, 243;(Mekeo), 99,100,101-4,112;(Mendi), 224, 225, 229; (Telefolmin),256; (Vanuatu), 75-6

warrior, 19-20,238,239,249,253; asleader, 240, 243; (Barok), 173;(Baruya), 212; see aoulatta

warsangul (graded society, SouthPentecost), 61-6

wealth, 12, 14-15,29,30,32-7,40,42-7,165; (Duna), 238, 243, 251-2;(Mendi), 216, 217, 218, 219, 221,223, 224, 227, 229-30, 231;seevaluable

wei tse (Duna), see fight leaderwitchcraft, see sorceryWiru, 11ff., 221, 230Wola, 17ff., 221, 230Woodlark Island, 37women's, labour (Telefolmin), 258-61,

262-4,267,269,271; titles(Vanuatu), 58, 60, 64, 66, 67

Yafar,130-41Yangis (Yafar, ritual), 131, 132, 133,

135,136,137,141Yela (Rossel Island), 38, 41, 42, 44-7younger brother, see elder

32947283 big men and great men personifications of power in melanesia strathern and godelier

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