Culture Change and Ex-Change: Syncretism and Anti-Syncretism in Bena, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea 9781785333859

Table of contents :
Contents
Maps and Photographs
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Note on Foreign Terms
Introduction: Culture Change and Exchange
Chapter 1. Bena Stories, Histories, and Sociality
Chapter 2. Unexpected Actions and Strategic Exchanges: Leadership, Warfare, and Economy
Chapter 3. In Exchange with the World: The Concept of Person in Bena
Chapter 4. Changing and Exchanging: Head Payments and Life-Cycle Rituals
Chapter 5. Magical Practices and their Transformations in Modern Bena
Chapter 6. Sanguma: The “Essence-Suckers”
Chapter 7. In Exchange with God: Christianity in Modern Bena
Chapter 8. Expect the Unexpected: Scientology in Napamogona
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Culture Change and Ex-Change

Person, Space and Memory in the Contemporary Pacific Series editors: Prof. Jürg Wassmann (University of Heidelberg, Institute of Anthropology), Dr. Verena Keck (Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute of Anthropology) Advisory board: Prof. Pierre R. Dasen (University of Geneva, Department of Anthropology of Education and Cross-Cultural Psychology), Prof. Donald H. Rubinstein (University of Guam, Director of the Micronesian Area Research Center), Prof. Robert Tonkinson (The University of Western Australia, Department of Anthropology), Prof. Peter Meusburger (University of Heidelberg, Department of Economic and Social Geography), Prof. Joachim Funke (University of Heidelberg, Department of Psychology) The many different localities of the Pacific region have a long history of transformation, under both pre- and postcolonial conditions. More recently, rates of local transformation have increased tremendously under postcolonial regimes. Yet, until now, research has concentrated on the macro- or culturally specific aspects of globalization, while neglecting actual actors and their perspectives of social change. This series supplements earlier work through the integration of cultural research with psychological methodologies, linguistics, geography, and cognitive science. Volume 1 Experiencing New Worlds Jürg Wassmann and Katharina Stockhaus Volume 2 Person and Place: Ideas, Ideals and Practice of Sociality on Vanua Lava, Vanuatu Sabine C. Hess Volume 3 Landscapes of Relations and Belonging: Body, Place and Politics in Wogeo, Papua New Guinea Astrid Anderson Volume 4 Foodways and Empathy: Relatedness in a Ramu River Society, Papua New Guinea Anita von Poser Volume 5 Biomedical Entanglements: Conceptions of Personhood in a Papua New Guinea Society Franziska A. Herbst Volume 6 Culture Change and Ex-Change: Syncretism and Anti-Syncretism in Bena, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea Regina Knapp Volume 7 Selfhood and Recognition: Melanesian and Western Accounts of Relationality Anita Galuschek

Culture Change and Ex-change Syncretism and Anti-Syncretism in Bena, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea Regina Knapp

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2017 Regina Knapp All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Knapp, Regina, author. Title: Culture change and ex-change : syncretism and anti-syncretism in Bena, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea / Regina Knapp. Other titles: Culture change and exchange Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | Series: Person, space and memory in the contemporary Pacific ; volume 6 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017019198 (print) | LCCN 2017022874 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785333859 (e-book) | ISBN 9781785333842 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Benabena (Papua New Guinean people)—Social life and customs. | Social change—Papua New Guinea—Eastern Highlands Province. | Ethnology— Papua New Guinea—Eastern Highlands Province. | Eastern Highlands Province (Papua New Guinea)—Social life and customs. Classification: LCC DU740.42 (ebook) | LCC DU740.42 .K517 2017 (print) | DDC 305.899/12—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019198

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78533-384-2 Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78533-385-9 Ebook

Dem Einzelnen bleibe die Freiheit, sich mit dem zu beschäftigen, was ihn anzieht, was ihm Freude macht, was ihm nützlich deucht; aber das eigentliche Studium der Menschheit ist der Mensch. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Contents

Maps and Photographs Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Note on Foreign Terms Introduction: Culture Change and Exchange

viii ix xiv 1

Chapter 1. Bena Stories, Histories, and Sociality

31

Chapter 2. Unexpected Actions and Strategic Exchanges: Leadership, Warfare, and Economy

64

Chapter 3. In Exchange with the World: The Concept of Person in Bena

99

Chapter 4. Changing and Exchanging: Head Payments and Life-Cycle Rituals

124

Chapter 5. Magical Practices and their Transformations in Modern Bena

162

Chapter 6. Sanguma: The “Essence-Suckers”

199

Chapter 7. In Exchange with God: Christianity in Modern Bena

222

Chapter 8. Expect the Unexpected: Scientology in Napamogona

257

Conclusion

273

References

284

Index

296

Maps and Photographs

Map 0.1:

Papua New Guinea

30

Map 1.1:

Eastern Highland language groups

32

Figure 1.1: View over Napamogona grounds

33

Figure 1.2: Inaku’e Takis, Napamogona, 2012

61

Figure 1.3: Tau Farakove, Napamogona, 2005

61

Figure 1.4: David Papua’e, explaining useful plants, Napamogona, 2012

62

Figure 1.5: Tani Iyape prepares the earth oven, Napamogona, 2013

62

Figure 1.6: Esi Papua’e at the bus stop on her way to the market in town. Napamogona Junction, 2013

63

Figure 2.1: Tapioca garden in Napamogona

85

Figure 2.2: Market bilum with peanuts

87

Figure 2.3: Sunrise in Napamogona

88

Figure 2.4: Pineapple garden in Napamogona

89

Figure 2.5: Piglet

98

Figure 4.1: Mumupit

158

Figure 4.2: Body decoration for female initiation, Asaroyufa

159

Figure 4.3: Red coloring

160

Figure 4.4: Coloring

161

Figure 4.5: Processing to exchange

161

Figure 8.1: David Papua’e, 2013

272

Figure 9.1: Tree near Tani Iyape’s house, Napamogona

283

Acknowledgements

Developing and writing this book reminds me of working a huge new garden in Papua New Guinea. First, one defines the piece of land, then prepares the ground, digs the earth, and plants the seeds. The weeds are cleared, and the crops are trimmed as they grow. All of this is, most importantly, collaborative work in which many people participate and cooperate until, finally, the plants are harvested. Like garden work in my fieldsite, the process of researching and writing depended on the cooperation of many persons of whom I can name only some here. They nurtured and shaped my ideas and contributed to the results in many ways. First, I would like to thank my biological family. My parents Walter and Waltraut Knapp and my brother Michael Knapp have been incredibly supportive, not only through their financial generosity but also their emotional and psychological sensitivity. I am indeed grateful to have such a wonderful family who believe in me, and who enabled me to pursue my interests and were always there to help me if necessary. I also wish to express my gratitude to my Papua New Guinean relatives and friends—and here the list is long. The people of Napamogona allowed me to stay with them and to participate in their lives, and they adopted me into their community. My very special thanks therefore go to the five clans that make up the Napamogona tribe: Sigoyalobo, Napayufa, Jogijohi, Mekfimo, and Matahusa. I know that it is not easy to take on the responsibility for a white woman, and I am most grateful to the Napamogona for their openness, support, and readiness to commit themselves to our relationship. In this respect, I want to mention some of the persons who are particularly close to me. First, there is my adopted Bena mother. She asked me not to reveal her real name in this book, so I call her Mama Polako. Mama Polako introduced me to my fieldsite, offered me a home, and has really become a second mother to me. The years I spent with her were wonderful, and I cannot express in words how grateful I am to her. Her relative Tau Farokave became my adoptive father, and I want to thank him very much for his companionship and guidance during most of my research. He gave me land, assured my safety, provided food, and took me around to introduce me to many people. He taught me a lot about Bena culture. I thank him for his never-ending patience in answering my questions and for discussing different perspectives on cultural matters. I further want

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Acknowledgements

to express my sadness over the deaths of Tau’s parents, Alapu’a Farokave and Mama Lewa. Both of them had been like grandparents to me, and I cannot tell how sad I feel about these losses. I further thank Tau’s brothers Avi, Sapu, Fili’i, as well as all his other brothers and cousins who looked after me. Tau’s wife Mama Samarin became a wonderful friend and I also thank her. Further thanks go to my sister Christine, my brothers Nigel and Michael, and my little sisters Fula’e and Ate Farokave. I also express my gratitude to Pastor Samson and his family for helping out with food and other support. Very special thanks go to my “tambus” David and Esi Papua’e and their children Busto, Maiblu, Ate, Sate, and Kimson, as well as to Esi’s brothers— Paku and his wife and Koke and his two wives. Not only did they build me a wonderful, large house and granted me land, they also became in-laws and true family. I am aware of the economic and personal efforts they made to contribute to my life in the village, and I am most grateful for it, as I am for the wonderful times we shared and the protection they granted me in times of danger. I was also most impressed by their role as mediators in times of political tensions. They have my greatest respect. A very special thank you goes to Inaku’e Takis, my Bena uncle/father, who over the years became one of my closest friends and person of trust in the village. Inaku’e profoundly contributed to this book by revealing aspects of Bena reasoning in his analyses and interpretations of Bena and Western practices. With him I had the longest and most frequent discussions. His great interest, enthusiasm, and engagement in anthropological research on his own culture made him my main research collaborator. Sometimes, in fact, I think I became his research assistant. Thank you so much, Inaku’e, for all those conversations, jokes, and great interviews, for taking us through the bush on hunting trips, and for traveling with me around the country. Specific thanks further go to Tani Iyape, his wife Bilasi, and his family for hosting me in times of trouble and for supporting me in many ways. They always make me feel at home and safe—and I have learned a lot from them. Thanks for teaching me so much about Bena language, nature, everyday practices, Bena mythology (thanks especially to Tani’s father, Bubu Iyape), and the production of material culture (thanks here especially to Auntie Bilasi). Thanks also go to Papa Koki and my dear friend Mama Yasi for helping me with all that garden work and house-building. I am further obliged to Papa James “Rasta”—the greatest gentleman I have met—and his family; also to Bubu Lofo and his wives, to Uncle Taya and family, Uncle Jacob and family, Papa Kela and family, Papa Martin and family, and to my brother Samuel (“Ekesa”), as well as the “village boys” and young men—Gola, Ogu, Seki, Fa’ne, Bigfoot, Bobby, Gideon, and all the others— who kept an eye on me when I was going around town and made my stay safe. Thanks also to Papa John, Papa Kipa and his wife, and Fenny and family, as

Acknowledgements

xi

well as Papa Kila and family, especially his daughter Daisy, for their continuous supplies of greens from their garden. I would also like to thank Bubu Sokret’s family for their support and acceptance and for keeping me out of ongoing trouble. There are other communities I am obliged to. The people from Sogomi village provided me with a second home in Papua New Guinea, and especially my “Sogomi-parents,” Kumson Gumulave and his wife, Roselyn, were wonderful hosts. More than that, when a fight broke out in Napamogona, they took my brother Sammy and me to a safe place. There are no words to express how thankful I am to both of them for saving me, physically and emotionally, in times of serious trouble. In this regard, I also deeply thank the people from Kotuni village in Gahuku, especially Mama Heni and family, for granting me their hospitality when I needed an exile and offering me a second home in the Eastern Highlands. I further thank the people from Pakule in the Southern Highlands for the great times we shared in their village. Very special thanks go to my Wiru-sister Donica Nandie. Donica and I look back on more than twenty years of friendship/sisterhood. Together we climbed mountains and crossed oceans. She shared good and bad times with me and even put up with being adopted by a Bena community. Donica once risked her own life when I was attacked by a stranger. She literally fought for me. I will never forget that and am most grateful for her loyalty as friend, sister, and cultural advisor. Further strong support came from Katagu village, where I dearly thank my sister Karufe Kotile and her mother, Mama Queen, for taking care of me in times of trouble, for praying for my family’s wellbeing, and for their positive and encouraging attitude in general. They helped me to regain my strength after very exhausting times. Karufe has also been extremely supportive in transcriptions and translation of Bena language and proved to be an excellent research assistant. Her contribution to my research was significant. There are a number of other persons from Papua New Guinea to whom I wish to express my gratitude. These include the staff of the YWCA Goroka, who allowed me to keep a perfect base in Goroka town. I thank the YWCA Goroka board members, especially Angela Soso, Miriam Leyton, Linda Voyorite, Jennelly, and Fiona for supporting my work; thank you, too, to the hostel’s staff, especially Tony, Sue Totai, and Bike, for their company, the interesting talks at the fire, and lots of laughter. During my times in the YWCA Goroka I also gained many friends, all women from different regions of Papua New Guinea. One of the most impressive and helpful women I met at the YWCA was Mama Naomi Yupa’e from Bena, with whom I enjoyed many hours of deep conversations on Bena culture. Sadly, Naomi passed away in 2015. I would like to express my deepest regrets for this loss. I feel honored that I had the privilege of knowing this knowledgeable and wonderful woman.

xii

Acknowledgements

May she rest in peace. Thanks also to Rachel from Mt. Hagen, Florence from Kimbe, Kinagita from Lufa, Lidiya from Okapa, Betty from Port Moresby, Carol from East-Sepik, and to many others too numerous to list here for their company, care, and friendship. I further thank Lady Carol Kidu for inspiring encounters in Goroka. She gave me hope regarding new approaches to the process of “development” in Papua New Guinea. Further thanks go to Dr. Michael Mel and Dr. Sam Kari from the University of Goroka for fruitful discussions and cooperation. A very special thank you to Dr. Verena Thomas at the Center of Social and Creative Media studies at the University of Goroka for affiliating me with the center and giving me access to its facilities, as well as to the staff of the Melanesian Institute. There is another person in Goroka to whom I am very grateful. Dr. Bun and his wife have always given me excellent medical treatment and also helped some of my Bena relatives in emergencies. If it wasn’t for Dr. Bun, at least one of my Bena sisters—who lost half of her leg in a violent attack—would not be alive anymore. In Port Moresby, I thank my dear friend Judy Undi and her family, who ensured that I and my equipment remained safe, who took me around, and even brought me safely through a shooting that happened in front of a supermarket. My stays in Port Moresby would have been much more difficult and far less safe if it were not for them. Very special thanks are further reserved for Martin Maden, who has been my friend and confidant in personal and work-related matters. Martin often helped me to overcome intercultural misunderstandings and delve deeper into cultural issues. His advice was fundamental—not only in times of crisis—and our friendship was and is of greatest importance to me, both on a personal and a professional level. Although I don’t like being in front of the camera myself, I enjoyed the twist in cultural perspectives that Martin achieved when he made a film about the relationship between the Napamogona and myself as both anthropologist and Bena family member (“Gina’s Wedding”). In Australia, I want to express my gratitude first of all to the Australian National University (ANU) for granting me an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship and an ANU PhD Scholarship that enabled me to develop and complete the foundational work for this book. The working conditions I experienced at the ANU were outstanding, and I am grateful to have been given the chance to complete my graduate education at this renowned institution. The financial assistance, the office space, and the fruitful discussions provided by the Department of Anthropology of the Research School for Asian and Pacific Studies (RSPAS) were the nurturing grounds in which my research could grow. My supervisory panel has been extremely supportive. I especially thank Mark Mosko and Alan Rumsey for their help. They have given me advice and intellectual stimulation (and challenges) as well as personal support.

Acknowledgements

xiii

Their generosity and trust was an important basis for the successful outcome of this piece of work. I am also thankful to Margaret Jolly for her constructive and inspiring criticism and her encouragement when I needed it. Gary Kildea delivered fresh perspectives on my work. I thank him for the time he devoted to me, to discussions and meetings, and for having become a friend. At RSPAS, I want to thank specifically Fay Castles for an impressive amount of patience in dealing with confused international students. My gratitude extends to many students I met at ANU, with whom I shared great intellectual exchange and who have become friends. Many thanks go to Sandra Welkerling (I will never forget our time stuck in the war in Bena!), Pascale Jacq, Jayne Curnow, Katie Englert, Quanmin Li, Luke Hambley, and Lila San Roque, to name but a few. Very special thanks to my friend and office mate Sabine Hess for her great humor and for contributing to the structure of this book (and to the tidiness in our office). I am also very grateful to Michael Young, who had the kindness to allow me to live in his house during my stays in Canberra. I remember it as the most beautiful period and the best setting for fruitful academic work at the same time. Thanks for allowing me to use your library—and your pool! Many thanks also to Borut Telban for great discussions and criticism on my early drafts. In Canada, I would like to thank Susanne Kühling for having introduced me to the ANU and for all her intellectual and personal input over the years. Her experience has helped me to find my way into the international scientific community. I am thrilled about the cooperation we currently share in our research project on Kula exchange. I further express my deepest gratitude to Verena Keck and Jürg Wassmann, who have been supportive of my anthropological work since I began my master’s studies in Germany. Their belief in me and their continuous encouragement throughout the years have helped me to pursue the scientific path, even in times of doubt. Many thanks also go to my dear friend Carla Cribari-Assali, who joined my research and filming in Bena temporarily. I am also deeply obliged to Frances Calvert, who has generously devoted considerable time and energy to correcting the language and style of this book. For cooperation in recent research in Bena and for help in linguistic fields, I thank my dear colleague and friend Carola Emkow. Further thanks go to Carola Emkow for compiling the index and to Orieta da Silva Menezes for her wonderful support and encouragement. Sina Emde was my companion throughout the whole process of completing this work, and I want to express my special gratitude to her. We shared the good and bad sides of academic writing—from the origin of an idea in a shared house in Canberra to the completion of a book in a shared office in Berlin—and have become true sisters.

Abbreviations

ANU

Australian National University

CoS

Church of Scientology

EHP

Eastern Highlands Province

IHELP

International Hubbard’s Ecclesiastical League of Pastors

NGO

Non-Governmental Organisation

PNG

Papua New Guinea

SDA

Seventh-day Adventists

YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association

Note on foreign terms: Bena terms appear in italics. Terms in Tok Pisin are in bold italics.

 Introduction 

Culture Change and Exchange

This book is an attempt to understand and explain cultural changes among the Napamogona, a community of about twelve hundred Bena-speaking people in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. It draws on material gathered during various periods of field research between 1997 and 2014. The topic of culture change is a vast one. I therefore decided to specify and analyze it in regard to changes observed in confined cultural fields. In accordance with my data, I want to explore culture change in Bena primarily within the realms of life-cycle rituals, magical practices, and Christianity, as well as new beliefs and ways, and to analyze these in reference to Bena concepts of person and exchange. As I will show throughout this book, culture change in Bena can best be understood as developing in accordance with Bena ideals of ex-change—for Bena cultural categories are structurally conceptualized as dynamic; they are not only open to changes but also expected to change according to a concept of the person as partible and defined by exchange relationships. Further, I will demonstrate that partible Bena persons act as agents in such relationships and that they do so with the (desired) transformation of specific relationships in mind. I have found countless instances of agentive culture change in Bena that confirm this argument, ranging from the incorporation of new magical practices and ideas on witchcraft to the adoption of aspects of Christianity into Bena belief or of Western elements into preexisting exchange rituals and warfare. The data I collected among Bena people reflect a perspective on culture change that became popular through Marshall Sahlins (1985).1 His model of culture change is fundamental to my work, but I intend to refine it. In the following, I show how my approach to culture change in Bena builds on Sahlins in new ways. I will demonstrate how it can be analyzed deeper in terms of the New Melanesian Ethnographies, by applying M. Strathern’s (1988) model of the “partible” person—that has so far been limited mostly to synchronic nonchanging systems—and Mosko’s (1992, 2001, 2010) idea of the “syncretic person.” In doing so, I supplement Sahlins by focusing deeper on the role of agentive exchange and person in culture change. For the analysis of the specific Bena notions of person and exchange, I found Philipp Newman’s (1962b, 1965) model of exchange among the Guru-

2

Introduction

rumba, an Eastern Highlands group neighboring Bena, extremely helpful. His analysis of a balance of personal strength and nurturance through an exchange of “vital essence” has so far remained unnoticed by ethnographers of Eastern Highland cultures—a gap I intend to fill because I found the same principle in Bena, where each single exchange is perceived as involving an exchange of nogoya’a, “nurturance,” in order to increase personal strength (Newman 1965, see chapter 3 in this volume). This specific understanding of exchange and person is, I argue, the fundamental cultural category that is applied in the “indigenous analysis” (Kirsch 2006: 2–3) of culture change as it takes place in Bena. I therefore position my analysis within a theoretical framework laid out by a synthesis of ideas from Marshall Sahlins, Phillip Newman, Marilyn Strathern, Mark Mosko, and Stuart Kirsch that enables me to analyze culture change in relation to what—on the basis of indigenous and anthropological analysis— appear to be the central “signifieds” of the Bena symbolic system of reference and the grounds on which it continues to grow and change: social relationships, partible personhood, agency, and the idea of reciprocal exchange of something that Newman (1965) called “vital essence” and that Bena persons refer to as nogoya’a.

Events and the Reproductive Transformations of Cultural Categories I will begin my analysis of culture change with a focus on the “encounters” that trigger such change—in Sahlins’s terms, the “events” that lead to culture change. Dissatisfied with the neglect of change and history in structuralism and the use of assumed dichotomies such as stability versus change or history/event versus structure, Sahlins (1985) concentrates much of his work on the relationship between structure and history (or structure and event) as it is expressed in the form of culture change. He defines “event” as the relation between a happening and an existing symbolic system according to which it is interpreted. In this context he developed his theory of history and structure, or the “relation between structure and event,” beginning with the proposition that “the transformation of a culture is a mode of its reproduction” (Sahlins 1985: 138). Whenever the people who share a particular culture are confronted with new cultural categories—for example, when the Hawaiians encountered Cook and his crew for the first time—a process of reproductive transformation of preexisting cultural categories is initiated. In Sahlins’s paradigmatic example, both Hawaiian commoners and chiefs were interested in building relationships with the divine strangers and went with their boats to visit the crew on board. In doing so, both parties acted in accordance with preexisting cultural categories. The commoners expressed the practice of “imi

Culture Change and Exchange

3

haku, ‘to seek a lord’” (Sahlins 1985: 139), while the chiefs hoped to establish new promising exchange relationships. Given their presumed divinity, the chiefs saw Cook and his men as equal, even superior, in their godliness, but at the same time they posed a danger as potential rivals (139). According to traditional rules, commoners had to fall on the ground, face down, whenever a chiefly person came near. Thus, when the chiefly boats on their way to Cook’s vessel approached the canoes of the commoners, the latter followed this rule and therefore couldn’t move their boats to the side—and it was not an option for a chief to change course because of common people in front. Further, the chiefs were not willing to allow commoners to be the first to meet the “divine” strangers. The result was that a number of Hawaiian commoners lying face down in their canoes got run over by the boats of their own chiefs. The reactions of both commoners and chiefs to the strangers and towards each other were here in accordance with their “customary self-conceptions and interests” (138), meaning that their response to the new culture was shaped by preexisting cultural categories. There has been a critical debate around Sahlins’s description of this first encounter. Especially his argument of the Hawaiian apotheosis of Cook as the god Lono raised discussions (Friedman 2016; Friedman and Ekholm 1985; Golub, Rosenblatt, and Kelly: 2016; Hacking 1999: 207–223; Obeyesekereye 1997; Yoshida 2008). Sahlins was criticized for his cultural relativist approach that seemed to deny the existence of universal human practical rationality (MacLeod 2002; Obeyesekereye 1992, 1997; Yoshida 2014: 73–128;). Obeyesekereye (1992: 3) argues that Cook’s deification “is a European myth foisted on Hawaiian self-memory by British and other foreign chroniclers” (cf. Hacking 1995: 6). He doubts that Hawaiians “created their own European god,” rather “the Europeans created him for them. This European god is a myth of conquest, imperialism and civilization” (see also Borofsky 1997: 256). According to this view, Hawaiians saw Cook as a chief and only deified him postmortem because they found it politically convenient. Obeyesekereye uses Cook’s example to stress his argument of the practical rationality of all humans. The idea of an apotheosis of Cook would contradict this proposition since it connoted the assumption of native irrationality (and implied inferiority) versus European rationality (superiority). Sahlins (1995: 14), on the other hand, concludes “different cultures, different rationalities” and accuses Obeyesekereye of being “imperialist” himself because “by treating Hawaiians as political players not so far off from rational choice theory” he would deny the islanders “their own voice” (Hacking 1999: 211). Obeyesekereye’s (1992: 19) concept of the practical rationality of all cultures—“the process whereby human beings reflectively assess the implications of a problem in terms of practical criteria”—is a valuable tool in the analysis of culture change. Obviously, humans apply pragmatic considerations when they interact with their

4

Introduction

environment. However, “the universality of pragmatic considerations … does not explain easily or quickly how local cultures act in distinctive ways to comprehend the alien, domesticate the foreign, and appropriate the useful” (Hanlon 1994: 110). I position myself in this analysis, therefore, more to Sahlins’s end of the spectrum with a focus on the cultural specificities of such pragmatic considerations. The heated argument about Cook’s apotheosis triggered important discussions in anthropology and raised most fundamental questions such as “who has the right to speak for whom” and “is … approaching a common, cumulative understanding of others possible?” (Borofsky 1997: 255). One way to answer these questions can be found in Kirsch’s (2006) Wagner-derived approach of reverse anthropology (see also Wagner 1981: 31f.). Reverse anthropology’s purpose is “to enhance recognition of indigenous modes of analysis, especially the interpretative capacities of … myth, ritual, magic, and exchange, and to acknowledge and benefit from the resulting insight into our shared world” (Kirsch 2006: 222). This approach adds a further dimension to Sahlins’s (and Obeyesekereye’s) analysis of cultural change. As the above example of Cook shows, culture change—the transformation of culture—is, according to Sahlins (1985: 144), grounded on the reproduction of culture; but it is not only reproduction, because in their reproduction, cultural categories are altered and undergo transformations. Throughout this book I will give various examples of such reproductive transformations. In chapter 4, for example, I refer to changes in Bena male initiation rituals since the arrival of Western culture in the area. Today, Bena men sometimes publicly stage male initiation rituals in shows or at special events in exchange for money, while they are hardly practiced anymore in the villages. Here is a noticeable shift in the relationship between signifier—the initiation practice itself (involving cane-swallowing, nose-piercing, etc.)—and signified, the idea behind it (increase of male strength through specific exchanges). At first glance, the cultural category of male initiation itself, its “meaning,” seems to change fundamentally, with the men now focusing on money acquisition in public rather than on practicing the “traditionally” secret male cleansing rituals. However, I show in chapter 4 that the transformations of initiation practices grow on the reproduction of the preexisting cultural notion of Bena exchange, which has always been open to the expansion of (exchange) relationships, thereby not only allowing but depending on personal innovations. Although a visible transformation of the relationship between signified and signifier is taking place, with the latter changing its form and context, the underlying signified (the gain of strength through practices of personal detachments and attachments in exchange) remains and even is extended. The structural transformation of culture further depends on a change in the relationships between cultural categories. In the case of Hawaii, Sahlins (1985:

Culture Change and Exchange

5

139) claims that it was the commoners’ “cultural consciousness”—here in the form of “simple pragmatism”—that led them into exchange with the strangers; for the chiefs it was a matter of economic and “cosmic” meaning. The exchange with Europeans became crucial for Hawaiian commoners and for chiefs. In this process the customary meanings of persons, practices, taboos, and goods—cultural categories—were altered. The divine kings/chiefs of Hawaii, for example, used the cultural category or “institution” of tabu for their own purposes (which to my mind was no less an act of “simple pragmatism”). By declaring it tabu for commoners to trade with Europeans, they ensured their own and exclusive access to Western goods. When respected, the sacred restrictions of tabu promised divine benefits, but now they were beginning to conflict with the public/general welfare and it was merely the chiefs who benefited. This led to a “revaluation of the meaning of tabu that can be correlated with the emerging of class” (Sahlins 1985: 142). Like other preexisting cultural categories, tabu underwent a “pragmatic redefinition” (Sahlins 1985: 142) that brought with it a structural transformation because it altered the relationships between cultural categories. Especially when an unexpected “event” occurs, this process involves the transformation or functional revaluation of cultural categories, while at the same time they are reproduced. I agree with Sahlins’s understanding of the reproductive transformations of cultural categories. However, I have a different understanding of “event.” What is an event really? Sahlins’s Hawaiian example implies that the initial motivation for the transformation of cultural categories lies in a personal striving to find new exchange partners. In Bena, I found that every event is perceived as some form of interpersonal exchange and that the signifiers of cultural categories—for example, the formalities of male initiation—may alter through such events but remain related to the same signified, which is in Bena the idea of exchanging nogoya’a, “vital essence” (Newman: 1965). Ideally, this exchange is reciprocal and designed in a way that a person always receives some nogoya’a from others when he or she gives parts of his or her own nogoya’a away in exchange. Nogoya’a is part of every living being, every spirit, plant, and all land, and signifies “nurturance.” It is and must be continuously exchanged to balance strong and nurturing aspects inside persons and in their relationships with each other. I will elaborate on this in more detail throughout the book. In this introductory chapter I merely want to point out that Bena culture works on the principles of exchange. I find that Sahlins’s understanding of “event” as the relationship between happening and symbolic system of reference can be misleading because it does not reveal that every “event” is primarily an exchange between persons. Sahlins (1985: 140) notes that “the dominant structure of the initial situation, that the chiefs distinguished themselves from their own people in the manner that Europeans were different from Hawaiians in general, became a

6

Introduction

conceit of personal identity—from which ensued an order of political economy.” Hawaiian chiefs attached to themselves parts of the new culture—for example, clothes or names (such as King George)—as crucial for their identity (expressed in their divine character that encompasses the whole society and cosmos). Sahlins’s description brings to mind M. Strathern’s model of the partible Melanesian person whose identity is created and shaped by an exchange of personal detachments and attachments. It further shows that “the functional revaluations” (Sahlins 1985: 140) of preexisting categories did not contradict but rather extended traditional conceptions. This is in line with my observations in Bena. I argue that the reproductive transformations of cultural categories work in Bena through attachments and detachments of parts of persons in exchange and, further, that these parts contain and signify nogoya’a. As I will show in chapter 7, Christian ideas—for example, the Last Supper or Christ’s Crucifixion—can in fact quite easily be interpreted according to the Bena concept of exchange, and the idea of a Christian God is not only compatible with but an extension of the previous idea of an exchange relationship with the Bena founding ancestor huma. My Bena data confirm that the (possible) extension of preexisting cultural categories is indeed a precondition for their transformations. In chapters 5 to 7, I analyze examples of syncretism and show that culture change happens in accordance with the drive to extend exchange relationships—and, with this extension, influence the balance of nurturing and strengthening aspects of persons in ideally reciprocal exchange. What, however, happens when new relational networks do not follow the cultural ideal of reciprocity? Kirsch’s (2006: 79) criticism on Melanesian ethnography—that, when dealing with exchange, “anthropologists have emphasized the constructive accomplishments of exchange rather than the consequences of its failure”—can be extended to the analysis of culture change. To more deeply understand the cultural categories of change and continuity, one also needs to consider situations when change fails, when new cultural elements are rejected. Chapter 8 gives an example of such a case of failed syncretism. Recent anthropological works on Melanesia widely agree that indigenous perspectives on the world are formed through social relations (e.g., Bashkow 2006; Courtens 2008; Crook 2006; Kirsch 2006; Scott 2013), that in fact “social relations determine how one sees the world, as well as what one sees” (Kirsch 2006: 78). In this book, I take social relations as the source of reference for Bena perspectives on cultural changes. They are closely tied to specific understandings and practices of exchange and reciprocity. My investigation in chapter 8 builds on Kirsch and explains failed syncretism in terms of “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2006: 95f.)—an extension of Sahlins’s (1972: 195) model of “negative reciprocity.” Sahlins stresses the active role people play as agents in the transformations of cultural categories. He approaches the problem of symbolic reference—the

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relationship between signifier and signified and its changes—by analyzing the ways “cultural concepts are actively used to engage the world” (Sahlins 1985: 145), how they are expressed in concurrent practices. Here, he introduces the subject and his or her “interest” into the sign in action (sign as the expression of a cultural category) According to Sahlins (1985: 150) there is a profound difference between the value of a sign in a symbolic system—its semantic relations to other signs—and its value to people when they use it. This means that the conceptual value of a sign or object additionally acquires an intentional value—in a way a pragmatic one—that may differ profoundly from its conventional value. Cultural categories (as systems of signs), Sahlins (1985: 151) rightly says, are therefore engaged by interest in projects. This already implies their capacity to change their structure and their values. The interested or intentional, thus fundamentally flexible, uses of cultural categories allow for innovations. Sahlins’s (1985: 144) example has shown that culture change is expressed in actions “insofar as in action the categories by which a present world is orchestrated pick up some novel empirical content” and that the opposition between event and structure is untenable. An unexpected—arbitrary—event such as, for example, Cook’s arrival on the shores of Hawaii or the arrival of the Church of Scientology in Napamogona (chapter 8)—triggers the reproduction of preexisting cultural categories but may also initiate their “functional revaluation” with sometimes unexpected outcomes. In this regard, culture change is always a bit of a “gamble”—the gamble being that culture change brings with it “some unforeseen effects that cannot be ignored” (Sahlins 1985: 149). At first glance, one may indeed perceive culture change in Papua New Guinea as a gamble, and occasionally as quite bizarre. I remember, for example, how stunned I was when my relatives told me that Tom Cruise and John Travolta were on their way to the village to open a new “school,” let alone how Napamogona interpretations of the Scientology ideology were formed and discussed. The arbitrariness of cultural categories allows for personal innovations with such seemingly unexpected outcomes (see chapters 5–8). The question, however, is what “the unexpected” signifies. During my research, I noticed that people reacted to unexpected events with greatest flexibility, often in ways that quite surprised me—and not only me. My observations confirmed M. Strathern’s comment that “the Melanesian world is one where people constantly take themselves by surprise” (cf. Da Col 2013: 1, original emphasis)—and others, I would add. However, as surprised as everybody may be on occasion, the indigenous analysis of unexpected events, as I encountered it, always appeared to be structured in terms of relationships. An outside observer may be tempted to see what Eco (1992: 50) once called an “excess of wonder” and that Da Col (2013: 1) describes as a “perceptual regime which overestimates the importance of coincidences and relentlessly traces relations

8

Introduction

between signs”; but this, of course, is not the way Bena persons perceive it. There appears to be no concept of coincidence in Bena culture. Instead, “coincidences” or “wonders”—be they sudden weather changes, accidents, good or bad news, unexpected encounters, or deaths—are immediately positioned within the local and personal relational networks and become thus complexly intertwined with elements of the physical as well as the spiritual plane—both of which Bena sociality is the center. The old, the new, and the unexpected are related through personal links from physical/local, temporal/historical, and metaphysical/relational fields (see Bashkow 2007; Courtens 2006; Kirsch 2006; Scott 2013; Tove Stella 2007). I found that unexpected events are primarily seen as unexpected (options for) exchanges and, as my adopted Bena father Tau loves to say, one should always “expect the unexpected.” He is well prepared for unexpected events that require his contributions and always has some extra pigs and crops in store. Persons in Bena indeed strategize—sometimes count on—an interference of the unexpected. In this way, nothing really is ever unexpected. Even if the contents of specific events cannot be foreseen, the fact that unforeseen events occur is an acknowledged (and expected) part of life. On the one hand, this cultural concept expresses the unpredictability of human existence as such, and, on the other, it points to a huge range of opportunities because everything is always possible. Such thinking may raise feelings of insecurity, as one can observe in Euro-American culture, where unexpected events often tend to be seen as disturbing preset plans; Bena persons, on the other hand, rather perceive them as chances that must be taken and strategically used to advance personal relational networks. Unforeseen events may bring unexpected strength or, for example, in the case of a natural disaster or personal catastrophe, they may be weakening. In any case, they are conceptually linked to exchange. The concept of always anticipating the unforeseen is by no means exclusive to Bena; in fact it has become acknowledged as a cultural characteristic on a local and national level, often with a playful tone of self-irony. For example, Papua New Guinea’s most popular Airline advertised with the slogan “Papua New Guinea—Land of the Unexpected” (later changed into “Papua New Guinea—Land of the Totally Unexpected”).2 For Bena I argue that the feature of being open to innovation and generally expecting unexpected events/ exchanges and to adjust one’s exchanges to new relationships is a cultural trait that existed before contact with white people. It is one of the a priori concepts of Bena culture that brings to mind the role of persons in the process of culture change. When taking a closer look at the process of synthesizing new cultural elements with preexisting ones under consideration of the persons who are the agents of such transformations, the apparent randomness fades and the strategic innovations of persons come to the fore—all of which are tied to (expected or unexpected) exchange. Seen from this perspective, culture change

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(the transformation of cultural categories) is the product of intentional, not random, action.3 Rather, people become the “authors of their own concepts” (Sahlins 1985: 152). Turning against theories on globalization or “world system theories” that often portray people in colonized cultures as helpless and passive victims of the dominating Western (capitalist) system that brings with it the loss or destruction of their indigenous culture, Sahlins stresses the active role people play as agents in culture change—“indigenous people are active agents in processes of change, even when the other culture represents the dominant capitalist system” (quoted in Robbins 2005: 5).4 My example of failed syncretism clearly supports this position. The fact that the Church of Scientology did not succeed in its “mission work” in Napamogona village shows that my interlocutors are far from being easily convinced, tricked, or dominated by new potential exchange partners. Rather, a new relationship is tested and valued in accordance to the preexisting Bena notion of exchange, which involves reciprocity and a balancing of nurturing and strengthening aspects in and between persons (chapters 3, 8). In this case, the new exchange relationship did not fulfill the cultural ideal of reciprocity nor did it allow for a nurturing extension of relational networks. Rather, it represented “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2006: 79ff.) and became associated with undesired practices of sorcery and witchcraft. Culture change thus results from personal actions that follow personal motivations or interests, which (at least partly) derive from preexisting cultural categories. Underlying all change is continuity. Influenced by Lévi-Strauss, (1962, 1971) Sahlins (1976: 23) understands culture change as shaped by (structural) continuity and vice versa. Such continuity of the structure is itself a historical product (Robbins 2005: 5–6). Structure and history can therefore not be seen as “exclusive alternatives” or opposites but are in reality synthesized with each other (Sahlins 1985: 144).5 The same goes for the opposition between stability and change. In Western thinking, they are perceived as antithetical, as “logical and ontological contraries” (Sahlins 1985: 144) and are, like other categorical distinctions such as state versus action, being versus becoming, condition versus process, and so forth (Sahlins 1985: 144), seen and treated as opposing or complementing each other. In reality, however, instead of being oppositions, the different aspects combine. “Culture functions as a synthesis of stability and change, past and present, diachrony and synchrony” (Sahlins 1985: 144). Based on this assumption, culture can be understood as the processual and continuous synthesis of different elements and categories (and their meanings) that encounter and interact with each other, acquire a new functional value that again affects other related categories, and leads to transformations in their meanings, use, and structure. Here Sahlins introduces his term “the structure of conjuncture.” The structure of conjuncture is “the situational sociology of cultural categories with the motivations it affords to risks of reference and innovations of

10

Introduction

sense” (Sahlins 1985: 152–153). In other words, it captures the situation and the process of synthesis, of the conjoining of seeming dichotomies (past/present, structure/history, preexisting/new cultural categories). It further implies the personal interests and agency of persons in such transformations. It was, after all, the personal motivation to begin a new exchange relationship that drove Hawaiians out to meet Cook’s crew and that made the Napamogona try to understand Scientology ideology. Sahlins’s focus on the embeddedness of cultural categories in history and structure introduced the aspects of arbitrariness, flexibility, and capacity for transformation into the previously somewhat static models of structuralism and, most importantly to me, it considered personal interests and agency as important criteria for the transformation of cultural categories. He has, however, neglected the relationship between “event” and “exchange” in that any event signifies (options for) exchange. I argue that the Bena understanding of exchange represents the system of symbolic reference according to which “events” are interpreted and agentive strategies are developed. The anchor for the agentive transformation of cultural categories—meaning a shift in the relationship between signifier and signified—thus lies in the culturally specific notion of exchange as reference and with it the understanding of person.

Agents and Persons When Sahlins talks about agency, he does not specify the term but uses it to describe the activities of persons as responsible and conscious strategies in the reproduction and transformation of cultural categories. Persons to him are per se agents. M. Strathern (1988: 268ff.) has dealt with this question on a deeper level and distinguished between agent and person. As I will explain in more detail in chapter 2, according to her, Melanesian persons are socially derived dividuals, composed of detachable bits of each other and thus “an assemblage of or the locus of relationships” (M. Strathern 1988: 272). In other words, persons define and reveal themselves through their ever-changing relationships. An agent, in this Melanesian model, is one “who from his or her own vantage point acts with another’s in mind” (272). Agents are responsible for the transformation of relationships and thereby of persons (and practices and cultural categories); they appear “as the turning point of relations, able to metamorphose one kind of person into another, a transformer” (272). M. Strathern speaks in this context of cause and effect. Agents as transformers of social relationships act in reference to other persons—perceived in the relationships that constitute them—who are not active themselves but become the cause of the agent’s acting. In some forms of Bena het pe exchanges that I describe in chapter 4, for example, the brother of an upcoming mother gives gifts to his in-laws and in doing so initiates long-term exchanges between

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him and his in-laws as well as his children and their children and so forth. He becomes an agent that acts with (the relationship towards) his in-laws in mind, their persons being the cause of his actions and the transformation of the relationship with them the objective and intended effect. Each agentive acting— wonderfully expressed in single exchanges—therefore aims at reproducing and transforming specific relationships. This goes for the change of cultural categories as well as for that of (dividual) persons. An agent always has such transformation in mind and plans it more or less strategically. While a “person is construed from the vantage points of the relations that constitute him or her,” an agent “is construed as the one who acts because of those relationships and is revealed in his or her actions” (M. Strathern 1988: 273). Thus both person and agent “occupy positions defined by different vantage points” (273).6 An agent’s position is “intrinsically multiple” (M. Strathern 1988: 273) because each cause for agentive acting is different and represents transformations of different relationships. By manipulating the transformation of exchange relationships, an agent always redefines (or transforms) his or her own person, leading him or her again to new transformations of exchange relationships and so forth. It is like a catch-22 in that it reveals one of the most fundamental principles in New Guinea Highland societies—that the dichotomy of person and society or individual and collective does not work in the way it does in Western culture. This, of course, is by no means a new idea; but Strathern’s model of Melanesian personhood has not been widely applied to the analysis of culture change, as I shall attempt to do here. With her concept of the partible person, M. Strathern has described the Melanesian view on person as social (dividual/multiple) and has shown that the analytical application of Western dichotomies is counterproductive to the understanding of Melanesian social structure. In this regard, she shares Sahlins’s objection to anthropological categories that stem from Western culture, like the “individual” and the concurrent assumption of a bounded “ego”-entity which is at the center of action and relationships (M. Strathern 1988: 269).7 In Melanesia, agents and persons are perceived as and act as dividual or multiple. Although I take the partibility of person as the starting point for my analysis of culture change in Bena, I need to emphasize that I do not see an understanding of person as partible or dividual restricted to Melanesian cultures and agree that “the stark opposition of individual versus dividual personhood on which Melanesia’s current bifurcation is premised is overly simple” (Mosko 2010: 219). The dichotomy between Western individual and Melanesian dividual cannot be withheld. As Mosko (2010: 219) has argued in relation to the conceptualization of person in Christianity, “The total Christian person … is as fully partible as indigenous Melanesians” and “the individualism that has been routinely associated with Christianity is itself a manifestation of dividuality closely analogous to Melanesian personhood” (see also Scott 2013).

12

Introduction

It seems “we Westerners” and the Melanesian “others” are not on entirely different grounds then. I will refer to this argument and other criticism on the “essentialist and synchronic limitations” (Mosko 2010: 219) of the new Melanesian ethnography in more detail in my chapters on the Bena person and on Christianity. At this point, my intention is merely to make clear that when I use the term “dividual” to describe the Bena notion of person, I do not see it in opposition to a Euro-American “individual.” Having said that, there is—as will become clear throughout this book—no doubt that persons in Bena are culturally conceptualized as dividuals, as partible agents in exchanges. Mosko has helped to clarify the similarities and differences of M. Strathern’s and Sahlins’s notions of agency. He counterposes M. Strathern’s construction of the Melanesian “partible person” with Sahlins’s model of the “heroic” or “divine” Polynesian “king” (Mosko 1992; Sahlins 1985). Mosko argues that Polynesian chiefs can best be understood and characterized in terms of personal partibility and not in terms of heroic hierarchy, as Sahlins suggested. As Mosko puts it, Strathern and Sahlins both have dealt with the same problem, namely the ethnocentrism inherent in the Western notion of the unitary individual, but they have taken different, actually opposing, directions in doing so. While Sahlins “would holistically encompass the ‘person,’ or merge a multiplicity of such ‘persons,’ within the greater social totality, Strathern partitions every ‘person’ into his or her composite and detachable parts and relations” (Mosko 1992: 698).8 Both authors have on their grounds developed theories of social action that profoundly diverge. The difference lies mainly in the specific dynamics of agency attributed to persons in the different regions. Strathern sees the Melanesian person not as individual but as dividual, “multiply or plurally constituted of the earlier contributions and relations of other persons” (Mosko 1992: 698), thus developing out of other person’s actions. In this Melanesian view, action consists, according to M. Strathern, of personal detachment— meaning that, in acting, a person detaches previously internal parts of him or herself, externalizes them, and exchanges them with other persons who in turn attach them to themselves and thus internalize them. Agency is then “a process of personal decomposition” (Mosko 1992: 698).9 In contrast, Sahlins sees person as embodied in the Polynesian divine king or chief “whose heroic capacities and actions summarise, unify, encompass and thus expansively internalise the relations of society’s member as a whole” (Mosko 1992: 698).10 Here a fundamental contrast between M. Strathern’s Melanesianist and Sahlins’s Polynesianist model of social practice is revealed. Strathern, according to Mosko (1992: 699), portrays social practice as a “‘subtractive’ process” and the capacity (of Melanesian persons) for action as arising from differences and separations. Agency is then, according to M. Strathern, stemming from incompleteness rather than from completeness of person. Sahlins argues the other way round. Social practice to him is “essentially ‘additive’ or ‘expan-

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sive’” (Mosko 1992: 699). In his view, persons (chiefs) completely incorporate other persons and relations in agency; and not only persons: they embody or encompass the whole society and even the cosmos (Mosko 1992: 700). Mosko does not agree with Sahlins in this respect. He proposes the partibility of persons for the divine kings instead: “Where Sahlins would attribute the extraordinary agency of divine kings and chiefs to a sort of extension or expansion of the Western ‘individual’ to heroic proportions, I suggest the possibility instead of something like its partibility, detachability and reduction” (Mosko 1992: 700).11 My data on the exchange of nogoya’a between persons in Bena support M. Strathern’s argument about their partibility in Bena thinking, and I agree with her and Mosko that acting is a process of personal decomposition. By decomposing their parts (and by externalizing and exchanging them), Bena persons stimulate others’ reactions. For M. Strathern, every action is therefore both conventional and innovative (Mosko 1992: 702). In other words, it is a reproduction and a transformation. In Bena, as among the Mekeo (Mosko 1992) or the Muyu (Kirsch 2006), persons are measured in terms of what they are “able to elicit from others” (Kirsch 2006: 80). Exchange transactions “make people appear in particular social roles in relation to each other” (Kirsch 2006: 88); they always emphasize the (potentially new) relationship between the exchange partners.

The Partibility of Culture and Cultural Categories With this understanding of agency, I argue that Bena personhood follows Bena cultural logic in its transformative character. Bena persons define themselves through social relationships and transform themselves as agents through the reproduction and transformation of such relationships. As agents, persons also shape, reproduce, and transform cultural categories; and they do so with social relationships in mind. If we consider the change a cultural category undergoes through the encounter with a new culture—for example the Polynesian institution of tabu as Sahlins (1985: 140ff.) described it in his example—it becomes clear that its transformations and changes occur with respect to their effects on social relationships. As pointed out above, the application of tabu had an impact not only on the relationships between chiefs and the “divine” strangers but also on that of commoners to chiefs and of commoners to newcomers. Bearing the differences in their approach to person and agency in mind, M. Strathern’s agentive transformation of relationships and persons shares a number of structural features with Sahlins’s understanding of the agentive reproductive transformation of cultural categories. Both changes—that of person and that of culture—are shaped by agents that act according to their understanding of social exchange relationships.12 This implies that the structural

14

Introduction

basis for cultural change as well as for the transformation of partible persons in Melanesia (at least, as I will show, in Bena) lies in the focus on shifting networks of social (exchange) relationships. What I am saying, in short, is that, in Bena, the change of person and that of culture work on the same underlying structural principle—the focus on agency in social relationships through an exchange of detachable parts of persons. It is a theoretical alley that Mosko (2005, 2010) has opened up with his use of M. Strathern’s notion of the dividual in regard to Christianity. The adoption of Christian elements into Mekeo culture, Mosko argues, may be grounded in similar concepts of personhood found in both cultural systems. In chapters 5 and 6 of this book I present and analyze data that confirm Mosko’s argument. I found that the “similarity” of elements of different cultures is a precondition for their compatibility and, with this, for their conjoining. Mosko shows that the Christian “person” cannot be understood as being “individualistic,” as the “Judeo-Christian West” may suppose. Rather, Mekeo and Christian culture both perceive person as dividual and partible (Mosko 2005). My research findings confirm Mosko’s argument of the relation between partible person and (agentive) culture change and prove that the similarity of notions of exchange and person provide a basis on which Bena people incorporate certain elements of Western culture and dismiss others. In Bena, as among the Mekeo, the adoption … of elements of Christian religion or other features of modernity has not necessarily involved the kind of profound ruptures, hybridities, fatal impacts, or globalizing flows that others have reported for the region. But neither has the adoption of Christianity by Mekeo and possibly other Melanesians involved the mere continuity of pre-existing religious beliefs and practices. For it is through active interpersonal transactions conducted in terms of personal partibility and mutual elicitation which mark both cultures that Mekeo villagers have adopted some elements of Christianity into their persons while relinquishing others of their Melanesian heritage; and it is as a consequence of these personal transactions that it can be estimated that their culture or religion has changed. (Mosko 2005)

If (inter)personal transactions are the causes for culture change, it can in Mekeo and in Bena terms best be understood as culture exchange. From a conception of persons as partible and consisting “of bits of one another” it follows that persons define (and reinvent) themselves as agents through (the transformation of) their relationships. In other words, they change—by their own will or by default—according to their social relationships. The latter are, at least in Bena, by definition exchange relations. Just as persons detach and attach parts of themselves in exchange, cultural categories undergo in their transformation a process of detachment and reattachment of their parts. When I speak of the incorporation or conjoining of

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certain elements of Western culture with those of Bena, I imply the partibility of cultural categories. Cargo cults are a good example. Here, preexisting categories are not replaced but have Western elements attached to them, elements that are detached from their context of origin but carry some of its features with them. If, for example, cargo cult leaders place telephone receivers on graves in order to communicate with ancestral spirits (as I was told was done in Bena) they detach the objects from their Western context as a tool for communication among the technically/mechanically connected living and attach them to their preexisting ideas of communication with spirits of the dead. This attachment follows pragmatic considerations and is done in reference to social relationships, in this case the relationships to the ancestors on which the living depend. According to Wagner (1981: 34), cargo cults can be seen as the “interpretive counterpart of anthropology” and are thus a kind of “reverse anthropology.” Wagner observed that “the ‘cargo’ is seldom thought of in the way we might expect, as simple material wealth; its significance is based rather on the symbolic use of European wealth to represent the redemption of native societies. In this usage, it resembles those other ‘cargoes’, the more traditionally symbolic constituents of the bride price, or the activity and products of gardening, that embodies the central meaning of human relations for Melanesians, and that we tend to interpret in materialist, economic terms” (Wagner 1981: 32; also quoted in Kirsch 2006: 105). In other words, the symbolical merging of Western elements into cargo cults reflects and enforces a perception of the world as determined by social relations. In the Bena example above, different cultural elements—for example, a telephone receiver—are attached to and incorporated into Bena exchange systems. They become the means of connecting—that is, building social relationships. Thus, the conjoining of elements of different cultures works in Bena on the same principles of partibility and detachment and attachment of certain elements as person in Bena does—in other words, it works through exchange. This Bena perception puts theories that focus primarily on hierarchy and domination of different cultures in culture change into a different light. I share Sahlins’s criticism of globalization theories of culture change to a great degree. Globalization, according to Sahlins (1999, 2000), does not bring with it any single, homogenized global culture but movements of cultural revival or preservation and differentiation. In opposition to the assumption of world-system theories that see capitalism as a dominant and forceful system threatening to destroy traditional cultures, Sahlins introduces his develop-man theory. “Develop-man” combines Sahlins’s main interests concerning culture change (the relation between structure and history): cultural integrity, continuity in change, and indigenous agency. It is a form of cultural expansion in which new elements are interpreted and incorporated into the preexisting

16

Introduction

culture in accordance with this culture’s categories in order to improve or expand the options of personal agency. The agency of indigenous people as it is played out in projects of develop-man also influences the world capitalist system rather than capitulating before it (Sahlins 1989).13 Sahlins argues that culture change should not be seen as an indicator of the death of a culture but rather as new “kinds of cultural processes” (Robbins 2005: 10). His important argument here is that cultures have always been invented and transformed and that the fact that they are doing so now does not make them less authentic than in the past. Further, even when people take one or two aspects of their tradition as central to their whole culture and use them as a means of differentiation from others, this does not indicate the inauthenticity of their culture. Quite the contrary, such reifications or “seemingly decontextualized symbols” (Robbins 2005: 8) may express cultural identity because they have a wide range of culturally specific connotations that come with them. This is exactly true for culture change in Bena, as numerous examples in this book will confirm. So far so good—but what Sahlins dismisses is that agency in “develop-man” projects signifies personal forms of exchange between partible persons, and that “new kinds of cultural processes” represent shifts in exchange relationships. Since Sahlins, the analysis of culture change remains of central concern to Melanesian anthropology, as numerous recent works on the topic confirm (e.g., Bashkow 2006; Crook 2007; Mosko 2010; Robbins 2007, 2013; Tomlinson and McDougall 2013; Tove-Stella 2007). These works represent a great geographic, theoretical, and epistemological diversity and offer rich comparative data. Especially the anthropology of Christianity (Barker 2008, 2013; Cannell 2006; Hann 2007; Keane 2013; Robbins 2004, 2007, 2013; Tomlinson and McDougall 2013) has contributed significantly to the analysis of culture change. An important issue it raised is whether cultural changes should be analyzed in terms of continuity, as, for example, Sahlins did, or rather by focusing on ruptures. Robbins (2007: 10) criticized anthropologists for their “continuity thinking” when analyzing culture change. According to him, “Cultural anthropologists have for the most part either argued or implied that the things they study—symbols, meanings, logics, structures, power dynamics, etc.—have an enduring quality and are not readily subject to change” (Robbins 2007: 9). In regard to Christian conversion among the Urapmin, Robbins (2004) found instead a view that stresses the rupture between traditional and Christian life. It is expressed, for example, in the Urapmin comment “Before was before, and now is now” (Robbins 2007: 11). Here, the conversion to Christianity has become a temporal and moral marking point in personal biographies as well as local history (see also Bashkow 2006: 118f.; Keane 2013: 220f.). However, I wonder whether such “marking points” necessarily imply fundamental “ruptures.”

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Even Sahlins, who sees “develop-man” projects as the first and initial reaction to the encounter with a new culture, at some point in his career has admitted to radical culture changes. According to him, these feed on the feeling of inferiority and humiliation people experience, a feeling that can rise at a second stage in the process of cultural change: “Humiliation breaks the cycle of develop-man reproduction and expansion by convincing people of their own worthlessness and the worthlessness of their cultures. It instills a ‘global inferiority complex’ that leads people actively to want to change” (Sahlins 1992: 24; Robbins 2005: 11; see also Knauft 2007).14 In many places, the introduction of Christianity would be an example of such humiliation-induced change. I have objections against Sahlins’s idea of “humiliation.” At least for my research site, I argue that “humiliation” rather signifies a state of “weakness,” implying an imbalance in nurturing and strengthening aspects of nogoya’a in persons. Sahlins (1990: 93) recognized humiliation but he also implied the self-awareness of people by stressing that “around much of the world … the universalising cultural project of the West does not succeed so well in humiliating people.” He further argued that an initial feeling of humiliation may well lead to a greater cultural self-consciousness because in order to feel humiliated by one’s culture one must become aware of it (Sahlins 1990: 93; 1992: 24; Robbins 2005: 12). Sahlins did not pursue his idea of cultural humiliation further, and I think he had good reasons for not doing so. It has, however, been taken on and developed further by others. Strong (2004: 123) speaks of a repudiation of traditions in the Asaroka area near Bena, and Robbins introduces a new model of culture change alongside assimilation (extension of preexisting cultural categories) and transformative reproduction. He calls it adoption. To him, adoption is a form of culture change grounded on humiliation through “cultural debasement,” a term originally used by Sahlins (Sahlins 1992: 24) with people learning to “hate what they already have … despise what they are … and want then to be someone else” (Sahlins 1992: 24; also quoted by Rumsey 2004: 584). In adoption, people take on the new culture completely “on its own terms” without attempting to link it with or work it into preexisting categories of their “traditional” understanding, because of their feeling of inferiority and humiliation. Robbins thus sees humiliation as a precondition for adoption. If Sahlins’s arguments—that “indigenous categories shape people’s understandings of novel experiences” (quoted by Robbins 2005: 12) and that new events are, at least initially, interpreted in indigenous cultural categories—are correct, and if on these grounds a feeling of humiliation develops, humiliation itself must be a preexisting cultural category (Robbins 2005: 12). In other words, “the initial humiliation must take place in traditional terms” (Robbins 2004: 9). Robbins followed this argument in the Urapmin context by showing how compatible the precontact Urapmin cultural emphasis on “moral deliberation” and on difficult moral choices in everyday

18

Introduction

life was with the Christian notion of sin and how it led to a feeling of humiliation sparked by that of severe moral condemnation from colonial officers and evangelists. Although initiated by the encounter with the new culture (first indirectly through the building of an airstrip in Telefomin, which changed the previous centrality of Urapmin in the ritual economy of the region, and then directly through encounters with missionaries), the Urapmin feeling of humiliation—which is, according to Robbins, the main motivation for their conversion to Christianity—is rooted in preexisting cultural categories such as the morality mentioned above. Further, the Urapmin value of innovation, expressed, for example, in the creativity and innovative strategies of Big Men in order to appeal to others, and the concurrent flexibility of choices and actions, provided nurturing grounds for Christianity. Robbins speaks of two different phases of Urapmin Christianization and developed a two-stage model of conversion (Rumsey 2004: 586) that corresponds with Sahlins’s assimilation and transformation-types of culture change. According to Robbins (2004: 115), the Urapmin conversion to Christianity was first what he called a “utilitarian (religious) conversion” with the motives and the initiative for change coming from traditional cultural categories—induced, for example, by the innovative character of Big-Men-ship. Conversion to Christianity was here understood as a form of utilitarian experiment (utilitarian in the traditional sense). The second step in conversion is the intellectualist conversion where the motives for change have become separated from preexisting cultural categories, “when Christian meanings have come to shape people’s world to such an extent that those meanings themselves, rather than ones drawn from traditional culture, begin to provide the motive for conversion” (Robbins 2004: 115). With this second stage of conversion, adoption happens and people take on a new cultural system “on its own term” (Robins 2004: 115).15 I agree with Rumsey’s (2004) criticism of Robbins’s model of adoption as treating culture as too distinct or too sharply circumscribed.16 The Urapmin (like all cultures) had been “hybrid” long before Christianity arrived. They did not encounter Western culture “as such … but rather a historically specific and relatively limited set of foreign people, ideas and practices, religious and otherwise” (Rumsey 2004: 591).17 People in Bena were also not suddenly confronted with Western culture as such but got to know it through personal encounters with foreigners who visited the area for various reasons and with whom they entered exchange relationships (either through wealth exchange or violence). Like Sahlins, Robbins may have neglected the fact that culture change happens through personal exchange. My data on Bena interpretations of culture change do not point to an idea of “humiliation” that leads to an adoption of the new culture, but rather to a focus on personal agentive exchange. Although Bena persons share similar experiences encountering a dominant Western culture and belief system as, for example the Urapmin, my

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data suggest that they interpret the new relationships, at least partly, in different terms. For example, although the dichotomy of “whites” and “blacks” is also engaged frequently in Bena conversations, it is referred to with a variety of attributes. Whites, safa bo (lit. red men), and their ways may in specific contexts be associated with strength, material wealth, health, order, and easy lifestyle, but in other contexts they conversely connote selfishness, lack of empathy and emotion, cruelty, or greed (see Bashkow 2006: 221). In some respects, persons in Bena see Euro-American culture as stronger; in others they don’t. Most importantly, even if they perceive it as stronger in specific contexts, this does not at all imply that Bena culture is generally regarded as inferior, nor that the status quo could not be altered. I argue that, for Bena, what Robbins refers to as “humiliation” is the self-perception of being “weak,” bereft of nogoya’a, inferior in exchange. In Bena language, the state of being weak is phrased as amuya memolo a menive, literally “strength is not there”; a weak person is described as amuya’a menina bo nohive, literally “strength is not with the man.” Unlike humiliation, the state of being weak (without strength, depleted of nurturance) can be changed. A weak Bena person—or a weak Bena cultural category for that matter—may regain its strength through strategic agentive acting, through being nurtured (receiving nogoya’a) in exchange; a humiliated person—or culture—will remain in the imbalanced state of inferiority in exchange unless it changes fundamentally, with crucial parts of it being dismissed and replaced by new ones.18 Thus humiliation leads to adoption and enforces a structural change of cultural categories while being weak does not. This is crucial because it means that in Bena, the preexisting category of exchange is not substantially altered or dismissed and replaced with Western ways. Instead I will show that it is extended because new elements are attached to or conjoined with it. In my work, I investigate why and how certain elements of Western culture are conjoined with indigenous categories and practices whereas others are ignored or even despised, why some Bena “traditions” were abandoned and others maintained, sometimes even reinforced. I am interested in understanding the process of merging or conjoining of elements of different cultures, a process leading to a reproductive transformation of preexisting cultural categories and concurrently to a shift in the system of symbolic reference and the social relational networks. Culture change is, to my mind, the best term to capture this process.19 My take on culture change builds on this model; however, I further argue that the best way to capture the process of culture change is by focusing on exchanges of indigenous and introduced elements of cultures and persons. Although this book deals with questions of cultural continuity and change, I hope not to make it an “obsessive concern” (Barker 2013: 162). The reason for my analytical focus on continuity (the reproductive transformations

20

Introduction

of cultural categories in Sahlins’s sense) is simply because what I found at first glance to be “ruptures” in Bena culture often turned out to be gradual (sometimes also radical) shifts in relationships. The situation in Bena appears quite different from that in Urapmin.20 When persons in Bena converse and leave their old ways behind to become true Christians, they seem to perceive it rather as a change in relational fields (usually an extension) than a rupture. Although Bena Christians use opposing terms such as “dark” and “bright” to describe pre-Christian and Christian times and sometimes withdraw from relationships with non-Christians, the Bena way of being Christian appears much more flexible and open to changes than that described by Robbins for the Urapmin. I know a great number of people, including, for example my adopted mother Polako, who are changing their church memberships quite often and who possess large networks in different churches as well as in political or nongovernment organizations. In spite of a conceptual “diarchy” (Robbins 2013: 207) between, for example, Pentecostal Church doctrine and politics, I found that in the reality of life, these spheres overlap. The same goes more generally for Christianity and traditional practices and beliefs. Bena persons operate and mediate very consciously in and between these different spheres. The closer I looked, the clearer it became that the underlying motivation for conversion, as well as for changing one’s congregation, lies primarily in pragmatic considerations regarding personal relationships. Mama Polako put it in these words: “I gained a new family. My old family stays but I also have other brothers and sisters now, my fellow-Christians” (personal conversation). I will elaborate more on this topic and recent approaches of the anthropology of Christianity in chapter 7. At this stage, I merely want to point out that only by understanding the cultural significance of the categories of continuity and change (and the role rupture plays or doesn’t play in this) through indigenous and anthropological analysis, can we grasp what is actually going on in Melanesia today, on personal, local, and national levels (see Kirsch 2006; Tomlinson and McDougall 2013). The questions I am dealing with in this book arise from the theoretical and empirical understanding of Bena culture I have outlined here. Central to Bena culture and to the transformations this culture experiences today is, I argue, the concept of partible person and exchange. In which way does it affect and shape the cultural transformations we can observe today? What strategies—if any—do Bena agents apply in the process of change? How do they analyze culture change and what do their interpretations reveal about the cultural significance of continuity and change? I hope this book may shed some light on such questions and will contribute to a better understanding of what it really is about—the people in Bena and how they position themselves in changing global contexts.

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Methodology Besides participant observation and other qualitative methods generally used in anthropological research, my main methodological focus was the audiovisual documentation of events, interviews, and Bena everyday life. This approach had a number of advantages. I could approach the filmed material in two different ways: first, through feedback analyses—I investigated the reactions and remarks when the material was shown to the protagonists and could thus supplement missing information or correct things that I misunderstood—and second, it enabled me to apply a fine-grained analysis to the images following the fieldwork. The process of filming further enabled me to reciprocate something visible to my Bena interlocutors and relatives. I compiled four related films for the community of Napamogona, hauslain documentaries as they called them, which I filmed according to the requests and wishes of persons in Napamogona. During the process of shooting and editing these short films, I took on the role as camerawoman and editor but left the directing entirely to my relatives. It was most interesting to see where the priorities of my Bena directors lay—what they chose as being of importance for the documentation of their cultural heritage and what they wanted me to dismiss.21 These films were stored in the village, survived a tribal fight and the village’s destruction, and are today still screened in Napamogona on special occasions.22 Filming had the further advantage of allowing me to collect more data than I possibly could get with any other method. After one year in Bena, I returned with eighty-six hours of footage, a great part of which still needs to be analyzed. Of course I have conducted numerous interviews with different people on all kinds of issues. Depending on the situation, some of these interviews followed a narrative and informal style; for example, when sitting together in the evenings, talking, I would not interfere with my interlocutors’ narrations or discussions but let them dictate the paradigm and topic of the interview. However, I also conducted a number of structured and more concrete interviews where I asked specific questions about particular topics—for example, on the concept of person, magical practices and religious beliefs, historical data, etc. Thus my filmed material is supplemented by transcribed interviews as well as field notes. The greatest part of my fieldwork consisted of participant observation, maybe sometimes more participating than observing. I learned how it feels to work the gardens, carry water up from the river to the village, and take care of pigs. I also learned how important it is to contribute in exchange and how much priority Bena persons give to exchange-related affairs as opposed to other tasks or obligations; and, possibly most important of all, I gained an insight into the complexities of village politics—the competition and tensions

22

Introduction

that arise between different influential people and their strategies for increasing their influence over others. Finally, I also supplemented my methods by archival research at the University of Goroka and the Melanesian Institute in Goroka. For the acquisition of statistical data, I visited the Eastern Highland’s Provincial Government in Goroka and consulted different NGOs, especially the YWCA Goroka, “Save the Children,” and “Family Voice.”

Structure Before I outline the book’s structure I need to mention that some—very few— names have been changed on request.23 My adopted Bena mother, for example, did not want her name publicized because she, as a committed Christian, did not want it to appear in a book that also elaborates on sorcery and witchcraft (an interesting ethnographic detail that I will refer to again in chapter 7). Further, in order to protect my informants, I have introduced a fictional character, a man named Nando, and placed him in my adoptive clan. There are a number of situations and practices described in this book that I consider relevant for my line of argumentation but which were illegal or secret, including killings, kidnappings, possession of weapons, revelation of specific magical knowledge and so forth. The stories and deeds I ascribe to Nando are all true but have in reality been committed by a number of other people who shall remain anonymous. This book consists of the introduction, eight chapters, and the conclusion. I begin by laying out the theoretical framework and by explaining my line of argumentation. Chapters 1 and 2 reveal the background of my research, give fundamental information about the fieldsite, and introduce the people of Napamogona. In chapter 1, I describe various aspects of Bena culture that I found crucial for understanding social interactions: the relation between persons and their land and the impact this relation has on the lives of people. I show that the relationship between Bena persons and their land is based on partible exchange of nurturance, nogoya’a, in a similar way that the relationships between people are. I further introduce the persons who were of greatest relevance for my work. Chapter 1 aims mainly at bringing the reader into contact with the situation and context in which the research has taken place and the people of Napamogona today. Chapter 2 deals with questions of Bena leadership and economy. I introduce two Bena persons, my adopted mother Polako and my adopted father Tau, who both represent strength and dominance, however in different fields of exchange. In chapter 3, I focus on indigenous notions of personhood that I see preliminary to culture change. Since this is the crucial point of my line of argumentation, it needs to be discussed before I delve into my material on cultural

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transformations. The description and analysis of the Bena concept of person helps to lay out the setting in which culture change takes place and according to which criteria it is performed. I strongly rely on M. Strathern’s notion of the Melanesian dividual and partible personhood and relate it to the Bena concept of nubune-nemehani, “my whole being and my spirit.” In this chapter I explain the Bena ideas on person as consisting of different parts that are in exchange with other persons and with other parts of one’s own person. This discussion includes a description of Bena spirits—of living and dead—and body substances with their inherent powers. The central focus is on a part of Bena person that Newman (1965) referred to as “vital essence” for the neighboring Gururumba. In Bena this personal “essence” is called nogoya’a, and nogoya’a is crucial in exchange between (partible) persons. Nogoya’a was translated by my interlocutors literally as “body fluid” but in a more metaphorical sense as “nurturance.” Thus my main argument in this chapter is that partible Bena persons depend on the exchange of nogoya’a in their relationships—they nurture others with parts of their own essence. Here another important aspect of Bena person comes into play. Sikrafu’i, translated as “strength” and “life-force,” is a substantial part of a Bena person. It indicates life. In order to increase sikrafu’i, strength, a person needs to receive nogoya’a, nurturance. Thus in exchange, persons give away nogoya’a and in doing so strengthen others, but they also elicit a future reciprocation of nurturance by the receivers that will in return make them stronger. From these standpoints I proceed to chapter 4, where I deal with Bena life-cycle rituals and analyze the exchanges taking place during these events in relation to partible person and the transfer of nogoya’a between exchange partners and/or groups. The main part of chapter 4 is taken up with the important het pe exchanges that profoundly shape a Bena person’s social identity and confirm relationships between his or her maternal and paternal lineages. I further describe main life cycle events such as birth, initiation, and courting rituals. My focus in the analysis of these rituals lies on the changes they have undergone during the last two generations. I try to explain these changes in relation to the Bena notion of person and exchange; more specifically, I investigate how new forms of exchange transactions reproduce and reshape the partibility of Bena persons and show how persons are in such transactions deconstructed and reconstructed into the relationships in which they participate (see Kirsch 2006: 94; Wagner 1989: 267). In ritualized exchanges, social relationships are made visible and nurtured. Ritualized exchanges operate in this way as “an indigenous technique of social analysis” (Kirsch 2006: 80). My analysis of magical practices in chapters 5 and 6 confirms that Bena culture possesses an intrinsic “openness to hybridity” (Kirsch 2006: 197). I focus on syncretism in magical practices, beginning with the description and analysis of magical practices in today’s Bena. Some of these practices have

24

Introduction

been introduced into Bena from other regions of Papua New Guinea before Western contact and have undergone various transformations; others have later been conjoined with Western ideas of horror-fiction. By focusing on indigenous interpretations of sorcery and witchcraft, I investigate how new elements are incorporated or dismissed in relation to the Bena concept of person and exchange of “essence.” Chapter 7 is on Bena belief and Christianity, with focus on religious syncretism. It investigates the transformation of cultural categories, such as “sikrafu’i/ strength” and “nogoya’a/nurturance,” through the introduction of Christianity. I draw mainly on indigenous analyzes of religious change and may thus position myself rather towards the “local configuration end of the continuum,” as Barker (2013: 155) put it, with a key focus on “what local people make of Christianity”; and, indeed, I found “the process of change as compatible with much continuity” (Barker 2013: 149). In this chapter I show that the impact of Christianity on Bena culture can hardly be seen as a sudden rupture that led to a complete change or identity crisis, let alone a devaluation of Bena culture in Robbins’s sense of humiliation. Rather than finding an unbridgeable gap between Christian individualism and Bena relationality, resulting in conflict and “moral torment” (Robbins 2004, quoted in McDougall 2013: 126), my data reveal that Christianity is here interpreted in terms of extending relational networks (to other persons, spiritual beings, and to God) in order to receive nurturance and gain in strength, and handled with the same pragmatic rationality as other matters in life. In this chapter I analyze Bena Christianity with respect to cultural concepts of personhood and exchange of nogoya’a. I demonstrate that the reasons for the acceptance and success of Christianity in Bena lie in the indigenous perception of similarity and the supplementing (extending) nature of Christian belief in relation to preexisting Bena cultural categories of person as partible and exchange as balancing strength and nurturance. Chapter 8, which deals with a newly introduced, non-Christian form of belief, supports this argument. Here I give an example of failed syncretism. The Church of Scientology tried to establish itself in the Bena area and, in spite of an initial enthusiasm among the Napamogona, did not in the longer term succeed in winning the hearts and minds of my interlocutors. In this chapter I investigate the Bena reasoning that led to the rejection of the new relationship and show how it builds on the cultural understanding of “unrequited reciprocity”—a “dehumanizing experience” (Kirsch 2006: 95f.) which has its roots in failed exchange. Unrequited reciprocity was the driving force that shaped specific reactions to the newcomers. The Napamogona gave the organization a chance—but after some months judged the exchanges as “draining” (weakening) people in the village. Consequently, the organization’s plan to establish itself in the area failed. Unrequited reciprocity is here a result of the indigenous analysis of the new “event” in terms of exchange and personal partibility.

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The main questions I seek to answer in my work are how culture change happens in Bena and how it is defined and interpreted by my Bena interlocutors. By examining how Bena agency is played out in concrete situations and practices of culture change and by drawing on indigenous analyzes, I hope to reveal Bena perceptions on change and continuity and link them with my anthropological analysis.

Notes 1. Sahlins developed his theoretical approach to the analysis of culture and culture change on semiotic-structuralist grounds and thereby relied to a great deal on the semiotic-linguistic model proposed by Saussure. Sahlins treats culture as relying on an underlying structure of cultural categories that correspond to Saussure’s categories of (linguistic) signs. Cultural categories are, like signs, classificatory schemes of structural, historical, and arbitrary character. In his “Course in General Linguistics,” Saussure ([1916] 1983: 67) declared, “The linguistic sign is arbitrary,” meaning that there is no connection between the concept, the idea, and the sound-image of a sign or, in Saussure’s terms, the “signified” and the “signifier.” Each language has, for example, a different signifier for the idea “mother.” In French, it is “mère,” in German, “Mutter,” and so on. Each of these signifiers is arbitrary because it is different from the other, but each points to the same signified. The idea of mother could have been signified by any number of linguistic representations, but it is the connection between “mother” and the idea behind it that form the sign. This connection that develops between signified and signifier is created and transformed through its use in language by people. It is a result of convention, meaning that speakers of the same language group have agreed and learned that these letters or sounds evoke a certain image. The specific meanings that signs, and cultural categories, have ascribed to them thus derive from historical processes during which the relationship between signifier and signified was and is shaped and transformed. These relationships order people’s understanding of the world (Sahlins 1985: 145–148; Saussure [1916] 1983), they are arbitrary and continuously changing. Sahlins sees their arbitrariness as a precondition for the historical character of culture and, with this, also for culture change. 2. The previous advertising already pointed in this direction: “Papua New Guinea—like every place you’ve never been.” 3. This is not to say that the change itself is intentional. It can never be fully so, because agents can never be completely aware of all the possible consequences of their actions (Sahlins 1985: 152). 4. Sahlins’s structural approach to culture change shows an interest in agency that LéviStrauss had neglected. This new focus on the relationship of structure and agency implies that in acting, individuals follow a pregiven structure but they do not “mechanically reproduce it” (Robbins 2005: 6). By acting, people (agents) shape their cultural categories “thus subjecting those categories to risk in the event that the fit between category and reality is not a neat one, and finally suffering the transformations of categories and the relations between them when there is a mismatch between category and reality” (Robbins 2005: 7).

26

Introduction

5. In Sahlins’s (1985: 144) Hawaiian example he has shown that Hawaiian history is clearly grounded in structure—“the systematic ordering of contingent circumstances”— while the structure of Hawaiian culture is also historical. 6. Where Sahlins describes the role of the agent as somewhat autonomous (he or she as author of his or her own concepts and acts), M. Strathern sees it differently. According to her, in Melanesian understandings of the matter, agents do not cause their own acts but “they simply do them”; agency and cause are not the same. “The cause is the person with whom the agent’s relationship is to be transformed, a unitary reference point for her or his acts” (M. Strathern 1988: 273). An agent has the cause in mind when acting and thus the relationship to the person he or she is acting upon, but he or she is also concerned to influence the transformation of the concerned relationship to his or her own benefit. 7. As it is pictured in various models (for example, Leenhardt’s model of the “New Caledonian personage,” as quoted by M. Strathern 1988: 270). 8. While Sahlins relies heavily upon Dumont’s (1959) model of hierarchy for Polynesia, M. Strathern’s analysis of Melanesian societies diverges from this approach. Like Dumont, M. Strathern shows a certain skepticism concerning the comparative use of the Western notions of the “individual” for non-Western societies, but unlike Dumont, she “also rejects anthropological constructions of ‘society’ as reifications” (Mosko 1992: 698). 9. Mosko (1992) stresses in this context that such a partible understanding of person does not depend on any hierarchical order of the detachable personal parts. 10. Unlike Melanesian dividuals, Polynesian chiefs or kings are thus “social-historical individuals” (Sahlins 1991: 63). The divine chief/king’s person represents the whole community; the latter’s history and current situation depend on him and are reflected in his relationships to the outside, as “precisely in these heroic politics the king is the condition of the possibility of community” (Sahlins 1985: 34f.; cf. Mosko 1992: 699). In other words, it appears “that the efficacy of the Polynesian divine hero lies precisely in his (or her) hierarchical supercomposition” (Mosko 1992: 699). 11. Although he fundamentally agrees with Strathern (certainly with her model of agency) Mosko sees some problems in her theory, at least for the Mekeo case. M. Strathern (1988: ch. 7–10) emphasizes the gendering of relations and the male-female pair, and with it the contrast of same-sex and cross-sex relations, thus relying on a notion of duality. “The ‘multiplicity’ or ‘plurality’ of relations composing the Melanesian person in her account thus seems always comprised of a duality” (Mosko 1992: 701). His main criticism of Strathern is this dyadic arithmetic. Mosko argues that for Mekeo, the “plural composition of the person consists of a four-fold or quadripartite arrangement” rather than a dualistic one (701). However, he sees Strathern’s axioms for Melanesian contexts as correct. It is just the “fundamental arithmetic” that may “require minor correction” (701). Mosko’s next point of criticism of Strathern is that she overlooked hereditary chieftainship in some areas of PNG (for example, the Massim) and, in spite of her and Godelier’s distinction of Big Men and Great Men, has somewhat fallen into the trap of essentializing the Melanesian person. By giving the Mekeo example, Mosko (1992: 702) gives an elaboration of Strathern’s theory “of sociality qua personal detachability and partibility in a Melanesian context in which she has not yet herself pursued it.”

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12. According to Sahlins (1985), change arises from the attempt to deal with new situations in terms of preexisting categories and not from the conscious intention to change the culture. In her book After Nature, M. Strathern (1992) has argued along the same lines, that one of the strongest motors of sociocultural change is the “deliberate attempt to keep things the same.” 13. Criticism of Sahlins’s theory has been made, the main point being that the reinvention or revival of indigenous culture has little or nothing to do with the original and “authentic” culture (see Robbins 2005). Sahlins’s reply to such criticism of “invention of tradition theorists” was mainly to criticize their “powerism,” meaning their bias toward functional arguments that “cannot explain the cultural content of the phenomena they analyze” (Robbins 2005: 8). 14. Humiliation can also be related to the concept of person. Silverman (2001) pointed out that Western individualism in one respect worked well for the individual and socially perceived Tambunum notion of person, but that the lack of emphasis on the social side of person in Western culture made them feel unable to follow their own cultural balance of individual and social parts of person. The inability to balance these two sides of themselves made them feel humiliated. Most of the chapters in Robbins and Wardlow’s (2005) book deal with humiliation and, as Robbin (2005: 14) says in the introduction, the “in-between position” of cultures being caught between “developman” and development. They show how “humiliation can unfold along lines laid down by the indigenous culture and can support efforts both at develop-man and development” and in doing so emphasize “that indigenous people remain active agents pursuing their own goals even during periods of change spurred on by their encounter with the West” (see also Biersack 2005; Leavitt 2005; Silverman 2001, 2005; Stewart and Strathern 2000, 2005). Humiliation is further analyzed in its emotional and psychological nature insofar as people’s values are rendered worthless and their self-confidence decreases. However, according to Fanon (1967), Margalit (1996), and Rorty (1999), humiliation is also a social fact and, with this, a political condition as well as an emotional one. Miller (1993) pointed out that humiliation can exist even when it is not felt—for example, when it refers to a “quasijuridical status” rather than an emotional one. Dalton (2005) gives an example of the ways in which humiliation becomes defined in indigenous terms by describing the conditions of “sori” and “les” in Rawa culture. Robbins and Wardlow (2005) discusses humiliation among the Huli in reference to cultural notions of emotion, person, and action—and finds the indigenous concept of madane (disappointment/resentment/righteous indignation) that relates to exchange and person. Humiliation is, in contrast to madane, an emotion that only makes sense in cultures with individual concepts of person. She holds that madane characterized early encounters with the West but has been transformed into the Western humiliation; an indigenization of humiliation has taken place. 15. The Urapmin predisposition to accept Christianity thus first depends on its cultural openness for changes and on the similar features of certain Christian and precontact Urapmin cultural categories, such as “the Urapmin emphasis on lawfulness, the need to follow an established set of prohibitions that apply to everyone … the emphasis on inward reflectiveness about these, the distinction between law and will, and the idea that willfulness is the cause of all immoral behaviour” (Rumsey 2004: 589). Robbins

28

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Introduction

sees, however, a difference between Urapmin and Christian morality in relation to the will. The latter, according to Robbins, “condemns the will altogether” while Urapmin culture aims at a balance between lawfulness and willfulness “by using the will to establish human relationships” (Rumsey 2004: 589)—in accordance with the importance given to optation in Urapmin culture. See also Robbins and Wardlow (2005), who found the humiliation not apposite for Huli people. Robbins further relies greatly on Sahlins’s and Dumont’s cultural structuralism and explains adoption in these terms. Since, in this approach, culture “is seen as fully specifying the terms in which action is framed and motivated” (Rumsey 2004: 585), Robbins creates with his model of adoption some sort of paradox: if culture provides the terms and categories for (any) action it must necessarily do so for modes of culture change—a process that takes place in relation to preexisting cultural categories. Humiliation can lie in an imbalance of exchange partners, if understood as “what one experiences when one is caught out trying to convince people that one has prestige or powers that one has no right to claim” (Miller 1993; cf. Robbins 2005: 12). Westerners often “out-give” indigenous people, thus creating a feeling of inferiority and humiliation that might lead to all sorts of consequences, from adoption of Western culture to aggression against it. Exchange certainly plays a crucial role here. For example, Stewart and Strathern (2005: 13) portrayed moka-exchange as a classic case of develop-man, with people (as agents) actively engaging in Western market economy but doing so “in exchanges patterned along traditional lines in efforts to enhance prestige and avoid humiliation as they traditionally understood them.” This has, however, not worked out as expected and as a result the moka system broke down, leading to destabilizing and unpredictable effects that function as outlets for emotions that have previously been lived out in moka. I generally try to avoid the contested term “hybridity” to describe the conjoining of cultural elements, mainly because of its origin in biology and its apparent focus on the present and neglect of temporal and processual aspects of culture change. I do sometimes use the term “syncretism” in reference to cultural combinations in concrete social practices but I have decided not to make it my main phrase since it has in practice a strong religious edge to it. When I use it, I abide by the original definition of syncretism in the Oxford English Dictionary as any “attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, esp. in philosophy or religion.” One must consider, of course, that the Bena villages I worked in have several churches and are not very far from town. While in Urapmin the whole society converted to one denomination, Bena persons can choose from a large number of competing churches. Although it cannot be part of this book because it is a huge topic by itself, this self-presentation of Bena people in their films gave astonishing insights into their perception of culture change. I was, for example, surprised when they told me, while I was editing the film on my laptop, that they wanted music in it—and not, as I had assumed, “traditional” Bena chants but Abba or Elvis Presley. For me, it was at first quite strange to see images of tribal warriors combined with pop music—but, after all, it was not my film, and the apparent contradiction was in my perception, not in that of the Napamogona.

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22. Some of the elder people I filmed have died by now and watching them on video is a great emotional event for their descendants. Years later, the films are still screened frequently in the village. 23. When I visited Napamogona in 2016 to present and discuss the latest draft of this book’s manuscript with my interlocutors, all but two people insisted that their names should be published because they were proud to be part of this work on their culture.

Map 0.1: Papua New Guinea

 Chapter 1 

Bena Stories, Histories, and Sociality

Bena, or Bena-Bena (Langness 1964), is the name for a region situated east and southeast of Goroka, the Eastern Highlands provincial capital, and as well the name for the language group that resides in this region. Geographically, Bena is divided into two parts: Upper Bena and Lower Bena. Upper Bena is situated in the very east of the region and reaches from the old Bena-Bena airstrip to the mountain ranges of the Ramu valley. It is a lush and green area, mainly covered with rainforest, with several small rivers and waterfalls. Lower Bena, on the other hand, lies southeast of Goroka bordering Unggai in the west and Henganofi in the south. It is hilly and dry land, widely overgrown with high kunai grass. Lower Bena comprises what in contemporary parlance is called Kona Bena, “Corner Bena.” As the name suggests, Kona Bena is the “corner” of Bena close to Goroka, Asaro, and Unggai. The village of Napamogona, where I stayed during my research projects (1997, 2003/04, 2005, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2014) is located in this area—amid the hilly grassland on the edge of Bena, sharing borders with Goroka and Unggai. With still about 45,000 speakers today, Bena is one of the larger language groups among the roughly seven hundred different languages spoken in PNG. The language Bena is a Papuan language that belongs to the family of Gorokan languages, within the Trans-New Guinea Phylum (Wurm 1975: 278–281; see also Wurm 1982 and Wurm and Hattori 1981). The current linguistic situation of Bena is typical for many languages in the area. Due to the increasing usage of Tok Pisin, the number of Bena speakers has been decreasing since the last generation. Today, most children in Bena possess only a passive capacity to understand the language, but they do not engage it actively. Most people in Napamogona are Bena speakers but, as in many other parts of Papua New Guinea, multilingual. Many are fluent in Tok Pisin and Gahuku, and some of them speak Unggai and English as well.

The Background -Story Horst Cain, one of my former professors, once joked in an introductory class that most anthropologists—at least those socialized in German culture—were

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EASTERN HIGHLANDS PROVINCE MADANG PROVINCE

ds lan gh Hi

BenaBena Language Group

ay ghw Hi

GOROKA

SIMBU PROVINCE

Henganofi Lufa

Kainantu

Highlands Highway

Ukarumpa

Okapa Obura

MOROBE PROVINCE

Marawaka

GULF PROVINCE

Map 1.1: Eastern Highlands language groups

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Figure 1.1: View over Napamogona grounds

inspired to study anthropology by the readings of either Karl Marx or Karl May. My choice to become an anthropologist, as well as that of my field site, depended rather on my personal history. I was born in Papua New Guinea and spent my early childhood in the small town of Wau, Morobe Province. After my family’s return to Germany in the late 1970s, I revisited the country several times and realized that I wanted to increase my understanding of local cultures and acquire the professional skills to do so. The reason for my decision to work in Bena lies in the contacts I had established in one particular Bena village. The people of Napamogona were not old childhood friends of mine but a community that I first encountered in 1997. My first contact in Napamogona was Mama Polako, an active and strong, divorced and single Bena woman, then in her late forties, whom I had first met in Germany in 1996 when she was participating in a volunteer training workshop funded by a German NGO. During her stay, Polako and I became friends. However, since there is hardly any Bena concept of “friendship” (one is either a relative or a stranger), she decided that I should become her daughter. I had at that time not yet realized that this meant entering an ideally lifelong exchange relationship. When I came to do my first research in Papua New Guinea in the following year, I worked with my “mother” Polako and her community. I began to inves-

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tigate personhood and focused on gender roles and the transformations they have undergone in modern Bena (Knapp 2001). I argued that gender roles in Bena are more flexible than suggested by previous anthropological literature and that it is primarily personal engagement in social relationships that leads to a high social “position.” My main interlocutor then was Polako, who aggressively combined and represented what Papua New Guineans would take to be female and male attributes in her person. She was running for a district seat in the regional elections in 1997—at a time when no woman was a Member of Parliament—and I had the chance to accompany her on her election campaign throughout Unggai-Bena. During this time, I visited Napamogona and met Polako’s wider family, who adopted me right away.

Adopted in Bena The adoption of strangers or newcomers into Bena groups is quite common. It is a cultural category that predates contact with Westerners and that may have its roots partly in the frequent warfare in most Highland communities (Langness 1964, 1968; Read 1966). Persons depend on group strength for survival and have therefore a personal and a group interest to incorporate—or attach— new persons. In Bena, adopting others means engaging them in exchange relationships, nurturing them, and in doing so elicit their reciprocation in the future. Adoption brings additional strength into a community; an adopted woman may give birth to children who will become future members of the family; adopted men will be supporters in warfare and exchange. Generally, adopted strangers are links to other groups and therefore open up new social fields of exchange relationships. These meanings of adopting a new person into one’s group and the fact that the Bena have no shortage of food in their fertile land have made Bena tribes very flexible and quick in adopting strangers. Through adoption, a group grants its new member support and shelter but also demands his or her loyalty and contributions to the community. This is in line with an understanding of person as partible and exchange as consisting of an exchange of parts of persons. An adopted person brings his or her capacities for nurturing and strengthening into the community and has therefore an impact on the balancing of nurturance and strength in social relationships. Adoption is, in other words, a way to expand relationships and increase options for exchange. As Polako’s daughter, I was adopted into her clan, Sigoyalobo,1 which is one of the five clans that make up the Napamogona tribe. With my adoption into Sigoyalobo, my relationships inside the clan and with other members of the community were clearly defined. I did not fully understand at that moment that I had just entered an incredibly complex system of social relationships, all based on some form of exchange and all of them with very specific obligations, behavior rules, and certain rights and privileges. My

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new Bena relatives expected me to learn, maintain, extend, improve, and work on these relations—relations that they expect to last a lifetime and that I am today still in the process of understanding.2 My Bena family generally expected me to behave according to their rules and cultural categories—respect indigenous gender roles, fulfill my communal duties, and contribute to my relatives’ wellbeing; however, they were also willing to bend some rules for the benefit of my work or personal feelings. My adopted father Tau (Polako’s MFBSS and also a member of the Sigoyalobo clan) and his cousin Nando, for example, sometimes took me along to meetings that were actually exclusively held among men and told me about specific kinds of magic that women in the village were not supposed to know about. This was clearly a risky enterprise, because by detaching (parts of) their secret knowledge and exchanging it with me, the men endangered their own balance of nurturance and strength. Women in Bena are considered to possess dangerous parts in their persons that, when detached, weaken the men. Giving away secret knowledge in an inappropriate context, for example to a woman, weakens a man and weakens the related magical practice itself. In one case, Nando told me, he had to acquire a new magical lakehusa object (see chapter 5) because the previous one had become powerless after he had shown it to me.3 This is just one example of many where my relatives acted against their own cultural principles in order to support me. Of course, this did not happen out of sheer altruism but—as will become clear in this book—with the idea of expanding exchange relationships in mind. My new relatives had put me into a specific family and clan context and expected me to act according to my role as daughter/sister/in-law and according to my role as a “wealthy” waitskin: to contribute in exchange and nurture relationships like a Bena person would, but also to contribute a bit more because of my Western cultural heritage. In return, they gifted me the same things they would grant any adopted or inmarried woman, but they also gave me a bit more than that. My safety and wellbeing, as well as my work, indeed posed a greater challenge to them than that of an indigenous Highlands woman would have done. They put a lot into the relationship with me and made it clear that they expected it to be a lifelong commitment for both sides, meaning a long-term and binding exchange relationship. The importance of social relationships in Bena is one of the main themes of this book and, as I will show, inseparable from the Bena concept of person and exchange, as well as fundamental for the ways in which culture change is performed. My personal relationship with Bena interlocutors is shaped by such cultural understandings. I was never an “objective” observer and interpreter of Bena culture. Instead I tried—and am still trying—to understand it as much as I can from the inside, as a family member; a pact that was ultimately confirmed when my British fiancé Mark and I had our wedding in Napamogona in

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2005 (Maden 2008). My intention here is not, of course, to claim that I have become a Bena person myself or that I could ever get a complete “inside” view of things—but what is such an “inside view” anyway? I do not want to play down the role my different skin color and Western background played in the relationships with my interlocutors. However, I argue that because it is a pervasive feature of Bena societies to readily incorporate strangers, my adoption was nothing completely out of the ordinary. It was a reproductive transformation of a preexisting cultural category, reproduced because adoption was common before, and transformed because of the new elements my “exotic” status brought with it in regard to a possible expansion of exchange relationships. In this way, I was absorbed into Bena culture in accordance with the indigenous notions of partible person and exchange relationships. At the risk of being redundant in emphasizing it, one should bear in mind that cultures have always transformed themselves and have never been static, closed entities. Bena adoption practices and Bena history confirm Sahlins’s model of culture change (1985), which understands culture as a process of continuous reproduction and transformation of structural categories. For example, Bena tribes participated in trade with other communities and used long trading routes from the grasslands of Lower Bena to the forests of Upper Bena and even further across the mountain ranges into the Ramu Valley long before the first contact with Western cultures (see also Jolly, Tcherkézoff, and Tryon 2009). Goods such as clothing or body decoration, war tools, and medicine were exchanged from Upper Bena to Lower Bena; shells, pots, and wooden bowls were imported from Ramu and reciprocated from the grasslands mainly with salt, stone axes, and pigs (Keil 1974: 39–73). With the goods, new knowledge and ideas were traded—or, rather, exchanged. Some of them conjoined with preexisting categories and in doing so reproduced and transformed them too. For example, a number of magical practices in Bena underwent significant changes long before Western culture arrived in the area. In fact, at least three of the most common magical practices in today’s Bena were incorporated no more than two generations ago, and some new ideas on witchcraft—for example, sanguma—developed from encounters with concepts from the coastal areas of Sepik and Chimbu before they were supplemented with elements of Christianity and Western horror fiction and conjoined with Bena categories. At the same time, basic principles of magic efficacy were continued or reproduced in the midst of these transformations, as will be closer investigated in chapters 5 and 6.

Managing Relationships The very ground of anthropology to me lies in intercultural and, even more important, in interpersonal communication and therefore in entering personal

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exchange relationships. I admit to a strong personal and emotional attachment to my adopted family that will always connect me to them, anthropologically and otherwise. I strongly argue that it is impossible not to get involved; and why should one not, or pretend not to be? In fact, I found that the main task and the greatest challenge I had to master during fieldwork in the Highlands was to learn in which terms to comprehend the numerous new relationships and how to manage them. With my adoption I suddenly found myself conceived as a person vis-à-vis similarly constituted partible persons, with all the concurrent capacities for agency this had on my research. All in all, the relationships with my adopted relatives helped me to gain deeper insights into their cultural practices and categories and to catch a glimpse of personal Bena perspectives on the visible changes of these categories today. It was on the basis of such relationships that “Papa” Tau and “Uncle” Nando exchanged specific magical knowledge with me, guaranteed my safety (strengthened me), and gave me interesting insights into village politics; that “Mama” Polako told me about her personal problems of combining a single mother’s life in the village with volunteer work in town; that Esi and David gave me my own garden; and that my “sister” Donica once risked her own life to save mine. In other words, living in the Highlands would not have been safe, and working there would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, without these binding relationships resulting from partible exchanges. However, my adoption also landed me in situations of serious personal danger, distress, and even fear. The most crucial of such situations was a clan-internal conflict that had its roots in a number of exchange-related disputes between different lineages of Sigoyalobo, which had begun years before my research and which in 2006 eventually turned disagreements into violence. Fighting was carried out with guns. People I cared for got killed in gruesome ways; some were taken hostage; others fled. This is not the place to go into the complex details of the causes, the strategies, and the events of the resulting warfare. They will be dealt with at various points throughout this book. It is sufficient to say here that the underlying reasoning for the aggressive acting on both sides is closely tied to the Bena concept of exchange. I argue that aggressive encounters in Bena have their roots mainly in a perceived imbalance in exchange, more precisely, in “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2006: ch. 3). If the ideal of reciprocity is not fulfilled, persons feel insulted and “weakened”—a feeling that triggers a variety of emotional components, including dissatisfaction, jealousy, anger, hate, even rage (see Rumsey 2006). During my research, I had to come to terms with the fact that my adopted father Tau was continually engaged in defending Napamogona grounds and extending his role as local leader by emphasizing his authority through strength in positive and negative forms of exchange. He competed with the enemy leaders (from his own clan, as well from other tribes) and displayed his strength to

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his own clansmen as well as to enemy groups through threats and physical violence. Tau’s cousin and age-mate Nando, who was particularly concerned about defending Napamogona from outside and protecting his cousin from intra-clan attacks, became Tau’s most loyal ally and played a crucial role in the planning and conducting of violent activities—with or without Tau’s knowledge. That despotism among leading men is a feature of many Highland cultures and that warfare is common may be self-evident to every anthropologist who works in the region. Being in the middle of such a conflict, however, is a different challenge. As Tau’s daughter and Nando’s niece, I was associated with their strand of Sigoyalobo clan and had great difficulty in keeping up a somewhat neutral position. When the fighting began, their enemies—my adopted maternal relatives from Polako’s side—feared I might support them financially, and I feared their reproaches since I was aware of the implications. It was a tough challenge for me to convince both sides that I did not support war or violence in any way and that I had decided to position myself on neither side until the ceasing of hostilities. The following months were extremely difficult. My plan to do some follow-up research was hampered by the terrible events—events that shed a different light on my perspective on Bena culture and Bena persons. While writing this book I was still in the process of somehow “coming to terms” with the things I experienced. I was also still trying to figure out all the components and alliances that caused and extended the fight. Writing this book was in this regard not an easy task. Napamogona village was burned to the ground in 2007; gardens were destroyed (including, of course, my house and garden). More people were killed, and my surviving Napamogona relatives were scattered far and wide, finding refuge with relatives in towns or other communities. For nearly five years, Napamogona as a village did not exist anymore. It was not until 2010 that the fighting finally decreased and that the rebuilding of Napamogona village began. During my last visit in 2016, all parties had agreed to a ceasefire, but the conflict has not yet been fully resolved. Some compensation payments were made, but clan-internal tensions remain, and the relations to neighboring tribes especially are still fragile. Unfortunately, one has to take into account that fighting might break out again at any time, probably in slightly different constellations regarding the alliances. I consider it important to insert this personal component because it sketches the cultural background, the setting, in which my research took place. It also shows a number of recurring cultural features that play a crucial role in my analysis of Bena person and culture change (for example, the importance of land and the concurrent frequency of warfare) and that are tied to exchange. In a discussion I had with Mama Naomi—an educated and extraordinarily impressive Bena woman—about the horrors of the then-recent killings in Napamogona, she told me,

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If you really want to understand our culture you must face such situations. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand much at all. … When they fight they show their strength. They kill the people they find, they destroy houses and take everything they can get. They steal everything. To show how strong they are. They show that the others have no strength. But the defeated will not forget. They wait, and whenever they are ready they pay it back. It only stops when they talk and pay compensation (personal conversation, YWCA Goroka, 10 October 2006).

In anthropological terms, Naomi’s comment describes warfare and violence as negative forms of exchange in which overly strong behavior is acted out to weaken others and to publicly display one’s own strength in opposition to the other’s weakness. Such acting is shaped by negative reciprocity, defined as “the unsociable extreme” and “the attempt to get something for nothing with impunity” (Kirsch 2006: 95). It triggers feelings of anger, hate, or jealousy on the side of the defeated, and only through positive exchanges (talking and compensation payments) can the relationship between the parties be rebalanced. Obviously, Naomi perceived this understanding as crucial for my anthropological understanding of her culture. Like Bena culture, my research, and with it this book, is based on personal relationships, sometimes very nurturing and sometimes very demanding. However, “I will not flaunt this personal ingredient like a banner” (Read 1986: x ff.) and will not make it a recurring theme of this work. I have mentioned it here because I want to point out that my book does not claim to be an objective description of Bena culture or culture change. Rather, it was nurtured and formed by specific relationships between Bena persons and between these persons and myself. Depending on the quality of these relationships, I had access to different perspectives and indigenous analyses. Often I found myself in a state of confusion because of the multiplicity of different Bena interpretations. I began to wonder whether the “truth” of an event or a story in an essentialist Western sense is relevant at all in Bena thinking. My participation in various village courts in Napamogona intensified such thoughts. For example, although people may take each other to court for fagasa’a, “lying” or “gossiping,” I observed that court cases were not resolved by striving to reveal what in Euro-American thinking would be factual truth. The main purpose of village court meetings was rather to give everyone a chance to express his or her opinion and then negotiate an exchange in order to prevent an escalation of the conflict. The topics of related gossip were also more likely to be speculations about the amounts of compensation payments or about other actions that could be taken than about questions of guilt in a so-called objective sense. It seems that “truth” is in Bena understood not in absolute but in relational and pragmatic terms. It is, in this context, important to consider that, precisely because of my position inside Napamogona kinship, some information was also

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inaccessible to or kept from me. Bearing in mind Kirsch’s demand to focus not only on exchange but also on its failure (2007), I will try to pay attention to situations when I noticed that specific information was not conveyed to me. I further need to mention that some information I present in this book had to be slightly modified to protect my interlocutors and relatives. This refers mainly to data on the tribal fight. In the following I will briefly review the main ethnographic work that has been written on Bena so far and see where and how it connects with mine.

Bena Ethnographies Ethnographic publications on Bena are limited and not very recent. Research was conducted in the Bena area by Langness and Keil, who focused primarily on Bena social structure (Langness 1964) and intergroup exchange (Keil 1974). In this book I refer to these ethnographic sources mainly for purposes of comparison with today’s situation in order to understand and illustrate the change that certain cultural practices—for example, life cycle rituals or magic—have undergone since then.

Residence, Alliance, and Descent: Bena Social Structure It is crucial to at least outline Langness’s (1964) distinct analysis in “Bena Bena Social Structure,” which reflects an anthropological dilemma of his times—the question whether societies in the New Guinea Highlands could be structurally compared to African lineage systems, or, in other words, whether the “African Model” of lineage segmentation and descent would be transferable to Highland cultures (Barnes 1962; Kaberry 1967; Lepervanche 1967; A. Strathern 1968). No, it was not, Langness (following Barnes) rightly concluded. He stressed that in Bena, residence is of much greater importance for a person’s clan or tribal identity than descent; as pointed out above, adoption is frequent, and new—especially male—members are welcome to join a group, while others might leave for various reasons to seek residence with other groups. Langness contrasts this pattern with that of African societies and speaks of the “relative impermanence of membership” in New Guinea (Langness 1964: 168). According to Langness, this is due to the Bena people’s history as warriors. On the one hand, their concurrent focus lies in augmenting group strength (Langness 1964: 174–175) and, on the other, they face the permanent danger of being vanquished and scattered. Thus persons may be forced or may choose to change their group membership according to practical circumstances rather than in strict line with a given kinship system. Instead, the latter can be actively achieved and transformed (A. Strathern 1968: 38). Langness (1964: 171) advised, “We must … recognise that kinship is not the determinating factor for human behaviour but that kinship

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can be and is adjusted to fit behaviour” (Langness 1964: 171). The question of whether the social structure of New Guinea Highland groups should be understood in terms of descent or alliance has led to a concretization in the study of group organization in anthropology. Langness (1964) contributed profoundly to this discussion by introducing into the debate his argument of “locality over descent.” He argued that no matter how they were organized and how ambiguously they conferred their membership status, groups were easy to define as political entities in regard to what Lepervanche (1967: 143) later described as their “common residence and working together” and not according to their “group membership ascribed at birth.” Langness’s approach to the understanding of groups is valuable since he proved that kinship is not static but flexible. In his focus on corporate groups, however, he has not questioned the immutability of relationships as such. With Wagner and Strathern, I doubt that Langness’s groups exist at all in the New Guinea Highlands. His fixation on corporate groups and immutable kinship relations rather obscures the reality that “groups” consist of relationships that are the medium as well as the product of an exchange between partible persons (M. Strathern 1988; Wagner 1974). Thus, if one were to understand the constitution of groups and group formation and transformation processes in the Highlands, one should look at what M. Strathern (1988: 50) called “common interests” grounded in an “ideology of shared characteristics (‘one father,’ ‘one men’s house’),” rather than focusing on dogmas of descent and fixed “groups.” My Bena data support Wagner’s argument that groups, like clans, lineages, subclans, etc., do not exist all the time, but come into focus when there is an exchange, war, marriage, or other event taking place. In everyday life, people are not actually organized into groups. There is a process of the members of the group coming together, doing something together and then breaking apart, doing other things with kin separate from the group. For Bena, I argue that the motivations that bring persons temporarily together in groups lie in (options for) various forms of interpersonal exchanges that affect the balance of nurturance and strength (nogoya’a and sikrafu’i) in persons and relationships. Such groups are far from being permanent and stable, as the recent war in Napamogona has shown. Here, common group membership did not prevent two lineages from the same clan fighting each other and building alliances with persons from other clans. Langness (1964) stresses the importance of clans and clan solidarity in Bena culture. According to him, the important “entity” in Bena warfare—and in major exchanges—is the clan. In warfare, different clans cooperate in shifting alliances; some of them are short-term and change frequently, others are of a more long-term nature and date back several generations. The history of Napamogona is full of examples of political alliances, fights, and solidarity in exchanges between clans. Success in warfare thus depends on strong clan solidarity—and so does success in exchange. According to Langness (1964: 169), clans represent the most important network of social relationships in

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Bena social structure, and life cycle rituals such as male initiation, funeral customs and “certain features of kinship, age-grading and communal activities all contribute to the solidarity of the clan.” Such Bena clans, according to Langness, are not primarily identified through descent but rather through common residence. Clan membership is in this regard flexible, and although a person remains in relationships to his or her “original” clan (the one he or she was born or adopted into), a change of residence often brings with it adoption into a new clan. I appreciate Langness’s withdrawal from descent models to residential group constitutions, but I think he failed to explain that residence itself is the activation of relationships on the basis of day-to-day exchange/ reciprocity of parts of persons (see also Wagner 1974). Although I admit that Bena clans play an important role on specific occasions, I object to Langness’s ideas on the permanency of the clan group. In Bena I found that clan solidarity is rather fragile today. People aim at building their personal networks of relationships through exchange according to criteria other than “group membership”; they look for potentially nurturing exchange partners with whom they enter an ideally reciprocal exchange relationship that affects the balancing of nurturing and strengthening aspects in their own persons. Further, with his focus on clans as the central unit in Bena social structure, Langness implies that lineages are not of great importance. He argues that in Bena one finds “groups composed of only two important levels, the clan and the individual” and that “although sub-groups within the clans can be distinguished they may be largely imaginary in function and in importance” (Langness 1964: 170). With Wagner (1974), I would go further and argue that even Langness’s categories of clan and individual are “largely imaginary.” Langness’s emphasis on the clan as the central social unit in Bena has another flaw that may have to do with cultural changes since his time of research. A phenomenon that struck me as important is that many of the fights in today’s Bena begin with clan-internal conflicts. The clan solidarity that Langness postulated, especially in regard to warfare, seems to have lost importance today. Today’s allies are often found in other clans and help to fight one’s own opposing clansmen. Sometimes they are hired for money, sometimes persuaded to support a party by common interests (for example, to gain land). Being members of the same clan is in Bena today by no means a guarantee of safety or mutual support in times of crises. As I have observed, in times of such conflicts a person relies on his or her lineages, the closest relatives, much more than on other clan members (Wagner 1974)—as the recent warfare in Napamogona, where different patrilineages of the same clan fought each other, confirms. In Bena today (and I venture to say that this was also true in Langness’s time), lineages play crucial roles in all ritual exchanges. My ethnographic data reveal that exchange relationships between a person’s maternal and paternal lineage—ritualized in various het pe payments—are decisive for

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his or her social identity and the “good” conduct of his or her life, and that the role of the residential lineage in the everyday lives of people is certainly of greater importance than that of the clan. Like clans, lineages are open to new members; they are structurally, to some degree, based on descent but are in practice all the time incorporating new members. Women are “gained,” and lost, through marriage; children may be adopted into the family or given away; refugees or outsiders that come to stay receive kinship terms and become relatives. Bena lineages seem to be just as partible as Bena persons.4

Gender Perceptions Because of the crucial role that warfare plays in Bena culture, Langness (1967, 1977) has interpreted most Bena rituals as confirming and strengthening clan solidarity, which he mainly understands as the solidarity of a community of male warriors. He found a strong sexual antagonism expressed in various male cults and rituals circling around concepts of male cleansing and female impurity and stressing the separation and difference of the sexes with a clear bias towards male superiority and female pollution. The idea of “polluting” female substances is expressed in Bena by a number of taboos women must observe, especially during the time of their menstruation but also in everyday-life. However, what Langness described as a concept of male superiority and female impurity is, according to my data, rather an idea of person that follows the concept of balancing nurturance and strength through an exchange of personal detachments. Instead of an idea of female pollution, I found an idea of (potentially dangerous) female strength—the power to weaken men (see Meigs 1978, 1988; Salisbury 1965). Berndt (1962), who worked in the Eastern Highlands among the North Fore shortly before Langness conducted his research in Bena, already suggested this idea and seemed to be way ahead of his time in ethnographic writing on this subject (see also Glass 2011). As Glass points out, Berndt never used the term “pollution” in his discussions of North Fore beliefs and practices related to menstruation and childbirth. Instead, Berndt argued that “this natural cyclic female state was not ‘ritual unclean[ness],’ it was ‘not polluting,’ but dangerous” (Berndt 1962: 56; Glass 2011: 26). Women possess a greater capacity for nurturance than men and are thus strong “by nature”; in their monthly flow they even detach dangerous (overly strong) substances “automatically” from themselves. Men, on the other hand, have to acquire their capacities to be nurturing through various practices, and artificially detach damaging parts from their persons, for example in initiation. I will elaborate on these aspects more in chapter 4. At this point I only want to emphasize that, according to my data, Bena women are not seen as impure or polluting. Rather, their strength is potentially dangerous to men. “Overly strong” female detachments, like menstrual blood, that the

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men—involuntarily or unknowingly—attach to themselves weaken them and need to be detached. I therefore argue that the underlying cultural category is here not that of an indigenous male-female and hierarchical dichotomy but that of nurturing and strengthening exchange between persons. This is one example that confirms that the models of sexual antagonism that Langness and others proposed cannot be upheld. M. Strathern (1988: 52f.) has discussed it in regard to issues of gender and person. She strengthened the argument of alliance over descent by questioning the model of sexual antagonism as it was perceived and described by a number of ethnographers (i.e., Langness 1964; 1967; 1977; Meggitt 1965; Read 1954). These saw women mainly as defining relationships between men while men would at the same time try to define themselves through separation from women because they posed a threat to their masculinity (in M. Strathern 1988: 52f.). As M. Strathern (1988: 51) pointed out, nonagnatic ties to women’s clans became here a puzzling factor, for anthropologists as well as for Highland men: “That ‘patrilineal’ groups were open to members recruited on non-male ties appeared to compromise the efficacy of their claims to solidarity.” If women were perceived as fundamentally dangerous, why should men connect themselves through female ties? The basic question is whether this dilemma is indigenous or if it is rather a problem of the anthropologists’ predisposition to think in categories of sexual antagonism because of their own concepts of personhood. In Bena, it never seemed a matter of importance whether new members came via nonagnatic or agnatic ties; what counted in the end was how they contributed to nurture and strengthen the community. In fact, one of the most renowned warriors and previous leaders of Sigoyalobo clan was adopted into the clan through female ties. In other words, is Bena social structure really fundamentally shaped by masculinity and male dominance (possibly even by a psychological inferiority complex of men to women (Herdt 1982) in opposition to femininity and women’s impurity and inferiority, or does this idea possibly originate in a Western understanding of individualized personhood and gender relations? Can the argument of ideal male dominance and maintenance of male superiority in the Eastern Highlands (Read 1954; Herdt 1981; Herdt and Poole 1982) and that of an inherent sexual antagonism as suggested by numerous New Guinea anthropologists be held in the face of the complexity of real life where women play crucial roles for and with men? To answer this question one first needs to consider gender-related role models and investigate how they are lived out in everyday life.

Gender Relations Before the influence of Western cultures became significant, the spatial separation of the sexes was very rigid. The initiated men of a Bena village lived in a male community in a men’s house, mythologically founded and manifested

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through cults. Women stayed with their children in single huts and were much more separated from each other than men (Langness 1967, 1977). A change in this pattern of residence has appeared in the last two generations. It was brought about mainly through the influence of Christianity and the accompanying concept of a nuclear family with a patriarchal form of organization (Schroeter 1994). Spouses now share the same house and live together with their children. The father is seen as the head of the family. Generally, however, the Bena kept their patrilineal organization and their ideal of patrivirilocality (Langness 1965).5 Bena men still share a closer and somehow more intimate community than women. Men generally regard women with a certain feeling of mistrust and certainly a feeling that they are inferior but nevertheless strong and potentially dangerous to them. Langness noted, for example, that men who spent a lot of time with women were sanctioned with isolation and mockery and perceived as weakened (Langness 1967: 172). There is a gender-related labor division that is still widely upheld in Bena, although it changes gradually. Hunting is definitely in the male domain and so are warfare and magic, as well as the production of weapons and tools, the building of houses and fences, and looking after cash crops. Women, on the other hand, do most of the basic daily work such as gardening, taking care of children and pigs, collecting firewood, fetching water, cooking, cleaning the houses, and producing items such as string bags. The influence of capitalization and Christianization in the Highlands was interpreted by some as leading to a decrease of men’s “traditional” duties (binding social or ritual practices) and an increase in women’s duties (Weise 1993). Engaging in male cults and initiation has indeed lost importance in Bena. In fact a number of my male interlocutors complained about the decrease in exclusively male activities and saw it as the cause for the general “weakness” of modern Bena men (as opposed to the stronger male ancestors). Anthropologists have further argued that other male domains, such as magic and warfare, have lost importance through the influences of Christianity, colonization, and “pacification” (Godelier 1982: 180; Weise 1993). I would question that to some degree. In my experience, warfare is as much present in Bena today as ever, if not more so; and, as I will show in chapters 5 and 7, magical practices are still widely applied and conjoined with elements of Christian belief rather than replaced by them. It is nevertheless true that through encounters with Western cultures, men’s activities have shifted somewhat. Representing their family to the outside, men were the ones who first extended their relationships to the newcomers, therefore the ones who first received education and entered the Western economy. Business enterprises, such as raising cattle, running public transport, or running stores in town, are today still highly dominated by men, as are politics.6 Women, on the other hand, often remain in the villages with even more work than before, because the introduction of new goods and

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cash economy has led to new duties—for example, the washing of clothes and dishes or an increase in garden work to produce more crops for sales on the markets.7 A Bena man depends on his wife’s productivity and support to enable him to fulfill his social obligations; she raises the pigs he needs for exchange and produces the food for him to distribute in ceremonies. Their offspring grants future nurturance. Thus, a young man is only considered a “man” when he is married (Langness 1967: 172). Polygyny used to be widespread in Bena, but through the introduction of Christian values and economic pressure it has become less frequent. A man with more than one wife is still regarded as a man of high status—given that he paid the bride-prices and is capable of looking after all his wives equally. Sometimes men decide to divorce their first wife in favor of another woman. This has not only an economic impact on the first wife, who might be abandoned without any material support, but also on her role in the community. Gossip may destroy her reputation, her own kin group may refuse to take her back (mainly because of the fear that the bride-price must be returned), and she may be isolated with or without her children. In the worst case, her husband may blame her for things that went wrong in his life and justify his divorce by publicly accusing her of being a sanguma witch or having used other kinds of magic to harm him.8 Many women from different regions in the Highlands told me that they had been observing a shift from real polgyny to “serial marriage” (Bilasi, conversation, 2014; Donica, conversation, 2013; Esi, conversation, 2005; Polako, conversation, 2004). Today, many men just “marry around.” They entertain love affairs outside their marriage without actually being able to afford the woman. “They take their lovers as second or third wives and bring them home. But they have no strength to marry them [pay the bride-price] and look after them properly” (Polako, interview, 2004). Many women complain about this change of morals because it leads to tensions between the spouses and between the first and the following wives. Several women in Napamogona have faced fights with their husbands or, more often, with his other wives or suspected lovers. The reason for these fights, I was told by my sister Bilasi, lay mainly in a fear of economic loss. A new woman is (at least initially) a financial burden to the family: a bride-price has to be paid, a house has to be built, food has to be shared, etc. Further, Bilasi explained, men would often prefer their new woman to the first wife/wives. He would give more money, gifts, and support to her than to them. It is primarily this fear of economic loss that triggers angry reactions when a man decides to marry a new woman. Bilasi told me in quite a direct way, “We do not fight for their dicks. Why would we fight for that? We fight because these women eat our food and we have nothing left.” Often such disputes result in a different form of wife bashing: old wives against (potentially) new wives. In such violent encounters, women

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are supported by their sisters-in-law or other close female relatives. During my stays in the Highlands, I came across a number of such conflicts, some of which even ended in a woman’s death. One of my Bena aunties, whom I had not seen for some years, told me very casually that she spent the last two years in prison because she had stabbed her husband’s lover to death; my Wiru sister Donica faced court cases because she had smashed her husband’s car and attacked him after finding out about his plans to marry a second wife; my Gahuku friend Sue was confronted by four angry women from the Southern Highlands, armed with bush knives, all of them wives of the man Sue had decided to marry; a dear friend from Lufa was hiding in a townhouse for weeks because the her ex-boyfriend’s wife and the wife’s sisters were roaming the streets to find her and “sort her out”—to sketch just a few examples. What struck me in all the cases was that the man usually stayed away from the scene and waited for the women to solve the problem among themselves. Sometimes men stood at the side and watched women fighting over them. On occasion I observed a hint of pride in their faces. Some men even boasted about it in public. Only twice did I witness a man interfere. In both cases, the man had decided to divorce his first wife for the new one already before the dispute and had taken the new wife’s side. Marriage partners used to come from nearby areas, and in most cases a woman married into the same language group or into a neighboring group with a language that was at least somewhat familiar. Most of the elder men in Napamogona (the generation of Tau’s parents) are married to Bena women who come from neighboring tribes or other clans inside their own tribe. Today, however, the pattern has changed. Contacts with other areas have become easier through an improvement in infra- and communication structure. More young people move to town or spend much of their time there. About half of the young inmarried women in Napamogona today come from different language groups and places further away. Relationships with these (and other) groups represent a kind of life insurance to the Napamogona: possible allies in need and places of refuge if one has to flee in warfare. Finding spouses in groups farther away extends relational networks significantly. These networks keep expanding on local, national, and global levels. For example, David’s son Busto married a girl from an island in Milne Bay, east of the Papua New Guinea mainland. Busto and his wife now live in Port Moresby. Occasionally, the families meet there. There are attempts to begin exchanges: while David’s wife Esi sends self-made string bags to her coastal in-laws (as gifts and for sale), Busto’s wife’s family in return provides mats and brooms made from coconut leaves or fibers, also coconuts and betel nuts. Marriage in Bena today facilitates new options for intercultural exchange inside Papua New Guinea, an exchange of goods and ideas that, according to Bena perspective, should ideally be reciprocal and nurturing to both parties. Marriage is clearly

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a means of confirming interclan and interpersonal relationships and creating or strengthening political and economic alliances. However, like everything in the Bena perception of life, these alliances may change unexpectedly. In other words, although marriage temporarily strengthens the ties between groups, it does not necessarily grant their perseverance—the latter has to be reconfirmed in continuing exchange practices between the parties involved. This explains why in spite of certain ideals such as marrying into a neighboring allied group, the Bena “have no strong marriage preferences or avoidances” and “marriages are widely dispersed” (Langness 1969: 43). With the rapidly growing town nearby, many Bena people move around more than before and find a wider range of options for sexual encounters with less direct social control. Today it is much easier to carry on secret love affairs away from home or for men to visit prostitutes in Goroka. The introduction of mobile phones deserves special attention at this point since it provides new options for relationships of all kinds.9 Since 2003 I observed a significant and rapid increase in the numbers and importance of mobile phones in Bena communities, with visible good and bad side effects (Jorgensen 2014; A. Watson 2013).10 Mobile phones are used as tools to begin, maintain, or extend exchange relationships beyond the local community and with very limited external control. Throughout Papua New Guinea, it is not unusual to make new friends through mobile phones by dialing an arbitrary number (Jorgensen 2014). If the call is received, one attempts to engage this person in a conversation. Often it is men who seek secret girlfriends, but also women and teenagers try to extend their relational networks in this way. Most of the persons who own mobile phones in Napamogona have more or less secret “phone friends.” As I observed, these random phone-friend relationships are usually (but not exclusively) between persons of the opposite sex, and aim, often playfully, at initiating exchanges or tricking others into giving something (gifts, money, sex, etc.). Women may use the phones to flirt with strangers and sometimes successfully persuade them to send money; men may try to engage women in sexual affairs. Relating to others without any previous personal link is quite a recent phenomenon. In premobile times, new relationships of people living in Bena villages were generally created through existing ties: kinship, common residence, or alliances. However, it has always been a concern to gain new allies, and a great part of Bena life has always been occupied with creating relational networks. Thus, although the use of mobile phones has brought about many changes, at the same time it adheres to traditional practices. New communication technologies extend the Bena category of exchange by providing a seemingly bottomless pool of possible new relationships. The new options for contact, combined with less social control and easy access to town, have also brought devastation into the lives of people. The impact of prostitution and alcohol consumption is dramatic. HIV is spreading rapidly,

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and domestic violence has increased in the last generations (Schroeter 1994). In Bena, wife-bashing has been practiced for a long time, an old Jogijohi clan leader told me. He stressed, however, that in the olden days, men beat their women lightly with sticks and only when they had seriously “misbehaved,” for example in case of adultery or child neglect. He further emphasized that a man was confronted with strict sanctions if he had injured his wife badly. According to the old leader, violence against women is in Bena today much crueler because the “men do not know their limits anymore and because they are often drunk” (personal conversation). Although one can without doubt say that women in Bena are more disadvantaged than men—they work harder, have less access to education, are often victims of physical violence, and have little say in common decisions, business, and politics—one must not conclude that Bena is a rigidly patriarchal society in which gender is the fundamental criteria for the acquisition of power. M. Strathern (1988: 57) notes that the sexual antagonism model derives from the Western perception of the subjective experience of persons as being male or female, implying that individuals have attached to them masculine and feminine aspects of persons that are transacted between people in relationships: “Masculinity and femininity are embodied in individuals as a dimension of their experience. Social categories become the framework within which men and women behave in certain ways, but behaviour is ultimately manifested by the individual.” The concept of sexual antagonism is thus closely related to the Western notion of the individual. From this angle, M. Strathern (1988) has opened up the field for the development of her concept of partible personhood in Melanesia and the “dividual” as agent of social relationships. I found—in line with M. Strathern—that the sexual antagonism Langness observed in Bena is rather an expression of different aspects of (contextually gendered) personhood, not an opposition of two substantially different entities defining themselves in hierarchical contrast to each other. It is one element of the crucial Bena cultural category of nurturing and strengthening exchange between persons. My analytical focus in the analysis of persons in culture change is therefore not on their gender but on their partibility and their capacities for strength and nurturance in exchange.

Restarting Napamogona: A History of Land and Fights Writing a book about a village that has been destroyed during my research, and that in 2016 is still in the process of being rebuilt by the survivors of a warfare that lasted for six years, is a bizarre and emotionally challenging task. However, as strange as this situation may appear, it would not strike a Bena person previously residing in that village as particularly exceptional. Violent conflicts and warfare are frequent in the Bena region of the Eastern Highlands

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of Papua New Guinea, and in spite of the personal sufferings and endurances they generate, they remain more or less socially accepted11 and widely applied means of responding to disagreements, challenges, or other problems in social relationships. Like other tribes in Bena (see Langness 1964), the Napamogona have a reputation for being warriors and possess a record of past fights. However, unlike Langness (1967: 165), who emphasized for the Bena the importance of warfare while claiming “they have never fought over land,” I shall argue that land disputes are the main underlying reasons for warfare in Bena, even if the apparent causes seem to be different at first glance. Since Langness’s time, land has become even more an issue for conflicts due to the introduction of cash crops and increasing population density (Westermarck 1997). I will show that even in Langness’s time, a number of fights in Bena were conducted over land disputes. This is due to a specific pan-Bena conceptualization of the relationship between persons and their land. As has been argued for other Melanesian cultures, I would also claim for Bena that land and person are “integrally implied in each other” (Hess 2009: 150) and that their “identity is grounded in place” (Rodman 1995: 88; see also Bashkow 2006: 221; Bender 2002; Ingold 1992; Keesing 1982; Tove Stella 2007). For the Solomon islands, Scott (2013: 53) noted that the “true Makiran person is a person in whom ancestral land is thoroughly ingredient and for whom such land is infused with … agency.” I made similar observations in regard to the relationship between persons and land in Bena. However, I would like to add to Scott’s argument (Scott 2013: 33) Tove Stella’s consideration of understanding land not only as an ingredient but rather as an extension of the indigenous self. Tove Stella (2007: 36) uses the term “place” to describe the relationship between land and person: “Places capture the complex emotional, behavioral, and moral relationships between people and their territory. They represent people, their actions and their interactions and as such become malleable memorials for negotiating and renegotiating human relationships.” According to Tove Stella (2007: 37), the first “cultural engagements with land are the naming of place and the creation of oral tradition.” The representation of “place” is here inextricably connected with permanent habitation, including that of ancestors and other spiritual beings. My interlocutors apply the name Napamogona12 to describe their common grounds of residence—what they themselves call village (peles, hepa) and the clans’ land that goes with it—as well as the people and spiritual beings that co-reside on them (Langness 1964: 34). J. B. Watson (1990: 35) noted for the Eastern Highland Tairora that “indigenous identity is partly a question of belonging to the country itself, imbibing the local waters and ingesting the foods that spring from the local soil.” Correspondingly, losing one’s place means in Bena not only a threat to food supply and survival; it also questions the personal identity of the defeated

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residents and their relationships. For Bena, without land and place, a tribe, a clan, a person is nothing; they have to rely upon the support of others and seek refuge with them, thereby often being forced to adapt to the new hosts’ ways and customs, sometimes even speaking a new language. In effect they become other people because they are forced to attach new parts to their persons. Leaving one’s grounds also means leaving places of spiritual significance and ancestral spirits behind. When leaving their territory, persons become detached from their ancestors, who are the source of life. They further allow enemies to abuse their powers, to weaken and harm or destroy them, possibly to chase them away. The rage of the ancestors will then haunt the survivors and will be reflected in further misfortune. The loss of land and place weakens persons not only physically but also spiritually. Defending one’s place means defending one’s person, one’s history (spiritual and factual), one’s past, one’s present, and one’s future.

Tribal Ground, Clan-land, and Village Until February 2007, the five different clans of Napamogona tribe resided together on what they called Napamogona place (hepa). The area was marked to the outside by different boundaries—a river in the south, a road in the north, coffee gardens in the west, and hills in the east. A marker stone that was put up by the colonial administration was also used as reference point to separate Napamogona from the neighboring Monekere territory. The vast Napamogona tribal land was divided into different segments of clan land. In Bena, plants (trees, tanget,13 bamboo) or fences typically mark the boundaries of clan land. In Napamogona, the greatest part of the land belonged to Sigyalobo clan, the clan that had settled in the area first. The clan land of Napayufa was only slightly smaller. Napayufa, Sigoyalobo’s “brother” clan, numbered nearly as many people as Sigoyalobo and had become the second most influential clan in the community. The ground that made Matahusa, Mekfimo, and Jogijohi clan land previously belonged to the two founding clans. According to oral history, Sigoyalobo and Napayufa invited the three mentioned clans to join their community only a few generations ago and gave them parts of their land to settle on. In offering them nurturing land, they offered them a nurturing relationship (granting food, shelter, and cooperative exchange) that the three new clans accepted. However, although the five clans co-resided for at least two generations, and although the three incorporated clans contributed significantly to the wellbeing of the tribe (through support in warfare and exchange), one could still feel that Sigoyalobo and Napayufa remained dominant when it came to political or economic decisions. The clans that make the Napamogona tribe are, like all Bena clans, organized by the ideology of patrilineal descent. Clan members are “men and

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women who are related to one another by descent through males from a common (sometimes putative) male ancestor” (Read 1986: 52). They share common stories of origin; however, the precise genealogical links that connect them to their apical ancestor are usually unknown (Keesing 1975) and thus—through the flexibility of oral history—adjustable to specific circumstances. The main aspect for clan membership in Bena is therefore not found in precise genealogical descent but in the common history of migration and the resulting shared interests of people in regard to a certain area of land. In order to maintain or retrieve their grounds, Bena clans depend on the frequent incorporation of new members and are thus characterized by their structural openness and flexibility. They operate quite autonomously but certain clans have intermarital connections or share a long history of spatial coexistence that defines their relation—they are then part of the same tribe.14 They cooperate in warfare, exchange, and initiation (Langness 1967: 161–177). Generally, they are supposed to support each other in times of need. Bena clans are strictly exogamous; some define themselves as brother-sister clans and are thus taboo for intermarriage. In Napamogona, members of Sigoyalobo and Napayufa clan are actually not allowed to marry each other, as well as those of Jogijohi and Mekfimo, because they are considered to be sibling clans. Each clan comprises several patrilineages, whose members ideally trace descent from an apical ancestor by known genealogical links (Keesing 1975: 150). In practice, however, shared close residence seems to become more important than common ancestry. Lineages, like clans, frequently attach and detach persons—for example, through adoption or marriage.15 In regard to the ideals of clan membership and unity (patrilineal descent, marriage taboos, solidarity in warfare, patrivirilocality) I observed numerous “exceptions to the rules”—in fact, so many exceptions that one might be led to question the relevance of the rules themselves. There is indeed a general flexibility in regard to the practical realization of cultural ideals. I found, for example, that in spite of the taboo of intermarriage between the Sigoyalobo and Napayufa clans, such marriages have taken place and their number among young people is increasing. I further found that the ideal of clan unity in warfare seems to be rather more optional than obligatory. As the recent conflict among the Napamogona shows, it is— like anything in Bena culture—not to be taken for granted. Here, the fight broke out between members of Sigoyalobo, and only at a later stage did it involve other clans. Clan internal fights are a common feature of conflicts in many Highland areas. They begin with clan internal disagreements—disagreements between lineages—that spread further. Although clan unity may reform itself after such conflicts, for example by the people on one side of the dispute leaving or being expelled, it cannot continuously be taken for granted. Thus, although clan identity is still withheld in Bena, it must be understood much more in practical

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terms as referring to persons and their common relationship to land than in abstract terms of descent or unity. Bena people who share a common story of origin or migration (clan stories) and co-reside (or have co-resided) on land for a longer period of time are rather “linked through the land whether or not a lengthy record of descent” (Westermarck 1997: 220) joins them. Clan membership in Bena is thus contextualized and depends on specific situations; it is not static or unchangeable. According to the demands of specific situations, persons can change their clan identities or, more often, add new ones to the one “given” by birth and/or adoption. This proves again that the early anthropological assumptions about the importance of descent for the social structure of Highland cultures neglected the reality of ever-changing residence and the concurrent restructuring of groups as well as the indigenous understanding of personal identity and group membership. Clan land in Bena is in possession of the patrilineage but as in most Highland communities, mainly cultivated by the women (Lindenbaum 1976; Meigs 1988; Reay 1959; A. Strathern 1968). Residency is usually patrivirilocal. The members of the same patrilineages often reside near each other and live with their families in neighboring houses that make small hamlets. Each lineage owns land inside the clan territory, often marked by fences, where the gardens of the different families are located. Most of the gardens in Napamogona are within short walking distance from the houses of their owners. Before its destruction, Napamogona was not a village in the Western sense; nor did it resemble nucleated villages in other parts of Papua New Guinea (Telban 1998; Wassmann 1984). Napamogona land was U-shaped, surrounding another small community named Monekere (the name is changed), and bordered by four other tribal grounds. The “village” of Napamogona consisted of family households, grouped into hamlets of lineages that were again grouped into clan segments and then into the tribe/village. The hamlets that compose hepa are not clustered adjacent to one another but are dispersed across the tribal terrain. When walking through Napamogona one did not instantly perceive it as one inhabited area. Instead, vast areas of bush, hills, grassland and even a river separated the twenty-three hamlets; walking from one end of the village to the other took an averagely fit person about three hours. Land usage shifts with time, and a family’s, a lineage’s, or a clan’s land can be extended or diminished. A result of the recent warfare was that Napamogona grounds have been reduced. The current drive is to regain the disputed pieces of land by gradually and strategically repopulating them. According to a census conducted during the election period in 1997, the population of Napamogona numbered 1,118 people; in 2015 only 900 people lived in the village. The decrease in population is due to numerous deaths related to the recent fighting but also to the fact that some people have not (yet) returned to their place since the violence ceased.

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There are many reasons for a clan either to challenge another group in order to gain parts of its territory or to defend its ground from outside challenges. The conflict that began in 2006 within Sigoyalobo clan increased to the level of warfare between various clans and their allies and resulted in the burning down of all houses and the destruction of family gardens and coffee gardens. This destruction of Napamogona in 2007 brought with it the depletion of the people and of their place, their source of nurturance, and with it the depletion of parts of their persons. Having lost their homes, their gardens, and some of their relatives, about one thousand people of the Napamogona tribe were forced to leave their grounds of common residence. Nine years later, during the writing of these words, some members of the five clans that make up the Napamogona tribe were still scattered among different groups that granted them refuge after a period of violent conflicts in their community. However, most of the refugees had returned to their land and “restarted” the place of Napamogona. The initial fighting was a result of long ongoing tensions that originally evolved between two patrilineages of Sigoyalobo clan. In order to understand the current situation and the reasons for the escalation of this clan-internal conflict into a warfare that grew until it involved members of at least three neighboring tribes, one needs to know some facts about the indigenous analysis of land ownership in terms of the oral history of Napamogona—considering, however, in which context it is told, by whom, and to whom. Oral tradition, Tove Stella (2007: 37) points out, “records, regulates, and legitimizes the inhabitation of place.” In Bena, the main part of local oral history consists of clan stories. They link persons through a common, sometimes putative, ancestor to each other (Keesing 1975) and to their land. The strategic use of oral history is a powerful means to control land ownership. By telling a clan’s history—which is, as I show below, usually told in terms of agentive ancestral acting in relationships to specific places—one primarily defines land rights. Oral history places clans strategically on a certain piece of land and grants that the memory of land ownership remains throughout generations, even if the clan members had temporarily lost their grounds to others (Read 1986: 52f.; Westermarck 1997: 220f.). Oral history gives persons reason and justification to claim, defend, maintain, and reconquer specific grounds. It thus relates the past to the present and at the same time fabricates the future. It is most important to have this in mind when reading the following clan story of Sigoyalobo.

The Story of Sigoyalobo Napamogona history is shaped by the stories of its five clans but is clearly dominated by that of Sigoyalobo clan, purportedly the founding clan of the tribe.16 The following history of Napamogona as Tau told it reveals certain

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traits in his relationship to his clan’s land and shows his ambition to present it strategically in one particular way. The history is this. Long ago the Napamogona fought with their enemies and were defeated. In the times of the forefathers the Napamogona were scattered. Some stayed in Goroka, in Kama and Ufeto, some stayed in Korufego, Kopafo, Fagasa. In the 1930s, my grandfather, the old Farokave and his big brother Kenagori’e— two orphans whose fathers had died in a fight—were looked after by the Korufego. The story goes—and I heard it from my grandfather—that the Korufego people came and offered them a bride-price for their sister because they wanted to buy her. But the two brothers did not want that big old man to marry their young sister. However, they were helpless at that time because they were living in the place of that man. The two had no power to stand up to their hosts. So they said, “What a pity, our land is there but we had to seek refuge here because of trouble and now we are stuck here. They come and offer this bride-price but what can we do? Still, our land is there!” So my grandfather Farokave made up his mind and he told all his orphan brothers in Korufego: “I will take six of our sisters and leave with them.” One man made up his mind in Korufego and he went and stayed in our first hamlet near Nosaga. There he camped with his six sisters and his first wife. When the first food in his garden was ready for harvest, he sent the message to his brothers and cousins and told them “I am ready now. Come!” So they all made their way from Korufego and met him at his new place. When his brothers came, my grandfather Farokave had prepared the food and they ate together. His brother Kenagori’e had come, and an agemate from Jogijohi clan came and the elders from Napayufa clan and the elders from Matahusa and Mekfimo clan. They all came and met. Kenagori’e stayed with his brother and when their families grew and they had many children, they extended their grounds and came to the Nosaga mountain. When they lived there, the Mohuveto came down and offered a bride-price for one of my aunties, the big sister of one of my mothers. … But my grandfathers did not agree with this price. When they refused, the Mohuveto told them “You live on which land that you can act like this? Are you in Sofagoto? Are you in Lupopa’hi or in Faligu that you can talk like that?” When my grandfathers heard these words they became angry. In the night they did not sleep and on the next morning they decided that they should go and take the grounds of their ancestors back. So they split up. The old Farokave, my grandfather, said, “I will take care of the land here in Nosaga, the first land that the enemies took and the first ground to which we came back after we had been scattered. So I shall gather some people and hold this land.” And he stayed. His agemate, my other grandfather, from my mother’s side, the old Faki’e came down with his team and settled in Lakosa, where we live now. He also took the Jogijohi and Mekfimo because they are his mother’s relatives. He said, “I think of my mother’s side and

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I take the two clans up to the mountain Kosaniviga.” So he went and took them to the mountain there. … Other old relatives of mine, Lamutopa and Gatope, took the Matahusa clan and they settled in Aminohi. Then they made their gardens down in Lupopa’hi and the Laminoki [name is changed] became angry, broke down the houses, destroyed the gardens. How often they fought on these grounds! But we continued building houses and breaking down the fences again and made our gardens. When I was a small boy in the early seventies, I remember that the Laminoki still had their pig huts and coffee on the ground. They had taken over our land. So my fathers and uncles and elder brothers fought for this, and I witnessed it. They forced them further and further back and we took over their coffee gardens and their pig pens and now we have put our landmark at the Lapega river. That is how it is now. The main thing the Napamogona are known for is tribal fights. (Tau Farokave, interview, 2004)

The first and most obvious aspect of Tau’s story to me is the fact that it begins only three generations ago. Little is known (or told) about the previous settlements of the Napamogona tribe or the clans who later joined to become Napamogona. The history of Napamogona, like that of its clans and persons, is thus not very long. Only few of my Bena interlocutors could trace their genealogical descendence further than three or four generations.17 This is not unusual for cultures in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Westermarck (1997: 220), for example, stressed that the Agarabi (an Eastern Highlands tribe, south of Bena) possessed no precise reckoning of their genealogical descent “because the alliances on which the Agarabi social system was based were subject to frequent redefinition as a consequence of the near-continual threat of war” (see also J.B. Watson 1970). This is also true for Bena. Tau’s story shows that founding Napamogona involved the settling of cooperating clans in greater distance from each other. This was, of course, not random but a strategic means to ensure the control over huge pieces of land. The first settlements of the Napamogona tribe, founded three generations ago mainly by Sigoyalobo, were Koplufagosalo, Nosaga, and Mopanuga. From there the remaining territory was divided among members of the other allied clans and became the Napamogona that I found at my first visit in 1997 and remained so until 2006. The refounding of Napamogona by Tau’s grandfather Farokave and his brothers on their previous grounds was of utmost importance to everyone in the village. It reshaped their identity on a community level, but also explained and justified the dominant role of Sigoyalobo clan in the tribe. On a personal plane, seeing oneself as a Napamogona (and being seen as one) is thus not only defining one’s position in opposition to other tribes, but also implies a network of specific social relationships inside the tribe, inside the clan, and with it to certain pieces of land that grant persons access to nurturance, give

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them strength, and place them in a position of being able to exchange. For Bena, as for Agarabi, one can speak of a reciprocal relationship between land and persons (Westermarck 1997). Persons receive nurturance, nogoya’a, from their grounds, and reciprocate by giving parts of themselves, of their “vital essence” (Newman 1964, 1965), to the land by investing their strength to work on it. They maintain and extend the relationships with their co-residents and with ancestral spirits (which again ensure fertility of gardens) and, most important, they defend it with their own lives if necessary. I argue that it is precisely this reciprocal relationship between persons and their land that turns land into place. It implies both that place is part of all the persons that live on it or have been nurtured from it in the past and that parts of these persons are inherent in this land. In other words, place extends persons (see Tove Stella 2007: 37) and, by always carrying parts of it with them, persons extend place. As well as being crucial for personal physical survival, land is the link in relationships between persons of different clans and tribes. The ownership of and access to land is therefore a—if not the—central topic of Bena life in general. It is expressed, reformulated, and justified in oral history through common clan stories. Such stories are “significant for the political unity of groups subject to frequent reconstitution, symbolizing … the shared substance of a common land” (Westermarck 1997: 220, my emphasis). One can summarize that the connection that unites different people in Bena into a “tribe” is their spatial and temporal coexistence on land of which they are a part and that they perceive as being part of themselves; an idea also expressed in the terminological identification of people and place (Hess 2009). By sharing the common encompassing name of the land, a part of one’s self is implicit in place, and, vice versa, the grounds that nurture oneself (and have nurtured one’s ancestors) are inherent in one’s self. Place is thus inseparable from the identity of a tribe, a clan, and the persons of which these groups are composed. Although the grounds may shift with the flow of time and flux of groups through tribal wars, parts of persons will always remain on their previous place, the land they were ideally born and bred on, but definitely the land of their ancestors. A continuous connection between people and their homeland persists even when they are forced to live somewhere else. According to different elders from Napamogona, returning to one’s place of origin is the ideal that every scattered clan member tries to achieve. Interestingly, in their current drive to reestablish peace in Napamogona, Tau and Nando apply the same strategies as their ancestors did when reconquering their land three generations ago: they resettled first on the Nosaga mountain on the very southern end of Sigoyalobo clan grounds to secure the outside boundaries of their territory. Read (1986: 52) observed the same among the Gahuku, neighbors of the Bena and in many ways similar in their conceptualization of the world and in

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their social organization: “At any point in time, the composition of groups on the ground was fluid, in a state of potential flux or change, though beneath this flow of population the ideology of patrilineal descent and the patrimony of territory remained, to be reasserted and reclaimed when fortunes improved or swung in another direction. The processes were not random, but rather … those of ‘organized flow’ as groups and leaders, seizing the main chance, attempted to augment and consolidate their ‘strength.’” Losing one’s place does not only weaken persons because they are then cut off from their supplies, but also detaches them from the essential “substance” (Westermarck 1997: 220)—that is, cuts them off from their main sources of nurturance or, in Bena terms, nogoya’a, “essence,” (Newman 1964, 1965), the crucial immaterial substance, which is continuously exchanged between a person and his or her surroundings. Without access to this essence (inherent in their land) people become disoriented and weak. With the loss of their place, crucial aspects of their person become diminished.

Conclusion In this chapter I have shown that Bena cultural categories are quite flexible in their adjustments to changing circumstances but remain tied to the indigenous notion of exchange. Bena exchange is open to everyone who offers to commit him or herself to a reciprocal and thus nurturing and strengthening exchange relationship to others. A good example is the Bena kinship system, where in spite of the ideal of patrilineal descent practically everybody can be adopted into a group and even override birth rights of his or her adopted siblings through the skillful agentive conduct of exchange relationships with persons of his or her adopted lineages and their exchange partners. This Bena perception requires an analytical shift from “social structure” and “sexual antagonism” (Langness 1964, 1967) to exchange relationships, agency, and (gendered, dividual, and permeable) person (Hess 2009; M. Strathern 1988). I have further described that the relationship between persons and their place (see Tove Stella 2007) follows the ideal of a long-term reciprocal exchange of nurturing essence/nogoya’a. Accordingly, the fear of land loss and concurrent aggressive warfare strategies are founded on the Bena perception of existentially important exchange relationships between persons, place, ancestors, and co-residents. Land disputes and warfare are caused by feelings of anger that derive from what Bena persons perceive as failed (nonreciprocal) exchange. Further, warfare itself works on principles of negative (Sahlins 1972: 195) or unrequited reciprocity (Kirsch 2006: 79–106). As my informants expressed in their analyses of Bena culture, the key element to understanding some of its fundamental structuring principles— kinship, gender relations, warfare, and land ownership—is the specific Bena

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concept of (positive or negative) exchange, framed in Bena terms by the idea of personal exchange of nogoya’a, “nurturing essence.”18

Notes 1. Polako is a divorced, single woman who lived on her brother’s land. If she had been married, I would most likely have become a member of her husband’s clan. 2. The fact that I was born in Papua New Guinea and that my “umbilical cord was buried in PNG grounds,” as Papa Tau emphasized, possibly made my adoption smoother. I was told by different persons in the country that I was somewhat Papua New Guinean (although, of course, not entirely) because of the connection I received through birth. It is not explained in terms of kinship but in terms of a personal connection to the land (through essence that entered the grounds when one’s umbilical cord is buried). 3. I had not asked him to do so. In fact he insisted that the secret he would reveal to me would be of great importance for my work and that was the reason why he wanted to do it. 4. For further information, I suggest reading Scott’s (2007, 2013) interesting criticisms on the Melanesian model of sociality regarding the partibility of lineages. 5. Some men choose to live with their wife’s clans rather than their own. One of the reasons for this may be a man’s position in his group (he may, for example, be adopted or a refugee and therefore less powerful in his own group than he is as an in-law in his wife’s community); or a tribe may have a reputation as great warriors and a man might prefer to stay with the stronger group. Inmarried husbands are usually welcome in their wife’s family. For the hosts’ part it means gaining new manpower and augmenting the group’s strength. 6. Only very few women have made it into the National Parliament since the country’s independence in 1975. In 2016, there were only three women among the 111 members. 7. Washing clothes is very hard and time-consuming work. In Napamogona, one has to climb down quite a steep and sometimes very muddy path to the river, loaded with dirty laundry in bilums (string bags) on one’s back and/or buckets on the head, then wash and scrub it as clean as possible, wring the water out, pack it up, and then, loaded with heavy wet clothes, climb back up the steep hill. 8. This strategy has become quite popular as a means of getting rid of unwanted wives. Such situations happened in the past as well, but apparently they are becoming more frequent. For more details on the sanguma witchhunt see chapter 6. 9. A number of studies have been made on the impact of mobile phones on Western societies, as well as on societies of the Majority World, especially in African and Asian cultures (e.g., Light 2009; Ling 2009; Scott, McKemey, and Bachelor 2004; Steenson and Donner 2009; Thulin and Vilhelmson 2009). A central point of interest lies in the ways in which mobile communication influences interpersonal interaction and coordination and affects relational networks, society, and personal identity. Topics of investigation include the impact of mobile phone usage on gender roles (e.g., Burrell 2014; Gam Nkwi 2014), economy, social structure, health, and literacy (e.g., Burrell 2014; Foster and Horst 2014–2016; Scott, McKemey, and Bachelor 2004; A. Watson 2013), on rumors and gossip (e.g., Burrell 2010; P. Turner 1993; L. White 2000), and

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on cultural conceptualisations of space and time (e.g., Ling 2009; Döring and Pöschl 2009; Paragas 2009). For example, mobile phones are of great use when it comes to helping friends and allies in times of distress. During tribal fighting, a fast transfer of information has always been important. Allied people informed each other about dangers such as the wherebouts of the enemy. While in former times this had to be done in risky missions through messengers, today a phone call fulfills the task. Mobile phones are also of great help when a person is sick or if an accident occurs. They further facilitate contact between family members and friends who live in distant places (Ling 2010: 256). On the other hand, mobile phones can be used to organize criminal activities more efficiently, to betray persons, or to spread gossip and rumors beyond the local context. Although tribal fighting is judged as a bad relic from the past by some—especially by Christians—it still is accepted by many others as a means to reestablish a lost balance in relationships (for example, through retaliation). There is a strong connotation of strength and pride to being a warrior. The origin of the term Napamogona is linguistically not entirely explicit. Napa clearly means “big”; mo can be used as topic marker or like an article; gona could refer to a suffix used in kinship terms. However, older Bena persons tend to call the place Napamona, dismissing the go. Then the second na may function as an emphasizing topic marker. My interlocutors were not able to explain how and when the naming originated but suggest translating it as “the large group” (bikpela lain). Tanget plants (Cordyline fruticosa) play a central role in Bena culture. They are important in numerous magical practices (see chapters 3 and 5) and they are used to convey secret messages or tell something about specific relationships. A red tanget leaf delivered to a man, for example, tells him about the succesful killing of an enemy; knots that are twisted into the leaves of a tanget plant represent conflicts between specific persons. When they are ritually untied, it means that the relationship has been reestablished. Knowing one’s tribe is important, but being conscious of one’s clan membership is crucial for a person in Bena. The clan identity is held in high esteem, even if the clan members are scattered in different locations. Langness (1967: 161–177) observed that clans and lineages were the most relevant social groups in a person’s everyday life in Bena, whereas the tribal identity was only of importance when intertribal conflicts occurred or if a common enemy threatened to take over the tribal land. However, according to my observance, clans are gradually losing their central roles in Bena social structure, and the cultural focus on a social unit seems to be in the process of shifting from clan to lineage. I will elaborate on this apparent cultural transformation in chapters 3 and 4, where I deal with life-cycle exchanges and the roles of clans and lineages in them. This story is related to the founding of Napamogona only and has been chosen because of its relevance to the relation to land and its importance as a means of political agency in the current situation. There are various other accounts and mythological clan stories that for reasons of space cannot be considered here. An impressive exception was, for example, the sorcerer Kolumalo (see chapter 5), who could name his forefathers of the last six generations—however, only in relation to his magical pot, which was passed down from father to sons and whose efficacy greatly depends on recalling the names of the previous owners and users.

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Figure 1.2: Inaku’e Takis, Napamogona, 2012

Figure 1.3: Tau Farakove, Napamogona, 2005

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Figure 1.4: David Papua’e, explaining useful plants, Napamogona, 2012

Figure 1.5: Tani Iyape prepares the earth oven, Napamogona, 2013

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Figure 1.6: Esi Papua’e at the bus stop on her way to the market in town Napamogona Junction, 2013

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Unexpected Actions and Strategic Exchanges Leadership, Warfare, and Economy

Being forced to leave their grounds was the greatest nightmare for the Napamogona, a nightmare that became terrible reality. Years before the recent war began, I already noticed a constant readiness to fight, especially among the young men in the village. They often patrolled Napamogona land at night, armed with bush knives or guns, aware of the possibility of an enemy attack because of minor land conflicts with neighboring groups such as the Laminoki and Monekere (both names are changed). Permanent alertness is indeed a fundamental trait of Bena culture; there are no peaceful times as such, only times with fewer or more tensions and frictions, with a lesser or greater possibility that fights may suddenly break out. Tau’s favorite saying, “Expect the Unexpected,” implied that anything could happen to him at any time, but he could also at any moment in time surprise others with unexpected actions. In a 2004 interview, Tau stated I am a warrior, a standby-warrior, because trouble can occur anytime. Because we will not just wait and see and observe what happens. If trouble occurs, we have to face it, defend our rights, fight for our rights. If we do not defend ourselves and fight for our rights, the other side will come and defeat us and we will lose, leave our land, and they will take over. If we then later want to return to our place, it will be hard for us to come back. The other men have taken it already. That is why I have to defend myself, to keep my own land.

Leaders: Warlords, Sorcerers, and Experts in Exchange Although not undisputed within the community, Tau combined all the necessary traits required for becoming—temporarily—the main leader in Napamogona. But what exactly are these traits? The first time that leadership in Bena is mentioned in literature is 1937. Michael Leahy, then with his exploration party on the quest for gold in the

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still “untouched” New Guinea Highlands, was the first white person to make contact with people from the Bena area. According to him, “There seemed to be no chiefs or persons of recognised authority” (Leahy and Crain 1937: 109), and even the elder men’s authority over their clan members seemed fragile because young men often neglected their orders. Some thirty years later, Langness wrote that there actually were Bena leaders, gipina,1 “Big Men,” who achieved their status mainly through their abilities as warriors and not by heritage. According to Langness (1968: 190f.), their main concern was to grant security for their clan, a task that could only be accomplished through strong networks of social relationships with persons inside and outside the clan. Thus, gipina also played central roles in ritualized exchanges. In fact, they needed to be experts in the art of exchange in order to secure a number of reliable supporters in times of warfare. Gipina would “recruit members, maintain ties with affines and cognates, maintain trade partnerships, help others in battle and give gifts and bribes” (Langness 1968: 194). Langness further notes that oratorical skills greatly increased the chance to become a Bena leader (191). A leader must be able to detach effective words from his person, and in exchange attach them to other persons, who respond in the right ways. Again, he must be skilled in exchange. All of the eighty people I questioned in Napamogona as to what characteristics they saw as important for a leader mentioned the following: a man’s strength, amuya’a, (this includes the acquisition of manpower and weapons, as well as clever strategizing in warfare and personal attributes such as aggressiveness, dominant behavior, and authority); a man’s economic skills and generosity (giving in exchange); his magical knowledge; and his oratorical skills. A number of my interlocutors added that they would like their leader to be an educated person and/or Christian. Only four of the eighty people (5 percent)—three women and one man—told me that they would like a leader primarily to establish peace, show nonaggressive behavior, and focus on negotiation over war.

Tau: “A man with strength” Tau is a strong warrior and may have killed a number of enemies in various previous fights and acts of retaliation. He is an eloquent speaker with impressive rhetorical skills and a dominating appearance, a great strategist in war, and talented organizer and manager of (exchange-related) events. He also is a man who possesses magical knowledge and, most importantly, wide networks of social relationships that, among others, involve his in-laws, members of a feared and strong tribe from Upper Bena. Tau, who had studied agriculture in Wewak and had worked with the Department of Agriculture (DPA) in Goroka, had on his return to Napamogona in 1995—he was then in his late twenties—

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clear visions of his future in the village. He intended to bring “economic development” and “order” to Napamogona (personal conversation). Through his studies and experience in town life, he managed to extend his networks to people from other regions and cultures. His education and ability to speak Tok Pisin and English, as well as his working experience, have made him a link between the village and the external world. When people in Napamogona described Tau to me, they said, amuya’a menina bo nohive, “he is a man with strength.” Indeed, for some years, Tau’s strong personality had a huge influence on many men in the community who admired and respected him deeply. Over time, he established the necessary manpower to guarantee security for the village, and his influence on community decisions in Napamogona became crucial. During my research, Tau was the one responsible for security issues. He stopped rascals from blocking the main road nearby, even delivering some of them to the police. He did his best to prohibit alcohol consumption, gambling, and the smoking of marijuana in the village, and encouraged people to focus on their work and set up small businesses. Tau promoted schools and education as well as indigenous Bena values and was very critical of the influence of some aspects of Western culture on Bena. He presented himself to me as a dominant but reflective and fair leader who used his strength to protect and defend his tribe with the intention of granting future generations their place and a good life. Tau’s relation to the land of his forefathers is profound. One of his greatest concerns is to keep hold of these grounds. The threat of losing one’s land in Bena today does not only come from enemy attacks and violent takeovers but also from the sales of land to the government, national and international companies, business enterprises, or organizations. Land disputes between different groups over the selling of land and its resources occur frequently (Kirsch 2006; Westermark 1997).2 Tau is aware of the danger of the Napamogona selling their land, and he promotes the land’s importance for the village’s autonomy. To him the future of the next generation lies in the hands of the people today. He sees himself as the temporal successor of his famous male ancestors and applies in his planning of warfare self-defensive strategies rather than aggressive ones. Securing one’s grounds is a goal worth striving for. This involves manpower as well as support from as many sources as possible, inside and outside his clan. Therefore, becoming a leader in Bena means first of all gathering a number of reliable supporters. This requires a process of extending and intensifying social relationships through processes of ideally reciprocal exchange. In other words, if a man wants to gain power in Bena and lead a dominant role in his village/tribe or clan, he needs to invest in numerous relationships. He strategically initiates or enforces specific exchanges with others. Showing generosity in giving gifts is a good means to ensure the support of the recipients in the future. An upcoming leader often helps persons in times of need, for example,

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when they lack pigs, food or money for their contributions in some exchange ritual. By helping them out he nurtures the relationship with them and obliges them to reciprocate in the future.3 However, direct material support through the giving of gifts is not the only means to find supporters. Tau gained much of his power through promises he made to others—for example, concerning participation in land ownership or economic benefits in return for support in warfare—or he convinced persons to fight on his side by offering them his support against their enemies later, after winning his own war. A great measure of Tau’s increasing power was further grounded in the fear he and his supporters created among people in and near Napamogona. Tau’s cousin Nando played a crucial role in this context. Nando was Tau’s main advisor in spiritual and war-related matters. He possessed both knowledge of magic as well as aggressive strength that enabled him to force others to support him and his cousin; Nando achieved this by threatening persons both spiritually and physically. People who stood up to them publicly risked their lives, for Nando might revenge their public shaming.4 Such oppressive practices are neither new nor unusual in the area, as we have already learned from Langness (1968: 191). About twenty years later, Feil (1987: 99) described leading men in the Eastern Highlands as despots that strengthen their powerful positions not through the manipulation of wealth (like, for example, Big Men in the Western Highlands) but through means of “domination, intimidation and audacity.” Although Bena leaders may temporarily be successful in dominating, sometimes even terrorizing, their environment and exercising their powers over others, their position is always fragile. They are in a permanent state of rivalry, challenged by others and forced to defend themselves with strength and well-developed exchange and warfare strategies. Therefore leadership in Bena is usually rather short-term.5 The conflicts leaders have caused with other groups, however, often continue beyond their time. There may be a respite for a while and a breakout again later. From the previous descriptions one can see that leadership in Bena is flexible. There is no such thing as inherited leadership. Unless a person proves suitable—strong enough—for the job, one is not determined to become a leader because one’s father was one. However, it certainly does help to bear the name of an important man. Tau’s clan story shows that his position is strengthened by the important roles his grandfathers played in winning back their previous clan-land, and he uses his kin relationship with them to justify his own claims over this place. But in Bena, this depends more on the acquisition of influence and prestige and on the efficiency and strength of one’s social relationships than on descent. With regard to land, this means that although one may have, through descent, legitimate ideal claims to land, in practice the most important thing is to have the strength (manpower, magical knowledge) to take, maintain, and defend it as one’s place (Tove Stella 2007: 37).

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In many ways, Tau embodies the “typical” and “ideal” Bena leader of today. He increased his influence through a combination of “strong” (material and immaterial) elements of Bena and of Western culture. Indigenous values, such as strength, aggressiveness, assertiveness, magical knowledge, strong social relationships, land ownership, and so forth, are conjoined in his person with aspects of Western culture, education, experience with political institutions and Western economy, cash crops, money, firearms, etc. The one thing these elements have in common is their efficiency, or strength, in exchange. It is not surprising that, with time, Tau’s reputation as a forceful leader and a man that one should not “mess with” spread to neighboring areas and even to Goroka town.

Big Men or Great Men? When discussing leadership in Papua New Guinea, one cannot dismiss the anthropological debates that were held around the topic. In his book “The Making of Great Men,” Godelier (1986) compares what he sees as the two main features of leadership in Papua New Guinea: the “Big Men” and the “Great Men.” Big Men have occurred in anthropological literature several times but were often given different titles. The term “Big Man” was used by Sahlins (1968: 162ff.) in his article “Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief,” in which he compares the Melanesian Big Man to the Polynesian chief. Godelier (1986: 163) notes that “in particular Melanesian tribes the phrase might be “man of importance,” or “man of renown,” “generous rich-man,” or “center man” as well as “Big Man.”6 What Big Men and Great Men have in common is that they represent a category of men of high social status and with great influence on the decision-making processes in the community. Great influence means here a man’s power to direct decisions in a way that is in his personal interest; something he can achieve only if he has strong communal support and/ or great manpower. Strategically creating and extending networks of people who are obliged to him (thus ensuring their support) is crucial for a leader. Therefore, he has to be skilled in the art of exchange. Big Men and Great Men entertain numerous exchange relationships inside their community and represent their group in exchanges with the outside world (Godelier 1986: 163). There is, however, a difference between Big Men and Great Men groups in their structural approach to exchange that reflects a difference in the positioning of exchange partners. Great Men societies seem to stress the equality between a Great Man and his exchange partners (and with it the equality of persons and groups in exchange in general) because both parties exchange equal “gifts” (sister for sister, warrior killed for a warrior killed, etc.). Big Men communities, on the other hand, appear to work on a principle of alternating inequality, where the positions between giver and recipient change, and

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the focus in exchange is on establishing a diverging imbalance rather than a balance (Godelier 1986: 171f.).7 Therefore the relevant question to distinguish Big Men from Great Men groups is, according to M. Strathern (1991: 1), “whether exchanges between groups and individuals depend on a quest for non-equivalence, and thus incorporate principles of calculated disequilibrium or unequal exchange (as in the substitution of human lives for wealth), or whether they rest on principles of equivalence and on mechanisms designed to restore equilibrium.” Gipina display a number of characteristics that are reminiscent of Western Highlands Big Men. The Bena have a kinship system that involves ceremonial exchange clearly based on an alternating inequality of persons in social relationships rather than aiming at equilibrium (see chapter 4). Bride-price payments are obligatory, and sister exchange is not practiced. The generous distribution of wealth in a strategized manner is crucial for gaining supporters and thus the advancing of one’s own position. Further, being a Bena leader is a competitive position. Challenges from other men (and their networks) have to be met. A man has to fight for his status and prove himself as efficient and successful in exchange to maintain his position. In other aspects, however, Bena leaders strongly resemble Godelier’s Great Men. The focus on masculine solidarity and strength in warfare and the importance of secret magical knowledge for the acquisition of power in Bena are examples. It is partly expressed in male cults that emphasize equality and solidarity between men and complex male initiation rites (Langness 1967). Specific sacred objects that are linked to masculinity and strength—for example flutes (Godelier 1986 Langness 1967)—are used in ritual and magical practices, and the possession of the secret magical knowledge that refers to these objects significantly increases a man’s chance of becoming a leader (see chapter 5). It seems that Bena leadership does not fit into either of the two models of leadership in Melanesia that Sahlins or Godelier and others developed; rather, it lies somewhere between the two categories and carries traits of both Big Men and Great Men societies. In this way it reflects the geographical position of the Bena region at the fringe of the Highlands between low grassland and high mountainous areas, close to Big Men groups, such as the Chimbu, and not very far from Great Men societies, such as the Baruya in Morobe. Tau’s career exemplifies the fact that ideas of Big and Great Men in Bena cannot be perceived as fundamentally different or opposing each other. Rather, as M. Strathern implied in the above quotation, both have developed on the same ground—that of exchange as the key element of culture. They have merely assumed a different emphasis on the structure of exchange. Therefore, if one is to understand Bena leadership, the analytical focus should be on the indigenous perception of exchange, which is inextricably linked to the concept of person and social relationships.

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Managing Relationships The focus in the management of social relationships for a Bena leader is on practices of agentive exchange, which involve parts of his and others’ persons. Tau, for example, once helped a number of people in Napamogona when two important old clan leaders from the Jogijohi and Mekfimo tribes unexpectedly died during the same week. Two grand funerals had to be organized at the same time, and in both cases many relatives and visitors were expected to participate in the concurrent exchanges. For many people, these involved social obligations they found difficult to fulfill. Tau, then in possession of numerous pigs and some cattle, contributed significantly to the exchanges by giving one cow, four pigs, various bunches of cooking bananas, vegetables, sweet potatoes, and fruit publicly at the funerals and by helping out relatives who did not have enough to contribute themselves. He further helped the families of the deceased in organizing the events and conducting the complex food distributions among the participants appropriately. Tau’s gifts on these occasions represent more than physical nurturing value. They have attached to them nurturing parts of his person. Animals and crops were grown and nurtured on his land, the land that also nurtures him and that he in return strengthens by working it and defending it. His sweat and his blood have gone into this very land and, with these, parts of his “vital essence” or “nurturance” (nogoya’a). Thus by taking and consuming the food he gave, the recipients attached parts of Tau’s person to themselves. In doing so, they accepted the obligation to reciprocate in the future by detaching parts of their persons and giving them to him in nurturing exchange that again helps him to increase his strength. This is only one example of dividual exchange in regard to leaders in Bena. It shows its “positive,” ideal form.8 Givina bo gain their reputation mainly for their strength, which is achieved through exchange practices that also involve the nurturing distributions of gifts and support. As I will explain in detail in chapters 3 and 4, exchange in Bena involves not only the material flow of goods between exchange partners but also the exchange of immaterial aspects of persons. These consist in parts of their personal “vital essence” (Newman 1964), which are detached from the giver and attached to the person of the recipient. This exchange of essence is an intentional and agentive process, grounded in the idea of eliciting parts of one another through forms of personal detachments and attachments and, in doing so, creating what Andrew Strathern (1971) and Marilyn Strathern (1991) called an “alternating disequilibrium” between the exchange partners. In Bena terms, this disequilibrium evolves through a change in the balance of nurturing and strong parts of persons. If a Bena leader becomes inefficient and unsuccessful in his undertakings, it implies that his person’s detachments are not sufficient to elicit appropriate reciprocities in others; he is no longer strong

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enough to oblige others in exchange (by giving nurturance or exercising his strength). In such cases, others take over his position. Therefore, a Bena leader must continuously prove himself. Failing in ceremonial exchange and endangering or destroying important social relations through unreflected behavior, or by showing weakness, can easily cost him his position. Displaying strength in exchange—either by nurturing others through gifts or by obligating their support—ensures his power. With such action, the fame of the man’s name spreads even across the boundaries of his locality (Mosko 2001; Munn 1986; Seib 1994: 412). In Bena, people describe leading men as having “a name”— a reputation (for being strong) beyond their community boundaries.9 Their broad exchange networks become especially important in times of crisis and conflicts when support from members in and outside the group is required. Godelier has pointed out that it is crucial for Great Men to possess authority in social fields like magic or warfare. I argue that these can also be understood in terms of (dividual) exchange. In war and magic, a givina bo “gives away” (detaches) the strong and aggressive parts of his “essence” and forces them on others, but keeps the nurturing aspects and withdraws his opponent’s strength. I will show in chapter 5 that most magical practices in Bena can be seen as forms of exchange that work on negative reciprocity (Sahlins 1972: 195); they aim at forcing one’s interest/strength through specific means and methods on others in order to weaken them spiritually and/or physically by depleting the victims of their “vital essence,” their strength, and, finally, their identity. In this process, the “alternating disequilibrium” of nurturance and strength between the exchange partners is shifted to the extreme: bereft of nogoya’a, the victim becomes weaker and may even die. Warfare works on the same principle. Success in war requires the strength to (violently) force one’s own interests on others (by forcing parts of one’s person on them), thus weakening them (depleting them of their strength), and, eventually, taking over their grounds (cutting them off from their main sources of nurturance). It involves both the physical withdrawal of the enemy’s essence in fights and the weakening of his spirit through specific magical practices. Warfare, like magic, means taking a person’s essence without replacing it through reciprocal nurturing—clearly the negative form of ideally reciprocal exchange. Godelier (1982) argues that the “pacification” of the Highlands through colonial powers has supported a shift from more warfare-oriented concepts of leadership to more economic ones.10 Warfare seemed to lose importance and thus became less relevant for climbing the social ladder. He writes, “There can be no doubt that the social importance of … exchanges and the role of the Big Men have grown with colonialisation. Now that war is prohibited, economic exchange alone remains as an outlet for competition” (180). Thirty-three years after Godelier’s words, the Highlands of Papua New Guinea are far from being pacified. Tribal wars and fights inside the communities or even with the police

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are frequent, and because of the use of (sometimes high-powered) firearms— objects of Western culture that extend Bena strength in warfare—they are more fatal than ever. With the increasing intensity of clan and tribal conflicts, Bena givina bo today rely to a great degree on measures of intimidation and force (Feil 1987: 99f.). Based on the previous description and analysis, I reason that leadership in Bena grows through agentive exchange between partible persons. In his work on Big Men and Great Men, Godelier has not mentioned the crucial aspect of the partibility of persons. With his distinction of Big Men and Great Men, Godelier has applied a valid model to describe different exchange forms and structures among leaders in PNG, but he has neglected the importance of their persons and how these (inter)act in exchange. Sahlins (1968: 162) observed the commonality of the concept among Melanesian communities and found that “local cultural differences modify the expression of their personal powers. But the indicative quality of big-man authority is everywhere the same: it is personal power” (Sahlins’s emphasis). Such “personal power,” as I found it among Bena leaders, lies in a person’s strength, acquired through successful conduct of exchange between persons. The latter—and this is crucial—are perceived as dividual and partible, meaning that with the gifts, they exchange parts of themselves.

Polako—“A woman with strength” In my description of leadership in Bena, I have thus far used Tau as an example of the typical modern Bena leader, and I have emphasized the importance of “masculine” aspects of person, such as aggressiveness and authority, for leadership in Bena. However, I have also agreed with Sahlins’s (1968: 162) claim that the authority of leaders “is personal power.” Such personal power can also allow women to acquire positions of public and social importance. I know some middle-aged Bena women who became women of political influence in their villages, who sit and discuss publicly with the men in spite of the prevailing ideals of male solidarity and fear of female pollution (Knapp 2001; Pataki-Schweitzer 1987). The reason they achieved such strong social positions lay in their specific skills—primarily that of successful networking. My adopted mother Polako, whose maternal grandfather Tutubilo’i (name is changed) was Tau’s paternal grandfather’s brother, is a good example of such a “Big Woman” (Knapp 1997, 2001; Pataki-Schweitzer 1987). According to Bena kinship, Polako is Tau’s elder sister, and therefore their relationship is supposed to be characterized by mutual respect and support. In reality, however, it is rather tense and seems to be of a competitive nature—overtly expressed, for example, in their competition for the Unggai-Bena regional seat in the 1997 national elections.11 Similar to Tau, Polako has a personality of dom-

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inance and authority. She also possesses strong rhetorical skills. She moves self-confidently in public domains and does not hesitate to compete with men. Her speeches are direct and confronting and often given in a challenging tone. Polako’s rhetorical skills are no less convincing than Tau’s, and her charm surpasses his. Her supporters are numerous, and so are her rivals. To maintain her status in the area, she has to find allies, master intrigues, and deal with complex reciprocal exchange relationships. The fact that she is involved in various development projects and has nationwide and overseas contacts gives her strength but also makes her vulnerable to all kinds of accusations, often based on rumors and gossip concerning supposed misuse of money. Polako sees herself as a frequent victim of other people’s jealousy. The tidiness of her house and garden, her possessions (for example, table, chairs, and a sewing machine), and her friendly relation with other Bena communities as well as her relational networks outside the Bena context would give rise to such feelings. I observed that her frequent absences from the village and from communal events encouraged gossip. However, in spite of her difficult position inside Napamogona, her reputation in other communities was high. As a volunteer, she traveled through Unggai-Bena and gave workshops on healthy cooking, HIV awareness, health care, and domestic violence and was renowned for her competence. One could say that Polako nurtured her relationships with persons from other communities by detaching her knowledge, time, and support and was therefore also supported by these groups—for example, during her election campaign. Even today, Polako’s position and political influence appear to be much stronger in the neighboring communities and beyond than inside Napamogona. Polako has to deal with exchange relationships forged through kinship and blood, and beyond these with local nonrelatives who are important supporters and allies, and with the relationships she gains through her faith, her church membership, and her volunteer work. In order to meet all concurrent obligations as well as possible, she relies on obligations of others towards her.

Polako’s Networks Polako’s position within Napamogona, her mother’s village, is ambiguous. Her father was a man from Markham who had lived and worked in Lae as personal assistant (hausboi) for several white colonial administrators and businessmen. After their marriage, Polako’s mother joined him. In 1957, Polako was born in her father’s village.12 She spent the first years of her childhood in Markham but visited Napamogona often and became adopted by her classificatory grandfather. Although ideally, Bena inheritance follows patrilineal patterns, Polako successfully uses her matrilineal ties as legitimization for her residing on Napamogona grounds.

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Although Polako’s adoption took place within Sigoyalobo clan, it brought significant changes regarding her relational networks. If, in Bena, someone is adopted into a new family, his or her relationships to the biological family are supposed to be minimized, if not cut off. It is seen by one’s adopted family as an insult if one still maintains close contact with the biological relatives. The reason lies in the new exchange relationships a person has taken on with his or her “transformation” through adoption. He or she is now nurtured (fed, educated, etc.) by the new family and obliged to reciprocate to them. Close contact with the original relatives may indicate their future claims in exchanges related to the adopted person.13 Polako’s adoption implied that she became part of the Tutubilo’i lineage and was therefore expected to reduce her involvement with her biological family to which Tau and Nando belonged. During her childhood, Polako never visited a school but managed to learn how to read and write with the help of local pastors. Her first book was the Bible—the book that is today still her daily reading and source of strength. In her early twenties Polako got married to a Bena man from a neighboring community. After some years, however, the marriage failed, according to Polako, due to her husband’s increasing alcohol consumption and womanizing habits. After the divorce, she got married to another Bena man who was then working as a public servant in Goroka. During the time of her second marriage, Polako enjoyed a wealthy town life, resided in a house in Goroka, had her own car, power supply, a refrigerator, and even a television. However, after some time, her husband turned violent. He abused her, especially when he was drunk, kicked her, bashed her, even cut her with a bush knife. Polako suffered numerous injuries. Finally, around 1990, she found the strength to leave him, together with her only child, a young girl. Since then, Polako has been single without any intention of getting remarried. She headed back home to Napamogona where one of her biological brothers granted her the right to settle on his land, thereby allowing her to reconnect to her place, to attach me’i nogoya’a, “the ground’s essence,” to herself—nurturance her biological brothers had detached from themselves. Such a gift would have to be reciprocated at some point. Polako was thus obliged towards her biological family and, even more so, to her adopted family. Polako’s daughter left Bena long ago and, due to numerous personal disputes, contact between the two women is rare. When she went, she left her youngest son Ekesa with Polako. Until the escalation of the conflict in 2006, Polako lived with her grandson in the village but was frequently away on field trips as a volunteer and development worker. During the period of fighting, she and Ekesa found shelter with relatives in her father’s village in Markham, then with her paternal relatives in Lae, and finally with relatives of her adopted mother in a Goroka settlement. Living in exile and depending on money and on the hospitality of others was a personal nightmare for Polako. Separated from her place, Polako felt that she

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was in a “weak” position because her main source of nurturance had been cut off: “I stayed in other people’s place; how should I make a garden or look for firewood, everything I buy with money and I eat and stay” (Polako, interview, 23 August 2013).14 Polako was enormously relieved when the situation finally allowed her to return to Napamogona and restart her life in the village. When she came back, she first reconnected to her adopted family. This is not surprising, since it was this family who had nurtured her since she was a child and whom she was primarily obliged to. In an interview I filmed in 2013—after her return to the village—she explained, “I will not move to another place, because a woman from this place, a native woman, gave birth to me” (23 August 2013).15 A number of people from Napamogona were present while we were filming. Accordingly, Polako directed her talk not only to me but used the occasion to let everyone hear her story. All of you who are here now will listen to my story. My origin and my living is on Napamogona grounds. My mother who gave birth to me is a woman from Napamogona. She gave birth to me and gave me to my grandfather as his luta’a. … So it is impossible for me to go back to my mother who gave birth to me. … My grandfather, he adopted me, and I took care of him until he died and I buried him. I will also stay and take care of my parents, his son, and his wife, until they both die and then I will bury them. I am the oldest child of my father so I will stay. He is my real father so I will stay with him. (23 August 2013)

Polako’s narrative confirms her position inside the Napamogona community. By justifying her claims to live on Napamogona grounds through maternal kinship ties, she elicits specific behavior towards her. In her story, she indirectly sends a message to the listeners; as Jospehides (2008: 21) describes it, “instead of literally commanding or explaining” what the others have to do, she confronts them with “the contingency” in which they are to act. Such “inducement to action” (Wagner 1986: 215f.) shapes a relationship “by forcing it to renegotiate its parameters” (Josephides 2008: 21). With her personal story, Polako renegotiated her relationships within the community and presented herself as being strong and nurturing in these relationships. By emphasizing that she was “given” to her grandfather—in a so-called luta’a exchange (see chapter 4)—she confirms her rights to live in Napamogona because of her matrilineal ties to the land and because of an exchange in which she was herself detached from one part of her biological mother’s lineage and attached to another part. Inaku’e, her neighbor, confirmed her right to do so: “You are a worm from this ground and you returned. And so you came because your relatives are here, we say, and that it is right [lit. not not good]” (Inaku’e and Polako, interview, 23 August 2013).16

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By using the metaphor of being a “worm” to describe Polako’s relation to Napamogona grounds, Inaku’e implies the cultural significance of land for personal identity and belonging. Like a worm attaches pieces of soil to itself while at the same time shaping the ground with its personal detachments (by moving, eating, excreting), Polako has internalized parts of the land she originates from and turned it into her place; a place shaped by her ancestors and also shaped through her activities during her life’s course, a place that nurtured her and made her strong and that was, in return, nurtured by her. This place is the link to her living and dead relatives. It is in this way an extension of her person (Tove Stella 2007: 37). Accordingly, losing her house and garden had made her feel weakened and incomplete. Restarting her life in her place, on the other hand, nurtured her and gave her back her strength. She therefore gladly accepted when one of her adopted brothers granted her a piece of land on which she could build a new house and plant her garden. People in Napamogona respect Polako, and some even slightly fear her. Like Tau, she is considered a strong—sometimes overly strong—person. Her strength is expressed in her large relational networks and the effectiveness these relationships display in terms of exchange. They include relationships to village outsiders, even white anthropologists, and a very intense relationship with God. During her times of hardship, Polako found strength in her belief and became fully committed to Christianity. Her faith in God and in the force of her prayers is strong. For example, once she suspected one of her cousins of having stolen things from her house during the period of fighting. Years later, this cousin’s wife gave birth to a disabled child. Polako interpreted this as God’s punishment for the cousin’s earlier wrongdoings towards her and articulated this in discussions with others, implying that anyone who did something bad to her (who tried to weaken her) would be punished by God (and would himself or herself be weakened). In her narrative, Polako “sends out messages to several people … that she is blameless and enjoys God’s favour” (Josephides 2008: 108), which means that she is nurtured and protected by God’s—to others, potentially dangerous—strength. Tau uses a similar strategy to express his strength. For example, he told me (and many others on several occasions) how he was once encircled by five armed enemies with no chance to escape. They opened fire at him and countless bullets hit him—but none of them entered his flesh. Instead, they bounced off his body. Without a scratch he walked away. When realizing that they could not kill him, his enemies got scared and withdrew. Talking about one’s strength and thereby convincing others of it contributes to personal success. Such “eliciting talk … may not be separated from moral self-construction” (Josephides 2008: 108). In the examples given above, Polako and Tau present their moral selves quite pragmatically in terms of their strength, thereby eliciting respect from others. Polako and Tau are both skilled speakers and very

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confident self-presenters. Tau expresses his strength in terms of his strong relationship to the Bena spiritual plane. The enemies could not kill him—in spite of their strong weapons—because he had magical protection through his nurturing relationships with ancestral spirits and his secret knowledge. Implied is a warning to anyone who might plan to attack him. Likewise, Polako’s interpretation of her cousin’s child’s disability in terms of a punishment God is implicitly a message to others not to mess with her. She draws on the spiritual sphere of Christianity: through nurturing her relationship with God she can ward off evildoers. Sufficiently nurturing all the relationships that Christianity has to offer—to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the angels, as well as to church members and fellow Christians—requires personal and temporal commitment. As a consequence of her tight schedule, Polako sometimes misses out on communal (exchange) events such as mumus (food exchanges that involve the steaming of meat in earth ovens) that are held in the family or among different families and clans. Her occasional absence on such occasions is interpreted by some as a lack of interest in the relationship with her relatives, sometimes even as overly strong behavior. “If she wants to rely on her own strength only, that is her problem,” Tau once said in this context, implicitly threatening to cut his support for her in the future (reject future detachments of nurturance from his person for Polako to attach to herself). Her display of excessive strength by not turning up at exchange-related events in the village indicated to him that she supposedly did not need the nurturance exchanged on this occasion because she drew on other sources. I observed that some people in the village felt provoked or insulted by her behavior. Already at the beginning of my research they had doubted that Polako would be capable of granting my security and wellbeing—in other words, her ability to be appropriately both strong and nurturing enough to me. They claimed that her frequent absence would make me weak and prone to loneliness and would endanger my safety. Polako had brought me to the village and taken on responsibility as my mother, but she could not look after me in the way she and others felt she should. Polako suffered from this inner conflict and complained about feeling stressed. Often she apologized for not taking me around or staying with me longer. She tried her best to ensure my wellbeing in her absence by handing over her motherly responsibilities to others. In this situation, Tau became a frequent presence in my Bena life. He saw himself as responsible for my safety (detaching his strength to protect me) as well as for my general wellbeing and the successful conduct of my research. He began to provide me with nurturing food and support, gave me a piece of land, planted a banana plantation for me, took me around, and became a most helpful research assistant, even co-researcher in my work. In other words, Tau nurtured and strengthened me through detachments of strong (security) and nurturing (food, land, knowledge) parts of his

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person. Polako was at first glad to know I was in safe hands when she could not be around, but when I began to spend more time with Tau and his family, she withdrew slightly. This was also due to her adopted family’s discontent over my “move” to Tau’s family; they actually expected me to associate myself more with the Tutubilo’i side.17 Polako gave Tau space and allowed him to build and strengthen his exchange relationship with me. This process was, however, not easy, and various imbalances in strength and nurturance between Tau and Polako, partly even expressed in public disputes, occurred along the way.18 However, it was Polako who allowed Tau to become my Bena father. This was, of course, not a random decision. Although Polako saw herself as equal to Tau, she knew that in Bena reality he could become dangerous to her if he felt provoked by her and if the previous tensions between these two strong persons could not be smoothed. One way to cool down his anger (kulim bel), was to give me to him as daughter. This soothing exchange was symbolically expressed when she formally handed him a glass of cold water while telling him that she agreed that he would from now on take the role of my adopted Bena father. In giving me to Tau, Polako detached parts of myself as her daughter from her and Tau attached these parts to himself. Indeed, I felt somewhat fragmented when I became merged into Bena kinship. During the years before the fight, the Farokave lineage of which Tau and Nando had become spokesmen was very influential in the community. Polako depended on her biological cousins’ and brothers’ nurturing support, for example, and their permission to remain in the village. In 2004 she told me that it was crucial for her survival in Napamogona to have a friendly relationship with Tau and Nando and their families. Thus Polako informally adopted Nana, Nando’s youngest brother, and treated him like a son. She prepared food for him, bought him clothes and tools, gave him some money, and tried to teach him her Christian values. In return, Nana helped her immensely with her daily tasks. He fetched water, repaired things around the house, carried her shopping home from town, and patrolled her home at night. Polako’s adopted relatives observed this process with suspicion. Taking on young Nana’s education was an attempt to show her interest in keeping up nurturing exchange with her biological lineage and thus a potential risk to her adopted family. The Farokave family appreciated her support for some time. Then, however, Polako’s demands on Nana’s nurturing/productive strength (which he was expected to give to his kin) led to some tensions between the parties, especially between Polako and Nando. The tensions were characterized by overly strong, competitive acting from both sides and arose for various reasons. Polako wanted Nana to become a Christian; Nando wanted him to be a warrior. Nando told me that he felt provoked because Polako interfered in his personal affairs and could not hold her tongue, while Polako saw it as her moral obligation (in line with her faith) to contradict Nando, even in public, if she objected to his

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opinion. The relationship between Nana and Polako gradually faded into the background and finally ended when Nana became one of Nando’s warriors. Tragically, Nana was shot in 2007, a loss that Polako still mourns. Although I observed over the years that Polako carefully draws on relationships to her biological family (the Farokave lineage to which Tau and Nando belong), her adopted family remains most important for her village life. As older sister, she has some degree of authority over her younger (adopted) brothers and, as sister-in-law, even more so over their wives. In everyday matters such as garden work, collecting of firewood, house-building, or repairing the fence, she relies on her female in-laws, her brothers, and their children. In times of trouble, her adopted brothers give her shelter and protection. However, she further depends on many other people’s help, including persons outside her adoptive and biological kin. David, the village counselor and spokesman of Jogijohi clan, is Tau’s poroman (age-mate) and “like a true brother” to Polako. He and his wife, Esi, whose origins are in Sigoyalobo, support Polako in many ways. Both of them are, like Polako, committed Christians. The couple often took care of Samuel when he was still a child and when Polako was busy with her volunteer work or with church-related activities. Today they still bring Polako greens and sweet potatoes from their garden or kerosene from the market in town; they offer rice or oil when her supplies are finished and deliver firewood. Their children help her with housework. In times of personal trouble, David often supports Polako’s position in the village, thereby sometimes even opposing his influential age-mates Tau and Nando. David also grants Polako’s physical security. In other words, Esi and David nurture the relationship with Polako and in so doing increase her strength. Polako reciprocates by spiritually supporting David and Esi in times of need. For example, when David was weakened by an attack of witchcraft, it was Polako who prayed over him and induced his healing. Occasionally, she also shares some money or acquired goods with them. Other supporters in matters of everyday life, as well as in times of conflict, are Pastor Samson— the pastor of the local Foursquare church—and his wife, and Inaku’e, a very “laid-back” man Polako’s age. Inaku’e, a Napayufa clan member, does not visit any church and, although he claims to believe in God, is not a committed Christian. He described his religious situation as “currently I am a pagan. I do not go to church and I also smoke. I think some time later I may become a Christian again” (personal conversation, 2004). Inaku’e does not seem too concerned or pressured about living a Christian lifestyle. Polako, of course, has problems with his attitude, but she has also acknowledged that Inaku’e has a “good heart” (Polako, interview, June 2004) and that he is supportive and nurturing; she needs him in order to cope with her life in the village. Inakue’s and Polako’s relationship seems to be relatively uncomplicated and is generally characterized by mutual support.

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Central to Polako’s life is her Christian faith and her engagement in churchrelated activities and relationships with fellow Christians. Like many other Christians I have encountered in Papua New Guinea, Polako changes her church membership frequently. Throughout her life, she has visited a large number of churches, including more traditional congregations, such as the Lutheran church, as well as many Pentecostal churches, such as “Life in the Spirit Ministry,” Foursquare, and Seventh-day Adventists. When I last met her in 2016 she belonged to a church called “Christian Life Center” (CLC). I will elaborate more on churches and Christianity in Bena in chapter 7. Here it is only important to keep in mind Polako’s strong commitment to Christian faith and her flexibility in connecting herself to different Christian communities—that is, to enter different fields of exchange relationships. Polako invests a great part of her time in her Christian work and concomitant relationships in town or in other communities. This has led to a (deliberate undeliberate) reduction of her participation in communal life in Napamogona. Her engagement in church- related activities thus brought with it a shift in exchange relationships concurrent with a change of balance in the flow of nogoya’a between her and her relatives in the village. As I have shown above, this shift was perceived as a withdrawal from binding exchange relationships in her family. It appeared as a form of failed exchange: Polako was seen as taking from others (support, nurturance) but not as reciprocating appropriately. The perception of such negative reciprocity can lead to feelings of anger on the side of those who feel that they have not received their due. Failed exchange—or the perception that an exchange has failed—can thus endanger a relationship and, in serious cases, even the person (or party) of the one who failed to reciprocate. Since Polako was not willing to reduce her engagement in the relationships with her fellow Christians, she had to find other ways to reciprocate to her relatives and supporters in Napamogona in order to avoid risking the relationships with them. Her choice to “give” me to Tau as adopted daughter, as well as that to “give” me later to David and Esi as daughter-in-law (Maden 2008), was an attempt to nurture and rebalance their relationship. She gave a white woman, thereby opening potentially unlimited options of acquiring further strong and nurturing exchange relationships since I represented a link to the Western world, to new relationships, and sources of nurturance. The examples of Tau and Polako vividly illustrate the importance of a strategic management of exchange relationships for a person, meaning the conscious and agentive attempt to manipulate the balances of nurturance and strength among persons and, with it, inside oneself. In spite of their differences, Tau and Polako share a number of characteristics, attitudes, and interests. Tau’s personal status derives from his activities in exchange, and so does Polako’s. However, they are currently acting in different fields of exchange. While Tau’s aim is to increase his strength by

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strategizing exchange forcefully through warfare, magical practices, and ritual exchange (mainly compensation), Polako’s concern is the creation of exchange relationships outside these fields. Polako’s strength depends to a great deal on her success with her “development” projects and on her relation to the church, while Tau’s position stands and falls with his control over land, men, and magic. Tau’s main domain is in the village; Polako’s in different villages and in town. What Tau and Polako have in common is their skill in managing exchange relationships and, in doing so, increasing their strong position in communal networks. They diverge, however, in the choice of their fields. Polako is primarily involved in exchange with members from other communities who cooperate in political and nongovernment organizations as well as through churches. She is also, she claims emphatically, in exchange with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (see chapter 7). Although she is aware of her family obligations, she often prioritizes her religious and work relationships. Tau’s alliances are of a different character. He relies mainly on the support of (extended) family members, business partners, and political allies.19 I have explained above that one of the difficulties Polako has to face in managing her relationships in the village is dealing with perceptions of failed exchange. The reputation of failing in exchange—not reciprocating at all or reciprocating in a negative way with overly strong behavior—endangers relationships and even the person, for sometimes negative exchanges and the concurrent feeling of “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2000: 79) trigger violent actions. The recent warfare in Napamogona that I have referred to a number of times already is a terrible but clear example of how failed exchanges can turn very violent.

Warfare and Failed Exchanges In the following, I will show how Bena leaders react to failed exchanges and the dehumanizing feeling of “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2000: 79) these failures bring along. By describing the escalation of a conflict in Napamogona that took place between different lineages of the same clan, I give an example of the Bena perception that failure in exchange leads to an imbalance in the relationship of the exchange partners, which causes a feeling of being “weakened” (depleted or cut off from nurturance). Bena persons in general and Bena leaders in particular, often react to such feelings with aggressive20 and violent actions that may even cause warfare (see Rumsey 2006). In 2005, rumors about dangerous tensions between the lineages of Sigoyalobo clan spread in Napamogona. Apparently, Mama Polako’s adopted family members—I call them here the Tutubilo’i lineage—were not happy about Tau’s growing influence in the village and saw his close alliance with Nando with suspicion. When Tau had once left the village to visit some relatives in

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Lae, Nando and his brothers began to pressure people in the village by forcing them to pay them money and by “disciplining” them publicly. I was told that Nando behaved “like a dictator” in the community, that he bashed and whipped some of his nephews (mainly from Polako’s adopted family) and shamed them publicly (Polako, personal conversation, 2005). Tensions in Napamogona increased, and another lineage of Sigoyalobo clan—the family of Sinodi (name changed)—who had until now remained in the background, entered the scene. Tau and Nando, both members of the Farokave lineage, had grown up with Sinodi’s family in Napamogona. Sinodi was an important givina bo, an old warrior who had defended the tribe in many battles. He was also a cousin of Tau’s and Nando’s fathers, and thus their uncle or “older father.” However, the two men had learned from their fathers that Sinodi’s links to Napamogona came through maternal ties: he was the adopted son of a woman from Napamogona who came to his mother’s place as a child because of tribal fighting in his father’s village. This position did not, in the views of Tau and Nando, grant Sinodi’s descendants land ownership on the grounds of Napamogona (Nando, personal conversation, 2004). To them, they were only allowed to use the land they had settled on, but they did not own it. The true land owners were, in their view, Sinodi’s paternal cousins and nephews, to which Tau and Nando belonged.21 Sinodi’s sons, however, had a different perception. During the increasing tensions between the Farokave and the Tutubilo’i lineage, they provoked each other with comments on their “birthrights” regarding the ownership of specific places on Napamogona grounds, culminating in direct threats that they would soon take over Tau’s and Nando’s birthrights. Sinodi’s sons even tried to ambush Tau and Nando on two occasions. However, their attempts to kill them were unsuccessful. Especially given that Sinodi’s sons were numerous and in the future would be likely to outnumber their own lineages, Tau and Nando took these incidents as serious threats and prepared themselves in case of an attack. It was a failed exchange, finally, that sparked the fire and turned tensions into violence. Tau had given a het-pe payment (see chapter 4) to the Tutubilo’i lineage and, according to him, never received the return gift. According to Tau, instead of reciprocating, they requested a second payment. Tau felt provoked by his relatives’ excessive demands and refused to pay. This refusal was interpreted by the Tutubilo’i as a withdrawal from exchange and, even more so, as a rejection of the relationship between the lineages and a weakening insult. In this heated atmosphere, rumors about an alliance between the Tutubilo’i and Sinodi’s lineages spread. The story went that their male representatives had met secretly in the house of one of Tau’s neighbors to plan an attack on Tau’s and Nando’s families. The neighbor’s (adopted) son, a young boy about thirteen years of age, was suspected to be the messenger between the putative conspirators. As a consequence and as a strong warning sign towards Sinodi’s

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men were not to support the Tutubilo’i side, Nando’s men kidnapped the boy some days later and killed him. This excessively strong action from Nando’s party triggered the outbreak of a fight, in which parts of the Tutubilo’i lineage joined forces with Sinodi’s and attacked Tau’s and Nando’s families on their grounds. Nando had prepared himself for the attack. He was in possession of hand-grenades, relicts from World War II, that he had found on his land some years earlier. He threw them towards his enemies when they came to storm his premises on the hill—but they did not explode. Then he had to run. Nando and most of his family fled; Tau also managed to escape with his wife, his children, his brothers, and one of his sisters, but Tau’s parents were shot in the raid, and his elder sister and one of his sisters-in-law and her children were taken hostage. The killing of Tau’s parents was retaliated a few months later by one of Nando’s brothers, who went to Goroka town on a Friday afternoon to find the murderer. He found him on the public market—and literally chopped his head off with his bush knife. He managed to escape the police, but he did not escape the retaliation of the victim’s relatives, members of the Tutubilo’i lineage. Some weeks later, in return for the gruesome killing, he himself was shot, together with his younger brother, when they were walking through the bushland in their place of exile, a neighboring village of Napamogona. With the outbreak of the fight, Nando, Tau, and their families had lost their grounds. They had fled and found refuge in a neighboring village. Their land and all their belongings in Napamogona were taken over by the two temporarily allied lineages of Sinodi’s sons and Polako’s adopted Tutubilo’i, family. The split between the lineages of Farokave and Tutubilo’i had widened into a gap. Fighting increased, and early in 2007, Sinodi’s men finally burnt the village to the ground. In the course of these clan-internal fights, more than twenty people lost their lives. In the meantime, however, another conflict that had grown silently for many years escalated. It concerned the relationship between the Napamogona and their direct neighbors, the Monekere (name changed). The Monekere had, of course, noticed the intra-clan conflicts among their neighbors and the concurrent fragility of the Napamogona tribe. Tau and Nando feared that the Monekere might take advantage of the weak position of Napamogona and conquer their land. Provocations—for example, the stealing of coffee from the gardens—had already occurred some time ago. Tau, who saw himself as the defender of his place for future generations and for the whole of Napamogona, tried to use this opportunity to reunite the community and regain the support of the clans of the Napamogona tribe in defeating the Monekere. However, the Napamogona were split in different factions—those who supported Tau but not Nando, those who didn’t support either or supported both of them, and those who made their own secret alliances with different parties. The results were various serious fights between 2008 and 2012, mainly between the

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Monokere on the one side, and Tau and Nando—who operated from their places of exile—on the other. The Tutubilo’i tried to stay outside this conflict as much as possible. Sinodi’s lineage, however, made what was to me an unexpected move and became Tau’s and Nando’s allies in their fight against the Monekere.22 Many persons were killed in these fights. It is impossible for me to give a precise number, but according to my informants, more than one hundred people died, the greater number of casualties on the side of the Monekere. Only in 2011 did all parties agree to a ceasefire. Since then, Napamogona has gradually been repopulated. As a result of the fights, the territory of the village is diminished and the place reshaped. By 2016 about 70 percent of the previous hamlets had been rebuilt. For reasons of safety, lineages have settled geographically much closer together than before. The long-term plan, however, is to spread again and to recapture all grounds as they were before the violent outbursts. Tau and Nando have now settled on the southern end of Napamogona land but are hardly seen in the village center, also because the tensions with the Tutubilo’i (who have their houses in the center) are not fully resolved yet. Polako returned to the village—but this time on a piece of land granted by her adopted Tutubilo’i relatives. Since the ceasefire in 2011, Tau suggested that a peace contract in which the borders of each territory would be stated officially should be signed by the conflicting parties. He informed the provincial governor of his intention— who must have been relieved to hear of the possibility that peace might return to the area. The presence of representatives from the provincial government was of central importance to all. It would strengthen the agreement. Further, apart from signing the contract, to maintain peace, compensation payments for every death on each side would have to be negotiated. Perhaps the high number of fatalities is the cause that the final ceremonial and political peace agreement has not yet been finalized—with so many compensations to pay, people may not yet be able to afford to make peace; or maybe it is the tight schedules of the politicians, who have already set and canceled several dates for the event. In any case, as of my last visit in 2016 it had not happened yet. The example described above of conflicts that led to warfare in Napamogona reveal that warfare was here clearly triggered by failed exchange, understood as an undesired imbalance of strength and nurturance in exchange relationships. Failing in exchange (or refusing to exchange appropriately) is an acknowledged reason to begin a fight, and not only in Bena. Rumsey (2006: 53) has found among the Ku Waru in the Southern Highlands that “ceremonial exchange … can turn into relations of enmity if exchange obligations are not met” and that any wealth exchange among allied parties potentially implies “an act of provocation” to enemy groups “insofar as it helps to create or strengthen an alliance against them.” The actual outbreak of the terrible and lengthy fight in Napamogona was triggered by a (possibly deliberately) failed

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Figure 2.1: Tapioca garden in Napamogona

exchange practice (unrequited reciprocity in the het pe exchanges between Tau’s and Polako’s families), combined with the suspicion that another strong relationship was formed between the opponents (the Tutubilo’i and Sinodi’s lineage).

Village Economy The field of interest that Tau and Polako share is the economic one. Both of them are involved in various small business enterprises that have not made them rich but help them to pay for education for their children (or grandchildren) and grant them—in peaceful times—a comparably wealthy village lifestyle. Here, two spheres of exchange are conjoined: the indigenous form of dividual exchange of nogoya’a (in its positive, reciprocal, or its negative,

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nonreciprocal form) and the Western form of exchange pertaining to principles of supply and demand. In this way, Tau and Polako are both active agents in culture change. One aspect of culture change that Tau and Polako face in their management of social relationships is the need to acquire (and distribute) money. Money has been incorporated into Bena everyday life and ritual exchange with the same ease that LiPuma (2006: 206) found in Maring culture, where it “added a new dimension to the production of big-man status.” In Bena, money has become an increasingly important means to display personal strength and nurture and extend relational networks. Since the introduction of money into the local gift exchange networks (see Gregory 1982), the latter have undergone some changes (LiPuma 2000: 186ff.). First, they have been spatially and temporally extended to a greater degree and in a shorter period of time than ever before. The development of the nearby town Goroka had a crucial impact on the economy in Napamogona. The growth of Goroka from a village with “slab-walled, thatched huts” (Griffin, 1979: 113) to the capital of the province and center of trade brought with it its spatial extension and an incorporation of nearby villages. In the 1950s, Goroka was “little more than a promising outpost of the Australian administration” (Read 1986: 22). It then consisted mainly of the airstrip, which had been constructed by American forces in the final years of the war and was no more than a short-trimmed lawn. A few houses were scattered on a hilltop north of the airport. Two generations later this hill had become the seat of the University of Goroka overlooking a colorful and busy town life. Villages that are situated somewhat further away but still relatively close to town, like Napamogona, increased their engagement in economic activities in town. This involved a more or less continuous movement of people between village and town. New options for exchange relationships have steadily increased since colonial times, but with them came new pressures and demands related to time and money. Like many villages in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, Napamogona is not entirely dependent on a money economy. The people in the village are subsistence farmers and rely primarily on garden crops and livestock for survival. Goods that can only be purchased with money and that have gained some sort of basic importance for everyday life in the village are soap, clothes, cooking oil, kerosene, salt, broth cubes, tools, nails, and so forth. Further, modern communicational tools, especially mobile phones, are becoming more prominent in Bena communities. Money is needed to buy the devices, credits, and SIM cards, and power is required to charge the batteries. Money also has become increasingly relevant in the field of ritual exchange and education. Parents need money if they want to send their children to school. Paying the annually increasing school fees is a very difficult task for families with many children and no consistent income.23 Therefore, in Napamogona, only about half of the school-age children regularly attend school; sometimes

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Figure 2.2: Market bilum with peanuts

parents send their children to school for one or two years only, and other children do not go at all. Education is still a privilege for people in the village, and given the financial requirements for it, it is not surprising that about 70 percent of the Napamogona are illiterate. Most women in Napamogona visit town two to three times per week to sell products from their gardens at the market.24 The big market area is the real center of Goroka town. The central bus stop is just in front of the market and every day crowds of people arrive from other regions of the country to trade, do their shopping, or wait for transport. It is here that people meet, exchange, come to, and leave Goroka. Women from Bena occupy about one quarter of the market area, where they sell their vegetables and fruit; other (often male) vendors offer all kinds of goods, ranging from foods to textiles, cigarettes, and tools. The women of Napamogona arrive early in the morning by public transport or on foot, loaded with bilums full of sweet potatoes, pineapples, peanuts, greens, guavas, or bananas; pay their one-kina fee; and then squat on the ground with their colorful goods displayed on a cloth or sheet of plastic in front of them. Generally, the market in Goroka is a female domain. The little money the women earn from their sales is mainly used for the purchase of basic goods such as kerosene, cooking oil, soap, and salt. Their average income from a day at the market lies between twenty and thirty kina;25 sometimes it

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Figure 2.3: Sunrise in Napamogona

can be slightly more than that, especially during coffee season when people have more money to spend. Thus, in their marketing strategies, the women have to consider seasonal fluctuations. During the peak of the coffee season, around July, they enter a period of heavy marketing. Of course, they have to prepare for this well in advance and plant their crops in time. In this context, long-term planning is necessary. However, the women also need short-term flexibility in order to react to specific situations and changes in plans if necessary. Anything may happen to disturb them, ranging from apparently external factors (shift of seasons, bad growth of crops, etc.) to communal issues (for example, a death in their community or any other exchange ritual that requires their presence in the village, a tribal war, or a family conflict, etc.). Preparedness, awareness, and flexibility are most important for the Bena economy as well as for exchange and the management of social relationships.

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Figure 2.4: Pineapple garden in Napamogona

Cash Crops Bena has a reputation for having the best guavas, peanuts, and pineapples in the region, a fact that seems to be confirmed by customers’ behavior at the market in town. Napamogona is especially known for its high quality guavas, and they are usually the first ones to sell out. The income of the women from Napamogona rises slightly during Kuafen gana’a, “the guava season” (around January and February). Kuafen gana’a is an important time in the economic year of the Napamogona (see appendix for the Bena calendar). It is, however, a relatively recent season. Guavas were introduced into the Bena area only two generations ago. When the guava season comes to an end, sometime around March, the economically most important season begins: the coffee season. Like kuafen gana’a, kofi gana’a is quite a new Bena season. Since the 1980s,

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the cultivation and trade of coffee as a cash crop has increasingly gained importance throughout the Eastern Highlands. It was then that the PNG government began to support local community coffee-growing projects in order to increase its export rate. After five years, two thousand hectares of land were already in use in the Eastern Highlands for this purpose.26 This new form of use led to land disputes and social conflicts and has had an increasing impact on local structures (Westermark 1997: 222). For the Napamogona, selling coffee beans is today the main source of income. Numbers and size of coffee gardens in the village have increased since my visit in 1997. In 2003, the ongoing land conflicts with the neighboring Laminoki had shifted to the benefit of the Napamogona. They had managed to extend their grounds by regaining some of the Laminoki coffee gardens. In doing so, they increased the cash flow into the community. A twenty-kilo bag of dried coffee beans is sold at the market in Goroka for roughly one hundred kina. The prices, of course, depend on the global market and are subject to drastic fluctuations. Unfortunately, no figure was available for the amount of income from coffee sales per year. However, I estimate the total amount of cash flow into the village from coffee sales at around 150,000 kina per season, about ten times as much as through the sale of livestock. The main focus of the community lies in increasing this number. Coffee, because it is a means of earning money, has become a most promising source of gaining strength. The coffee season has become the time when most feasts and exchange ceremonies in the area are held. People then have more money and are willing and able to contribute with greater generosity in exchange. Money has become an integral part of Bena exchange practices, and the gaga gana’a, “the time of talk,” during which most greater exchanges take place is therefore centered on the coffee season. It is mostly men who benefit financially from coffee sales. They own the land it is planted on; they sell the crop and in return receive the income it brings. They are, however, expected to share the profits with the relatives who helped them pick the beans. Village life changes during the coffee season, not only because of major exchange rituals. The money from coffee sales is often spent in the following weeks, often a great amount on alcohol and gambling, two “modern” features of Bena culture that clearly increase in the months of July, August, and September. The selling of coffee can also be interpreted in terms of dividual exchange. The men—dividual agents—invest their strength in working the coffee gardens and in doing so nurture the land and crops with their “essence” (and their relationship with ancestral spirits who provide the fertility of the ground). They attach parts of themselves—as well as parts of their land—to the coffee. In return they receive money, an element of Western culture that has Western strength attached to it, which the men detach and attach to themselves, thus increasing their personal strength. Money enables a person to nurture others

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in exchange and, in doing so, oblige the others to reciprocate in the future. For gipina, money has become a powerful means of building and maintaining their strong position. After the coffee season, people return to subsistence garden work and domestic tasks. It is by then usually the end of the dry season, and the gardens have to be prepared and replanted before the first heavy downpours of rain. By the time the rainy season begins (around October/November) most villagers are left with very little money, if any. This is the time when the women have to devote most of their time to garden work; the agricultural year is about to begin again.

Livestock Another important source of money income in Bena is the selling of livestock. Walking through Napamogona, one always comes across a number of pigs, goats, cows, and chickens. As in most Highland communities, the pig is still the most popular and important domestic animal. It is the women’s task to look after the pigs. They take care of them, feed, name, cherish them, and develop a very personal relationship with them. Polako, for example, was very proud of her two pigs, which she called “Reproduce” and “Multiply.” Women nurture their pigs and in return they will receive and share the pig’s nurturance when it is killed. When the time comes to slaughter a specific pig, the woman who took care of it often expresses deep emotional concern. A Bena woman would never eat the meat of the pig she raised. According to Esi, this would be like eating’s one’s own flesh (personal conversation). Pigs play a crucial role in exchanges, such as life-cycle rituals, compensation payments, and other communal events. For this reason they are a critical factor in the process of nurturing social relationships. The significance of pigs in social life results in their careful and complex treatment. For example, certain magical practices are applied to enhance their healthy growth. Again, what one finds is a dividual form of exchange; women/persons nurture their pigs until they become strong, then they detach them (and with them parts of themselves) to give them to others for attachment and nurturing. Today, pigs and other livestock are also a source of cash revenue. Most of the Napamogona own pigs that they use for themselves (food, feasts, exchange, etc.), but in addition they breed some specifically to sell; some people also possess goats and even cattle. According to Tau, in 1998 the village’s income from selling livestock was fifteen thousand kina. Since the kina is currently going through a period of devaluation, the prices for goods in town, but also for livestock, have risen.27 Thus, selling livestock has become an increasingly important income source for the villagers, a fact that results in the introduction and setting up of minor farming and cattle projects. Four lineages in Napamogona have specialized in raising cows for this purpose.

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Encouragement to ensure that various sources of money flow into the community does not reflect the aim of wealth accumulation in the Western sense of becoming “rich” but can instead be seen as the addition of a new, very strong object into local exchange relations. As Tau explained, “I tell them ‘do not leave your pigs.’ I say so because when problems occur, only money and pigs can settle them. That’s the way it is and because of this I advise them ‘You must not neglect your coffee and your pigs. If you are an SDA [Seventh-day Adventist],’ I tell them, ‘you must have some goats. And if you have the money to take care of cows, buy a cow and an ox and start from there’” (interview, 2004). Money has become nearly as important as the contribution of pigs and other goods that were of great relevance in the past. It is therefore crucial for the community members to possess at least a certain amount of cash for “emergencies.” This is the money they can contribute in times of need. Tau’s emphasis, however, lies in ensuring a partial independence of the villagers from cash money, which can only be achieved if enough livestock are available. Livestock, especially pigs, can in this sense be seen as having traits of both gift and commodity. They can be used as gifts in dividual exchange that strengthen social relations, or they can be sold for cash (commodity) (Gregory 1982). Thus, owning pigs enables families to participate in different economic fields of exchange. Owning livestock is both an economic and a social insurance. Tau explained his advice in these terms: “I say, ‘When there is a problem, you don’t have to find money to solve it; if trouble occurs, it is not necessary for you to find money. Instead of finding money, you take your pig or your goat and you will kill it on that occasion and it will help to sort out the problem.’ And I say, ‘If you don’t have money and you don’t have pigs or goats and a problem occurs, you are in difficulties. You must go and borrow. But you must know, when you borrow, when the next coffee season comes, you will pay your debts back and you will have nothing’” (interview, 2004). Another great advantage of keeping livestock is the independence it grants from seasonal fluctuations. It can be a source of money all year round.

Conclusion My descriptions in this chapter point to an aspect, or a predisposition, of Bena cultural practices that has often been noted in Highlands ethnography and that I see as fundamental for the understanding of culture change in Bena today. Bena culture is significantly shaped by an inherent flexibility in the way that practices are easily adjusted to circumstances.28 However, such adjustments are not random; they follow preexisting cultural values. For Bena, I argue that the flexibility to adjust practices to (sometimes unexpected) circumstances grows on the perception of an ever-changing and reciprocally exchanging world. New elements are valued according to this idea. Pouwer (2003) has

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found the same principle among the Kamoro: “Space and time in cosmos, culture and society are regulated, set and kept in motion by the golden principle of reciprocity”; and “Reciprocity is the prime mover of social state, social process and history. It also includes engagement with the foreigners, their acts, power and wealth.” The arrival of Western economy in Bena opened up new fields of exchange, including exchanges that work on reciprocity and are perceived as “nurturing,” as well as exchanges that are driven by negative reciprocity and thereby create a sense of unrequited reciprocity (Kirsch 2006: 79f.). For example, most people in the village see a cash economy as ideally an additional source of income, supplementing and enhancing their lifestyle (nurturing them). However, money also brings with it negative influences of Western culture—for example, access to alcohol, prostitution, gambling, and crime—weakening influences that are noticed and disliked by many. David told me such practices would take away people’s strength (personal conversation, 2005). The point I am making is that elements of Western culture are evaluated in terms of fulfilled or unfulfilled reciprocity and judged according to the Bena perception of their nurturing or weakening influence regarding exchange relationships between persons. Failing in exchange can, as I have shown in this chapter, have serious consequences. According to Kirsch (2006: 80), “The failure to fulfill exchange obligations, whether by design or by default, is experienced as negative assessment by the person who does not receive his or her due.” In the case described in this chapter, unrequited reciprocity, as Kirsch defines it, triggered violent actions and led to a warfare that lasted years. “Expecting the unexpected,” be it a newly introduced Western good or habit or a sudden enemy attack, and reacting flexibly to circumstances are features of Bena culture. This is hardly surprising, because such flexibility is a prerequisite for, as well as the result of, a long history of warrior tribes with changing alliances, and of subsistence farmers who live in a permanent fear of losing their land or being attacked. It brings with it a certain form of pragmatism with regard to cultural ideals. In this chapter, I have also shown that powerful persons in Bena demonstrate personal “strength” as well as capacities to be nurturing in exchange relationships. Bena leaders cannot be entirely subsumed under either of the anthropological categories of “Big Men” and “Great Men” because they display features of both. They require skills and knowledge of exchange practices in their ideal reciprocal and nurturing form and in their one-sided negative form. Bena leaders need to be experts in the fields of detaching certain parts of their “essence” and attaching that of others to themselves in a way that strengthens their own person. The examples of Tau and Polako further confirm the argument that power in Bena is above all personal power. It depends on personal strategizing—as dividual agent in exchange relationships—rather

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than on gender and principles of sexual antagonism. I shall therefore proceed in the next chapter with the analysis of the Bena concept of person and then delve into the analysis of exchange practices and their transformations in the following chapters.

Notes 1. In Napamogona people speak a slightly different Bena dialect. Leaders are here called givina bo, literally “big, important man.” 2. A long, ongoing conflict between Sigoyalobo and Monekere, for example, evolved when it became public that the hill that marked the border between the two clans consisted of gravel that was useful for building roads and could be sold/exchanged for money. 3. In modern Bena elections, this approach is also taken by political candidates, who bribe their voters with gifts. 4. As I found out years later, Nando’s strong alliance with Tau was grounded on the mutual agreement that at a later stage specific places regained in fights would be divided between the two lineages—to the benefit of both of them. 5. If they go too far in their oppression of others and turn too many people against them, these men are killed, often by their own relatives. Such killings can be seen as a negative form of reciprocity, where a person that has attached too many nurturing parts of others without reciprocating receives in return strong parts of others that in their strength kill him. 6. The concepts of Big Men and Great Men have widely been adapted and discussed by many anthropologists, for example by Jorgensen (1991: 256–272), Liep (1991: 28– 47), Modjeska (1991: 234–135), Mosko (2001), and M. Strathern (1991: 197–214), to name but some. 7. The crucial trait of a Big Man is, according to Godelier (1986: 163), “namely his ability to amass wealth and redistribute it with astutely calculated generosity.” This redistribution is an exchange that precisely manages the relationships between exchange partners (persons or groups). Thus the position of a Big Man is acquired through a man’s own exchanges—merit, as Godelier puts it. Great Men, on the other hand, usually inherit their social status through the acquisition of specific knowledge—for example, concerning the use of magical objects in rituals or the ability to recount myths (168). The production, accumulation, and redistribution of exchange goods is, in these groups, usually carried out directly between lineages, sometimes under the control of a Great Man or family elder (171). As opposed to Big Men, Baruya Great Men do not contribute more than others to communal feasts or common payments; they are not economically in a superior position to others but rather have the function of controlling the common distribution of goods. In Great Men societies, exchange objects play a minor role in the important life-cycle events of a person; a woman, for example, is exchanged for a woman and not acquired through bride-price payments. Similarly, these groups practice direct payback in warfare rather than compensation payments. In retaliation for a person’s death, a member of the enemy’s group is killed (176f.). In Big Men groups, to which Godelier counted Highland cultures such as the Melpa, the Enga, and the Chimbu, economic skills are more important for gaining

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9. 10.

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prestige than, for example, warrior skills. According to Godelier, one of the main differences between Big and Great Men further lies in different structures of competitiveness in exchange. Big Men are found in communities where ceremonial exchange plays a central role, in societies that practice “competitive exchanges” (176), which penetrate every field of political relation and feed on the principle of inequality. Only few Great Men positions in Baruya are, on the other hand, open for competition. While Big Men cultures foster the permanent competition between men, groups that produce Great Men stress the solidarity and equality of men. They are characterized by the significance of male initiation rituals and male cults that consolidate the male community and generally seem to emphasize a direct balance in exchange. On this occasion, Tau’s calculated generosity allowed him to criticize and even accuse the deceased’s families for their carelessness. During the funeral exchanges, he and his elder brother publicly and loudly accused the two clans of having provoked such catastrophes (such as the death of two leaders at the same time) by settling too far away from the other three clans of Napapmogona tribe. Their spreading out and their settling near the road made them vulnerable to attacks in general, and in this case especially to magical attacks. No public accusations were made about the concrete nature of the two deaths but Tau and his elder brother Avi emphasized that they could have been prevented if the two clans had cooperated more and moved closer to the others. See Kuehling 2005 and Munn 1986 for comparable data on concepts of “name” and “fame” in kula, the exchange of shell valuables in Massim, Papua New Guinea. Lemonnier (1991: 7–27), for example, shows that the Big Men concept might have evolved from a previous Great Men principle. According to Lemmonier, the introduction of the sweet potato into the Highlands of Papua New Guinea had changed economics in the groups long before the colonial powers arrived in the region. The cultivation of this relatively resilient crop, its integration into the daily diet, and its use as food for domestic animals led to a shift in local economy. Suddenly, an intensification of pig husbandry became possible, and so the importance of pigs in exchange increased. As a consequence, Lemmonier (1991: 23) sees a paradigm shift from warfare to exchange. However, he does not suggest a substitution of warfare for exchange. Rather, he points to the connection between the two fields. Economic exchanges do not replace war. In short, the only thing that can be said is that wherever peace ceremonies exist, they make it possible to initiate a process that is accompanied by the development of ceremonial exchanges and which can lead, indirectly, to a decrease in warfare and an extension of competitive economic exchanges. We can, however, say that when competitive exchanges do exist between friendly groups, this seems to provide the possibility of extending them to hostile groups. Only then—and especially when colonial rule imposed its peace—do large-scale ceremonial exchanges replace war, for which a long period of transformation has prepared the way. In 1997, both of them stood for elections, to no result. Many people saw it as an impractical move from Polako to compete with her brother, because it split up the voters in the community. Some were upset and saw her decision as a provocation against her own kin. Others found it a very brave thing to do. In the end, neither Polako nor Tau won the elections and both returned to their previous enterprises. Polako went back to her little store in town, where she temporarily sold products of women from the area, and Tau committed himself to cattle projects in the village.

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12. Polako is one of the very few persons of her generation in Bena that knows her birth year. This is due to her father’s involvement with foreigners who, according to Polako “taught him the ways of white people” (personal conversation). 13. A similar feature appears after marriage, when a woman is expected to have no or very little close contact with her own family. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Generally, however, reconnecting with one’s previous group is seen as an insult to the new family. 14. To’o bona me’moga ninago, bona me’moga ninago to gai foya buto hokofalapi to’o logo buto holalani to anaya monimolotiko’i kefapolotiko minafito noto mino. 15. To’o nani fatoga mebiluna a’i nohu manamogu minaluna a’mo nohu. Ma’anagu ma’anagu menugu a’mouwa nanimo negeto ehina a’i nohu. (Polako M. Samuel, interview, 23 August 2013). 16. Memofihi kafa’amo nohatago anoane. To luna manaka’mo nehanamolo’i noane luto noane luto liluta su’na hu’ehi to sivina mehu’ehi. (Polako M. Samuel, interview, 23 August 2013). 17. I only realized this much later. At that stage I did not notice that Polako’s adopted relatives always left when Tau arrived. Being stronger than they in the community, he subtly “pushed them out” of the relationship with me and, being weaker, they yielded to him. 18. One of the matters of disagreement was the influence both of them should have on my wedding, the general pattern of their conflicts being that, in Tau’s view, Polako did not contribute enough to the community and, in Polako’s view, that Tau pressured her with his too-high demands into failing to deliver because he wanted a reason to get rid of her. In spite of these imbalances, however, both of them knew that they had to work together in a balanced way (at least temporarily) because they represented my adopted parents and shared responsibility for me and for the wedding to come. Tau was aware that it was Polako who had first brought me into the community, that it was she who opened the way to white people, and therefore he did not officially question her importance in the relationship. To my mind, many of their personal tensions are founded on the underlying cultural pattern of strength versus nurturance, or rather in the balancing of these aspects in exchange with others. Both of these strong-minded and energetic personalities sometimes act overly strongly towards each other—for example, in their competitiveness for votes or in public affairs. 19. The fact that Tau and Polako held their strong positions in different contexts made them slightly less competitive with and hostile to each other than other influential persons in the same contexts. Tau saw himself more challenged by other men in his community, and Polako was highly competitive with women in women’s organizations. Whenever their fields overlapped, however, one could observe increasing hostility between the two. Their competing for the regional seat in the 1997 elections turned their relationship into one of mutual mistrust. 20. This refers not only to physical aggression. Damaging or destroying another person’s reputation through gossip and rumor is another means of reacting to failure in exchange (Stewart and Strathern 2004). 21. I do not want to hint at anything, but it is interesting that Tau’s grounds were predominantly steep, planted with coffee, bananas, and various other crops, but not suitable for cattle. Nando, on the other side of the river, was in a similar position. The soft

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green hills where Sinodi’s family had settled would provide perfect grazing grounds for cattle. This alliance was regarded by Tau and Nando with greatest vigilance and suspicion. The common interest in defending the place of Napamogona joined the groups together. However, both parties were aware that this might only be a temporary alliance and that hostilities might reoccur after the Monekere were defeated. In 2012, Papua New Guinea introduced a Tuition Fee-Free Policy that supposedly grants children free access to education. However, school project fees need to be paid. For more information, see Grant Walton, Anthony Swan, and Stephen Howes, “Papua New Guinea’s Tuition Fee-Free Policy: Is It Working,” Devpolicy Blog, 10 December 2014, accessed, http://devpolicy.org/pngs-tuition-fee-free-policy-is-it-working-20141210/. There are also the little markets in or nearby the village. When people socialize in the afternoon at the community place in Napamogona, one always sees some women selling bananas, rice balls, roasted sweet potatoes, or corn to their card-playing relatives. The prices in the village are lower than at the market in town. A bundle of bananas (between six and eight bananas) is sold at an average price of two kina at the Goroka market, while they cost only half of that in the village; the green vegetables that are sold for twenty to forty toya in town are around ten to twenty toya in the village, etc. In the case of the women from Napamogona, two kina of the sales’ profit are used for the bus fares from and to the village (one kina per trip). The rest is spent on the aforementioned basic goods or put away for contributions in exchange. Hardly anything is left for the women themselves or for special things. Buying a new spade, for example, requires two to three days of sales at the market. In 2010, an estimated eighty-seven thousand hectares were used for coffee cultivation in Papua New Guinea. Of this, 37 percent is grown in the Eastern Highlands. For more detailed statistical information on coffee growth in the province, see Batt and Murray-Prior 2006; and K. Christopher Gimbol, “Coffee Industry Corporation Limited,” paper presented at the Regional Workshop on the Constrains [sic], Challenges, and Prospects for the commodity-Based Development & Diversification in the Pacific Island Economies (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), Fiji, 18–20 August 2001, accessed 3 March 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20090824061423/ http://www.unctad.org:80/infocomm/Diversification/nadi/gimbol.PDF. In 2016, the average price for a home-grown adult pig was 1000 kina, as opposed to an average rate of 300 kina in the 1990s. An adult cow cost about 2500 kina; a goat that cost 50 kina in the 1990s had a price of 300 kina, and a chicken around 25 kina. The Bena flexibility regarding these adjustments recalls Sahlins’s (1985: xii) “prescriptive” cultural approaches to historicity and culture change, where circumstantial happenings or unexpected events are valued for their similarity to and compatibility with the system of preexisting cultural categories, but where, in fact, the circumstances become somewhat assimilated to the categories.

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In Exchange with the World The Concept of Person in Bena

In the following, I will outline and analyze the concept of person in Bena, which to my mind is fundamental for the understanding of Bena culture and the transformation of its categories. I do so by conjoining two theoretical frameworks set out by Newman (1962a, 1962b, 1964, 1965) and M. Strathern (1988). This choice may seem odd on the surface since M. Strathern (1988) has only referred to Newman briefly in her Gender of the Gift (55, 100) while she has drawn most of her comparative data on Eastern Highland cultures from Langness (44f., 50–60, 62f., 65, 205). I argue, however, that when her theory of the “dividual” Melanesian person is combined with Newman’s earlier, more ethnographic and less comparative, concept of the flow of “vital essence” between persons and their surroundings, some brighter light is shed on the Bena perception of person, and with it on exchange and culture change.

Nubune-Nemeha’ni: My Being and My Spirit The Bena term for what we would call “person” is nubune-nemeha’ni, which can best be translated as “my whole being and my spirit.” Nubune refers mainly to what in Western terms could be understood as the physical side of the person—the temporal, material body itself. In Bena, this term also includes body substances and their inherent material and immaterial powers— nogoya’a and sikrafu’i. Nemeha’ni (my spirit) represents a person’s spirit and one’s inner voice. When a person dies, this part is detached and transformed into the ancestral spirit.

The Bena Dividual In the introduction to this book, I have briefly outlined M. Strathern’s model of the “dividual” person, which she sees as a clearly different notion from the Western “individual.”1 M. Strathern has developed this model from a genderoriented approach, which she used to analyze and compare anthropological works from different Highland cultures. Quoting Herdt (1981), M. Strathern

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questions the ideas of early Highland anthropologists, such as Langness (1964, 1967, 1977), Newman (1965), Meggitt (1965), and Read (1952, 1966), who grounded much of their works on the assumption that the central structuring principle of New Guinea cultures, and possibly the main criteria for personal identity, was to be found in sexual antagonism. According to their view, “male myth and idioms only represent the collective assertion of male superiority and solidarity over women” (Herdt 1981: 263 quoted in M. Strathern 1988: 56). Such theories of sexual antagonism propose that the attachment of sex roles to the individual (for example, in male cults) is a subjective experience, a proposition that is inextricably linked to the notion of person as an “individual” (M. Strathern 1988: 57). M. Strathern rightly points out that “the antagonism model … promotes a self-contained approach to gender that pushes the problem of individual identity to the fore” (58). Describing persons as “social entities” and “autonomous individuals” (Newman 1965) assumes that each person is “a being that worries about its boundaries and searches for a unitary identity” (M. Strathern 1988: 57). But is this really so? A dividual, to M. Strathern (1988: 102), is “a s/he who is multiply authored or caused and who is complexly positioned within a network of consanguines and affines. Unlike the Western individual, the dividual is always already social: born of others and dependent and interdependent rather than autonomous.” This description expresses very well what primarily makes a Bena person. Each Bena person is born social—namely, into a network of kinship relations that a priori define his or her position in the community.2 These relationships link a person to the past as well as anchor him or her in the present. Proceeding from this, a person will engage in further relationships at different stages in life—for example, through participation in the same cults (men’s cult) or rituals (initiation), through common upbringing (age-mates), and through shared common interests3 or experiences. All events in a Bena person’s life that define a change (transformation) of his or her role in the community—for example, life-cycle rituals—stem from social activities that have the purpose of building the social network of the participants through exchange. In these rituals, the aspect of a balancing of nurturance and strength is ideally represented—they have the purpose of ensuring the growth of and strengthening the participants by nurturing them through exchange (Newman 1965: 74ff.). Here is the place where Newman’s work can add some crucial aspects to M. Strathern’s characterization of Eastern Highlands personhood.

Vital Essence Among the Gururumba, neighbors of the Bena, Newman has discovered an indigenous idea of “vital essence”—“GwondEfoJE” (Newman 1965: 257)— which, according to him, is central to Gururumba religion and the social sys-

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tem. I could not find any hint of such “essence” in Langness’s work on Bena. However, during my research, I came across a concept of vital essence that strongly resembles that of GwondEfoJE. Before I deliver the ethnographic data I gathered on this topic and show its significant relationship with the notion of person in Bena, I shall proceed by first giving a brief summary of Newman’s understanding and interpretation of GwondEfoJE.4 First, GwondEfoJE is the “vital essence” that animates the body. It mainly resides in the liver but can move through the body in affective states such as fear, anger, jubilance, or sexual arousal. However, GwondEfoJE can also leave the body in sleep and is lost with death; after death it becomes the deceased’s “ghost,” which at a later stage turns into foroso, the ancestral spirit. GwondEfoJE is further present in a person’s reflection, breath, and certain body fluids such as sweat, “clean” blood, and semen. According to Newman, it is not present in one’s urine, feces, menstrual blood, and blood shed in male initiation. GwondEfoJE is “life-force,” an all-animating and activating power, but more specifically it is the “capacity to be strong and nurturant” (Newman 1965: 258). GwondEfoJE possesses strengthening and nurturing aspects that Newman associated with different characteristics. The nurturing aspects of vital essence are in themselves either more protective or more productive, while strengthening aspects represent aggression or assertiveness; thus assertive behavior—as I have described it, for example, for Bena leaders in the previous chapter—is seen as display of vital essence (Newman 1965: 261).5 It is the balance of these different nurturing and strengthening traits that determines the effects GwondEfoJE has on persons.

Vona Nogoya’a and Sikrafu’i: A Person’s Essence and Strength The Bena concept of vital essence is captured in the word nogoya’a, which literally means “spring water”6 or “fluid,” but has in fact also been translated by my interlocutors as “nurturance.” It is complemented by the term sikrafu’i, “strength.” Nogoya’a and sikrafu’i are both crucial parts of each person, each piece of land, each being. Like GwondEfoJE, nogoya’a is inherent in a person’s body, but it does not explicitly “sit in the liver”; instead, it is in this context seen as part of a person’s detachable body fluids. Concerning the different body substances, the term nogoya’a is specified. If a person becomes weak, people say Gufa nogaya’a nohemi, “he/she is losing his/her body fluid.” Tau translated this sentence as “he/she is losing weight”—a clear hint at the loss of the nurturing aspect of nogoya’a. When nogaya’a is detached, nurturance is lost, and so is weight and strength. Nogoya’a expresses the nurturing aspect of a person’s “essence,” but also refers to the “essence” of the land. When Tau talked about

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the me’i nogoya’a (fluid of the ground), he translated the term nogoya’a again, using the English words “nurturance” or “having nurturance.”7 If land becomes infertile or covered with weeds and therefore weak, it is said to be fluflu me’i (soft/weak ground). It has lost its nogoya’a, or rather, the nogoya’a has been lost—detached—from it. The use and meanings of the term nogoya’a are other indicators of the relation that binds persons and land. Both live only through the flow of a main nurturing force or essence—the nogoya’a—which also directly relates them to each other. Here the Bena notion of nogoya’a not only as water but also more generally as the “essence of life” is consistent with Newman’s descriptions of GwondEfoJE. In this context, the perception of the relation to the physical environment becomes an obvious analogy. The Bena, like the Gururumba, show their great concern with the growth and strength of plants and pigs in various rituals that they display (Newman 1965: 72f.). In the same way, the growth and strength of a person is ritualized in exchange activities that define social relations. I argue, therefore, that the “new role” that persons seem to acquire in exchange rituals does not mean that they receive new individual identities (male or female) but that they, as (unbounded) dividuals, have opened up to new exchange relationships. The one thing that allows them to do so is a change in their personal balance of nurturance and strength. According to Newman (1965: 263), GwondEfoJE is also the driving force of human interaction: “In vital essence, nurturance and strength are combined and turned to a variety of ends so that the various aspects blend to produce human behaviour as the Gururumba understand it should be” (Newman 1965: 263). Only with GwondEfoJE—the capacity to be strong and nurturant—is one able “to participate effectively in human affairs” (Newman 1965: 258). Newman mentions here the crucial role of GwondEfoJE in “human affairs” but he does not precisely explain what he means by that term. When he analyzes various Gururumba rituals—female and male initiation, the jaBirisi ceremony, and the pig festival—he focuses on the symbolic expressions of GwondEfoJE—for example, in describing how male initiation aims at controlling “vital power” or how the “magic” namo flutes are nurtured—but he does not say a great deal about the human interactions or how the idea of GwondEfoJE shapes the indigenous understanding of relationships between persons. Among Bena, a person’s course of life is characterized by the management of social relationships. These relationships are based on the principle of reciprocity through gift exchanges of material (one’s pigs, goods, money) and nonmaterial aspects (essence, thoughts, advice) of persons.8 To give an example: if Tau hunts wild pigs—one of his main hobbies where he enacts his strength— and brings them back to share the meat with his kin, it clearly situates him as giver in a superior position of strength, while others who become the receivers

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are nurtured. Tau literally nurtures the people who received their share of the meat, and he does it not only by supplying them with nurturing protein but also by giving them a “nurturing” part of his own person that is attached to the gift. With accepting the gift and consuming the meat, the recipients oblige themselves to return his favor in the future (Battaglia 1992). They have to reciprocate by returning the nogoya’a that has produced strength in them. Tau’s strength obviously rises with this transaction. By giving nurturing parts of himself to others, who attach those parts of him and his nogoya’a to themselves, he elicits their support in the future. A gift elicits a future return gift. Thus detaching nogoya’a does not necessarily imply that the giver becomes weaker. By giving, he or she creates a future obligation for the present recipient. In doing so, the “giver” ensures that he or she will gain in strength in the future. Relationships need to be actively pursued. Like the crops in one’s garden, they should grow strong, and to do that they have to be nurtured and nurture others in reciprocal exchange. Such exchange happens at momentary intervals. It is a temporal process in which the positions of giver and receiver alternate, thereby creating an alternating inequality or “disequilibrium” between them (A. Strathern 1971). Bena relations feed on the tension that is created between owing someone something and expecting a return. In terms of strength and nurturance, it is the reversible nurturing flow of Newman’s (1965: 76) “vital essence” from one person (group) to another that connects them in a shifting but obliging network of social relationships. In Bena, people express this “alternating inequality” in terms of an unbalance of nurturing and strengthening aspects of nogoya’a. Strategic (agentive) exchange is the means of receiving/attaching nurturing aspects of other persons or giving/detaching them strategically in order to ensure the continuation of exchange relationships and, with this, to sources of nogoya’a. In such reciprocal exchanges, the socially born dividual becomes the actor or agent of his or her relationships. He or she is continuously “managing” the flow of vital essence in his or her social network, aiming at finding the right balance between nurturing and strengthening aspects. Nogoya’a is, like GwondEfoJe, not a static component but exchanged continuously between persons and their surroundings (the spirits, the land, the mythological figures). More precisely, parts of a person’s nogoya’a are detached in exchange and given to nurture others who consequently become stronger. Thus, as the above example has illustrated, for the Bena, any kind of exchange includes the exchange of parts of persons, which means that persons are actually composed as bits of one another through exchanges of parts of themselves, or, in other words, through exchanges of parts of their nogoya’a. Let me give an example that explains and confirms this argument. Shortly after the recent war in Napamogona had begun, I experienced a disturbing sequence of events which are a sad but clear proof of the Bena idea

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that exchanged objects have parts of personal essence attached to them. During my previous stay in Bena in 2004, I had begun to produce a bilum, a string bag. Since I was never very skilled in this craft, my adopted aunt/sister Faki’e (name is changed)—Nando’s younger sister—helped me. Together we worked on the bag and each time we met we exchanged it so that it was the other’s turn to continue. When the fighting began, Faki’e—being suspected of having supported Tau and Nando financially—was in danger of being killed and had to flee Bena. I was devastated because I could not see her anymore. Frankly, I had forgotten all about the still-incomplete bilum, which at that time had been in Faki’e’s hands. About six weeks later, an old woman, the adopted mother of Polako and thus my adopted grandmother, brought me Faki’e’s and my bilum, completed. I was surprised and shocked by the sight and asked her where she had found it. She told me that before Faki’e fled, she had given the incomplete bilum to Tau’s mother, Lewa. Lewa tried to escape as well but was shot. When they found her dead body, she was holding the incomplete bilum under her arm, tightly squeezed to her body. My adopted grandmother took it from her, so she told me, completed it, and now brought it back to me. Needless to say, this was one of the most emotional moments during my stay in Bena. However, this gesture shows more than sympathy or affection. Faki’e and I had both detached quite a lot of our nogoya’a and attached it to the bilum; each time we exchanged it, we reconfirmed our relationship; in fact, this process, and with it the bilum, had become a symbol of our relationship. We nurtured each other through it. It seemed to be of crucial importance for Faki’e and also for Lewa and my adopted grandmother that this exchange of nogoya’a should not be terminated in spite of the circumstances. By leaving the bilum behind for me, Faki’e signaled that she wanted our relationship to continue in spite of the war, her fleeing, and the fact that I might or might not become allied with her “enemies” (Polako’s adopted family). Leaving the bilum for me also implied that it was I who had to come to see (even find) her next time. Maybe the most interesting aspect of this whole drama is the fact that it was Polako’s adopted mother who completed the bilum and gave it to me. Under the circumstances of a violent family split, she was actually one of Nando’s and thus Faki’e’s enemies; her son was one of Nando’s and Tau’s main opponents. She certainly had no sympathy for Faki’e as Nando’s sister, but with her gesture she acknowledged the relationship I had with Faki’e, and with completing the bag even added parts of her own person to the object. In doing so, she showed me her interest in the relationship with me and at the same time accepted parts of Faki’e as parts of me and, by taking over and working on the bilum, of her. Without wanting to be over-interpretative, I would argue that this example clearly shows that, in Bena thinking, objects consist of personal detachments and attachments of personal essence and express social relationships. I cannot think of any other underlying reasoning that makes an object so important that

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one ensures its persistence, even completion, in times of danger to life. Exchanged objects are perceived as containing parts of the giver’s/contributor’s person and, in some instances—for example, when inherited or sacred objects are exchanged—also parts of the previous owners’ nogoya’a. Thus they represent social relationships. Tau described nogoya’a as nurturance. In fact he literally translated it into English as nurturance. The Bena term that is related to person and stands mainly for strength is sikrafu’i. Sikrafu’i was translated by my interlocutors as “strength,” “life-force,” “breathing,” and “snoring.” Sikrafu’i indicates that a person is alive, healthy, and strong. It is nurtured by nogoya’a. In the case of poisoning through magic, the nurturing source of sikrafu’i is affected and so is sikrafu’i (see chapter 5). With a person’s death, sikrafu’i ends. Certain traits of Bena sikrafu’i appear in Newman’s (1965) work on GwondEfoJE. He notes, for example, that GwondEfoJE is present in one’s breath (257). In Bena, breath is primarily associated with sikrafu’i, not with nogoya’a. Just as a person’s breath terminates with his or her life, so does sikrafu’i, but nogoya’a does not die or end. It is the essence that nurtures all beings, including ancestral or nature spirits. Sikrafu’i is sometimes used in Bena today as a synonym for meha’a, the spirit. Conceptually, however, the two are clearly distinct. Newman (1965) describes how the nurturing and strengthening aspects of vital essence are differently balanced in humans, natural spirits, ghosts, ancestral spirits, and witches.9 He further suggests that, after death, GwondEfoJE becomes the ghost (259), and later ghosts become ancestors: “Vital essence, ghosts, and ancestors form a series in that each is derived from the other and each is successively more distinct from the scene of human affairs” (261). None of my Bena interlocutors confirmed the idea of a direct transformation of nogoya’a into the spirit of a deceased person. For Bena, I would therefore oppose Newman’s idea of such a transformative succession of “vital essence” and argue that instead it is exchanged among and between the different categories of beings and that it is only through this exchange of nogoya’a that they can exist. I further do not share Newman’s (1965: 261) view that with its transformations, vital essence becomes more distant from “the scene of human affairs.” The emphasis rather lies on the importance for persons and spirits to exchange (detach and attach) nogoya’a.

The Spirits The Spirit of a Living Person: Meha’a The spirit of a living person in Bena is called meha’a, which actually means “his/her spirit.”10 Interestingly, there is no word for “spirit of a living person” without a possessive marker that refers to the concrete body it resides in. Ap-

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parently it cannot be alienated from its host, neither linguistically nor conceptually. To my knowledge, in Bena language all expressions of a person’s “spirit” consist of the possessive markers—in the singular forms ha’ni, ha’ka, and ha’a; in the plural forms ha’ti and hi—and the noun me, which means “earth” and “ground.” This indicates again the relation between person and land, which are integral and inseparable aspects of each other (Tove Stella 2007: 32f.). In Bena thinking, everybody possesses his/her own spirit, which comes into being with conception. The process of conception involves an exchange of nogoya’a. A man’s and a woman’s body fluids—both referred to as nogoya’a, “essence”—merge; they are exchanged between the couple (semen is detached from the man and given to the woman, who attaches it to herself in order to produce and nurture a child). Out of this merging results first the embryo and later the child. I was told that meha’a developed with the embryo. Like its physical counterpart, meha’a grows when it is nurtured. One way of nurturing the embryo is frequent sexual intercourse, where the unborn child “feeds” on the man’s semen to grow healthy and strong, as some women told me. Another way to ensure the physical and spiritual development of the person-to-be is for the mother to increase her protein intake—for example, by consuming more pig grease than usual—and in doing so attaching nurturance to her own person and giving it to the baby. A person’s spirit is thus not predetermined; its “life” begins when specific exchanges of nogoya’a between a man and a woman turn out to be nurturing enough to produce a new person (nubune-nemeha’ni). One could thus say that persons in Bena evolve out of exchanges of vital essence and, with this, of personal detachments and attachments. The spirit’s gender and age equal the physical sex and age of the body—a young man’s meha’a for example, is seen as the exact image of that particular young man. David told me that meha’a resides in a person’s heart—interestingly, the place where, according to Gururumba belief, the vital essence GwondEfoJe has its seat. Meha’a can further refer to a person’s shadow or reflection; GwondEfoJe “is present in one’s reflection,” as Newman (1964: 257) pointed out. It seems that the Gururumba-term GwondEfoJe includes aspects that are more distinct from each other in Bena, where the vital essence is the fundamental source of strength, of which parts are continuously exchanged, but not inclusive or equal with the ideas of spirits. Meha’a mainly has the role of an internal advisor, an inner voice. This inner voice is different from a person’s intellect and his or her conscious thoughts and may, on occasion, even contradict them. Meha’a’s advice is taken very seriously and has an impact on a person’s behavior, activities, plans, and time structuring. It generally tells people what to do at what point in time (for example, when it is right to plant certain crops) and also warns them if they are

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about to make a mistake. Meha’a is in this way a directive source of people’s motivations and actions. Before making any major decision, one carefully listens to one’s meha’a and acts as meha’a suggests. A number of times, I witnessed short-term changes of plans which were attributed to the advice of one’s meha’a. Unexpected events that followed often revealed these decisions to be appropriate. In Bena thinking, there is a direct link between meha’a’s warning or advice and the occurrence of some unexpected events. Meha’a is above time—it can point to approaching opportunities or dangers and in doing so help persons to shape their future according to their advantage. One could argue that by giving advice, meha’a nurtures a person and possibly others (which implies taking up an exchange relation). Accepting another person’s meha’a’s advice is like accepting another person’s food; only when it is eaten will one find out whether it is nurturing or weakening, whether it points towards a nurturing exchange relationship in the future or to an undesired, weakening one. If, for example, someone feels that his or her meha’a warns against another person’s planned travel, he or she informs the apparently endangered person of meha’a’s advice. Then it is up to the recipient of that advice to accept it or not. People in Bena take the advice their spirit gives them very seriously and are willing to adapt to them and change their plans with great flexibility if required. This has an impact on their time structuring and their agency. It is an aspect of Bena sociality that can only with difficulty be combined with a Western approach to time planning because it influences every aspect of life. Once Polako could not attend an important meeting of the German Development Service in Port Moresby (in 1997) because her meha’a told her it was not safe for her to travel during that time. As a consequence, she missed out on some funding for a particular project she had hoped for. Tau also had canceled a trip planned well in advance because of his meha’a’s advice and thus avoided a landslide that occurred on the road on his intended path and time of travel. Meha’a can give advice and warnings, but it cannot directly affect or harm others, as can, for example, spirits of the dead that enter persons and then manipulate them (see below). Accordingly, others cannot manipulate it. Poisoning through magic has no impact on meha’a. It may weaken or kill the body, diminish nogoya’a, and terminate sikrafu’i, but it does not affect the spirit. Meha’a appears to be nurtured by a person’s nogoya’a in the same way the body is nurtured through the nogoya’a of the ground. It derives its strength from feeding on the person’s vital essence. Like the plants, pigs, and people, growing strong meha’a needs nurturing, which means participating in the flow of vital essence through reciprocal exchange. Meha’a receives nogoya’a in order to grow and become strong (sikrafu’i) through the exchange relations of the person. Meha’a therefore advises him or her in matters of relevance and directs him or her towards the path that promises more exchange. More pre-

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cisely, meha’a advises the person on how to regulate exchange detachments/ attachments of nogoya’a. Today, the same form of exchange is also being used in new contexts of interpersonal transactions. For example, although people in Bena still refer to their inner spirits, some of them, including Mama Polako, consider the Holy Spirit as their main advisor. The Holy Spirit that can be seen as a detached part of God’s person becomes part of one’s self. God himself can here be seen as the ultimate source of nurturance. By detaching the Holy Spirit, God enters an exchange relation with the person and gives the nurturing essence—nogoya’a—to a person’s meha’a. Through this relation, meha’a grows strong and as a result gains strength in relation to other persons that he or she then nurtures. Receiving God’s nurturance enforces the preexisting imbalance between God and the spirit of a living human (Mosko 2005). As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, Bena exchange relationships generally appear to feed on an inequality of exchange partners rather than aiming at equilibrium; however, as Newman (1964) rightly points out, when things became too imbalanced, exchanges were held to restore the balance. Accepting nurturance from God obliges meha’a to reciprocate by giving the right (moral) advice and by prompting the person he or she resides in to fulfill the requirements of a Christian lifestyle. In this way, the relation between meha’a and the Holy Spirit influences the time strategizing of many people. One result of their relation to the Holy Spirit is that they are obliged to attend church activities and give them priority over other commitments (chapter 7; G. White 2013). During one’s lifetime, the spirit does not usually leave the body but stays attached within it. Meha’a does not travel in dreams or act independently from its body; it does not become detached from nubune. Only on very rare occasions may it be seen outside the body. Then it appears in the form of the person’s exact image. Such an externalization of a living person’s meha’a is considered a very bad sign. It can be seen as a result of the body either not being nurtured enough or being weakened by external forces (magic, for example). It could also be an indicator of an increasing imbalance in specific exchange relationships that affects the body’s state. Usually it indicates the person’s approaching death and is a warning to the relatives. During my stay in Napamogona, I heard of one such case. The meha’a of one of our neighbors was seen at the gate of his house—outside his body—while his nubune was in town. The reaction of the family was intense. Having internalized the sight of the spirit, his wife and his brothers feared the worst and were enormously relieved when the man came back from town in good health. In this case, nothing special was undertaken to bring the spirit back into its body, since it apparently had decided to return by itself. Generally, however, if such an externalized spirit is seen by others, the family members who ingest it will slaughter a pig and offer parts of steamed meat to meha’a to forestall the

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person’s death. The family detaches nurturing parts of itself and parts of nogoya’a inherent in the meat and gives them to the spirit to produce the desired reaction of taking the offered nogoya’a going back into the victim’s body. The meha’a must be persuaded to return into its body. Here, the spirit’s movement out of the body (and back in) can be seen as a dynamic that implicates relations with other people. Nurturance of the meha’a—in the form of food or the nogoya’a contained therein—must take place in order to direct him or her back into the body. The cause for the weakening of a person’s body and the resulting detachment of meha’a from the body is often perceived as some antisocial, overly strong behavior (an overly non-nurturing activity) that the person displayed earlier (for example, not reciprocating in exchange). Meha’a can also be caused by negative forms of exchange—for example, another person may cause it through magical means. Acting from a condition of increased strength as a reaction to the display of antisociality, or out of their own antisocial behavior (motivated by greed or jealousy), a person may detach magic from himself or herself and cause meha’a to happen to another person. In both cases, the flow of vital essence is disrupted, meaning that either too little nurturing has taken place, that strength was taken from the person, or that an abundance of unwanted “negative” essence—the assertive and aggressive parts of the vital essence (Newman 1964: 263)—was received. Through the ritualized nurturing of meha’a by the endangered person’s kin, the balance between nurturance and strength in meha’a is reestablished, and the person’s life can continue.11

The Spirit of the Dead: The Complete Person? When a person dies, the separation of meha’a from the body takes place, and meha’a is transformed from the spirit of a living person into an ancestral spirit. Like other stages in life, death is a process of transformation, and transforming a person means transforming a person’s relational networks and thus finding new balances (or imbalances) of nurturance and strength. If the death of a person occurs unexpectedly, it is usually seen as caused by others through magic or through direct physical violence—two practices that can be described as non-nurturing forms of exchange. Death thus refers to an increasing imbalance in the strengthening and nurturing aspects of social relationships; it is always caused by a lack of nurturance leading to the decrease and, finally, the termination of sikrafu’I, and with this the physical body, nubune. At the moment of death, the detachment of meha’a from nubune is complete. The first few days after death—the time until the body is buried—are crucial for the transformation of the meha’a of a living person into an ancestral spirit. During this time, the (usually) angry spirit roams about and sometimes harms or possesses living people by entering them. This possession of a living per-

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son by an ancestral spirit is called gne lutuhi. It takes place shortly before the burial and involves a replaying of the magical killing in which the possessed person turns into or imitates the victim. Here the detached spirit of the deceased enters into and becomes part of the person (is attached to the person) and then gives him or her advice on how to act, comparable to the advice that a spirit of a living person gives. The resulting theatrical reenactment reveals to others how the death took place. Such reenactments often end with the possessed person revealing the detached items that were used for the killing (for example, hairs of the deceased used in death-magic or weapons or money that indicates a hired killing). These detached parts of the victim are usually accepted as proof of someone’s guilt and measures are taken accordingly. When detached from and outside of the body, the spirit becomes dangerous to others. My assumption is that this is partly because a spirit might want to retaliate for the lack of nurturance that led to the death of his or her body. The spirit might want to mark the ones who are considered responsible for the death to the living kin and thus weaken them. However, this is not the only reason. The spirit of a recently deceased person appears as overly strong and displays the aggressive side of Newman’s vital essence. According to Newman, spirits of the dead need to be “pacified” or “placated” through exchange rituals that grant them new sources of nurturance. For Bena, I would say that it is more about weakening than pacifying the spirit. After death, a new imbalance of nurturance and strength is created: the spirit lacks nurturance and displays overly strong behavior. When the exchanges before, during, and after the burial are conducted appropriately, when the reason for death is found and all parties involved have reestablished their relationships through exchanges, only then will the roaming spirit become weaker and calmer and turn into an ancestral spirit that does not aim at damaging the living. In May 2004, a healthy middle-aged woman from Mekfimo clan in Napamogona suddenly became sick and died. Her relatives were sure that she had been killed through gunakfe’i, a specific kind of death magic (chapter 5). In gunakfe’i, a sorcerer (who usually is hired by someone who desires the death of a person) magically fills a person’s body with rubbish (leaves, screws, tins, etc.). As a consequence, the victim sickens and gradually dies. The community discussed the matter, and rumors about who had killed the woman spread and became the main topic of conversation during the following days. One day before she was buried, one of her nieces started acting very strangely. While the community was mourning the dead, she suddenly started to shiver, move in odd ways and scream words that nobody could understand. My uncle John explained to me that this was a clear case of gne lutuhi. He suspected that the angry and overly strong dead aunt’s spirit had entered the young woman, probably to identify the murderers. John told me that people who are possessed by spirits develop special powers. The feelings, thoughts, and strength

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of the external spirits become internalized and work analogously to the internal spirit, the meha’a. In such a situation, the strength of the dead spirit is an addition to the possessed person’s own powers. Such hyperstrong persons are believed to move so fast that people can hardly keep up. Even old men, so I was told, would run faster than young ones and exceed everyone in physical strength. One could say that in such moments, a person is double-nurtured and thus doubly strong. He or she has his or her own nogoya’a plus the one of the roaming meha’a of the dead. In the case described, the woman ran to the house of her in-laws, two brothers from Okapa, who had settled in Napamogona a few years before the incident. A crowd of people followed her. She went into the men’s house, straight to their sleeping places where various items were scattered. Without any hesitation she took one of the empty kerosene canisters from the ground and to everybody’s excitement found 200 kina hidden under it. For the relatives, this was a clear indication that the men—who were said to possess special magical knowledge12—had been paid for exercising death magic on the woman. Both of them were absent when this incident happened. When they came back days later, they were interrogated. I was not there on that occasion but was told that they first denied their involvement in the killing, but admitted it later. Consequently, their houses were burnt down, and they barely managed to flee the village in time.13 It was most important for the Napamogona to retaliate with strength because they feared that the women’s spirit would not be satisfied and with its strength cause all kinds of trouble for the community if the supposed murderers remained in Napamogona. Until the spirits are safely “contained” in the ground, they may enter other people’s (or animals’) bodies and make them unexpectedly and dangerously strong. Instead of nurturing the living, they then harm them. Only through the action her relatives took, guided by the woman’s spirit that possessed her niece and thereby settled the question of her death, did it become safe for the family to bury the body in the normal way and be sure that it would not come to haunt the living but would instead turn to supporting them with its nurturing powers of vital essence. After the transformation has succeeded, the spirits of the dead take up their residence near or in the graves of their former bodily hosts. The nogoya’a of the dead is returned to the same ground that grows crops and feeds pigs and humans. Therefore, parts of their persons become parts of living persons; in fact, the dead exchange nurturance with the living. They are also seen as the powerful guards of this area. People in Bena generally avoid coming too close to the graves, especially at night. An overly strong meha’a might enter the body of a person and so endanger his or her wellbeing. They might become angry and cause harm rather than provide nurturance for their living kin. If somebody must cross their territory, he or she will usually bring some food or other small gifts or will at least excuse himself or herself for crossing their

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path. This again indicates an exchange between detached parts of persons, not just an individual act. The meha’a of the dead are part of a person’s network of social relations that are based on reciprocal exchange of the mentioned nurturing “essence.” The harm that a meha’a of the dead can wreak ranges from damage to one’s property14—the crops in the garden failing to grow (here again, one can see the inverse role of nurturance to strength) or the pigs becoming sick—to one’s physical and mental health. The dead spirits are not, however, moral agents that punish people for their wrongdoings. They are concerned rather with themselves and interact strongly only when it is in their interest or as a reaction to a personal “insult.” They are feared for their strength and assertiveness (Newman 1965: 86), which they are likely to use against the living when they do not feed or nurture them as they should. Dead spirits are dangerous because they “display strength unmodulated by the limiting factors of reciprocity and obligation” (Newman 1965: 90). They cannot be forced to give their support but they are concerned that their descendants do not fail to nurture them. Establishing the favored kind of balanced relationship with dead spirits is of crucial importance for the living. It is expressed in a number of rituals and is most obvious in exchange gifts given to the ancestors (mainly in the form of food).

Appearance and Role of the Spirits of the Dead Although they reside mainly in burial grounds, the spirits of the dead are more mobile than the spirits of living people. They can move around and frequent the locations where they stayed when they were still alive—houses, gardens, or other favorite places. Such places are thought of as having parts of the person’s nogoya’a attached to them, contained in the substances a person left behind. All places a person has frequented have traits of that person’s nogoya’a; what he or she has, for example, excreted near his or her house and garden or has left behind as sweat, spit, blood, and objects that have such substances attached to them (food leftovers, cigarette butts, etc.). Thus the spirits of the dead remain related to such places and return to them on occasion. If one keeps on nurturing them with gifts and in doing so remains on good terms with them, they may watch over and nurture the growth of crops in their previous gardens and in those of their descendants. They also occasionally appear to their relatives in the form of the deceased’s exact image and give advice or warnings. It is interesting to see that the spirits of the dead also have an advisory function—just as the meha’a during a person’s lifetime. Like the meha’a of a living person, they direct the actions of people. If the spirits of the living are internal advisors, the spirits of the dead would have become the external advisors. Thus, in the moment of death, when spirit and body are separated, a spiritual process of externalization takes place. The former internal meha’a becomes externalized.

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In precolonial times, visits of dead spirits were said to be frequent. Koliopa Tete, an aged former leader, told me that he had witnessed a visit from two ancestral spirits when he was a young man. According to him, the men of the different clans in Napamogona had used their strength to build a men’s house to domesticate the spirits of the founding fathers. Koliopa witnessed the building of that house. In its middle, a small table was installed, on which the men had put nurturing food for the dead spirits, in this case ripe bananas. While the men were sitting together in the house, they suddenly heard the voice of two deceased ancestors: Tau’s great uncle Kapolo’e and his elder brother. All the men gathered and waited for the spirits to emerge. Koliopa’s eyes were focused on the table and suddenly he could see the spirits’ mouths as they began to eat the bananas provided. In this case, the men could see the spirits only as partial images of the deceased. Having eaten their share—that is, having been nurtured—the spirits left some food for the men and disappeared. The reason for the visit was, according to Koliopa, quite a casual one: “We said ‘That is because they think of us and came to see us, then they went.’ These were our only thoughts” (interview, 2004). The dead spirits wanted to show that they had not forgotten their descendants. This implies that they still have nurturing relations with them, here expressed in the giving of food. The two dead spirits took the food that was offered to them, ate parts of it, and left the rest for the men whom they had visited, their sons, nephews, and younger brothers. They acted according to the social convention they had practiced while they were alive and thus fulfilled obligations and expectations that have their roots in social relations and exchange. Koliopa stressed that the spirits appeared frequently when he was a young man. According to him, their visits stopped, however, once the church gained importance in Bena. He said, “We used to see them and we said ‘Always give them food’ and such, but now I don’t see them anymore. When the missionaries came, the contact with these dead spirits was cut off. The church became stronger in these times, when it came new, and this group went and is now completely isolated” (Koliopa Tete, interview, 2004). Koliopa’s statement that the spirits had left and are now isolated shows that he does not question their existence, but that a shift in exchange relations has taken place. Instead of entertaining them with ancestral spirits, most Bena today have different networks that include exchange relations, for example, with the Holy Spirit, God, and Jesus. Without nurturing exchange relations, the ancestors might fade away. But, in fact, the relations to the dead spirits still play an important role in Napamogona everyday life. They are crucial for the growth of a person and his or her property and are characterized by the exchange of personal essence. Therefore they “can be seen as conjoined in a system expressing balances and imbalances of strength and nurturance” (Newman 1965: 89).

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The meha’a of the dead may help their living descendants in times of need, for example in tribal wars; however, they have to be invited to do so and be given something in exchange. One or two old men will go to the burial places, call the spirits by name (the names they had when they were still alive), and invite them to come to the nurturing feast that is held before the fight. When the mumu (earth steam-oven) is prepared, the various supporting groups arrive and call out their names: “We, the people from Amino’hi, have come to fight on your side,” “We, the people from Nosaga, have come to fight on your side” and so forth. Among the arriving participants will be the group of dead spirits, not recognized by anyone except the old men who invited them. They will also call their names “We, the people from … , have come to fight with you,” adding the name of the burial place as their origin. Few of the present people, however, will take notice of them; most of them may think they are from another supporting village or distant relatives. The main aim of this gathering is to prepare the male community for the approaching fight, to enhance strength, and to create a feeling of solidarity. Their relations need to be emphasized and strengthened. As one may already expect, this happens through exchange. In this specific situation, it involves exchange between the living and also between the living and the dead, in which the present male community is linked with the members of the past men’s communities. The men—living and dead—nurture themselves with certain food that has been treated in special ways to enhance its strength. A specialist (sorcerer) talks over a fresh ginger root and by pinching holes into the root with a small stick, he “injects” it with his words that include names of the ancestors. With these words parts of his and their person (his and the named spirit’s vital essence) are transferred. He then cuts it into smaller pieces and hands it over to one or two unmarried young men, ideally virgins. They chew the ginger until it becomes soft and then spit it onto the food. Now the meat, the bananas, and the sweet potatoes are wrapped in leaves and put into the earth oven. In some cases, the ginger is spit onto the food after it is roasted. The fighters are then given their share. By eating and being nurtured by this food, they consume parts of the “vital essence” of the younger men as well as the sorcerer and the addressed ancestors, and in doing so they again enter exchange relations with the various parties—with the sorcerer, the ancestors, the young men, and in this case even with the other men and spirits who participate in the fight. By eating the same enhanced food, they acquire the same source of strength. They are nurtured well—physically and spiritually—an idea that is expressed when Tau says that they will become stronger, more aggressive, and more confident so as to win the fight. In these situations, the dead spirits appear as humans, not as images. They are physically embodied and eat food, just as everybody else does. They possess great strength, and during the fight they may even multiply and support their descendants and allies in defeating the enemy.

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I was told that the appearance of meha’a of the dead is not restricted to a specific age. They can take the form of the deceased as a child, as an adult, as a young or old person, and do not usually resemble the person at his/her moment of death. Tau told me that if he died now, his spirit could come to me looking like the young boy he once was or as the old Tau—that is, that he would never come, if he died now, as the man I know right now. Spirits of the dead are thus seen as independent and flexible in regard to time and age because they can take any temporal form of their former “host.” These aspects indicate that a person’s dead spirit embodies all the different parts of a person: temporal and nontemporal, spatial and nonspatial, physical and nonphysical ones. In this sense, the dead spirit represents the “complete,” the whole, strong person. In contrast, his or her temporal and physical manifestation (the living person and its parts) represent time- and space-bound detached parts of that complete person. This person grows and, with its strength, moves through temporally different stages by being transformed through its social relations (and by transforming them).

Gufalo and Sme’hi As already mentioned, when a dead spirit is angry with his/her descendants, he/she becomes strong rather than nurturing. This causes various kinds of trouble and hardship to them by denying them nurturance and making them weak. This action—the damaging of the living by the dead—is called gufalo. However, misfortune can be averted by slaughtering pigs and holding a mumu. The steamed meat is distributed among the family; some parts are put aside for feeding and giving nurturance to the spirit, which “placates” him or, in Bena, brings his strength into the right balance (weakens him). This process is called sme’hi. Tau told me of such a practice that he had to exercise to calm the spirit of his deceased uncle. One day, Tau’s cows suddenly became very sick and acted strangely. Tau could not find any clue as to what kind of sickness they had. During his inquiries, however, he was told by one of his brothers that his cows had been seen grazing on the grave of the deceased uncle and had dug a hole and sank into the grave. A hole on a grave is generally bad news. It upsets the dead spirits, and they will retaliate by becoming overly strong and aggressive. They will wreak some kind of damage on the responsible person’s property or even make them mad or sick. In this case, the spirit entered into the bodies of Tau’s cows. They became thinner and thinner—clearly a lack of nurturance—and developed uncharacteristic aggressively behavior. Tau then arranged for a sorcerer, a specialist in these matters, to come and assist him. The man concurred with Tau’s suspicion—namely that his uncle’s spirit had entered the animals—and suggested that Tau should approach the dead spirit by sending him an apology. Tau was told to write a letter of apology and attach

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it to his ID card. Both papers should then be wrapped in a tanget (Cordyline fruticosa) leaf and thrown into the nearby river. Tau did as he was told. Shortly after, the sorcerer went further downstream with Tau and fished a bamboo segment out of the river. He shook it, and Tau clearly heard something rattling inside the bamboo chamber, which was—as bamboo segments are—closed on both sides. He then cut the bamboo open and to Tau’s surprise, his ID card was inside the bamboo; the letter with his apology, however, was gone. This was a clear sign that the deceased’s spirit had accepted and reciprocated Tau’s apology and would relent on sickening the cows. By giving his letter and his ID to the spirit, Tau offered parts of his person to the spirit and entered an exchange relation. According to Tau, from the moment he opened the bamboo, his cows recovered and things went back to normal—the balance of nurturance and strength in them was reestablished. The relation between him and the spirit was newly defined, and the flow of vital essence benefited both parties. This became even more explicit in Tau’s slaughtering of a small a few weeks later, of which he offered parts to his uncle’s spirit. Harmful acts by spirits towards the living can be seen as an indicator of an imbalance between strength and nurturance in the affected relation. This imbalance occurs when one side focuses its strength not on nurturing others but primarily on self-assertion and destruction of the other (Newman 1965: 90). In the case of such an imbalance of nurturance and strength it is usually the embodied person that initiates the reestablishing of a disturbed balance. Ancestral spirits do not seem to care greatly about their descendants unless they are nurtured by them through interaction/exchange. As “complete” persons, they do not, however, depend on being nurtured by their descendants. They possess the vital essence, the source of nogoya’a.

Body Substances and “Essence” Body fluids (saliva, sweat, blood, sperm, and urine) are generally called nogoya’a, with an additional descriptive word to specify their meaning. Gufa nogoya’a is a general term for body fluid but refers mainly to sperm and sweat; numu nogoya’a means tears; namaga nogoya’a is saliva. Objects that had close contact with these substances such as leftover food, cigarette butts, or betel nut leftovers, as well as some body parts, such as hair or fingernails, contain a detachable part of a person’s nogoya’a or vital essence; the animating principle of the body. It presents both nurturing and strengthening aspects and ideally represents the perfect balance between these two aspects. After death among the Gururumba, this vital essence transforms into the “ghost” (Newman 1965: 84). In Bena, this essence is not defined as part of the living meha’a, nor is it seen as just part of nubune. Nor is it this essence that transforms into the dead spirit. Rather, it is used and exchanged between these different forms

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of a person. It is the nurturing force that allows them—and their crops, their pigs, their children, and their social relationships—to grow. It is also the vital essence that spirits of the dead exist on and that they exchange with the living and vice versa. When it is too strong it can turn into the destructive force that kills the living. When detached, a person’s nogoya’a can be used by others, but it always remains inalienably tied to the person and refers back to him or her. The positive and social means of using another person’s essence is to internalize it and benefit from it by growing strong and to reciprocate this nurturance at a later stage and keep the relationship going. However, there is also a manipulation of a person’s essence that becomes a threat to exchange relations and may even lead to death. In the realms of magic, actions are undertaken directly with body substances or with objects that have body substances attached to them in order to weaken or kill the victim. “Poison magic” is very common and widely feared in Bena. In this practice of various forms, sorcerers block a person’s flow of nogoya’a by attacking his or her sikrafu’i. As a result, they kill the victim’s nubune, which is basically starved of nogoya’a (chapter 5). The destructive and negative forces involved in such magical practice derive from excessive strength, jealousy, and greed, traits that, although common, are most despised in Bena society. They are seen as emotions that instigate antisocial behavior. Somebody might be jealous or angry and, for example, secretly steal some anaina nekisa’a, “leftovers” (lit. something a part of it). He or she will take the leftover parts (food, etc.) to one of the sorcerers and pay him according to the kind of spell he should apply. The sorcerer will treat the object or substance with the person’s nogoya’a traces in specific ways (burn it and utter secret words into the smoke; or destroy it in other ways, say the words, and blow it from his hands into the direction where the victim lives, etc.) and the affected person will become sick, weaken, or die as a consequence.15 In this situation, one can speak of a negative form of exchange. The negative aspect of such actions is expressed through the separation of strength and nurturance. Instead of directing the essence into “nurturing channels” (Newman 1965: 90), the sorcerer uses its strength to kill the other by directing it back to him or her without entering a nurturing exchange. In other words, he does not reciprocate with any nurturing aspect of his person but rather with a strong component of his person only; and strength, when employed all alone, is conceptually congruent with anti-nurturance. It is quite understandable that people in Bena decide carefully where they put their excreta and where they leave hairbrushes or food leftovers since they might give others traces of their nogoya’a and their enemehi (their spirits), which make their nubune vulnerable to other people’s operations and manipulations. Even leaving laundry unattended on the line can increase the risk of getting poisoned. On several occasions, Tau became angry with me because I would hang my clothes out to dry and then leave them there all day, even

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when I left the house. He told me that evil-willing strangers (or jealous relatives) could always sneak in, steal the clothes, and treat them in specific ways, with the result that I would become sick on the very spot of my body that this particular piece of cloth would cover. Thus, objects of everyday life, things one touches often, are equally perceived as containing a person’s externalized nogoya’a.

Strong and Dangerous Aspects of Body Substances There is a further aspect to the qualities of nogoya’a that needs consideration. It is the assumption that certain parts of this essence are dangerous to others and need to be treated with specific behavioral taboos. In Bena, this idea is closely related to the concept of gender. Bena men live with the constant fear of unknowingly attaching “polluted” female parts to their persons that are inherent in women’s body fluids. A number of taboos in male-female interactions are intended to prevent such personal “catastrophes.” For example, women are not supposed to touch a man’s head or hair, and they must never step over a man’s legs. During their menstruation period women in Bena used to be secluded from the community and stayed in menstruational huts. Today such huts have mostly disappeared. Menstruating women remain now in their houses but sleep separately from their husbands. They are not allowed to touch, prepare, or serve any food to men, nor are they permitted to work in the gardens (Langness 1967: 165). Their destructive powers, inherent in their blood, might destroy the crops if detached and placed in the garden. Food prepared by menstruating women and given to the men (detached from themselves and attached to the men) is thought to harm and weaken the latter. Male-female interactions can here also be understood as exchanges between partible persons. They involve detachments and attachments of male and female substances (“essence”) that seem to represent nurturing aspects (for example, the nurturing capacity of semen) and strong aspects (for example, the dangerous strength in female substance). Boys are seen as being weakened through contact with female substances, which they have attached to them through and since birth. These substances block the boy’s proper growth. Therefore, it is crucial for young boys to undergo specific cleansing rituals of detachment to free themselves of these dangerous female substances.16 Male initiation practices, as described by Langness (1967), have mainly the same function: detaching any female substances that are still present in the stomachs and intestines of male persons, thus “cleaning” them and making them stronger because female weakening “essence” is detached. Although many things have changed in Bena since Langness conducted his research in the area, the idea that there is a dangerous strength in certain parts of female “essence” has remained. Women, and especially their detachable

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body fluids, are still considered a threat to masculinity. The rules and taboos that accompany this idea have, however, loosened slightly. This process of change seems to be in line with the general shift in gender relations in the last fifty years.

Conclusion Many anthropologists have developed their works on culture change explicitly or implicitly along an understanding of person as dividual and partible (e.g., Bashkow 2006; Courtens 2008; Mosko 2010; Scott 2013; Tove Stella 2007). One may therefore wonder why I chose to devote such a large part of this chapter to M. Strathern’s Melanesian dividual, an idea that has been widely discussed in numerous anthropological works. The reason is simple. I found that the combination of M. Strathern’s notion of personal partibility with Newman’s concept of vital essence describes best how personhood is understood and acted out in Bena culture. I would even argue that it represents indigenous analysis in academic terms. In this chapter, I hope to have shown how my data on Bena personhood vindicate the synthesis of the theoretical and ethnographic framework given by M. Strathern and Newman. On the basis of his significant description of the role of vital essence and the balancing of nurturance and strength in different beings and rituals, Newman has delivered nurturing grounds for further anthropological analysis on this topic; his work alone, however, is not enough to understand how the concept of vital essence ties in with indigenous notions of person. He has neglected the role of exchange and the importance of GwondEfoJE in social relationships and for personal identity. Of course, this criticism should not be misunderstood as reproach; Newman’s focus of interest was, after all, not on the Gururumba notion of person but on the religious and symbolic expressions of vital essence. His interest on persons remained restricted to the role of persons in the social structure and system. In this context, his work contributed significantly to that of other anthropologists who sought to question African models of social structures that had so far been used to describe New Guinea Highland cultures (Berndt 1962; Brown 1962; Meggitt 1965). Newman stresses the individual autonomy of persons in such social systems and shares the view that New Guinea Highland societies are more “open” and “flexible” in regard to group membership than, for example, African segmentary systems (Barnes 1962: 7; Berndt 1962: 175; Brown 1962: 59f.). Hardly any anthropologist today would question this theory, and my data on Bena “social structure” strongly support his argument. Newman’s (1965: 271) conclusion that “[m]any sectors” of the Gururumba social system, “are ordered by individuals operating within an inter-personal context marked by little collective orientation,” however, leaves room for dis-

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cussion. Although a new and important contribution to Highland anthropology in his time, Newman’s focus on “the individual as a social entity” (270) may be misleading, if one is to grasp the indigenous notion of “vital essence” and its flow or exchange between persons and with their surroundings. Newman diverts us away from the importance of social relationships and exchange of vital essence towards “the individual as a symbolic referent” and “the distinctive way in which individual autonomy is built into the social order” (270f.). I suggest pursuing a different path. M. Strathern’s model of Melanesian personhood makes it possible to develop Newman’s ideas further—but not on the grounds of individual autonomy and sexual antagonism. Her understanding of the person as dividual rather than individual, as partible and consisting of different detachable and reattachable parts rather than as social entity, and as an active agent17 can be combined with Newman’s notion of vital essence. Newman’s model of the (im)balance of nurturance and strength also complements M. Strathern’s gender-oriented approach to the analysis of Bena-personhood. A Bena person is perceived as a social, partible, and permeable dividual that stands in a continuing dynamic and mutual relation to others, a relation which revolves around the exchange of detachable parts of the person (as argued by M. Strathern). The critical detachable parts of person I have described are the body (nubune), the spirit (meha’a), the strength (sikrafu’i), and the “essence” (nogoya’a).18 This essence, or “vital essence” as Newman (1965: 76) called it, plays a crucial role in social life since its flow in exchange determines the kind of relation people entertain with each other. It is also the nurturing source for sikrafu’i: a person’s life force or strength. A person’s nogoya’a, “nurturance,” is the implicit central focus of exchange. The appropriate flow of nogoya’a in exchange grants a balance between nurturing and strengthening aspects for the participants. In contradiction to M. Strathern’s treatment of personal partibility strictly in terms of gendered parts, Bena understandings of partibility and elicitory exchange are more in line with Newman’s treatment of nurturance and strength (both of them are, of course, male and female aspects and thus contextually gendered, but precisely because of this I would not choose their gender aspect as the analytical focus). A dividual person is formed during a life-long process of being defined and defining himself or herself through interchangeable social relations. Like the relations that constitute it, a person is played out in time and is subject to temporality. During the course of his or her life, different stages are transversed in order to transform the person and, concomitantly, his or her social relations. A person is thus temporally staged through transformations and exchanges. The death of a person is one among other transforming life-cycle events; however, when death happens, a final detachment of spirit from body occurs. The spirits of the dead are in possession of the nurturing and strengthening essence and in

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this way are more autonomous and independent than living people (Newman 1965). Generally speaking, social relationships are the basis for a person’s—and a spirit’s—identity and definition; they shape his or her own self-understanding, his or her positioning in the social and geographical environment, and his or her capacities to be “strong and nurturant” in order to participate in human affairs (Newman 1965), in other words, his or her capacities for agentive acting. A person is therefore seen as internally inseparable from the broader community he or she lives in and from the place he or she resides in (long-term), as well as from the residential community of the past—one’s ancestors—and the land they used to occupy.

Notes 1. As I have pointed out in the introduction, I do not share the view that dividual and individual conceptualizations of person reflect Melanesian relationality in opposition to Western autonomy and individual independence. Rather, following Mosko (2010), I see dividuality as the constituting element for person in both Western and Melanesian societies; equally I also found aspects of individualism in Bena characterizations of person (see also Bashkow 2006: 95f., 221; Crook 2007: 73ff.; Kirsch 2006). My interest here lies in understanding the Bena specificities of person as partible and its relation to culture change—not in confirming an assumed opposition that may at first glance exist in ideology between “us” and “them” but not in the reality of everyday life. In other words, we are all partible. Interestingly, this argument corresponds to new discoveries in genetic science that reveal that the human genotype does not exist as an entity but rather is a mosaic of different relations between ever-changing genomes—it is partible and relational (Bahnsen 2015; Macosko and McCaroll 2012, 2013). As a consequence, the concept of a genetic entity of any human, and with it the idea of a biological identity of an individual, has to be given up. “Nun zerfällt auch die genetische Einheit des Menschen, die biologische Identität des Indivduums muss aufgegeben werden” (Now also the genetic unity of man, the biological identity of the individual must be abandoned; Bahnsen 2015: 39f.). 2. A given kinship system is, although generally most reliable, not necessarily stable throughout a person’s life. A change of residence or adoption by another clan may influence such relations. Only some of these relations can be considered as binding life-long—for example, the role of one’s mother’s brother to one’s ego or the relation between a male’s ego and his elder sister (Langness 1964). 3. Common interests are often the grounds on which relations grow. M. Strathern (1988: 48) talks in this context about “shared characteristics.” These do not refer to that which persons already have in common, but “what they hold in common is regarded as the rationale of their concerted action” (48). This is the force that joins different clans into tribes or different persons into alliances and enmities of all kinds. 4. Ideas about “vital essence” inherent in body substances, body parts, images, or detached parts, such as nail clippings, of persons have been reported for many Pacific societies—ranging from Polynesian mana (e.g., Hogbin 1936; Keesing 1984: Sahlins

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6. 7.

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[1974] 2004, 1985), to Highland Papua kopong, noman, and min (A. Strathern 1996; A. Strathern and M. Lambek 1998). For reasons of space I must dismiss the discussion of similarities and differences of these concepts with nogoya’a and restrict my comparison to Newman’s data on GwondEfoJE. As I have pointed out in the previous chapter, one of the main qualities of Bena leaders, their assertiveness and aggressive behavior, is a socially accepted means to gain power. Newman (1965: 261) noted that behavioral assertiveness is seen as a good quality in men “and is so intense that, to the outsider, aggressiveness seems to pervade much of everyday life.” It refers to running fresh water only and describes the fountain, the origin of the water “where it comes out of the stone” (Tau, interview, 2005). Tau’s usage of these English terms probably goes back to his studies in agriculture and his work in the Department of Agriculture and Livestock. The fact that he chooses these words, however, strongly supports Newman’s (1965: 262) translation of GwondEfoJE as “the capacity to be strong and nurturant.” Although material and nonmaterial gifts are distinguished insofar as each is expected in different circumstances (for example, in life-cycle rituals, material gifts must be given, whereas in everyday exchanges, immaterial gifts, such as support, etc., are more usual) they are conceptually treated as similar. Both follow the idea of reciprocity and imply a nurturing/strengthening flow of vital essence (see below). Newman claims that nature spirits mainly show the protective aspect of nurturance, expressed, for example, in their protection of certain pieces of land. However, when their land is invaded, their protective nurturance can turn into aggressive strength. Ghosts of the deceased and harmful thoughts represent strength only slightly tempered by nurturance. “They are ‘strong’ without being nurturant, and harmful in displaying strength not limited by reciprocity and obligation” (Newman 1965: 262); they are forcefully self-assertive and thus emphasize the behaviorally assertive aspect of vital essence. Harmful thoughts are assertive and can—even unintended—cause harm in others. However, ghosts as well as harmful thoughts can be placated and are thus not exclusively aggressive. Gururumba witches, on the other hand, are exclusively aggressive and non-nurturant in their strength, while ancestors represent mainly nurturance and with it the productive aspect of vital essence, which they can give or withhold (Newman 1965: 262). Ancestral spirits are not forced to reciprocate in exchange, but are likely to do so when treated respectfully. Meha’a is a relational noun that expresses a sense of belonging. Such nouns are in Bena language always linked to a possessive marker (Emkow 2015; Knapp 2015). Meha’a means his/her spirit, nemeha’ni is “my spirit,” the suffix ni indicating “my, mine,” gmehaka: is “your spirit,” our spirit(s) are called lemeha’ti, and their spirits are eneme’hi (Emkow 2015). At first glance, this last statement might seem contradictory to my opening remarks about the desired inequality between exchange partners. However, it is not. The exchange described here aims not primarily at alternating the positions between giver and receiver but rather at establishing a balance of nurturance and strength inside a person whose spirit has threatened to leave (indicating death). Okapa is a region feared by the Bena for its strong magic and violence.

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13. There are several ways of dealing with such cases of magic killings. Direct retaliation may take place, which can involve killing or chasing away the culprits. Another option is to bring the matter to court and negotiate compensation payments. 14. Property must here be understood primarily as something that refers back to the person/owner. Crops in one’s garden, for example, are closely related to the person who owns/planted/cares for them; they consist of detached parts of the person who produced them and vice versa (the essence someone put into the ground when working it and the one he or she gets when consuming the crops). 15. Another method is to give someone bespelled food (which may or may not contain real poison). 16. Polako’s grandson Samuel, for example, was suspected of being polluted by female substances because he was too small and skinny for his age. Since he grew up in a household that consisted of women only, his adopted mother Polako suspected female pollution. Sammy had to see his grandfather, an expert in magical cleansing practices, and eat food (the root of a specific flower, pig meat, and magically treated ginger) that his grandfather specially prepared in a bamboo tube and gave to him. This food caused nausea and diarrhea in the boy and helped him in this way to cleanse his body from maternal “dirty” substances that were supposedly still inherent in his body. 17. In arguing so, she is, by the way, not far from Newman (1965: 270) who emphasizes agentive acting: “The Gururumba act on the world to a greater extent than it acts on them.” 18. This distinction is based on the terminological and conceptual distinction my interlocutors applied.

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Changing and Exchanging Head Payments and Life-Cycle Rituals

The aim of this chapter is not to give chronological descriptions and analyses of all life-cycle events in a Bena person’s biography. Rather, I decided to focus on those ritualized exchanges that belong to the so-called head pay system (see Glass 2011). For reasons of space, I have selected only some of the numerous het pe exchanges in life-cycle rituals and relate these as examples to my argument of partible personhood and the importance of the exchange of vital essence in Bena.1

Birth: Entering a World of Exchange Relationships In chapter 2, in line with M. Strathern’s view of Melanesian personhood, I mentioned that a Bena person is viewed as already “born social” because he or she is understood to consist biologically and conceptually of different parts of his or her ancestors’ and parents’ persons. This idea is in Bena terminologically confirmed in the expression that a young child is nothing but the merged nogoya’a of its parents (and their parents, etc.). A newborn infant is not yet considered a person in its own right. I was told that its “spirit” was not formed yet. An infant has the capacity for meha’a but needs to be nurtured first in order to develop it properly.2 This development is ritually initiated at a later stage, when the first het pe exchange is held between the child’s paternal and maternal lineages. Eventually, with initiation, the child will become a “full” person. Until then, parents may sometimes even refer to their child as nani nogoya’a (“my fluid/essence”). This, however, is considered an insult and only done when the parents are very angry.3 With its parents’ and ancestors’ nogoya’a, a child receives his or her clan and family identity and thus his or her first network of social exchange relationships relating the child to the past, anchoring it in the present, and providing the grounds for its future. Here the term nogoya’a implies that the “universal” vital essence actually consists of personal detachable and attachable nurturing parts; a child evolves from parts of its mother’s and father’s essence. Nogoya’a is thus not a platonic idea of nurturance but rather a flowing and shifting sum of detachable and reattachable personal nurturing parts that people exchange; more precisely, it

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is the parts of persons’ nurturance which themselves consist of parts of other persons’ nurturance which they exchange. When detached, the parts of a person’s nogoya’a, always refer back to that person—a relationship that becomes crucial, for example, in magical practices where the manipulation of personal objects (objects that have parts of a person’s essence attached to them) is thought to have an impact on the person (chapter 5). In Bena, there is no concept of a person’s prenatal existence. However, sometimes an ancestral spirit—for example, the deceased father or mother of a woman—may appear in dreams and tell their daughter that a child will be born. The unborn child is seen as blut nating, literally “blood nothing,” implying a substance that has no “nurturing essence” yet.4 Abortion was and still is practiced frequently without the notion of killing a living being.5 An embryo is described as blood but not yet seen as possessing any nurturance itself—not all blood therefore is considered to contain nogoya’a. Most of the women in Bena today give birth in their houses; sometimes they seclude themselves and bear their children at hidden places in the nearby bush area. If possible, they deliver in the Goroka hospital. Her female kin usually supports a woman when she is giving birth. They bring her water, cut the umbilical cord, and see to her wellbeing. At a later stage the woman has to reciprocate this support by slaughtering a pig6 and distributing the meat, with sweet potatoes and vegetables, among the supportive women. She needs to nurture the relationship with them in exchange for the help they offered— in other words, reciprocate for the nurturance she had received. One of my sisters, a mother of eight, told me that during her last pregnancies she had decided to do without the assistance of her female relatives. The reason for her decision was that she did not have enough crops in her garden or pigs to reciprocate later and wanted to avoid an unfulfillable obligation towards the women. When she actually gave birth, so she told me, her only support was the meha’a of her deceased father, who appeared in the form of an image, an animal, a sound, a cool breeze of wind or, in her last birth, as me (earth) falling on her head from the roof of her house. According to her, only her father’s meha’a gave her the strength to bring a healthy child into existence. This example points to Newman’s idea of a balance between nurturing and strengthening aspects. With the birth of a baby, the woman detached parts of herself, of her personal nurturing essence, and was therefore weakened. In this situation of need she received nurturance from a sympathetic ancestral spirit, a spirit that had been nurtured before through his daughter, who had contributed greatly to his funeral. He strengthened his weak daughter so that she could provide enough nurturance to give birth to a healthy and strong child. He acted as an ancestral spirit should, by displaying, in Newman’s (1965: 262) terms, “the productive aspect of vital essence”: “Ancestors represent strength fully tempered by nurturance and focused on growth, the productive aspect of vital-essence.”

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Often the umbilical cord is buried together with the afterbirth on the family grounds and a plant—preferably a banana—is planted on the same spot. This plant is somehow related to the child since its growth indicates the wellbeing of the child. Once the child has reached the age of ten or eleven, this relationship fades away. If the plant then dies, it has nothing to do with the state of health of the person. The fact that the umbilicus, a detached part of child and mother, is buried in the ground under such a plant relates child and mother to the land and to the plant, which is nurtured through the detached parts of the two. It is therefore also a symbol for the relationship between mother and child, a relationship that may loosen when the child grows into a “person,” the same time when the state of the banana plant is not considered an indicator of the condition of the child/person any longer. Shortly after the child is born, it receives a new part to its personhood: its name. In pre-Western contact times, it was never the mother who gave a name to a child but the elderly people (women and/or men) of her kin. In the course of life, a Bena person acquires a number of names, but the first name a child receives is often chosen because of the child’s resemblance to another person, or because of specific circumstances during pregnancy (for example, a child may be called wari, “worry,” because it was born under particularly stressful circumstances), or after a specific event or the place where it was born. To my knowledge, no specific name-giving ceremony is held in Bena. There are, however, a number of complex exchanges that are initiated with birth and meant to intensify and continue throughout a person’s life. Many of them belong to the so-called het pe system.

Het Pe A number of recurring exchange practices of fundamental importance in Bena are today summarized under the Tok Pisin term het pe (lit. head payment). As the name indicates, het pe exchanges focus on one particular person. In Bena they either compensate a lineage for the “loss” of a person (and with it the loss of nogoya’a), or they are beholden to “honor an aged person” (Naomi Yupa’e, interview, 2005) and return the nurturance this person had previously given. Most het pe exchanges take place between a person and members of his or her maternal and paternal kin and involve long-term reciprocal gift exchanges between these lineages. Between the giving and returning of the gifts lie periods of months, years, and even generations. Het pe relationships continue after the person’s death. They are thus not only of importance for a person’s exchange network during his or her lifespan but bind different groups together over generations. They are “inherited” by the next generation and thus become “inter-generational in scale and … embedded within the authority of the ancestors” (Glass 2011: 20). They create alliances that ideally never terminate.

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Het pe exchanges are the core of Bena politics and are especially important because they constitute intra-tribal and intra-clan relationships and thus amplify the feeling of solidarity and strength inside the community: a necessary trait for a warrior people who live with the permanent fear of and planning for enemy attacks (see Keil 1974). They are equally important for a person’s identity and social positioning and for the relationship between the lineages who exchange “head payments” on behalf of this person. Het pe is not unique to Bena. The nearby Fore and the neighboring Gimi, for example, also practice exchanges that focus on one specific person, on behalf of whom “head” payments are made between different groups. Glass (2011: 31) observed that among the Fore, “the ‘head-pay’ … defines a complex system of debt and obligation” between a person and—primarily but not exclusively (17f.)—his or her maternal and paternal kin. In het pe, the involved parties elicit, establish, and (re)negotiate their relationships in various ritualized exchanges. These exchanges are, in Fore culture and likewise among Gimi (Gillison 1991, 1993), related to transformative events in a person’s life cycle: birth, childhood events, first menstruation, initiation, marriage, and death (Glass 2011: 33). Each het pe exchange has its own name and is seen as a single event in the cycle of het pe; a cycle that in Fore “begins at the time of a couple’s marriage” (Glass 2011: 31). In Bena, het pe exchanges are also linked to life-cycle events in a person’s biography. Most head payments are exchanged in relation to birth, initiation, marriage, and death.

Luta’a and Gne In spite of many commonalities, there is an interesting difference between the Fore and the Bena conceptualization of het pe. While the Fore have the word anondaninda (lit. eating the head-food; see Glass 2011) to cover all exchanges of the het pe cycle, Bena language does not provide such an umbrella term. For my Bena interlocutors, the Tok Pisin term het pe instead encompasses two specific categories of exchange called luta’a (lit. backbone) and gne (lit. dead body), which reflect the position of a person’s maternal lineage as either receiving or giving a payment made on that person’s behalf. In luta’a exchanges, the maternal side receives gifts, usually from the paternal side but sometimes also by another group. Gifts given in luta’a include raw meat or livestock and, increasingly, money and trade goods such as sugar, rice, or tea. Such payments may refer to the “buying off ” a person’s “head” from his or her maternal kin and are exchanged in rituals such as female initiation. Luta’a is reciprocated with gne. Gne covers exchanges in which the maternal side is the main giver. In gne, a person’s matrilineage “pays” the other party (usually the patrilineage) either to honor an elder or in return for a previous luta’a exchange or to compen-

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sate a loss of nurturance. Glass (2011: 17) showed that in Fore, “the ‘headpayment’ equates the obligatory compensatory payment of ceremonial foods with the flow of substance (blood) from the mother’s clan into the person on whose behalf the ‘payment’ is being made.” In Bena, this is done in gne, where members of the person’s matrilineage give either steamed meat (when honoring an elder or reciprocating a luta’a) or raw meat (in cases of compensation), as well as money and trade goods, to members of the patrilineage. Glass (2011: 17) further emphasized that “the kernel of the entire ‘head-pay’ system” is “the shared blood, its circulation and transformation.”7 Similarly, I found in Bena that all het pe exchanges involve the reciprocal flow of nogaya’a between the participating persons and groups, thereby focusing on a long-term continuation of this flow. During my research, I witnessed a number of luta’a and gne exchanges. Sometimes I was not sure whether a specific exchange event belonged to the assumed Bena het pe cycle or not—a worry that my Bena relatives did not seem to share. There is a general trend to gradually replace the Bena terms luta’a and gne with English and Tok Pisin names. People often speak of “compensation” instead of gne, and use the word het pe in reference to luta’a exchanges only. In the following I will describe some selected het pe exchanges by beginning with gu’i nimi (lit.: bilum give me), which constitutes the first het pe in a person’s life. From there I continue with the description of selected reciprocal het pe payments throughout and beyond a person’s life. I am proceeding in this way to clarify the chronology of the exchanges and give them a biographical framing. One has to bear in mind, however, that het pe exchanges between the participating parties may have taken place previously and that the “first” het pe may just be the continuation of a long-existing exchange relationship.

Gu’i Nimi: The First Bilum Gu’i nimi literally means “bilum give me” (gu’i: bilum, nimi: give me). It is the name for the first and initiating het pe that defines a person’s social position and exchange relationships. It takes place before a new child is born and involves gift-giving from the child’s maternal kin (represented by one or two of its mother’s brothers) to its paternal family (represented by the father’s father and mother). Gu’i nimi initiates a cycle of differentiated het pe exchange rituals that will ideally continue between a person’s maternal and paternal lineage throughout and beyond his or her life and ensure the reciprocal flow of nogoya’a between the two groups. Gu’i nimi consists of two exchanges, both involving the giving of gifts from the child’s maternal lineage towards its paternal lineage. Shortly before a woman gives birth to her first child, her brothers kill a pig and steam it in the earth oven together with sweet potatoes and greens.

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They also cut some sugarcane and look for an exceptionally beautiful large bilum. Equipped with these gifts, they approach the grounds of their in-laws and hand the bilum and sugarcane to their sister, the forthcoming mother. The bilum is the bag in which the woman will carry her newborn baby; sugarcane is said to “make the breasts full of milk,” as Esi told me. Sugarcane is highly nurturing and meant to strengthen the future mother. The steamed meat and greens are given to the child’s father’s father and his wife, who will later share it with their kin. The parents-to-be are not allowed to touch any of this food. If they did so, they would “eat from their own nogoya’a,” as Esi explained to me, and take away strength from their unborn child. Feeding on nogoya’a that is exchanged in relation to the child is taboo for the parents and considered an overly greedy act.8 It means withdrawing previously given nurturance. Throughout their whole lives, parents, especially mothers, must therefore not eat food given in any exchange involving their child. After the in-laws have accepted and eaten the food, the family awaits the birth of its new member. When the woman has given birth, her brothers come to visit her a second time. Then they bring a cooked chicken or a small steamed pig and give it to their sister, this time for her to consume. This nurturing food is said to replace the blood—the nogoya’a—that the women lost during the process of childbearing. The woman had received this lost nogoya’a before from her family members (father’s and mother’s clanspeople) who raised and nurtured her and in doing so implicitly detached part of their own personal essence, which the woman could then attach to herself. The loss of this essence must be replaced by her own maternal kin, represented by her brothers. In gu’i nimi the maternal brothers nurture their sister (with sugarcane, and after the birth with steamed meat) and their in-laws (with steamed food). Through the mother, parts of the received nurturance are passed on to the child, thus relating the child further to its maternal relatives. This nurturance is understood as a transfer of nogoya’a from the child’s maternal side to its paternal side; the child itself is thereby seen as consisting of (being nurtured by) the nogoya’a of both sides. Gu’i nimi should categorically be part of gne, the het pe from a person’s maternal side to his or her paternal side. However, it is not referred to as gne. Nevertheless, it is, like gne exchanges, reciprocated with a luta’a exchange, a return of gifts (and with them of essence) from the child’s paternal side to its maternal side.

The First Luta’a: “Buying off” the Person When the child has reached the age of four to six years, the members of the father’s family decide whether or not to continue nurturing the relationship with the maternal side. If undesired, the het pe relationship between the child

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and its maternal uncle can be cut off with the first luta’a. Then the father will return only a bilum to the child’s mother’s brothers. Such reciprocation clearly indicates that the child has now been “bought off ” its maternal line and that the balance between the exchange partners is established (see below), but it also signals that no further het pe exchanges between the two lineages are intended, meaning more or less the termination of the exchange relationship between the two groups. Such ruptures of relationships indicate a hidden conflict or anger between the two lineages. Usually, however, people opt in favor of the relationship and conduct a grand luta’a food and gift exchange. This form of luta’a is planned about one year in advance and begins with the child’s father’s family marking a specific pig for the exchange. The child will then learn to address the mother’s brother (who gave gu’i nimi) tata’e and will refer to him as tata’nifu (grandfather). The latter will use the same term for his sister’s child and respectively call it tata’e (grandchild).9 When the pig is grown fully, when it is fat and full of nurturance, its time has come; its slaughter marks the beginning of the luta’a. In this exchange ritual, the paternal kin (mainly the child’s father and his parents) give money (around 500 kina) and fresh raw meat to the mother’s kin group, represented by the child’s mother’s brothers, who provided the bilum and food exchanged in gu’i nimi. The latter group also slaughters a small pig and consumes it together with the child’s paternal family. This luta’a exchange—from the paternal to the maternal side10—indicates and confirms the kinship position of the child. With this payment, the paternal family has “bought the child off ” its maternal lineage (Naomi Yupa’e, interview, 2005). Luta’a compensates the mother’s group’s “loss” of the child, who becomes a member of the paternal clan, and ensures that no future claims can be made towards the child from its maternal group. This may seem as if the child as a “totality” had been lost from its mother’s clan. On a closer look, however, one finds that the “buying off ” refers to a (at least temporary) cutting off of the exchange of nogoya’a between the child and its maternal kin—but it does not question that parts of the latter’s essence are in the child. In other words, even if a child is “bought off,” it remains throughout its whole life in a relationship with his or her mother’s kin, even if this relationship is not always visibly lived. Persons in Bena can always refer back to their maternal kin when in need and will usually find support. Further, although this form of luta’a disconnects the child/person from his or her maternal group in regard to the rights and obligations towards them as family member, it creates and nurtures the grounds on which a new, “voluntary” relationship between a person and his or her maternal kin may develop. This also points to the idea that the child is not perceived as a totality that is being lost but rather that parts of the child, potentially nurturing parts (expressed, for example, in the obligation of a child to nurture its parents and also its maternal kin), are lost; but they can be transformed through the optional continuation of het pe throughout the generations.

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Het pe exchange practices are not obligatory after the first luta’a. They are, however, important for the identity of a person and his or her maternal and paternal lineages. While the personal relationship of the mother to her own kin is reduced to a minimum, het pe exchanges that follow the first luta’a payment nurture the relationship between her child and its maternal kin and thus between maternal and paternal lineages with the ideal of a continuous flow of nogoya’a between (persons of) these groups, and the aim of carrying the relationship into the forthcoming generations. Again, one can understand the exchanges here in Newman’s terms as an attempt to reestablish a balance of nurturance and strength between a person’s maternal and paternal kin: the woman receives nogoya’a from the man, adds parts of her own, and brings a child to life. This process weakens her, because she detaches parts of her essence. To reestablish the balance of nurturance and strength within her, she receives nurturing food from her brothers, a part of which will be received by the child (through the mother’s milk) and by the husband’s kin group. It is reciprocated by a strengthening payment (money and raw meat) from the paternal to maternal side. At this point the equilibrium between the groups is more or less established, both sides have given parts of their personal essence away and have in exchange received some of the others. Now it is up to personal decisions and agency whether to continue or to quit the relationship.

The Second Luta’a: Honoring the Mother Since exchange relationships promise access to nogoya’a, most men (and some women) in Bena decide at some time during their middle adulthood to “honor their mother” (Naomi Yupa’e, interview, 2005) and organize a het pe to express their appreciation. In such a luta’a payment, a person—I call this person Mogu—gives living pigs or uncooked meat, money, and garden crops to his mother’s lineage. The receivers of these gifts are usually Mogu’s maternal cousins, sons of his mother’s brothers, preferably of those who had brought the gifts in gu’i nimi when Mogu was born. At that time, Mogu’s maternal uncles had given nogoya’a to Mogu’s paternal lineage with steamed meat, and now their sons receive raw meat in return. In this het pe exchange, the nogoya’a a woman has brought into her husband’s line by giving birth is reciprocated and the relation to her husband’s lineage is reconfirmed. The expression that in this “second”11 luta’a a woman’s “head is bought off ” also implies that her remains will be buried on the grounds of her husband’s family and not on that of her natal clan. Many years later, when Mogu’s tata’e—the mother’s brother who did gu’i nimi when Mogu was born—is old and weak, his sons reciprocate with gne consisting mainly of raw meat (or living pigs) and garden crops. In practice, luta’a initiates a generational shift of the exchange relationships between a person’s maternal and paternal lineage. While the first luta’a took

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place between Mogu’s mother’s and father’s generation (and the one before), the one described here involves exchange between Mogu and his maternal cousins. The first luta’a payment, made by Mogu’s paternal family, empowers him many years later to receive the gne that will be exchanged shortly before or after the death of his mother’s brother.

Gne: Reciprocating Luta’a In return for the “second” luta’a to his mother’s brother’s sons, Mogu receives the responsibility for one old person from his mother’s side and is “given” an elderly man or woman, possibly a distant uncle or aunt. Mogu may also suggest a person to take care of. Mogu will then look after the old maternal relative, bringing pieces of food and visiting him or her frequently. In the frame of such a luta’a relationship, Mogu is allowed and even encouraged to build binding long-term exchange relationships with specific persons in his maternal lineage. Mogu’s mother on the other hand is—at least officially— discouraged from having closer contact with her kin group. The focus here is thus not on relationships between individual people (such as between one woman and her kin) but on relationships of dividual persons where parts of persons are detached and relationships can be maintained and/or lived through others indirectly.12 The exchange of nogoya’a between a mother and persons of her kin group is indirectly (through the child) maintained When the old man or woman dies, his or her child reciprocates by making a gne payment for the deceased to Mogu. Mogu had detached parts of him/herself to nurture and support the old person until death. Thus parts of Mogu’s nogoya’a (and with it parts of Mogu’s kin’s nogoya’a) were attached to the old person, and also passed on/exchanged indirectly with the old person’s children. When the old person dies, they reciprocate the essence Mogu had previously detached by giving the nurturing gne payment to Mogu. One generation later, when Mogu’s time has come, his child will decide to “honor” his parent.13 In return for the gne payment that was given to Mogu and thus indirectly also to Mogu’s child, the latter now makes a het pe payment (consisting of raw meat) to the grandchildren of the deceased old person, the one Mogu had taken care of; and another generational shift takes place. Usually it is Mogu’s son who gives the gne in honor of Mogu to the deceased person’s grandson. Later, the parents of this child (the deceased’s son) reciprocate by giving an old person to Mogu’s son and so forth. Such het pe relationships sometimes date back as far as four to five generations (Kolumalo, interview, 2005). The complex het pe exchanges are, I argue, appropriate examples for the Bena understanding of person as partible or “dividual” and the idea that exchange relationships between such persons involve the reciprocal exchange of

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nurturing parts of the persons. All persons involved in these exchanges conceptually consist of parts of one another because they have directly or indirectly exchanged (detached and attached) parts of nogoya’a, “essence,” with each other. They are clearly not seen as bounded individual entities that interact with one another from fixed positions. Exchange is here not an alternating disequilibrium between exchange partners nor is it striving for equality—for Bena, I would argue that it is rather about balancing nurturing and strengthening aspects in partible persons through elicitory detachments and attachments of nogoya’a. Every person has the option of starting new het pe relationships at any time. Some exchanges are short-term arrangements made in accordance with specific situations. An upcoming leader may, for example, decide to begin a new cycle of het pe with his maternal or paternal kin in order to reconfirm or create new obligations and alliances. He might strategically choose to nurture his father’s brother’s sons or mother’s brother’s sons by giving them a gne payment—often for political reasons in times of crisis. The more generously a lineage gives, the more nogoya’a is transferred and the more binding are the receivers’ obligations towards the giving lineage concerning future reciprocities of nurturance. From a group perspective, het pe exchanges strengthen the relationships between maternal and paternal lineages since they “glue” them together in exchange, as Tau put it (personal conversation, 2006), thereby obliging them to nurture/support each other in times of need (warfare, crisis, etc.). Therefore the conduct of many het pe relationships is also a political strategy for future local leaders and persons of influence. All of the influential men—and some women—in Napamogona are known for the number of het pe exchanges they organized, and they have a reputation for the generosity they displayed—the nurturing parts they were able to give to elicit future reciprocity. Gu’i nimi het pe, for example, is usually only given for a couple’s first child. If a man, however, wants to show his wealth and generosity, he may invite his wife’s brothers (or other members of her family) to bring gu’i nimi for his second and third children as well. In encouraging his child’s maternal relatives to revisit him and bring gifts, he indicates his generosity in regard to his future reciprocities.14 A man who can afford to receive gu’i nimi for all of his children is therefore considered a person of high social status. In a similar way, taking on the responsibility for an older person from one’s maternal or paternal clan is a way to ensure good relationships with their sons and grandsons and, through the resulting exchange of gne, a means to strengthen alliances of crucial importance for the political and physical survival of Bena tribes.

Syncretic Aspects of Het pe The importance of het pe exchange rituals has not ceased since colonial times. In spite of the church’s general discouragement of indigenous exchange prac-

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tices, the different forms of het pe have remained common in Bena, and there is no indication that they will diminish in the future. However, slight changes and adaptations have evolved. First, a certain terminological simplification has developed, possibly reflecting a structural simplification of the more complex pre-Western conceptual categories of het pe. In Bena language, such exchanges are not summarized under a term such as het pe but specifically defined as gu’i nimi, luta’a, or gne, the latter again divided into several exchange practices with their own names. What has been summarized as het pe in Tok Pisin today refers to all exchanges between a person’s maternal and paternal lineage that take place in order to “buy off or honor a relative.” The gne exchange in the sense of compensation payment is today usually referred to by the English term “compensation,” and the word gne is nowadays nearly exclusively used in reference to the honor-payment for an old person. Young people in Bena hardly use the Bena terms but refer to each of the different exchanges simply as het pe. An element of Western culture that has found its way into basically every Bena exchange is money. Money has attached to it the nurturance of Western culture, expressed, for example, in the fact that “money can buy everything,” and it provides its owner with great strength in other relations. Money has become an integral part of het pe exchanges and is given along with pigs and garden crops in luta’a and gne.15 Money has not replaced any of the traditional exchange gifts but has received an important role as an addition to them, a role that slowly shifts more and more into the center and that affects the form and size of “head payments” today. Glass’s (2011: 19) observation that in the Fore “head pay” system, the scale of “ ‘head-pay’ prestations sets up a tension between the competing demands of modernity and customary practices” is true also for Bena. Given the increasing financial demands and competing obligations that living in the modern world brings and the difficult access to money in the village, people cannot afford to entertain numerous grand het pe exchanges anymore. As in Fore (see Glass 2011: 20), there is a tendency to adjust het pe events to the changing circumstances and shorten them in their duration and scale. What remains, however, is the personal and social importance of het pe for Bena culture. Following Weiner (1980), Glass (2011: 21) argues that, for Fore, the “system of ‘head-pay’ is both a ‘reproductive system and a system of replacement or replenishment’ for the loss of and compensation for maternal clan substance utilised in the procreation of persons for another clan.” For Bena, I would agree that het pe is a reproductive system in Weiner’s sense, and there certainly is an idea of replacing lost substance. One could in fact argue that the Bena het pe cycle begins with the replacement of the mother’s nogoya’a when her brothers give her meat as a substitute in gu’i nimi. However, instead of replacing something lost with something new, Bena het pe is more about ensuring a balanced flow of vital essence in the

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relationships between a person and his or her maternal and paternal kin. The focus is thus on processes of attachment and detachment of personal aspects in continuing, nurturing exchanges. My main question regarding het pe is why this ritualized form of exchange is so avidly maintained in Bena, whereas other exchange rituals have almost ceased. Maybe the analysis of another life cycle event, neheya, “initiation,” and its structural and conceptual comparison with het pe exchanges may shed some light on this question.

Initiation Initiation practices in Bena play(ed) a crucial role in the transformation of children into strong and nurturing persons. Such rites of passage were obligatory for girls and boys; while the ones for girls are still practiced today, male initiation was last held in Napamogona in the generation of Tau’s father.

Neheya: Male Initiation Langness (1964) described the Bena initiation ritual for young men when it was still commonly practiced. Today it is carried out only in some very remote parts of Upper Bena. In Napamogona, only some of the elder men—Tau’s father Alapua and his age-mates—have undergone this painful procedure, whereas all their fathers practiced it. Tau’s generation was the first to miss out entirely, and the upcoming generation hardly knows about this ritual anymore. There is, however, a growing tendency to reintroduce male initiation, possibly in a milder form. In the following I will describe the Bena male initiation practice as it was explained to me by four old Napamogona leading men, all of whom have now died: Koliopa Tete from Jogijohi clan, Kolumalo from Mekfimo, and Sokret and Alapua from Sigoyalobo. The Bena term neheya encompasses different ritual practices that are part of the process of male initiation. It involves different exchanges—detachments and attachments of nogoya’a—between the participating boys or young men and their male relatives as well as their ancestral spirits. Since the young novices had to endure a number of painful procedures as well as overcome fundamental fears, it was also clearly a means of disciplining them by forcing them with strength to obey the elders’ orders and hence to display their mental and physical strength. In Bena, young boys of the same age group—called “age-mates”—were required to endure a series of different initiation rites, the first of which took place when the boys were approximately five years old (Langness 1967: 165). At this time, they were separated from their mothers and ceremonially had their ears pierced. About two years later, their septum

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was pierced. The final stage of initiation, pana’i yuhuve (pana’i means “boy”; yuhuve refers to yahu, the men’s house), occurred when they had reached adolescence. Then the young men of Napamogona village moved into the men’s house or into huts specifically build for the purpose in isolated locations outside the village and underwent a period of seclusion from village life. Women were strictly forbidden to come close to the places of male initiation. Their presence at, or near, such a location was thought to nagami pipi (dilute or water down) the whole exercise and thus invalidate initiation by weakening the male strength, which was supposed to be created and confirmed with neheya. Correspondingly, to avoid weakening influences from the outside, the novices were not allowed to leave the initiation site during the time of seclusion “for any reason at all” (Kimiafa 2015: 4). The only contacts they had during this time were older men. Each novice was looked after by a male relative, often a maternal uncle guiding him through the following days of initiation. These uncles are said to replace the mothers of the boys, an idea that is terminologically confirmed when the boys address them as ito, “mother.” During the following days in the men’s house, the young men had to observe a number of food taboos (they were, for example, not allowed to eat “strong” food such as sweet potatoes) and undergo some “educational” treatment from their male mothers. Often they were woken during the night and not allowed to fall asleep again for hours. If they did, their “mothers” beat them with the neheya osahi (initiation sticks). The boys were intentionally weakened. After some days, their skin was rubbed with ritually treated salak, a strong stinging nettle that before its use was bespelled and spat on by a sorcerer. This process is called psi’i. The sorcerer had added his nogoya’a (implicit in the magic words and his saliva) to the leaf and thus increased its strength. When it was rubbed on their skin and even their eyes, the boys received the hot and painful strength of the plant (and the sorcerer); in other words, they attached assertive parts (Newman 1965) of the sorcerer’s essence and the plant’s nogoya’a to their persons to become stronger. They were told that even if they first felt weakened, this process would strengthen them for what was to come. The following days were marked by various piercing and cleansing rituals, which were mainly performed at sacred sites in the flowing waters of the nearby river. In uti’i the boys’ tongues and penises were pierced with tiny arrows that were “shot” through their flesh. Golga bihogolo and ekesa yaliu, the piercing of nose and ears followed. In each of these practices, blood was detached from the novices, and with it nogoya’a. However, the blood that was lost here was considered dirty, polluted blood because it contained weakening female substances. Conceptually, these parts of the initiation process represent cleansing rituals, with the aim of freeing the young men from the (female) “dirt” inside their bodies, as Tau’s father Alapua told me. The peak of this cleansing occurred in gonafa, the cane-swallowing (Langness 1967). In gonafa young men

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had to swallow a looped cane, holding one end in each hand, until it arrived inside their stomach, then they carefully bent over and pulled the loop out in a fast move, thereby emptying their stomach, inducing vomiting. According to Alapua, a blood clot came out of each novice’s mouth. This blood clot is said to consist of the “bad” female blood that is now externalized or detached, similar to the “bad”—dangerously strong—blood that women detach from themselves in menstruation. The practice of cane-swallowing is not restricted to initiation only; it can be done by men at any time during their lives in order to detach from their persons earlier or recent female attachments. In fact it was advised that every man should occasionally undergo this procedure to remain strong and healthy, because through everyday contact with women men were continuously exposed to weakening female attachments.16 In initiation, the function of gonafa was mainly to clean the young men from dangerous female substances that they had automatically internalized by birth and by contact with their mothers and sisters. Some days after the successful endurances of these cleansing rituals, the novices had to undergo the final stage of initiation. They were gathered in front of the men’s house and led to the local cemetery. Each boy was shown one particular grave and ordered to put a personal present, possibly a spear or bow and arrow, on it. In other words, he was told to detach nurturing parts of himself and attach them to the object and give it to a particular ancestral spirit. This act of detachment is a display of strength because detaching parts of one’s essence and, through the object, giving it to the spirit shows that one is confident enough to possess the strength to enter a relationship with the very strong spirits of the dead. After all of the boys had deposited their gifts, they were brought back to the men’s house. Shortly after they had fallen asleep that evening, the older men woke them up by slapping them in their faces. Each of the sleepy boys was then asked by his “responsible” elder whether he “had not lost” or “forgotten something” (Alapua, interview, 2005). Most of the novices neglected to mention this and were consequently asked by their uncle about the gift they had laid on the grave earlier that day. The novices usually claimed that they had been told to do so, and in response to this answer they were punished by the elder men, who hit them with sticks. Again, the male mothers forced their strength on the boys, humiliating and weakening them. One boy after the other was then told to return to the cemetery, take the gift off the grave and bring it back to the men’s house. One by one they had to leave when their names were called to approach the graveyard. Alapua told me that most of the initiands were very scared when they came within reach of the ancestral spirits’ homes in the dark; and the thought of taking away a previously given gift from a spirit was particularly discomforting. Entering the graveyard was in itself dangerous enough because it meant an intrusion into the homes of spirits that could pro-

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voke them. They could harm, possess, and even kill the intruder. Therefore, if one had to go, one should at least have something to give to the spirits to nurture them and placate their possible anger. Going to the graveyard and taking away a previously given gift from an overly strong exchange partner, the ancestral spirit, must indeed have been a very frightening idea for the boys. It meant taking back nurturing aspects from a relationship, detaching the previously given nogoya’a and reattaching it to one’s self. This would create a sense of unrequited reciprocity on the side of the exchange partner and requests for compensation. In order to further scare the novices, the elder men had previously placed ghost-like figures, made of leaves and bush fiber, in and around the graveyard. The boys’ fear increased when they saw these threatening silhouettes near the graves. Sometimes, men hid in the bushes and imitated the voices of ancestral spirits or certain animals. The initiands had to conquer their fear, reach the grave in spite of the scary distractions, retrieve the object, and rush back to the men’s house. The novice’s reactions to such distressing situations were observed by the elders and became crucial for the completion of his initiation. If a boy did not manage to overcome his fear/weakness and returned without the object, he was beaten by his uncles and then sent back a second time. This procedure was continued until the novice finally succeeded and returned with the gift. Fear was in this context closely associated with weakness, and the overcoming of that fear seen as a display of strength. Only when the novice had finally been strong enough to fulfill the task did he receive his new name, which the “male mother” chose. It represented the last nurturing attachment to the initiand’s person that was required to make him an adult member of the men’s community. After negative essence had been detached (in gonafa) and strength had been acquired and displayed (in the overcoming of fear), the boy now attached to himself a new name and with it parts of the essence of the person who gave it to him. Such names were often descriptive; for example, they might refer to the behavior and attitude of the young man during the initiation; a boy who was very scared might have been called fluflu, “soft/weak,” and so forth. Finally, the boys had become men, and when they returned to the village after the initiation in their colorful outfits, they were welcomed by the singing and dancing community. A great feast was then held by the young men’s maternal and paternal kin to complete the ceremony. Structurally, this feast is reminiscent of the het pe exchanges described earlier. With initiation, the boy’s “head is bought off ” his mother’s lineage. In the final neheya exchanges, the patrilineage of the boy invites his maternal kin to a feast. Both parties provide food for the occasion, but the greater part of the expenses is carried by the boy’s father’s side. This luta’a payment is central to male initiation. It redefines the relationship between the boy’s maternal and paternal lineage,

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and it is given to confirm the bond between the young men, who from then on refer to each other as apo, “age-mates.” In the times of Tau’s grandfather, apo were always members of the same clan. Today, the term apo is used in a broader sense to describe men of similar age and status from the same tribe (but possibly from different clans).17 Such age-mates share a friendly but competitive relationship. As mentioned above, male initiation has practically ceased to exist in present Bena. During my stay in Napamogona, however, Tau, Nando, David, and Samson discussed whether the ritual should be reintroduced. Many men in Bena see its loss as a sign of—or the cause for—weakness among men today. Tau told me that the lack of discipline among the young men in the village derived partly from the absence of an initiation ritual that would “teach them discipline” and “make them strong” (interview, 2004). According to Tau, male initiation cleans and strengthens men while at the same time disciplining them. It trains them to respect social rules and the elders and to disregard the influences of their mothers and sisters—a trait that the upcoming generation is said to be lacking. Today, according to Tau, ol yangpela man i malomalo tasol. Ol i nogat strong olsem ol tumbuna, “the young men are soft [weak]. They don’t have their ancestors’ strength” (interview, 2004). They never rid themselves of dangerous body substances from previously attached parts of their persons that consisted of destructive (overly strong) parts of female essence; nor did they learn how to endure strong pain. Tau suggested that his sons should be initiated but in a somewhat less painful way. The cleansing ritual could, for example, be replaced by a form of vomiting induced by the consumption of parts of certain plants (for example, the cooked root of the trumpet flower) instead of dangerous cane-swallowing.18 Other men in the village agreed about their sons’ participation. So far, no new gonafa has taken place in Napamogona. I would not be surprised, however, if it did happen sooner or later. During the last few weeks of my stay in 2006, when the crisis in Napamogona turned into warfare, I heard many men complaining about the loss of strengthening rituals and their weakness. Young men in the village suggested building a new men’s house and reintroducing the stricter separation of the sexes. These ideas fell victim to the warfare, but it is interesting to note that persons in Bena are considering strengthening cultural elements they seem to have “lost” (or, rather, detached) and “replaced” with new weakening ones (attached new elements instead). Cane-swallowing is currently being revived in a very different context. A group of men from Upper Bena have discovered the economic value such a ritual has if performed for outsiders, mainly tourists. Public cane-swallowing performances are taking place on events such as the Goroka Show or are staged in the town theatre. Here, a part of the ritual is decontextualized from its original setting; the focus is on the rather challenging physical side of

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cane-swallowing. In other words, parts of the ritual are staged as an art form to gain reputation and money, and with this strength. In this regard the reinvention of gonafa builds on the Bena notion of positive exchange that aims at increasing the performers’ strength.

Pa’i Nohiti: Female Initiation Compared to the male initiation ceremony, female initiation in Bena might appear somewhat less spectacular. Maybe this is one of the reasons why—at least to my knowledge—nothing has so far been specifically written on the topic. The young women are not pierced or tattooed, and no serious blood shedding is involved. However, the female initiation ritual is possibly of greater importance for the relationships between different lineages and clans than the male. It involves a grand and complex exchange ceremony between the child’s maternal and paternal lineages, in which the paternal side is the main “giver.” Through this luta’a payment, the girl—who has just become a woman—is finally “bought off ” her maternal kin.19 While the male initiation ritual focused more on creating a greater solidarity among the men of the community and a strengthening of the young men (by cleaning and disciplining them), female initiation primarily strengthens the relationships between different lineages. In terms of nurturance and strength, one could describe male initiation as the unmixing of blood (detaching bad maternal blood) for the sake of strength, while in female initiation exchanges blood is mixed so as to increase the exchange of nurturance.20 This might be one of the reasons why female initiation is still commonly practiced throughout Bena and, although it has undergone some minor changes, its fundamental structure and procedure have remained the same since precolonial times. As part of het pe, it “glues together” different lineages. On the other hand, it becomes clear why ideas of male initiation and ritual recur in times of warfare, when more strength and male solidarity are needed. Ruth’s Initiation Ceremony In May 2004, Ruth, a thirteen-year-old girl from Jogijohi clan, experienced her first menstruation and had to go through the initiation ritual. Ruth is the firstborn child of Charles Robinson, a man from the small Gmegunabo tribe in Upper Bena, and Aileen Soporo from Jogijohi clan in Napamogona. Charles is one of the men who married into the Napamogona tribe and took up residence with his wife in the village. His decision to live with his wife’s family resulted from the problems his small tribe experienced in Upper Bena. Charles’s shift to Napamogona granted him security and gave him the opportunity to increase and intensify his exchange relationships with his in-laws and their exchange partners. Like all men who newly join the tribe, he was welcomed by his

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tambus, “in-laws,” a new male resident always being seen as a new ally, a supporter in war, and in exchange. Charles was a teacher at the nearby Siokie elementary school, and his good working position made him an interesting and promising exchange partner and relative for his tambus. His decision to move to Napamogona was further influenced by the location of the village, which lay within walking distance to his work place, whereas his place in Upper Bena was quite far away and would make it difficult for him to get to school in time every day. Charles’s wife Aileen spent most of her time as a housewife in the village. Charles and Aileen had five children, one of whom died shortly after birth. Four children, three girls21 and one boy, were in 2004 living with them in Ikisagu, a hamlet in the northwest of Napamogona where mainly Jogijohi clan members reside. Ruth was the first of their daughters to experience female initiation. Charles described the main aspects of the ritual: It is a practice that our mothers and fathers and ancestors have done among them and the two of us [Charles and his wife] do it as well. Showing that we care for the child we have born. Showing the same to the family members. The side of the father and the side of the mother, both will also show their respect, the tradition of liking the child [expressing the affection for the child]. This is good. It means that we from the father’s and we from the mother’s side we have love for you, child, you became like this and we like you as you are; and in your later life [when you have settled] you may have a good life and you will be able to help your mother, your mother’s side—her uncles and grandparents and small children from her mother’s side—and when it comes to the father’s side she will show the same behavior. So we fathers discuss with the mothers, and we agree “at this time the two of us must be ready.” (Charles Robinson, interview, 2004)

Female initiation requires long-term planning by the parents. Before a young girl has her first menses, a house for her initiation ceremony must have been built and the father must have saved some money and pigs for this specific occasion. Parents begin planning the event early enough to be ready in time, sometimes two years in advance. When a girl has her first menstruation—when she detaches “bad” and (to men) dangerous (non-nurturing) parts of her essence for the first time—she is secluded from her family and brought into the house built for this purpose. She has to stay inside this house for the following days, the length of the stay varying from about four days to one week. This duration is clearly shaped by the requirements of modern life. Before the influence of Western culture, religion and lifestyle, the time in seclusion lasted several weeks. Since many girls are attending school and guests must meet other commitments, the duration of the initiation has been shortened significantly.

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Ruth had just turned thirteen when the time for her initiation had come. She was brought into the house, accompanied by some of her sisters or bestis, “best girlfriends.” For the following four days, Ruth had to stay inside the house. She was not allowed to drink water, nor eat any “wet” food, such as cooked greens or any boiled food. Her diet consisted of “dry” food only, such as roasted sweet potatoes. The only liquid she consumed during this time of seclusion was fresh fruit, such as pineapples, pawpaws, oranges, and sweet bananas, brought to her by her mother and her sisters or her paternal aunties.22 In Ruth’s case, the situation was slightly complicated because her mother had spent some years of her childhood among a Chimbu tribe who had adopted her. She only returned to Napamogona when she was an adult. Therefore, the maternal lineage comprised the woman’s Bena family (her parents trutru, “real parents”) and her Chimbu relatives. Some women from Chimbu arrived shortly after the news had spread and supported the girl, together with her Bena family. After some days inside the house, Ruth was very weak. Her skin had become paler, she had lost weight, and her physical condition was not at its best. In other words, she was weak because she had experienced a lack of nurturance during her period of seclusion. Charles told me that he as a father felt sorry for his daughter because she had to endure such hardship: “I, as father, am feeling sorry for my child because she has to face some hard times inside of this house; she must not drink water nor eat greens. But it is our ancestors’ tradition so I have to accept it, she must face the challenge that comes.” After four days, the time had come to take off Ruth’s “laplap,” the cloth she wore during her menstruation, and change it for a new and clean one. Her first period was over, and it was now time to begin the ceremonies. During the previous days when the women were still busy inside the house, her father and his brothers had discussed the procedure for the upcoming exchange and collected contributions among their lineage. In Charles’s case, some of his brothers from Upper Bena cooperated with some of his adopted relatives from Napamogona (not his in-laws but members of Mekfimo clan who had accepted him as their “son” and “brother”). Aileen’s family, Ruth’s maternal uncles, did the same in cooperation with Ruth’s Chimbu brothers. Everybody needed to be ready on the day Ruth received her new laplap. This new cloth was attached to her body, and, with it, detached parts of the givers’ essence were attached to the girl’s person. Receiving the laplap indicated the beginning of different nurturing exchanges, especially between the girl’s maternal and paternal kin. During this day, the first groups of guests arrived in Ikisagu. Some of Ruth’s maternal relatives from Chimbu had come, as well as some of Charles’s Bena relatives and, obviously, the maternal Jogijohi clan members were present. A big party was going to be given in the evening and throughout the night, a party the parental lineages had to cater. In fact, Charles and his brothers had

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been extraordinarily busy to ensure that they could provide enough food for all the guests. Pigs were slaughtered, garden food was collected, and coffee, tea, sugar, and beer were bought in town. Ruth’s maternal side contributed food, especially garden crops, a small pig, and some cash money. The greatest burden, however, lay on her father’s shoulders. Charles told me that “this food has cost us more money [us = the paternal lineage] to prepare this party; it cost us more money [than the mother’s side]. So the mother’s side contributes and the father’s side contributes. When we have contributed everything we must cater for all the persons who will come and be our guests during this night.” Charles relied heavily on the support of his brothers to gather the money and gifts that were required for Ruth’s initiation. Charles’s eldest brother Robin (name changed) contributed especially generously. This is in accordance with Bena tradition where the eldest brother usually plays the most important role when his younger brothers need support for an exchange with his wife’s lineage. He will help out with pigs, money, or help in any other way. This support, detachments of his essence, will later be reciprocated to his son, who takes on the responsibility for the girl until she gets married and who will receive a large part of her bride-price. In the case I have described, in return for Robin’s support, his son Stuart (name changed) received the role of Ruth’s “father” with the completion of her initiation (until then he had been Ruth’s paternal cousin and was thus seen as her brother). This implies that the transaction of parts of persons, here nurturing detachments of Charles’s and Robin’s kin, is a means of changing kinship relations, even to create and uncreate them. Charles is replaced in his role as Ruth’s father by Stuart. Stuart will be the one to organize the contributions of Ruth’s paternal side when she gets married, a task that resembles that of Charles and Robin in Ruth’s initiation. He will gather contributions for the exchange with Ruth’s future husband’s lineage, and he will cater to Ruth’s maternal lineage when they come for the wedding ceremonies. Stuart will prepare his “daughter” for her wedding. He will be the one who officially sends Ruth to her husband’s family. In return, he will receive the bride-price given for Ruth and distribute it accordingly among his brothers. The duties of Charles and Robin during Ruth’s initiation are detached and handed over to Robin’s son. Thus the exchange in female initiation provides the ground for a continuation of exchange relationships and responsibilities inside the paternal lineage as well as from the paternal side via the initiated girl to her maternal lineage, thereby transferring the roles of father (and father’s brother) as parts of their persons onto the eldest father’s brother’s son. The relationship between Ruth’s paternal and maternal line thus continues throughout the following generations. In the late afternoon, the display ground in Ikisagu was fully decorated and a tent for guests wanting to stay overnight had been erected. A big fire was lit in front of the house. When the sun had gone down, Ruth and her female

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friends were brought out of the house and commanded to sit in a close circle around the fire, surrounded by Ruth’s maternal and paternal relatives. When night had fallen, the time of givim stori began. It is the time when the young girls—here Ruth as well as her friends—are publicly instructed how to behave as “women” and especially how not to behave. During the time of givim stori, the girls are taught by means of words and with physical violence what aspects of their behavior they should change: what they had done wrong so far and how they should instead behave in future. Givim stori is a recurring practice in Bena life-cycle rituals. It is, for example, repeated in the haus paia ceremony that a woman has to undergo before she marries (see below). As in marriage, the givim stori in initiation is also called haus paia. This name refers to the big fire around which the girls are closely packed; a fire that will nearly burn them at the front while their uncles and village elders hit their backs with cane-sticks. Charles told me, “The mothers prepare a fireplace. All the young girls and Ruth, all her friends, all the girls who stayed with her in the house, these girls sit down with her and the uncles, the elders, like the fathers in the community and the mamas, all our close relatives teach them their lesson. ‘You young people, you must not show bad behavior.’ In the old times, the parents told them to work in the garden, take care of the pigs, help their husbands, and get a good reputation” (interview, 2004). These messages are also given today; however, the spectrum of demands on young girls has increased with modern times. Charles explained, “Now today, in the coming generation, in this time we tell the children ‘You [must] go to school and learn something. If you succeed in school your and your family’s life will be good later.’ So today they say that school education is a key to the road for a good life. This is the kind of thoughts they give to the children” (interview, 2004). After such encouraging introductory words, mainly spoken by their maternal and paternal uncles, the girls are criticized and punished for their previously wrong behavior; often the uncles get very angry with them and cane them hard on their backs. In doing so they vividly display their strength and force it on the girls. Ruth and her friends had to endure a short but severe beating by their uncles on that night. Charles continued his explanation: “Sometimes anger comes up—they see that the young girls go around, visit discos, or they gamble and they do not help their parents at home—they will get up and fight them. They hit them hard with sticks in the firehouse. Many girls get hurt. Ruth was inside with the others, too. They beat them very hard. To make them change their bad behavior. Normally the girls know when they take up the habits of drinking alcohol, going to the disco, gamble, and hang around in town for no reason they won’t have a good life later. Her future life will be full of problems” (interview, 2004).

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Although one of the girls is the central initiand, all her close friends and female age-mates share the pain inflicted on her. All girls receive their share of violence, whether they have displayed wrong behavior or not. The givim stori part of initiation is meant to discipline with strength young girls and to stop or prevent their “bad,” non-nurturing, or too strong behavior in the future. Going to dancing clubs, drinking alcohol, and gambling are elements of Western culture that, although widely practiced, are seen by many persons in Bena as dangerous because they “weaken people” (Tau, interview, 2005). The beating usually lasts about half an hour, certainly not much longer. Sometimes the girls are also slightly burnt with fire; then their fingers are held by an uncle and pushed into the hot ashes. Charles told me it is mainly the uncles who punish the girls because of their fear of losing their good reputation in case their nieces misbehave. A girl’s “bad” behavior reflects her family background, and here specifically the role of her uncles and aunties. If, for example, a girl becomes pregnant before marriage, especially without having a future husband at hand, her father’s and his brother’s reputation will suffer. Her behavior showed that her father was too weak to impose his will (strength) on her. People will gossip and say that em i nogat gutpela papa, “she hasn’t got a strong father,” and that he had wanpela pikinini long rot, “a child on the road.” This “bad name” will not be restricted to the girl’s biological or adopted father but extend to his brothers and even to her mother’s brothers. Therefore all the uncles—and aunties—are particularly concerned about their niece’s behavior. If she misbehaves drastically, if her “head is too strong,” they might withdraw their support. Then her life is endangered in many ways: “If a child has no father to help her in her life … her life, in the long-term, is destroyed (Charles Robinson, interview, 2004). The physical violence is important, according to Charles, to make very clear how to behave appropriately. Through physically inflicted strength, the rules are supposedly attached in the girl’s memory. Like the beating of young boys during male initiation, it is a means of disciplining the girls. It is a display of strength by close relatives who hurt the previously weakened boy or girl in order to detach “bad” parts of the latter’s persons. In female initiation, blood is shed naturally through the first flow of the girl; in male initiation, it has to be induced artificially by human intervention. In both forms of initiation, the young person is first weakened through the physical “treatment” (in which destructive parts of nogoya’a are detached from him/her) and then finally nurtured again with productive parts of nogoya’a. Male initiation focuses more on strengthening aspects: a boy must overcome his deepest fears and become strong (representing the assertive side of nurturance). Further, his initiation represents a detachment of the boy from his mother (and her kin) and strengthens relationships between competitive men, not so much between maternal and paternal kin groups. Female initiation

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focuses more on the exchange of nurturance than on the display of strength. Its aim is not the detachment of the girl from her parents—this happens at a later stage with marriage—but rather the “gluing together,” as Tau put it, of the girl’s paternal and maternal relatives. It also indicates that the girl is now potentially nurturing as a woman, that she can reproduce and so initiate new nurturing exchanges for both sides. Although the girl’s parents consider such practices necessary for the good development of their daughter, they never participate in the beating because they feel sorry for her. Charles said, “Me as father, I feel sorry, but it’s tradition. They fight her and I feel the pain but I must accept it. This practice is done because it is our ancestors’ tradition. So in the night, I feel sorry because of the pain my daughter receives from her uncles’ hands. And after some time of teaching and fighting her … her mother becomes sorry (interview, 2004). The parents’ empathy for their daughter is not only understandable from an emotional point of view but also plays a crucial role in the givim stori practice. Their relationship to their daughter remains one of nurturance. In a way, it balances out the strength imposed on the girl by her uncles. It is the crying of the child’s mother and her sisters—the detachment of their nogoya’a inherent in their tears—that finally cools the uncles’ anger, or weakens their aggressive strength, and stops their violence. Their loudly expressed empathy turns the men’s belhat, anger, into a general soribel, empathy, and leads to the ending of their ritualized aggressive outbursts. Charles described the effect: “When the child cries now, you will hear the whole party turning and the mothers cry and feel sorry. So the fathers and brothers who hit the girls, when they hear the mothers crying with pity, they stop this practice and leave them alone. So the feeling of pity becomes great during these ten–fifteen minutes and then the mothers bring some prepared food, food from the garden like pitpit, sugarcane, bananas, fruits from the garden. They come and throw [banana leaves on] the fire. They kill the fire. That’s how we say it” (interview, 2004). Once the fire is extinguished, the general mood changes again, and a party begins that lasts all night. At this point a balance of strengthening and nurturing aspects in and among the participating persons is (at least ideally) established. After Ruth and her friends had endured the painful beating and after the fire was cooled and finally “killed” by her mothers, she received some food and was allowed to join the party. The girls were, as one can imagine, by that state in quite a fragile physical and emotional state. Similar to ground that lacks nurturance, they were fluflu, “weak” or “soft.” They cried with pain but at the same time were overcome by the joy that the worst part of the initiation was over and that everything from now on would only prove how much Ruth’s relatives were going to nurture her. A singsing began. Some men and women had left the scene for a while and in the meantime dressed in the traditional Bena gear. Now they reappeared in different groups, one after the other com-

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ing back to the feast ground dancing and singing Bena chants and crying out loudly the name of their clan ancestors (a sign of joy). Drinking began as well. Charles and his brothers had not only catered for food and coffee but also provided huge quantities of beer that was eagerly consumed by male and female participants (the girls did not drink, of course). The party went on until sunrise. At dusk, the girls were brought back into the house where they waited a few hours for the next and last part of the ceremony. They were still not allowed to sleep or rest. Most of the people who attended the haus paia and the following party did not sleep during the whole night and were by now getting tired and—not surprisingly—quite hung over. In the early morning hours, some people had fallen asleep and were lying scattered on the ground; others were sitting together in small groups and continued drinking and chewing betel nut and talking. Some were playing cards. The paternal lineage began preparing the earth oven and heated stones in the fire. It took some hours until they were hot enough and thus it was not until late in the morning that the mumu was prepared and the flesh of their slaughtered pigs could be steamed. Once the sweet potatoes, the meat, and the greens were put on a thick layer of leaves on top of the hot stones and sufficiently covered with leaves and soil (wet mumu), the activities slowed down for a while. People rested and waited for the food to cook. Early in the afternoon, more people from Chimbu (parts of Ruth’s maternal lineage) and from Upper Bena arrived, equipped with food, mainly cooked chicken, greens, cooking bananas, and so forth, but they kept themselves in the background. In the meantime, Ruth was brought out of the house and dressed. Interestingly, it was her Chimbu relatives who provided the required dress, feathers, and furs, and it was also they who decorated the girl. It was a Bena initiation, conducted according to Bena tradition, but Ruth’s outfit was that of a female Chimbu initiand. Apparently this matter had been discussed and agreed on previously between Ruth’s maternal relatives from Bena and Chimbu. In the late afternoon—it must have been about four o’clock—the mumu was declared to be ready. Different groups from Ruth’s maternal side came and laid down their gifts—steamed meat, bananas, greens—on a large plastic tarp spread on the ground. Now Ruth, followed by a procession of people, walked up the small hill and approached the place. She sat down on the tarp, amidst the food, looking very exhausted. Her father’s family now ritually thanked her maternal lineage by shouting the traditional exclamations (ancestral names) in Bena and in Chimbu. Since half of Ruth’s mother’s family is Chimbu, both forms of thanking “cries” were held. The mumu was uncovered and Ruth’s father’s brothers brought the steamed pigs and placed them on the tarp together with sugarcane and bananas. Her paternal uncles publicly distributed the pig among the maternal line, calling each family by their name. The representatives then accepted the food, which also had some money attached to

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it. Ruth’s aunties were called first, and the mother’s brothers were the last to receive their share. The amount of food each called person or group received and how much money came with it depended on their previous generosity towards the child. Charles told me, “Regarding the mother’s side, we will give to her [the girl’s] uncles. The tradition is that we satisfy [lit: make happy] all those who took care of the girl, who helped her with some coins and food from the garden, who talked nicely to her, who gave her something she could use, or brought her food from a party they attended; this kind of support we, her father and mother, have noticed, when they took care of her and helped her when she was a small child. So we have observed this during the last thirteen years. So we know who talked good to her” (interview, 2004). In this exchange, the maternal relatives of the girl are nurtured in return for the nurturance they gave the child before, helping it to grow into the healthy young girl she now had become. Once Ruth’s maternal kin was served, the remaining guests were called upon. After this the people sat together in groups, ate some of their food and packed some away for their relatives at home. In the center of everything, in the middle of the tarp, sat Ruth with her friends, eating. She had cheered up by now and although she still looked tired, a broad smile had appeared on her face. Her relatives had clearly achieved one of the main goals of the initiation—they had shown their care for Ruth and expressed their love and support. As Charles put it, “The girl sees that her family organized this because they care for her. So she is happy with them.” During the following hours, the party gradually dissolved. The guests found their way out of the village, some of them drunk, others looking very tired, loaded with their share of the great exchange that had just taken place. Ruth’s initiation shows the importance the ceremony has on personal, family, clan, and in this case even intercultural levels. It has deepened the relationship between a lineage from Chimbu with Ruth’s Bena relatives and her father’s lineage from Upper Bena. It further has confirmed, renegotiated and transformed relations between persons from Ruth’s maternal and paternal lineages—for example, between her mother’s and her father’s brother (Robin) or between her and her father’s elder brother’s son (Stuart). It confirms that central to female initiation in Bena is the exchange between maternal and paternal lineages that continues into future generations and that, like initiation in Fore (Glass 2011), conceptually belongs to the het pe cycle. Male and female initiation rituals consist of different luta’a payments. There are, however, some differences regarding temporality between het pe exchanges held in initiations and in other contexts. For example, het pe exchanges that are held to “honor” an old person focus backward insofar as they compensate the nogoya’a a person has detached throughout his or her lifetime to nurture others. Female initiation-related exchanges, on the other hand, point forward by emphasizing the nurturing potential a woman has, the nogoya’a she may give later when

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she becomes a mother. Charles’s statement that initiation is performed to show the “care” of the relatives towards the girl captures a sense of “honoring” the girl for what she is and represents at the time—the mixed essence of her maternal and paternal kin—but even more so for her potential to detach nurturance in the future. As opposed to other het pe exchanges, initiation also has a disciplinary function, expressed in the haus paia/givim stori that is concurrent with the exercising of physical violence. Here strength—in the form of violence—is given together with nurturance—in the form of knowledge. Central to initiation is the idea that “bad,” non-nurturing, destructive parts of essence are detached from the initiand and replaced with nurturing and strengthening ones, thus creating a new balance of such aspects inside the person and also in the relationships between persons of his or her kin. Het pe exchanges also aim at creating this balance, but the detachment of “bad” parts of essence is not involved; they focus rather on the exchange of productive parts of nogoya’a. All het pe exchanges, however, confirm the argument about the partibility of dividual Bena person that cannot be separated from his or her relationships. Due to her family ties to Chimbu, Ruth’s Bena initiation had a strong Chimbu edge to it. It was in this regard an intercultural and syncretic event. However, it was clear from the beginning that the cultural emphasis was on Bena practice—a decision supposedly made because of the girl’s and her family’s place of residence and cultural background. Since female initiation in Chimbu is structurally similar to Bena (the girl must undergo a period of seclusion and a great exchange is held after her return to the community as a woman), the merging of Bena and Chimbu cultural elements in Ruth’s initiation proved to be easy. As in other exchanges, a certain Western element— money—has become of importance in initiation. Money has become a strong source of nurturance in itself, a powerful object that supplements and extends the nogoya’a given in pigs and garden food. After initiation, the boy or girl is prepared to meet young people from the opposite sex in appropriate ways, possibly to find his or her future partner. Until the generation of Tau’s father, ritualized courting practices were common in Bena but have since decreased.

Courting Practices: Yafa vo’alovo Before a young person married, he or she used to be allowed and even encouraged to entertain affective relationships with people of the same age group from the opposite sex. Such relationships included different forms of courting, flirting, and “kissing,” but did not include sexual intercourse, as Alapua emphasized in a personal conversation in 2004. This, so I was told, had always been a strict taboo, reserved (ideally) only for husband and wife/wives.

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The main courting ritual in Bena was called yafa vo’alovo, yafa meaning “kiss,” vo’alovo “young men and women.”23 Yafa vo’alovo is not practiced anymore in its “traditional” form, at least not in Lower Bena. Like male initiation, it was last done in Alapua’s generation. In yafa vo’alovo, young men and women from a village (mainly brothers and sisters) decided to invite young people from a neighboring village for a one-to-two-week visit to their home. Each village had different yafa vo’alovo relationships with various groups. Usually one yafa vo’alovo involved two participating parties, but if a third group of young people wanted to join, they could take part, given that they had “enough young women to bring along” (Tau, interview, 2005). The invited guests arrived at their hosts’ village at night and were welcomed by their agemates and shown into a house specifically built for this purpose. For the following period of yafa vo’alovo, the guests shared this house with their young hosts. Their time together was reserved for pleasure only. The young people went to the river together, arranged nightly singsings, prepared and shared food, and enjoyed each other’s company. In the evenings, they sat around a fire inside or in front of the house and began “kissing” each other. Kissing in Bena is not the same as in Western culture. No lips or tongues were involved in the process. Instead, the young people rubbed their chins against each other’s.24 These chin rubbing sessions lasted throughout the nights with partners frequently changing. Ideally, one tried every participant at least once. After a while, the chin rubbing led to sore skin and even to minor bleedings. Basically, all the boys and girls in the house thus detached and mixed their blood with each other’s and exchanged nogoya’a. They also slept in the same house, but apparently not with each other—becoming pregnant before marriage was even in pre-Christian times socially abhorred, and measures were taken to ensure that sexual contact before marriage did not happen (at least ideally). The young people spent a week or so together. By the end of this time they were all weakened from lack of sleep and the intensity of their social activities. Finally, the guests returned to their villages with sore, weakened chins. After some weeks, “when all the sore chins had healed” and “when their skin had become strong again,” as Alapua said, the invitation was reciprocated. Now the former guests invited the hosts of the first yafa vo’alovo back to their village. This return visit took the same shape as the previous one; the young people enjoyed themselves, went into the bush and roasted sweet potatoes, caught fish in the river, sang together, and practiced yafa, chin rubbing. During such times, the parents and adults left the teenagers to themselves and usually did not interfere in their activities. They acted in a nurturant way and not strongly. It was, however, always a great and exciting event for a whole community when an invited party of youngsters arrived in the village for yafa vo’alovo. Tau told me that when he was a curious small boy, he and his agemates used to hide and secretly observe the young people—his elder brothers,

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sisters, and guests—trying to catch a glance of them doing yafa. The little boys sneaked through the bushes, followed the teenagers around, and peered through the walls of the grass house in which they slept. Sometimes they were caught, Tau remembered, and were beaten up for their naughty behavior. Yafa vo’alovo stressed the relationships between unmarried young people of the same age-group from different tribes and clans. Its focus was not on exchange of gifts but on opening up a wide choice of possible future relationships without the expectation of any serious commitment at this stage. The courting ceremony gave playful entertainment and excitement to one another without the responsibility of committing to further exchanges of personal essence in the future. Nevertheless, many young women and men found their future spouses during yafa vo’alovo. Since Tau’s generation, yafa vo’alovo has disappeared in its formalized sense. In Napamogona, I observed that most teenagers still share their first flirting experiences with boys or girls from neighboring villages, and groups of teenagers still visit each other in their respective communities or meet at the river. However, such meetings are today less formal and hardly controlled, resulting in an increasing number of unwanted pregnancies and unmarried young mothers. Most Bena villages today have a “clubhouse” or an area where dances are held on the weekends. During such dances, alcohol is often consumed heavily. Bena teenagers today also meet their friends in Goroka town, during the day or when they visit town dances in local discotheques. The growing use of modern communication technology, especially mobile phones, gives further options for meeting new friends and significantly extends the relational networks of Bena teenagers today (see Jorgensen 2014).

Conclusion The life-cycle rituals and concurrent exchange ceremonies I have described in this chapter represent changes in the balance of nurturing and strengthening aspects of nogoya’a in and between persons of different lineages. While most het pe exchanges focus on the reciprocal detachment and attachment of productive nurturance with the aim of nurturing and strengthening persons from a person’s maternal and paternal sides and thus establishing long-term, binding relationships between them, male initiation, for example, is more about the detachment of weakening essence and its replacement with strong parts. Neheya is particularly concerned with detaching weakening female essence from the young man and therefore also detaching him from his mother and her lineage. He receives, however, a new, male “mother” and has attached to him the assertive strength he receives mainly from that person during initiation. Male initiation seems to aim primarily at creating a male community of strong warriors in the present, thereby displaying a strong rather than nurturing attitude

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towards exchange. Female initiation is also concerned with detachments of “bad” (weakening) essence and includes the display of overly strong behavior towards the girl. However, while the detachment of “bad” essence in male initiation indicates that men will now become strong, in female initiation it rather implies that the girl becomes nurturant. Like other het pe exchanges, female initiation stresses the nurturing aspects of exchange relationships with the consequence of binding together different lineages in the long term. All the ritualized exchanges described, however, are grounded on an understanding of the person as partible, expressed in the idea of an exchange of nogoya’a leading to a new balance of strength and nurturance inside of and among persons. I argue that one of the main underlying reasons that some of these exchange rituals have fallen into disuse and why others continue may lie in the different effects they have on the balance of strength and nurturance in persons and their exchange relationships. Of the mentioned het pe exchanges, male initiation has more or less disappeared during the last few generations, while female initiation is still practiced—slightly modified by the use of Western goods such as money and beer but structurally and conceptually consistent. What strikes me here is that the exchanges that are maintained are those that concern an exchange between a person’s maternal and paternal lineages that transcends generations and links the two groups in a long-term relationship, thereby stressing the productive side of nurturance. By contrast, the practices that have been abandoned refer mainly to the strengthening of relationships among persons of the same age group and are more concerned with the strengthening and assertive aspects of nurturance/nogoya’a. The influence of Western cultures seems to have initiated a shift of priority in indigenous practices that led to the decline of primarily strength-oriented practices (as male initiation), preferring instead those focusing on nurturance. This had various reasons. One contributing factor to the dismissal of male initiation may be found in the gradual decline in perceptions of female “pollution” (or, rather, strength). Christian values, such as the co-residence of the nuclear family, promoted by “strong” (wealthy) white people, suggested a different, less rigid separation of the sexes. Menstrual huts disappeared and are not used any longer in today’s Bena (except for some very remote places in Upper Bena), nor are there real men’s houses. Husband and wife today live together; the separation of the sexes, although still present, has become less strict. Consequently, the somewhat dangerous cleansing ritual of cane-swallowing has lost importance. Of course, the church exerted further influence on abandoning male initiation practices. It despised the detachment rituals, such as cane-swallowing, and judged them as evil and satanic—in other words, as weakening. Thus, the new cultural perspectives confronting people in Bena in regard to male initiation were basically of two kinds: first, the aspect of female pollution could be less threatening than they had thought, and, second, the pur-

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portedly strengthening cleansing rituals now threatened to instead be weakening but could be replaced by truly strengthening Western practice. Western cultures promised to offer replacements for the evil practices of the past and, indeed, displayed a considerable and apparently convincing amount of strength in the exchange relationships with the Bena that led to the abandoning of male initiation as whole. Parts of it, however, have merged into other practices. Since the concept of female pollution, the danger of strong nurturing essence, is still present in Bena today, some men practice cane-swallowing occasionally independently from initiation; others induce vomiting by other means—for example, by drinking the liquid of special plants. Young boys may receive such “juice” from their grandfathers to cleanse themselves of their mother’s weakening parts, but this is no longer done in an initiation ceremony nor does it take place on a regular basis. Furthermore, I heard men on many occasions complain about how weak they were today and how strong their forefathers had been. The reason for this, they argued, lay in the change in gender separations and the lack of male rituals. Many men in Bena today see themselves as far more exposed to weakening female essence. They are concerned about an increase in female pollution and a decrease in ritual practices to counterbalance it. From this perspective it is not so surprising that the reintroduction of male initiation is today being discussed in various Bena communities—especially in times of warfare when assertive strength is most required. Further, that parts of neheya are even shown today on public occasions may appear at first glance as a commercialized staging of “indigenous traditions” for tourists; but if one takes the aspects of strength and nurturance into account, the picture changes somewhat. Being paid for the performance of cane-swallowing, for example, means the detachment of weakening essence is accompanied by a gain in strength through the acquisition of a strongly nurturing part of Western “essence”: money. The detachment and attachment of money in Bena exchanges have thus added a new means of giving and receiving strength. Male initiation has to some degree merged with elements of Western culture, and as a cultural practice it is still undergoing transformation. The criteria for this merging, however, remain rooted in the idea of receiving strength through personal detachments, a process that involves the dismissal of some relationships (mother) and their replacement with other, stronger, ones (male mother). Without wanting to overinterpret, I would, in this context, like to point to an interesting similarity between male initiation and the transformation of cultural practices in Bena as such. Both share a process of detachment from something that is considered weakening and involve a replacement of weak relationships with supposedly stronger ones, thereby enforcing a nurturing exchange. In other words, transforming a practice such as male initiation is somewhat like male initiation itself: gaining strength by detaching parts that are considered weakening.

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The courting practice of yafa vo’alovo also aims at strengthening relationships between “age-mates,” in this case, however, between the sexes and in quite a pleasurable and playful way (as opposed to initiation). Yafa vo’alovo is not concerned with anybody’s maternal or paternal lineage, nor with one’s clan identity or tribal membership. Rather, it gives young people from different groups/villages/clans/tribes an opportunity to experiment with each other and find out who they like and who not; possibly—but not necessarily—with the intention of finding a future husband or wife. The church has played a crucial role in the abandoning of yafa vo’alovo, which was seen as promiscuous and sinful behavior. The acceptance of the exchange relationship with God as the strongest and the one that is given the highest priority has led to a negative valuation of previous “bad” practices and exchange relationships that were accordingly stopped. At the same time, the church provided new forms of social gatherings for young people, for example in church activities (camps, evening worship, etc.), and gave them opportunities to meet their age-mates— albeit in a less physical way. Another reason why many elders do not support the continuation of yafa vo’alovo is “the lack of discipline among youngsters today” (Tau, personal conversation, 2005)—in other words, their weakness. People fear that if yafa vo’alovo were held today, it would result in excessive drinking and smoking of marihuana, leading to sexual encounters and leaving young women pregnant without husbands. Thus the Bena perception of yafa vo’alovo has changed and adapted to new circumstances (especially the presence of alcohol and “lack of discipline and strength”). Courting today is therefore ideally mainly taking place in strong and secure fields, such as the church, where young people are not entirely left to themselves but “guided” and “educated” (through the strength of Western cultures) when approaching the other sex. Again, Western perceptions suggested that the indigenous practices were actually bad and weakening, rather than strengthening, and offered an alternative for the acquisition of (possible future) nurturance, an alternative that many Bena apparently came to view as stronger than their previous practices. One can now conclude that the “abandoned” ritualized exchanges described in this chapter were replaced by, or merged with and—in the regard of acquiring strength—even extended by, conceptually similar practices of Western culture. Yafa vo’avolo, for example, was replaced with youth-group activities of different kinds, while parts of neheya—for example, cane-swallowing—have remained and were conceptually even extended because the Western strength of money became part of the exchange ritual. Further, it seems that het pe exchanges that focus on long-term nurturing exchange relationships between a person’s maternal and paternal kin have remained strong and undergone only minor change,25 while those that link persons of the same (young) age group

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in the present and/or encourage discipline and strength (and not primarily long-term nurturing exchange) have ceased—possibly because their aim of increasing strength can be covered and extended by new, stronger practices from Western cultures. There is, however, no equivalent of the nurturing and binding het pe exchanges to be found in Christianity or Western economy. According to Bena understanding, it is the exchange between maternal and paternal lineages that gave a person his or her nogoya’a, that nurtured him or her so he or she could grow strong and become a person (develop his or her meha’a and sikrafu’i). Through attachments of parts of both parties, a person links others from different kin groups in exchange (through conception, birth, and following exchanges). This kin-oriented binding exchange of nogoya’a cannot be fully replaced by Western practices. The dependence on strong and nurturant relationships with allied groups is of utmost importance in Bena culture. Whom else should one rely on in times of crises? Even if strength can be found in Western contexts (money for firearms, for example) one needs the nurturing support of maternal and paternal kin in everyday life. It will have to be seen whether this will hold up over the long term, but I venture to argue that exchanges in Bena that have the function of “gluing together” maternal and paternal lineages will continue, while the role of other forms of exchange that focus more on relationships between age-mates and the increase of assertive strength may change according to the specific circumstances (for example, exclusively male rituals may undergo a renaissance in times of warfare).

Notes 1. I am deliberately excluding marriage and death rituals from this chapter, because these two major rituals of transition would have to be treated extensively in their own chapters. 2. For comparison, see Bashkow’s (2007: 175) description of Orokaiva culture, where, different from in Bena, infants—although not seen as incorporeal—are said “to consist of only ahihi, ‘spirit’” (my emphasis), a notion that is to some degree comparable to the Bena meha’a (see Iteanu 1990 and Schwimmer 1973 for a detailed description of ahihi). 3. I surmise that it is considered an insult because it denies the child its own personhood and indicates that it “only” consists of others’ nogoya’a, therefore being dependent and still without meha’a. 4. This may at first glance appear confusing, since one would think that the fetus is actually made of the combination of the father’s and mother’s nogoya’a (inherent in semen and the nurturing capacities of the womb). However, according to Bena ideas, the conjoining of male and female essence is not completed until birth; the baby may still be lost, in which case the nurturing capacities of semen are lost and the exchange of male and female parts fails. In line with this perception is what some men in the village told me: that sexual intercourse should actually only take place in order to pro-

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duce children, otherwise it weakened the men because they gave away their nurturing semen in nonreciprocal and non-nurturing exchange, without receiving (options for) future relationships through the birth of their child. Usually in the early months of pregnancy, a women who wants to abort her child chews specific leaves and the bark of a tree, together with magically treated ginger. In doing so she induces a miscarriage. Her brothers slaughter the pig for her, but she distributes the meat. Blood is to the North Fore a “vital life-giving and life-symbolizing essence” (Berndt 1962: 72; Glass 2011: 17). Glass (2011: 17) points out that “the sharing of the same blood or substance is embodied in the North Fore understanding of a clan (katu) as a unified entity that shares ‘one blood.’” It may be that the nogoya’a given to the in-laws is indirectly a means to nurture the child while it is still in the mother’s womb because it ensures the in-laws’ present and future obligation towards child (and mother). Then it would be logical that the mother should not feed on the nurturance given to the child in her body—her own nogoya’a. Her husband would by eating food that indirectly nurtures his own offspring (who consists partly of his own nogoya’a), implicitly weaken his child and take away nurturance. Such terminological cross-references in kin relations are common in some Papuan languages and also in Tok Pisin (for example, a child may call his grandfather “bubu” and vice versa). To my mind this reflects a crucial element of Bena kinship: it is the relationship that is named rather than the two “individual” parts of it. I cannot think of any ritual exchange in Bena that is completely one-sided. But there is a clear understanding of a group of “main givers” as opposed to “main receivers.” I mark the exchanges as “first” or “second” because of their chronological sequence and their relation to each other; one has to bear in mind, however, that other het pe payments may have taken place in between. A mother consists of her own mother’s and father’s kin’s nogoya’a, which nurtured her and with which she nurtures her child. Her child again exchanges parts of this essence with a person of its mother’s kin, often a person of the child’s maternal grandparents’ generation who was close to the mother; in other words, a person who has previously given nogoya’a to the child’s mother, which is now being returned to him or her through personal detachments from the child. In my description I have so far focused on het pe payments that center on a person’s mother. However, a person may throughout his or her life conduct numerous het pe exchanges with his or her maternal and paternal kin (luta’a and gne) and may decide to honor his or her mother or father. In the latter case, the paternal cousins will receive the gifts and reciprocate in the same way as the maternal side does (as described above). Nando would in this case not be supported by his father’s lineage in gathering the payment but by his maternal side. This clearly shows that the expectation of reciprocation is the main feature of exchange relationships in Bena. Creating such expectation, here by inviting others to give, is a—if not the—crucial strategic means of establishing, negotiating, or confirming relationships (see Wagner 1986: 215f.). It has a spatiotemporal dimension to it that embraces the time period between eliciting a gift, receiving it, and reciprocating, as well as the temporal linking of exchanges to life cycles and the “individual’s transformation through birth, marriage and death.” (Glass 2011: 20).

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15. Interestingly, money is not given by the mother’s brothers in gu’i nimi payments. 16. The fear of being weakened through women is still present in Bena. Men frequently suspect women of intentionally polluting/weakening them—for example, by giving them food while they are menstruating. 17. The term apo or apaso is today widely used as a synonym for “friend.” When referring to the previous meaning (men who were initiated together), most men today use the English term “age-mate.” 18. This form of cleansing is still practiced in Bena—for example, when a man feels weak or after he had close contact with women. Tau told me that in his great grandfather’s generation, men would do it on a daily basis. After having eaten, they waited for some time to let the “juices [nogoya’a!] of the food get into the body,” then they would swallow the cane or induce vomiting by other means to rid themselves of the negative aspects of the food. Especially when food was given to one by persons one did not fully trust, this method helped to prevent poison-damages from the food. 19. The payment implies that the girl’s mother’s lineage has little or no rights to claim any gifts that are held on behalf of the girl in the future. The bride-price, for example, will later be shared mainly among her father’s lineage. 20. It has been argued for other areas in PNG that women do not need to be “cleaned” from female polluting substances because they are, as women, meant to have them attached to their persons (Lutkehaus and Roscoe 1995). 21. Their third-born, a girl, was given the name “Aileenacharles” (Aileen-and-Charles), a name that reflects the partible concept of person in regard to children; they consist of the father’s and mother’s nogoya’a, here expressed in their names. 22. The fact that her consumption of liquid is minimized might point to the idea that a girl is “wet” and “soft” (malo) when she has her period, characteristics that need to be balanced out by giving her mainly dry food. 23. The Bena term “young people” is generally used synonymously for “unmarried people.” This clearly shows an emphasis on social status in regard to exchange relationships defined by life-cycle events. Usually an unmarried (not a divorced or widowed!) person is also referred to as pikinini man or meri, a “man-child” or “woman-child.” This description does not necessarily reflect a person’s age. 24. While all my adult or middle-aged interlocutors showed disgust at the Western ways of kissing and found the idea of having “another person’s tongue in the mouth” ridiculous, even appalling, the younger generation has widely adopted to Western kissing. Of course, internet and media have a great impact on the changing attitudes towards sexuality. 25. I do not intend to play down the impact of money and alcohol consumption present in today’s exchange ceremonies, but my focus here is rather on structural or conceptual changes and I argue that these have not taken place in het pe.

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Figure 4.2: Body decoration for female initiation, Asaroyufa

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Figure 4.3: Red coloring

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Figure 4.4: Coloring

Figure 4.5: Proceeding to exchange

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Magical Practices and their Transformations in Modern Bena

In previous chapters I introduced the concept of the “dividual” person in Bena and with it the reciprocal dynamics of nogoya’a, “nurturance,” and the growing of sikrafu’i, “personal strength.” As I have shown, in enacting exchange, persons detach parts of themselves in the form of objects, which retain their connection with them. When the object is received, these parts become attached to the person of the recipient, who is then compelled to reciprocate with a detached part of him/herself. I argued that, in Bena, such exchanges are concerned with creating different balances of nurturing and strengthening aspects inside and among the persons involved, with some exchange rituals focusing more on the strengthening side (male initiation) while others emphasize the nurturing character (het pe) of the relationships. The latter appear to have undergone relatively little change since the encounter with Western culture, while the former seem to have faded away or merged into newly introduced schemes of exchange. Below I will describe a set of social exchange practices that aim at manipulating the flow of nogoya’a to one’s benefit and usually to another person’s disadvantage. It can be seen as an antisocial, non-nurturing, aggressive, and overly strong form of exchange. Practices of this kind are found in the realms of what Westerners would call extraordinary activities of magic and witchcraft, which are integral parts of ordinary life in Bena villages. As Forsyth and Eves (2015) pointed out, more definitional clarity is needed regarding terms such as sorcery, magic, and witchcraft. Often these are used interchangeably, and they “can also be viewed as dangerously neo-colonial, and reference European traditions that are highly inappropriate in the Melanesian context” (Forsyth and Eves 2015). Most anthropologists draw in their use of the terms on the work of Evans-Pritchard (1937) among the Azande in Africa. Evans-Pritchard distinguished between sorcery and witchcraft “on the basis that witches are seemingly possessed of an innate and unconscious propensity to harm others, whereas sorcery involves the conscious and deliberate manipulation of objects and/or spells to achieve a desired outcome” (in Forsythe and Eves 2015: 4). For practical reasons, I will also stick to this dis-

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tinction. However, one needs to bear in mind that in social reality the situation is more complex. This complexity is expressed, for example, in the indigenous terms used to describe what we may label as sorcery, magic, or witchcraft: puri puri, mura mura, dikana, vada, mea mea, or sanguma in Papua New Guinea; vele and arua in Solomon Islands; and nakaemas, posen, and black magic in Vanuatu (Forsythe and Eves 2015: 4). In Bena language I did not find one term that encompasses all magical practices. Rather, as I will show in this chapter, each practice has its own name. The reason for any unexpected event, whether it be sudden sickness or death, a bad harvest or a decline in someone’s fortune, is seen in terms of some magical practice that was inflicted on the affected person by another being—another person, a sorcerer, a spirit, or a witch (Forsyth and Eves 2015: 1f.).1 In such situations, sorcerers—“magic men” or poison man as they are referred to in Tok Pisin—are consulted. In Bena, like in other Melanesian cultures, “the practice of sorcery is bound up with maleness” (Courtens 2008: 62). Bena sorcerers are highly respected and feared men and usually experts in both harmful and protective magic. In this way, sorcerers, like sorcery itself, are perceived ambiguously. They can kill, but they can also heal (Courtens 2008; Forsyth and Eves 2015: 10ff.). Unlike witches, sorcerers work on demand and get paid for their work. When consulted, they advise people on how to behave regarding their specific situation and they apply the required magical practice to achieve their client’s goal. In the following, I will describe six magical practices, each of them illustrated by at least one case I witnessed in Napamogona between October 2003 and November 2004.2 In these examples I reveal how magical practices consist of the manipulation of the balance of nurturance and strength inside a person and of the manipulation of the flow of nogoya’a between persons and cover different fields of magical belief, ranging from poison or death magic, which aims at weakening and/or killing the victim (gunakfe’i, nami, gejana), to protective magic that strengthens a person in situations of need, when he or she has lost nogoya’a and lacks nurturance (lugefa, lakehusa, yago ologo vefa). I will further investigate some of the changes magical practices have undergone since the encounter with Western culture and shall attempt to explain the reasons for these changes.

Gunakfe’i Gunakfe’i magic is a “traditional” death magic that is today also expressed in Tok Pisin as pulim asrop, “to pull out someone’s anus and intestines.” According to my interlocutors, it came to Bena from Okapa, a region that is known as the heart of magic in the Eastern Highlands and consequently feared for that reason. Gunakfe’i magic in Bena carries features of different magical

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practices of death magic that are applied in a number of Papua New Guinean and other Melanesian societies and date back a long time (e.g., see Courtens 2008; Forsyth and Eves 2015; Lawrence 1987; Mead 1935, 1977; Mihalic 1971; Mitchell 1975; Stephen 1987). These features merged with previous magical Bena practices and new influences from the Western world to turn into gunakfe’i as it is known today. In gunakfe’i, it is believed that male sorcerers bewitch other people and kill them slowly by pulling their victims’ inner organs out of their bodies and refilling their bodies with rubbish. In doing so, they forcibly detach vital parts of the victim’s person and attach non-nurturing and weakening parts—rubbish—instead. As a consequence, the bewitched person lacks nurturance, loses strength, becomes weak, and—if not healed in time—finally dies. Gunakfe’i can be conducted in various ways, and the symptoms the victims display before they die vary accordingly. In relation to exchange, one could say that gunakfe’i is a forceful (excessively strong) and nonreciprocal acting in which the sorcerer withdraws vital essence from the victim, who is thus weakened until he or she finally dies. Esi described the possible procedure of a gunakfe’i killing as follows: a woman walks home from her garden by herself. On the way she is approached by a sorcerer who intends to kill her. His motives can be numerous; either he himself has a grudge against the woman or he is hired by someone else who wishes her dead. The act of hiring is in this context a form of exchange that is founded on an agency between the client and the sorcerer through the strength of money: the sorcerer is nurtured by the money he receives, his strength increases, and with the application of a strong magical object, the lakehusa,3 he becomes strong enough to extract his victim’s nogoya’a and weaken the sikrafu’i. One could say that he forces his victim into a non-nurturing exchange relationship with him. The moment in time when this exchange is initiated (by the sorcerer) is crucial for the successful outcome of the project and must be chosen carefully. It requires a long period of preparation to find the right moment for a gunakfe’i attack. This time of preparation is mainly used to gather strength from various sources (ancestral spirits and other persons involved in the killing) to make sure that the sorcerer’s strength will be sufficient to overcome the victim. The latter needs to be caught unexpectedly and alone. The time to prepare an attack is not measured in days or weeks but in the quality of the exchange that takes place. When enough strength is added and the circumstances are good (the victim is alone), the attack is launched. With the help of the lakehusa, Nando told me, the sorcerer makes himself invisible to everybody except his victim. He moves towards the woman, they greet each other and shake hands, and from then on the woman will follow the sorcerer’s requests. The strength of the sorcerer has affected the woman. In approaching her, the overly strong sorcerer has already forced parts of his

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strength on the woman and weakened her mind and spirit to such an extent that she gives him her complete obedience. Then he asks her to come with him. After leading her into the bush, he pulls out the woman’s asrop, “anus and intestines,” thus depleting her of nogoya’a. Then he fills her belly with weeds or wood, or today also with broken glass, coffee beans, nails, screws, and empty tins. Sometimes he cuts off the woman’s breasts or, in the case of a bewitched man, he might remove his testicles. These acts reflect the depleting of a person’s nurturance on a physical level, the breasts being the seat of the nurturing mother milk and the testicles containing nurturing semen. A sorcerer may also put knives or razor blades into the victim’s throat and cut his or her neck from the inside. After having met the sorcerer, the victim forgets everything. This is another act of strength from the sorcerer. He forcefully detaches his victim’s vital essence and its thoughts and memories. The bewitched person will go back to the village as if nothing has happened. He or she will not have wounds or any visible signs of the encounter, but will become sick very soon afterward and die if not treated in time by a healer. Generally in Bena, if there is a magic for one particular thing, there also is a counter magic—an idea that works according to the logic of detachments and reattachments of personal parts to create new balances of nurturance and strength. When nurturance is lost, it can be replaced, provided that the reasons for the loss are found and dealt with. If, for example, a case of gunakfe’i is diagnosed in time, there is the chance of reversing the spell (the extraction of nogoya’a) and healing the victim with the help of a sorcerer or witchdoctor.4 Such healing practices often involve the consumption (the attachment) of specifically treated (“bespoken”) ginger that is said to possess strong nurturing powers and strengthen the body (see Courtens 2008: 63f.). The kind of damage that the sorcerer has done to the victim will be reflected in the kind of disease the affected person develops. If, for example, someone’s belly was filled with rubbish, the person is likely to suffer from internal problems such as stomach ache, severe constipation, or diarrhea; if it was the knife-in-the-throat approach, then he or she will lose his or her voice. Tau described a sorcerer’s strategy when exercising gunakfe’i in detail: The men [sorcerers] will come and they have a special thing that they will throw over you. They will hold a stone or stick and attach it to this thing that they own. Then they will hold it with this thing and step over you or they will throw this stone or stick over you and it will confuse your mind. You won’t scream for help and shout out loud. You will be quiet and surrender. You can see the sorcerer but you won’t talk. You will be helpless. He [the sorcerer] will weaken your ability to scream or fight back and he will confuse your thoughts. So you are confused and helpless and then they come and get you. When they got you they can do all kinds of things to you to destroy you. They can cut your neck from the inside or cut your

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body open and fill it with things from the outside. Or they can close your neck and work such poison magic. Once they did this to harm you and your body, these sorcerers can determine the time you have left to live until you will die. They may even tell you how you will die. (Tau, interview, 2004)

The “special thing” that Tau refers to is the lakehusa object that is part of a sorcerer’s main magical equipment. I will explain its forms and functions in detail later. Through the strength of this object, the sorcerer is able to weaken the victim. He extracts the inner organs, and with it a person’s nogoya’a, and replaces the nurturing essence inside with non-nurturant and therefore weakening rubbish from the outside. As I have mentioned, the rubbish that is used in Bena today for this purpose is different from what was used before Western goods arrived in the Highlands. The change of items used in Bena magical practices reflects a general openness and flexibility in their conduct. New influences are tried out and incorporated into practice if they are proven to be “strong”; if not they are dismissed and replaced. The integration of new goods into magical exchange thus relates to the strength that such objects are assumed to have. The “new” objects brought by white people arrived in Bena two to three generations ago. Considering the colonial past and the personal experiences of the Napamogona with the white colonial administration, it is not surprising that those goods were generally considered to contain a great deal of strength and were therefore incorporated into exchange. One can assume that the strength ascribed to Western goods partly reflects the overly strong behavior that the white strangers displayed in exchange. Interestingly, the objects that have been introduced into gunakfe’i share two main characteristics: they are all perceived as strong and as non-nurturing. Tins are containers of food (nurturance) that were once bought through the strength of money and are therefore seen as strong, but depleted of their content they become rubbish—non-nurturing. Screws and nails, made of strong metal, have the function of holding things together strongly but can in other contexts (for example when attached to the body) cause damage; coffee beans possess strength because they are cash crops that can be turned into money, but if not used for that purpose have no nurturing value.

Gunakfe’i and Meha’a In line with what I have written on the concept of person, I argue that the sorcerer actually manipulates (weakens or paralyses) and kills a person’s sikrafu’i and confuses a person’s meha’a, “spirit,” which, during the person’s lifetime, depends on the balance of nurturance and strength, nogoya’a and sikrafu’i. If, through magical practices, the flow of nogoya’a is interrupted, a person is

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no longer nurtured. If, further, he or she is, as in gunakfe’i, depleted of nogoya’a, the physical (sikrafu’i) and spiritual (meha’a) strength of a person is diminished. Draining the victim’s strength means weakening a person’s inner voice, his or her thoughts, and with it his or her meha’a—or it may mean that the person is too weak to listen to his or her meha’a.5 Either way, the sorcerer “robs” (in the sense that he takes up a negative exchange relation to the victim) the victim’s life force or vital essence. Consequently, meha’a is deprived of nurturance and becomes weak. The weaker meha’a gets, the more likely he or she is to be seen outside the body in the form of a person’s exact image. In such situations, through a lack of vital essence, meha’a is forced to leave the body and seek nurturance from outside sources. The externalization of meha’a usually indicates a person’s imminent death, which can only be avoided by the slaughtering of pigs. The smell of the steamed meat is supposed to lure meha’a back to its body. Thus, in gunakfe’i, a sorcerer affects the victim’s life through the detachment of nogoya’a and the attachment of weakening parts to the victim’s person. This overly strong, forceful, and “negative” form of exchange diminishes a person’s sikrafu’i, “strength” or “life force,” and weakens meha’a. The sorcerer interrupts the flow of nogoya’a between the body and spirit and cuts its external supplies. At least in the situation of the encounter between sorcerer and victim, this becomes very clear. Not knowing what he or she is doing or undergoing means either that the person has lost the connection to his or her meha’a (does not hear him or her) or the meha’a has lost his or her strength to communicate—to exchange—with the person. In both cases, the relation between meha’a and other parts of the same person is disturbed. The balance of nurturance and strength within the person is changed to his or her disadvantage. At the same time, the sorcerer cuts off the external exchange relations that a person possesses. He usually attacks when a person is alone. Therefore, during the encounter, the victim is also deprived of any support from the outside. He or she “functions” but, having no external way of acquiring nurturing and strengthening support, is forced to follow the instructions of the overly strong invisible sorcerer. Although at first glance it seems that the sorcerer manipulates a person’s body rather than the spirit because he fills it with rubbish, it becomes clear on closer examination that instead he manipulates the relation between body and spirit that is founded on the exchange of material and nonmaterial (nogoya’a) parts of the person.

A Sorcerer’s Instructions Sometimes a sorcerer instructs the victim to undertake specific abnormal, antisocial, or endangering activities when he or she comes home. Esi told me

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that, in one case she witnessed, the sorcerer had instructed his female gunakfe’i victim to go home, cook her vagina, and give it to others to eat. The consumption of the vagina, which is in its detached state a source of anti-nurturance, may have a weakening impact, especially on the male consumers; but its detachment mainly weakens the woman herself. Esi told me that the woman, bereft of will (and strength) and her vagina, became sick shortly after coming home from her garden. On one of the following days, the sick woman insisted on preparing and distributing food to her family. The food included what Esi first considered to be pig meat. However, when Esi saw black hairs on the soft meat she became suspicious. She realized that she might have eaten the woman’s vagina. On the following day, the sick woman refused to let Esi, who took care of her, wash her between her legs. Esi concluded that this was because she did not want her to see that parts of her vagina were gone. The woman, depleted of her inner organs, her vagina, and her strength, died three days later. A sorcerer may also instruct his victim to instigate situations of trouble or hardship that may lead to his or her death. This strategy helps him to disguise the real cause of the person’s death (gunakfe’i) because people may think that the specific behavior the victim displayed is the reason for the death. Tau gave me a hypothetical example of what a sorcerer might say and the outcome of his words: “We do poison magic on you now. We instruct you ‘Go home and fight with your wife. She will hit you with one hand and you will fall down and die.’ If they instruct me like this, I will come home and start a fight with my wife for no good reason. After they have poisoned me, I will do so. The anger grows and my wife likes to talk and I get angry and I want to fight her but she gives me a punch. I will fall down and die. Because the ones who want to destroy me have instructed me already” (interview, 2005). In this example, Tau shows that the sorcerer is even able to permeate a person’s meha’a with his own in order to give bad advice to the person, like starting a fight for no reason. He has weakened his victim to such a degree that it confuses the sorcerer’s advice with its own will and acts antisocially or overly strongly, until its cure or death. One might notice that Tau speaks in the plural form when referring to the people who kill other persons through gunakfe’i. Although it is usually one sorcerer who carries out the sorcery act, the intentions, the planning, and organizing of this magic is teamwork. In Tau’s words, Dispela gunakfe’i wanpela man i no save mekim. Ol man i save go long tim na wokim, “this gunakfe’i can’t be done by one man only. Some men form a team and do it.” Tau’s statement implies that one person’s strength is not enough to conduct a gunakfe’i killing. Rather, it is the combined strength of a group of men that makes the magic work. The single sorcerer is here the executing force in a conspiracy against the victim.6

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Gunakfe’i Cases in the Village I felt the presence of gunakfe’i in Napamogona in everyday life. The general fear of becoming a victim of a gunakfe’i attack is always in the air and people are very cautious about their safety. Attacks are often conducted out of jealousy and greed, and most persons know of a number of people they fear for that reason. To remain safe and successful, a sorcerer attacks when a person is alone and therefore weaker than in the presence of others. Thus, in Bena, one avoids being by oneself when walking to the garden or the bush. Being with others enhances a person’s strength and protects him or her from being bewitched because even if the sorcerer is invisible to others, they would still witness the victim’s strange behavior and suspect his presence.7 Being alone, therefore, is something that does not happen very often in Bena. Like most Westerners who come to Papua New Guinea, I was surprised and at first had some problems adjusting to the fact that one has almost no privacy while in the village. People will simply not let one walk around alone. The belief in gunakfe’i explains why being alone is seen as unsafe. It is not only for fear of enemy attacks or loneliness but also because one endangers one’s life and becomes an easy target for sorcerers. While staying in Mama Polako’s house, I was surprised to find that even when I had to leave the house at night to relieve myself, somebody would get up with me and wait outside until I came back. But this became understandable when I realized that Bena people believe that a poison man prefers to hide near people’s outhouses and attack them there because this is one of the few occasions where people actually are by themselves. When alone on the toilet, people are, through the physical action of excreting, already in a process of externalizing their inside (asrop) and therefore in a perfectly exposed position for a gunakfe’i attack. During my stay in Napamogona, I witnessed a number of incidents that were attributed to gunakfe’i; some of them had severe consequences for the community. In the following I will tell the story of a gunakfe’i killing that had taken place in Napamogona as retaliation for the death of an important man. Nando was heavily involved in this case.

Nando’s Retaliation In August 2003, a month before I arrived in Napamogona, Nando’s father’s younger brother—Nando’s “small father”—became unexpectedly very sick. He lost his voice, became, as Nando said, wik na wik moa, “weaker and weaker,” and by the end of the month he could no longer speak at all. He lost his gufa nogoya’a. His breathing deteriorated and after some days of suffering he died. The suspicion that he had been killed through gunakfe’i was strong and fueled by the fact that his death had to do with respiratory malfunctions. In

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Bena, breath and life strength are synonyms, both expressed in the term sikrafu’i. Losing the strength to breathe indicates a lack of nogoya’a, “nurturance,” and consequently a loss of strength, sikrafu’i. The rumor spread that a sorcerer had cut the victim’s neck from the inside, making the man lose his voice and his breath, thus weakening him and causing his death. But who had killed him and who was involved in the killing? Nando told me, “About my uncle, we suspected some people had done teamwork. Some men from inside our family [hauslain = extended family that resides together] met with some neighboring villagers and did it. They killed my little father [father’s younger brother]. And we here thought who might have done that and we did our own research and we took a long time to find out who had done it” (interview, 2005). As one can imagine, I was interested to learn more about the “research” that was undertaken to find out who was involved in the killing. Nando’s explanation was both fascinating and shocking. When people do gunakfe’i, they hide. It is a secret activity. We, however, know some signs that reveal the evildoer. When my uncle died we organized a big feast to end the mourning period. On this occasion, we, the family members, wanted to go first to prepare the bed for the food and distribute it to others, but one man who was not supposed to be in the front went to the front and stayed there. While we prepared the bed of food and while we distributed the food among the family, he came and followed us and participated and also distributed food. This was the first [suspicious] thing I saw. The second tip was that while we were preparing the bed for the food and sharing it, one man chewed betel nut and stood in front of the bed. There he spat betel nut, right in the front. In our tradition, betel nut symbolizes the blood of a man. And anything related to a man’s life, anything that represents his blood, one has to be careful when doing [something with it]. But at this time, the second sign we noticed was that on the place where we prepared the bed to display the food, he came and spat betel nut. So that was the second hint. Now we suspected him already, this man who spat the betel nut, and we watched him. His next move was that he got drunk. He drank and drank and got very drunk with an old man and acted very joyful. One of our family members spied on him and overheard a conversation between him and the old man. The old man said, “Everybody will know. You act like this but you should not. Everybody will know.” So he talked and we got this information because one of our family members spied and saw with his own eyes that the man was drunk and heard with his own ears what the man said. He said, “This drunkenness you have because you celebrate the death of this man. Everybody will notice. Leave it.” So I mobilized all my boys and we went and got hold of this old man and asked him, “On that occasion you have talked like that and we want to hear now what you said.” The old man was under pressure. We forced him to talk. He was scared because we had captured him and threatened him. He just said, “I have nothing to say. Go and ask that man to talk,” and he named the man we suspected (interview, 2005).

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To Nando, the fact that the man had ignored the hierarchical order during the preparation of the food display and during the distribution of food among the participants at a pinisim sori feast was sufficient to make him suspicious of having played a strong role in his uncle’s death. In doing so, he had publicly put himself forward as stronger than the hierarchy and provoked the persons in charge. By joining too readily in the food distribution he had acted as if he were a close relative of the deceased, and by standing in the front he showed lack of respect towards Nando and his kin. The distribution of food is related to a nurturing exchange (of vital essence) between the participants of the feast and—through the invoking of the deceased’s spirit and by offering him steamed pig—between the dead spirit and his living descendants. The dead spirit is nurtured in order to ensure a reciprocal—or at least a nonharmful— relationship with his living descendants. Depending on the relation between the living and the deceased, each attending person (or group) will receive their share of food in a clearly defined order. Ignoring this order is tantamount to refusing to participate in nurturing exchange. In his disrespectful behavior the man displayed antisociality, excessive strength, and self-centered greed, all signs of sorcery. It is thus not surprising that such performance creates mistrust and suspicion. He acted like a sorcerer would have, except a professional sorcerer would have done so secretly. Even worse than participating in the distribution without being entitled to was the fact that the man dared to spit his red betel nut spit out in front of the food bed. As Nando pointed out, betel nut spit is associated in Bena with blood and thus with strength and life force, and also with its destructive capacity. It is taboo to display such attributes at a feast that is held to honor the dead and release his spirit into the world of ancestors. By spitting near the food, the man mocked the blood and life, nogoya’a, of the deceased and possibly externalized his own strong essence and its destructive powers. Obviously this provoked the deceased’s close relatives. Finally, the culprit even became publicly drunk and seemed to be in a happy and joyful mood. Given the grief and therefore weak state of the people attending, it is quite clear that this display of overly strong behavior caused anger among the deceased’s kin, who themselves reacted strongly. A pinisim sori feast is not the right occasion to get drunk and celebrate joyfully. Such behavior is considered inappropriate and ruthless—aggressively strong. It represents the strong, aggressive, non-nurturing aspects of exchange and threatens the balance of nurturance and strength in favor of one party. It also shows lack of respect for temporal norms of social conduct—for example, the mourning period for the deceased. Nando and his men concluded that this man (who displayed antisocial behavior in its extreme) must have been involved in the killing of Nando’s uncle. However, they wanted to be sure, so they sent a man to spy on the suspect. The

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conversation between him and the old man was the third and final proof they needed to take action. Nando recounted the retaliation: So my next move was to mobilize all my boys. I sent them down to capture the man that we suspected. They went and surrounded his house and his wife admitted it. She said, “This man and this man are the killers.” So she gave us a list with all the names of the men who were involved in the murder of my uncle. All the names she listed were the names of men that we already suspected. All the suspects were on that list. So then we knew, and we went to take revenge on these people. In our next move we mobilized and went and surrounded these men and we killed one of them. The man who performed the killing, that’s the one we killed. Four others we took hostage. Two ran away. One we had killed already as a payback for my uncle’s death. Four we captured and took home as prisoners. They [their kin] paid us five hundred kina [compensation] for each, so two thousand kina altogether, and we released them. (interview, 2005)

Let me add some more details to the story that Nando did not mention in this interview. From different conversations, I gathered that Nando’s men entered the suspects’ village and began to surround the houses. They acted strong and dangerously, brandishing their guns and threatening to shoot everybody unless the four suspects were delivered. When asked, Nando explained to me that he would not really have ordered his men to kill innocent women and children and that he merely intended to put pressure on the people so as to get hold of the culprits who were hiding. In doing so he weakened them through the detachments of his strength (threats and violence) until they gave up. Three of the accused men turned up, but the main suspect was nowhere to be found. Consequently, Nando decided to take an innocent man as a substitute. He told the latter’s family that he would be released in exchange for the ringleader of the conspiracy. After this announcement, Nando’s men burned down several houses. This act of aggression again indicated the strength of Nando and his men. The reason for it, according to him, was that some sorcerers were hiding strong magical objects in their houses, objects that needed to be destroyed. Otherwise they might be used later to retaliate and kill Nando and his men. After the destruction of the enemy village and the weakening of its inhabitants, Nando and his men withdrew with the four prisoners. They were locked in a house and firmly guarded. Apparently, these hostages were treated badly—they were “humbled” and weakened, as Nando put it. One of the men’s ears was cut off—a forceful detachment of nogoya’a as it is practiced in gunakfe’i—others were forced to eat food that Nando’s men had urinated on—a forceful attachment of their aggressive, non-nurturing, weakening strength. Several humiliations and injuries were performed until some days later the enemies arrived with the main suspect. According to

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Nando, the man was brought to Napamogona by the relatives of the substitutehostage. While Nando was turning around to free the latter and take him to his kin in exchange for the suspected murderer, he heard a shot, as he told me. He said he turned around and saw that “one of his boys” had shot the man in the head. To him, the payback for his uncle was now complete. Now only the hostage fees had to be paid. A few days later, Nando’s previous enemies came and paid the compensation he had demanded: five hundred kina per person. Nando received the two thousand kina and released the hostages. To him, the conflict was settled, and to show his desire to reestablish good relations— which means the balance of nurturance and strength in exchange with each other—he returned one thousand kina and slaughtered a pig for the “enemies.” The meat was distributed, the people involved ate together and the conflict was settled to everybody’s satisfaction. The strength on both sides had been subdued through nurturance. No police officers were involved, and no court case was held, although at least one person had been killed. In the end, the balance between nurturance and strength in the exchange relations was reestablished through the payment of the compensation and the exchange of food and thus the detachments and attachments of nogoya’a.8 The role that money has assumed in such contexts is crucial. Money has become an additional important object in Bena exchange and has with other “strong” modern items such as tins or screws also found its way into magical practices. It embodies Western strength in its highest form. One can buy everything for money—from goods to magical practices. Detaching money from one’s self and giving it to others to attach to themselves is thus a means of displaying strength by offering nurturance. In Nando’s case, the compensation money nurtured him, and he reciprocated by feeding the donors with pig meat. When he returned half of the compensation money, he further displayed his strength, indicating that he was strong enough to do without the full amount. The conflict between the two groups was settled. However, Nando’s problems were far from over. Somebody—probably a person who had a grudge against him for other reasons—had taken advantage of his or her knowledge about the killing and reported Nando to the police. The police came, excavated the body of the man who had been shot, and for a while tried to arrest Nando and his men, who had temporarily escaped into the bush. Later, Nando was forced to stay in the village and could not show his face in Goroka town for months because he would have been arrested on the spot.

Nami, Nalisa, and Lipina The second main informant in my research on magical practices, apart from Nando, was Tau. The more time we spent together, the more he became interested in my anthropological work. He bought himself a notebook and started

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developing a plan for my research. On occasion, he interviewed Nando for me and provided me with background information that would otherwise not have been accessible to me. As my adoptive father and as a person who “nurtured” me with ethnographic data, Tau displayed strength in his relation to me. At the same time he saw the chance to elicit from me a broad documentation of village life and history for him and the community. Such documents could be shown to their descendants, used in land disputes, or as proof for certain inheritance issues. They would, in the future, become a source and sign of clan strength and identity. My video camera became the main tool for this purpose, and I produced a series of four small village documentaries on different topics in return for his support in my research. When Tau heard that I was interested in magical practices and wanted to interview some old people on this topic, he first introduced me to Koliopa Tete, an old man and former leader of Jogijohi clan. I had not seen Koliopa before because he was too old and weak to walk around and spent his days sitting in his house, mainly eating and sleeping, awaiting death. He was pleased to see me and enjoyed talking about his life and the past. Koliopa told me about another form of poison magic that, according to him, had been used in the Bena area before other magical practices such as gunakfe’i were known. He said, “Long ago there was only one form of poison magic. They called it nami. This is something that they put in the food and give a man to eat and then he dies” (Koliopa Tete, interview, 2004). According to Koliopa, there are two different ways of exercising nami. Each of them involves parts of certain plants that are treated specifically, and then directly or indirectly given to the victim. In the first nami magic, the overly strong juice of a tree, lipina, is mixed into the victim’s food. It “burns the intestines” and kills the person who eats it. As Koliopa described this form of nami, it sounded very much like the direct physical poisoning of a person’s body by actually giving him or her poisonous substances to eat. The other application of nami magic does not require direct physical contact between the substance and the victim. In this case, lipina is mixed with nalisa, pieces of the branches of a growing tree that are cut small. These two substances are mixed until they form a fine paste. During the process, the mixture is bespelled by sorcerers. They detach strong words from their persons and add them to the already strong mixture. No other man is allowed to hear what the sorcerers say or come near the place where they prepare their deadly substance. When the paste is dried it resembles a rough powder. Then the sorcerer holds it in his hand and blows it into the wind, into the direction where the intended victim lives. Koliopa Tete explained, “Just blow it in the wind. They hold it and blow it so that it goes and they talk and their talk goes and gets the man. They hold it and their talk goes into it and they hold it in their hands and say ‘Go and take this man’s heart’ or ‘go and take this man’ or ‘damage him in

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this way.’ They say something and look into the direction of the man, position themselves towards the man, and this thing gets the man and makes him sick” (interview, 2004). The powder that is blown into the wind contains the sorcerer’s strength (it is carried to the victim by his sikrafu’i, “breath”) together with the strength of his magical words. It represents the assertively strong, aggressive side of strength without nurturance. It is thought to enter the victim’s body through the air that he or she breathes. Once internalized, it commences its destructive mission by weakening the victim’s body and making him or her sick. Similar to other plants, or parts of plants, that play a role in magical practices the lipina/nalisa substance is seen to have inherent power by itself; however, it has to be activated through the strength of magic words and directed by the sorcerer who calls out the victim’s name. The magic words include the names and advice of ancestral spirits, whose nurturing powers give strength to the substance. They represent a link between the past and the present. In the exchange that is taking place between the living and the dead, the chronology of time is lifted, and relations of different time spheres are synchronized.

Gejana Of the different magic poison techniques that exist in Bena today,9 gejana is probably the most common one. It is easy to apply and easy to catch, is very effective, but usually not as strong as, for example, gunakfe’i. Tau explained how it worked: Gejana is the kind of poison that you get by touching something. You get it from wherever they have put it. For example, if you wash your clothes and you hang them on the line and a man comes and puts gejana poison on them, and you take the clothes in later—when you touch them you get it. Another way is getting it from the garden food. When the food is ready, they go and put the poison on it. When you see the food has grown and you are ready to harvest, when you touch it, you get it. Or, another way is you can get it from the road or gate. The gate is one way of getting it. You open it and go in and out, you will get it. Or, if you are the driver and owner of a car, they can put it on the door of your car or on the door of your house. So when you open the door to get in or out you will get it. So you get gejana when you touch something (interview, 2004).

Apparently, there is no way to see if an object is gejana poisoned or not, and therefore the only way to reduce the possibility of getting poisoned is to take care what one touches and to not leave things—for example, clothes on the line or dishes drying in the sun—unattended. Objects that have parts of

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one’s nogoya’a attached to them always refer back to one’s self. Another person can take an object and attach this personal part to him or herself, and by manipulating it weaken the person whose nogoya’a it contains. People who get gejana are usually the victims of a planned gejana attack. However, it can happen that the wrong person is affected by accident. Since gejana is an invisible substance that is put on a specific spot—for example, a gate—anyone who touches it will get it. If someone has caught gejana, he or she usually develops symptoms such as sore wounds, eczema, or skin infections that become extremely painful. This indicates a reversed process of essence flow: Gejana—which is “given” in an overly strong and therefore negative and harmful form of exchange—is internalized, and nogoya’a—the nurturing aspect of essence—is externalized and forced out of the body (for example, in blood or the pus of wounds). The victim receives gejana and gives nogoya’a. This process can be seen as another form of reciprocal exchange; however, it is unexpectedly forced upon a person through the sorcerer’s strength and puts him or her in a weaker and disadvantaged position. As in gunakfe’i, the victim is unaware of being bewitched until physical signs of weakening appear. There was no time to be prepared and no choice about entering this relation. Thus, the purpose of this negative exchange is not the building of a relationship but the weakening of the victim by forcing him or her into negative exchange. He or she involuntarily reciprocates a gejana attack with nogoya’a, thus giving away nurturance and as a consequence losing strength. Gejana does not focus primarily on killing a person but rather on making him or her weak. Although gejana might occasionally lead to death, this is not its main goal. It is instead applied to torment the victim with physical pain. Tau himself was a victim of this kind of poison magic. Some years earlier he had lost his right middle finger through a gejana attack. I got it and my hand got damaged. I got it from the gate. They put it on the gate to my garden. Whenever I go to the garden, I touch it, and that is how I got it. It made my hand swell. I asked the healer and he came and helped me. It was very, very painful. Gejana is a painful sickness. You will suffer. Its pain is more than normal. You want to take treatment from hospital, but it won’t stop it. You want to take pain killers; they won’t stop it. The healer came and helped me, and when the pain stopped I went to the hospital and they cut my finger off and gave me treatment and it healed. If you go directly to the hospital, it won’t heal. You will die. So here we know that when we are poisoned, the first thing is to go to the healer, the sorcerer; they come and heal it first and then we take the treatment from hospital to finish the cure. If we go directly to hospital, the treatment won’t work. The medicine won’t help. So I am a victim of this gejana poison and my finger had to be cut off. (Tau, interview, 2004)

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The local healer has a special way of curing gejana wounds. Koliopa Tete told me that sorcerers use special plants that they collect and bespell. They cut the plants up while speaking the secret magic words10 and then mix them with fresh meat and steam them in a bamboo tube. The first juice that develops is squeezed onto the affected skin, if it is an open wound. In a case of swelling, the healer will first open it up by “shooting” a small arrow into the swelling. Today, pieces of broken bottles are also used for this purpose. Then the healer rubs the liquid into the wound while whispering his secret magic words. Shortly after, the wound “cools” down and the pain decreases. Only after this procedure can one go and complete the cure with medicine from the hospital. Like the act of poisoning, the healing process reflects a process of externalization of body fluids (opening of the closed wound) and an internalization of outside essence (rubbing of medicine). However, here nurturance that increases strength is internalized, while the destructive part of essence is drawn out of the body. In other words, the act of poisoning has been reversed and the original balance of strength and nurturance in a person has been reestablished. Gejana magic is usually applied because people are jealous or angry with another person. They then become (or act) overly strong. Like other magical practices in Bena, gejana is centered upon an exchange of personal essence. A gejana victim gets the disease through physical contact with the (invisible) poison that has been strengthened by a sorcerer before it is “rubbed” on the spot the victim touches. This empowering involves the saying of magical words that include the name of the intended victim. Once touched, the poison enters the victim’s body through the skin, which consequently becomes infected. As opposed to gunakfe’i, gejana is not completely internalized. It has no impact on a person’s meha’a; it does not influence someone’s mind or thoughts, and it does not make a person act strangely. Rather, in a very physical way, it weakens the area touched. In this way one could speak of a localized withdrawal of essence. It can be healed by adding strong essence to the affected area. The juice of special herbs combined with the healer’s strength can cure the weakened skin. If not treated at all, however, gejana may gradually weaken the body and finally lead to death.

Yago Ologo Vefa: Delaying-Plans Magic After the killing of Nando’s hostage had been reported to the police, several people accused Nando himself of being the murderer or at least the “wirepuller.” Although Nando “kept his head down” and stayed in the village, my relatives expected the police to come at any time, raid Napamogona, and arrest Nando and his men. Nando told me about specific precautions he had taken against his arrest. They involved the planting and ritual growing of a

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specific plant that can be used for what Nando called the magic of delaying time. The plant that makes people delay their activities until they finally forget about them is called yago ologo vefa which in Bena means “tomorrow repeated.” Like the victims of gunakfe’i, victims of yago ologo vefa are forced to detach their thoughts about a specific enterprise from their minds. The plant can block the road to unwanted intruders by confusing and weakening their minds and their ability to plan their time. The expert Nando hired to help him distract the police from their plan of raiding the village planted a small yago ologo vefa in front of Nando’s house. To direct the plant’s powers in the desired way, the sorcerer induced magical words into the plant while slowly putting it into the ground. These words included the names of two police commanders in charge of Nando’s case. Nando told me that “he called the names of the PPC Provincial Police Commander and of the police man who was in charge of the court case for this murder. He called the names of the two and added his magic words, and he took his special plant and planted it and called the names of the two men and put them into the plant together with his words” (interview, 2005). The bespoken plant becomes the container and transmitter of the magical strength (see Courtens 2008: 62f.). This force consists partly of the sorcerer’s nogoya’a and that of the words he uses while planting it.11 In Nando’s case, it was meant to confuse the minds and thoughts of the victims, and it was directed towards them. While ginger in war preparation enhances its power through the literal “injection” of essence, the yago ologo vefa receives its first strengthening when it is bespoken and put into the nurturing ground. The inclusion of the names of the two intended victims into the words that are spoken during this process evokes their images and relates the sorcerer’s strong essence to them. Once this connection has been established, the third party, in this case Nando, becomes part of this set of social relations. He is the one who seeks protection, and a part of him—more precisely a part of his nogoya’a—needs to enter the plant in order to make things happen. Through the ritual planting practice, the sorcerer initiated the strength of the plant and gave the spell its direction. This strength of the plant, of the sorcerer, and of the words he used was then combined with aspects of Nando’s person. From then on, it became Nando’s duty to maintain the flow of essence and keep it flowing in the desired direction. To do so successfully, Nando had to follow precise instructions: The man who planted this plant for me told me that I must get up every morning and piss around this plant. Urinate near it. So that the steam of my urine will come up and the plant can smell it. When it takes urine from me through the ground it grows. Urine also fertilizes it. He said, “Every morning you must come and urinate here. First, the talks will be hot. Now the plant is not yet growing. After

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a while you will see. When this plant begins to grow, it develops roots, and at the same time the smell of your urine comes and holds it, then it will get the two faces of the police commanders. The talk will cool down and they will forget.” They will say “I will come next week” or “I will come tomorrow.” Tomorrow comes and they say again “tomorrow” or “next week,” and the “next week” comes they will again postpone it until “next week.” They will add time for a while and then they will forget. So that is what I did and now I am in the “next week” and again in the “next week” and how many next weeks … I am now in the fourth month. (Nando, interview, 2005)

Nando explicitly describes the process that takes place when he is entering the set of magical exchange relations—between the sorcerer, him, the police commanders, and the plant, the latter as transmitter of the vital essence that is exchanged. By urinating near the plant, he gives nogoya’a, nurtures its growth, and adds strength to the strength it received from the sorcerer. A flow of personal nogoya’a from Nando (inherent in his urine) to the plant occurs; one can say that Nando detaches a part of his person and exchanges it with the plant; or rather with the other involved parties through the plant. This is reciprocated when the “talk” of the men “cools down,” when they forget about their plans. By forcing their strength on the men and confusing their minds, Nando and the sorcerer weaken them. They are forced to reciprocate in the desired way, namely, by forgetting their plans. When the plant feeds on Nando’s urine it grows. Only then will it be strong enough to affect the policemen. It is most interesting in this context to note that the sorcerer expressed it as em igo kisim pes bilong tupela bosman bilong polis, “it takes/gets the faces of the two policemen.” It could be that he refers to the policemen’s meha’a (often described as the face or image of a person in Tok Pisin), which would then be manipulated by the magical practice. This assumption does in fact make sense. The meha’a is the advising aspect of a person, one’s inner voice or spirit. Thus, if the police change their plans and delay their activities because they are “confused” and forgetful, it indicates an external manipulation of their meha’a. The latter then changes its advisory function because it is manipulated in favor of others. The flourishing of the plant indicates success—trouble will remain far— whereas bad growth is seen as a sign that the magic is not working and danger is approaching. Nando’s situation developed as he had hoped. The plant grew quickly and became strong. Nando was pleased: “So I am not scared of the police now. The plant is already growing. I just stay. They may say next week on Sunday or Monday the police will come down, or next week Monday or Tuesday the police will come down—the police will not come! So this thing is to block the road, to delay time. And you can see it! The police add time and add time and I am here. It’s the fourth month now! The police won’t come

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here. … They won’t come because the man I hired blocked the gate of the police station and the road to the village. So I am here (interview, 2005). In the last sentence Nando mentioned that the sorcerer had blocked the gate of the police station and the village road with specific spells. In order to do so, he applied a related means of magic bilong blokim rot (of which there are many). This type of prevention magic involves a tiny piece of dried wood (around three to five centimeters) from a branch of the plant—a small magic stick. It is said to work like a barrier if treated correctly. Nando explained: They take a special stick. If there is trouble and you don’t want this trouble to happen and take its course, you go and block the gate or door of the man you want to make forget about you. Example: In my case now with the police and my boys, we can go and block the gate of this policeman. He will come and go through the gate where we put it and he will step over that stick. We put it into a hole on his way and he will step over it and he will say “OK we go and arrest Nando and his people tomorrow.” The next day comes and again they say “next day.” The next days go on and on until eventually he will completely forget about it (interview, 2005).

Like a powerful plant has to be activated, a magical stick is not magical “by nature” but is cut and bespoken by a sorcerer or by a person who possesses the required specific knowledge, who knows the words and formula to evoke its strength. Again, the sorcerer detaches parts of his essence (and that of his ancestors and possibly other spirits) and forces their attachment to the intended victims. This ritual practice enhances and vitalizes the object. It is about a transfer or exchange of vital essence between different parts of the participating persons, in which the magical object functions as a container and transmitter of essence. The various precautions that Nando had taken made him sure that even if the police considered arresting him in the village, they would delay their plan and eventually forget about it. Until my departure five months later, the police had indeed not come to Napamogona, and given that the killing happened more than one year before that, it seems unlikely that his case will be followed up. According to Nando, this proves the efficacy of his magic. He told me later of two further outcomes that he clearly linked to the applied magical practices. About six weeks after the planting, the police officer in charge of his case left Goroka, and the Goroka police commander was transferred to another place. Two things Nando had wished for happened, and it seemed that at least one of the many struggles in his life had faded away. Through the flow of nogoya’a from Nando to the plant—expressed in the giving of his first morning urine (another temporal aspect), a hot and strong substance—the plant becomes strong. With this strength it forces the victims to follow the sorcerer’s demands. There is a third way in which parts of the plant are used in the magic of delaying time or preventing actions. In this case, mainly the leaves of the

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plants are used. They are burned, and the smoke is said to reach the enemies or unwanted persons and confuse their minds in the same way the magical stick does. They delay their plans and forget; in other words, they detach their prior thoughts and unknowingly replace them with the sorcerer’s advice to delay their plans or give priority to other activities. Yago ologo vefa magic possesses a clearly time-related feature. Through the confusion and weakening of a person’s meha’a, his or her time strategizing is manipulated. For example, although the police had planned to come to the village and arrest Nando, they never managed to carry it out because they were forced (through the sorcerer’s, the plant’s, and Nando’s strength) to keep on delaying it. Their priorities shifted, and they postponed their original plan day to day for weeks until they finally forgot all about it. Here a form of merging of time regimes takes place. Another example of “delaying-time magic” was given to me by Tau, who once offered to prove his magical skills to me by making me change my departure plans—that is, delay them until I would forget all about Germany and stay in Napamogona forever. I did not accept the offer and hence returned to Germany as planned. However, Tau’s perception implies that a Western time schedule can become subordinated to Bena magical practices and that its microscopic chronology can be manipulated according to the same principles as other objects or people. Or rather, that people can be manipulated so that they change, or rather, forget their time schedules.

Lugefa In March 2004, I met the oldest living man in Napamogona. Kolumalo Maginoka from Jogijohi clan was not only one of the founding fathers of the village as it is today, but also a widely respected sorcerer who had supported the Napamogona in various tribal fights, as well as in their general wellbeing, with his magic. His age was hard to guess—in some way he seemed timeless—but I estimate he must have been in his 80s when I met him. When Kolumalo was a child, he and his family lived in Nosaga, the place of origin of Napamogona where Tau’s great grandfather Farokave and his brothers had gathered the previously scattered Sigoyalobo clan members. Some Jogijohi had made their residence with Sigoyalobo in Nosaga, and some of their descendants still lived there. Nosaga remained part of the village; however, it had shifted from being the center to becoming the hamlet on top of a small mountain at the farthest northeast side.12 Kolumalo’s whole appearance—although the one of an aged man—reflected strength and pride. He had incredible self-confidence and a stubborn expression on his face. He knew who he was and what he wanted, and especially what he did not want. He was one of the last persons who could chant secret stories of origin. He possessed

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very specific magical knowledge and powers and had contact with the world of the spirits. His main reputation, however, was grounded on his ability to look after the wellbeing of his kin by applying a special magic that is called lugefa. Lugefa magic covers the realms that are necessary for a community’s wellbeing, such as pig magic, magic that enhances the growth of plants, and war magic. In this way, it clearly refers to nurturing and strengthening aspects. It requires the use of some specific magical objects of which Kolumalo was the proud owner. The central object in lugefa is an old clay pot that he inherited from his father. This is what he told me about it: This is from our forefathers, from our ancestors long ago. It is not from today. My ancestor came and married here. He came and he carried this pot with him and he used it when he came. … The first ancestor who set foot on these grounds brought his pot with him and we take care of it. Balig’e brought it here and he gave it to his son Silve. Silve gave it to his son Gosa. Gosa gave it to Sijo. Sijo gave it to Manulepa. He gave it to his son Ariofo. Ariofo gave it to me. So that is seven generations. I will give it to Jacob. If it does not break, Jacob will give it to his son Manive or Tom. This pot won’t go to another man. … This pot covers all needs and sorts out difficulties. But it does not cure diseases. It is for garden work, for the pigs, for the community. Here we have two clans, Jogijohi and Mekfimo. This pot watches over them. And you, down there, Sigoyalobo and Napayufa, you have your own. (Kolumalo, interview, 2004)

It becomes clear from the way Kolumalo presents the chain of inheritance that a great deal of the pot’s magical power stems from the ancestors who owned it, added some of their nogoya’a to it, and thus strengthened the object. Its age, measured in exchange relations rather than years, give it its strength. These exchange relations connect past and present; relations—and practices or activities—in the present are affected (in this case strengthened) by detachments and attachments of nogoya’a from the past. Kolumalo’s pot itself is a symbol for the balance of nurturance and strength, and its use in magical practices reflects this aspect. No matter what issue is at stake, lugefa always involves the cooking of food in the pot and its distribution to the relevant people and/or their possessions. This process enabled them to attach traces of the ancestors’ strength to their persons. In the case of pig magic, for example, Kolumalo cooks special food in his pot and adds secret magic words (including ancestral names), thereby transferring some of the residues of ancestors that are present in it to the cooked food. The magically enhanced food will then be given to the pigs to make them grow quickly and multiply in great numbers. The same technique is applied for garden magic. Further, if a tribal war is looming, lugefa is said to strengthen the warriors and

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ensure the defeat of the enemies. Kolumalo said, “I can use the pot and cook special food for fights to prepare the men who want to fight. If there is a fight with bows and arrows, I cook the food here, special food, and the men come and put their bows and arrows near it. I will take the food from here [from the pot] and rub it on the displayed weapons before the men go to fight. The enemies will not chase you and you will not lose. Everything—cooking food, garden work, caring of pigs, or tribal fights—this pot serves every need of the community (interview, 2004). The food that was prepared in the “strong” pot nourishes and strengthens the warriors and their weapons. Kolumalo approved of our filming the magic pot, but he did not reveal all of its secrets. He told us, however, that the pot alone is not enough to conduct the magic. There are some other items that are used in lugefa magic. These things are secret and nobody except Kolumalo himself and his son Jacob, who was chosen to inherit the pot after his death, were allowed to see them. Apparently, Kolumalo had hidden these other objects and buried them in the ground at a secret place. Obviously, he was not going to tell us what kind of objects they were nor how they were used. He said, “When I become weak, I will give it to Jacob. Everything I will give to my son Jacob, and Jacob will look after it. This thing and the other things that I buried on top of the mountain are still here. And I will not show these things I buried there to anyone. Only Jacob will see them. Everything that is needed to do this magical work is there and all these things together with the pot I will give to Jacob and he will do this work. I will teach him how to do the work with this pot” (Kolumalo, interview, 2004). These words of Kolumalo had a specific function that lay beyond the mere information they conveyed. When Kolumalo had agreed to Tau’s request that I be allowed to film and interview him, he had something quite delicate in mind. He felt flattered and wanted to support my work, but he also wanted to convey different messages to the people in the community. Knowing that I would edit a film for the Napamogona and that he was going to be part of it, he chose to use the camera as a means of saying things indirectly to his kin. The first of these issues was that Jacob would inherit his knowledge and his position. This may have upset some of Jacob’s brothers who actually counted on becoming Kolumalo’s successors. Making his decision public and especially telling it into the camera was a slap in the face of Jacob’s brothers. It was a clear demonstration of strength. At the same time, it assured that none of them could come after Kolumalo’s death and claim the pot because it was officially documented who was to inherit it. The videotape became a source of “proof ” of the old sorcerer’s last will. The second message that Kolumalo sent to the community was even more disturbing. He announced that he had put a curse on the two clans—Jogijohi and Mekfimo—because they had not respected him.

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My people don’t appreciate me and now I have put a curse on them. I don’t help them anymore with the pot. They put me down and talked badly and I cursed everyone in Jogijohi and Mekfimo clan. I put them into the toilet. That means I caught them and now their lives will become worse than in the toilet. I used my magic words and the bush grows around them. I damaged them already. Their place is overgrown with bush and you cannot see them. They are there but it does not look as if they were there. Their food does not grow either. I cursed these two clans and now their situation is bad. When I die, the curse will go with me and nobody will be there to take it away. So while I am still alive, they must come and kill a big pig and we shall have a feast and I will release the curse. If they don’t do that and I pass away, I will block everything and go. So they must come and apologize and kill a pig and then I will bless them. But they have to do it soon. I am getting weak already and if I die, the curse will stay with them. (Kolumalo, interview, 2004)

This message to his people was clearly a threat. It was also the first time, so Tau told me, that Kolumalo expressed it publicly. There had been complaints by Jogijohi and Mekfimo clan members shortly before about weeds growing everywhere and that they could not get rid of them. With his statement, Kolumalo explained the cause. His detached words, a curse, effectively withdrew the land’s nogoya’a and made it weak. However, he offered to reverse this depletion of nurturance if his relatives apologized by nurturing him and thus soothing his anger (lessening his excessive strength). A young boy who witnessed the filming was sent to deliver the message. While he was gone, we asked Kolumalo if he had used the pot for this curse. He denied it. Apparently the pot cannot be used in the practice of cursing others. It is meant to be used exclusively for nurturing and strengthening purposes. The curse was based on magic words. The pot, however, would play a role in releasing the curse, by renurturing the weakened land and people. Unfortunately, the two clans did not react to Kolumalo’s demand in time. The old sorcerer died a few weeks after the interview and no one had come and apologized to him yet.

Lakehusa Most magical practices in Bena involve certain magical items or objects that are crucial for their successful conduct. These objects are seen as strong in themselves, but they acquire their effectiveness in magic through the “essence” (that of the sorcerer, the person who wants to apply the magic and, depending on the context, the essence of certain spiritual beings and/or ancestors) that is induced into them from the outside. They are seen as containers and/or transmitters of this combination of powerful personal essences. This also applies to a secret and widely feared magic that is called lakehusa. The term lakehusa refers to a very strong object that can be used for different pur-

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poses in Bena. Lakehusa enables its owner—the one who attaches its strength to his person—to overcome spatial and temporal boundaries and exercise specific superhuman skills. With the help of the lakehusa, a man can detach a part of himself and fly, become invisible, create a double of himself that can act in his place, manipulate others’ thoughts and minds, heal people who have been affected by poison magic, or use the object to kill people through poison magic. As most of the magic in Bena, the appliance of lakehusa power is restricted to men only. No woman is allowed to see, touch, or use these objects in any way because, on coming into contact with women, lakehusa is said to lose its strength. This perception may have its rationale in the dangerous strength that women are said to possess, especially inherent in their detachable body fluids. Their destructive strength might weaken the object and make it useless. Lakehusa objects receive their power through the complex process of their production, during which men with specific magical knowledge—the knowledge of certain magical words and spells—undergo a period of seclusion. They detach themselves from the village for several weeks and take up their residence in the bush, where they remain abstinent (detach themselves) from sexual activities and follow specific food taboos. In the bush, the men mark a special tree of outstanding height and build a platform on its branches. During the following days, the men will live exclusively on this platform. They are not supposed to have contact with anybody outside their group. Women and children especially are strictly prohibited from coming near their secret places. While women could weaken the men and turn their magical practices into meaningless activities, children could be endangered through the contact with the dangerously strong male objects, practices, and knowledge. According to Nando, it is furthermore of crucial importance that the men do not leave the platform while they manufacture the lakehusa. They must detach themselves completely from the ground; otherwise the objects would become weak. That means that the men stay in their tree house for weeks. The objects that are created during such a time of detachment (from social life, sexuality, food, and even the ground) are small round “balls” that seem to consist of tree bark and moss tied together with bush rope. Exactly what ingredients they consist of and how they are manufactured in detail are the men’s secrets. I was told, however, that while the objects are being produced, the men invoke certain ancestral spirits and “put” their magic words (and with it their own nogoya’a and that of the invoked ancestral powers) into the lakehusa. Personal parts of the different spirits are thus joined together in the objects.

Lakehusa grades There are three different grades of lakehusa that indicate its strength. This strength depends on the specific place and the period of time during which

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the object is produced. The third-grade lakehusa is produced on a platform in the lower part of the tree, not too far from the ground. This relatively weak lakehusa will enable its owner to heal people who are the victims of witchcraft and make invisible sorcerers visible to him. The second-grade lakehusa is manufactured in the middle of the tree. It has the same functions as the third but can additionally make its owner invisible and create a double of himself to support him in times of need—for example, in tribal wars. If a man wants to become invisible, he breaks a small piece of the object, puts it in his mouth, and chews on it. He takes into his mouth bits of the spirits’ detached strength inherent in the ball and, like the spirits, becomes invisible. Instantly he will disappear and pursue his secret mission. However, while doing so he must be careful not to swallow his saliva because that would make him visible again. Here, the parts of the spirits are not ingested into the body like food; they are not attached to the person for reasons of nurturance. Rather, their strength affects others, who take in the spirits’ strength by looking for the man without actually seeing him. This second-grade lakehusa can be used for personal and social purposes—for example, creating a double as a means of personal protection, and healing victims of poison magic—but also for self-centered, antisocial aims. In gunakfe’i sorcerers use second-grade lakehusa to make themselves invisible to others while targeting their future victim. They lock the object in their fists and then put the latter in front of the victim’s face. The strength of the lakehusa will confuse—weaken—the victim’s sight and mind; detached parts of the spirits’ and sorcerer’s strength leave the ball and enter the eyes of the victim, leaving him or her blind, speechless, helpless, and bereft of will. In this context, lakehusa is used to manipulate others through the confusion of their thoughts, paulim tingting, in order to harm them. In fact, a sorcerer relies on the possession and strength of lakehusa to conduct his evil mission successfully because it enables him to remain invisible for everybody except the victim. Invisibility is a crucial aspect in exercising poison magic. As Nando put it, how would a sorcerer get hold of anyone if he was visible to those who would recognize him? Surely they would come to help the victim. Further, how should he make a person follow him if not by weakening his or her thoughts? If applied by a sorcerer in poison magic, the lakehusa strength is used to pursue weakening, antisocial, and destructive activities. Nando mentioned that young men abuse this specific function of lakehusa today for selfish purposes. The raping of women falls into this category. The men approach a woman, hold their lakehusa in front of her face and thus confuse the woman’s mind, make her helpless, speechless, and weak. They remain invisible to others but the woman will follow the men and do whatever they want her to without objecting. Her thoughts, ideas and her will, together with her identity, will temporarily be broken through the lakehusa strength. As in an encounter with a sorcerer, the victim will not remember anything that happened later.

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The stealing of goods from others with the help of lakehusa is another example of its antisocial usage. Nando described how it may happen: “I want to steal your purse. I am here [in a distance from you] and I put the lakehusa into my mouth. I won’t swallow my spit and I will come straight to you and lift your bag. You won’t see me coming. And you won’t see your bag either. Later you will look for your bag here. I took everything already. If I want, I can take the bag back and put it next to you. I take all the money, I don’t swallow my spit, and I put the bag next to you. The bag will be there but the wallet will be missing” (interview, 2004). Here, similar to the gunakfe’i example, the second-grade lakehusa is used for antisocial action, namely the deception of others for selfish purposes. The higher the men reside in the tree, the greater their detachment from the ground during the period of lakehusa production and the stronger the objects will be. Thus, the first-grade—the strongest—lakehusa, is made by men who reside high above the ground on a platform in the crown of the tree. Nando stressed that the strength of the object comes from the risk that the men take while living in the top of the tree. They have to deal with strong winds and possibly rain and endure more hardship during the production process than the men in the other positions. Possibly these natural phenomena are perceived as containing parts of spirits that can be attached to the object. The wind, for example, is said to have the potential to carry messages from the ancestors to the living. It is also the carrier of various spells and helps to overcome space. Closer contacts with the spirits and the endurance of physically challenging conditions also increase the men’s strength, as well as the strength of their personal essence that they induce into the objects. This very strong lakehusa has all the qualities of third- and second-grade lakehusa but additionally enables its owner to fly. In order to fly, a man has to break off a tiny piece of a firstgrade lakehusa roll and chew it. Then he spits into his hands and claps them against his legs while thinking about the desired place. In the same moment he will appear at that place. The fact that these objects were exposed to wind during their production may play a role in this context. The parts of strength that enter such a lakehusa come from the spirits of different places whose names are cited during production. In the same way that spirits of the dead can visit the places of their origin through the wind, users of this strong object can detach parts of themselves and fly. Using first-grade lakehusa, Nando told me, requires experience and skill. Without these qualities, accidents can happen and the owner might find himself thrown into the deep bush or some other unknown territory instead of reaching the place he wanted to get to. Nando gave an example: “If you swallow your spit, it [the lakehusa] can confuse you and you will float [through space] and it will throw you into the deep bush and you will find yourself on top of a mountain and you will have to find your way home. It can also make you unconscious. Then you will sleep for a long time

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until you wake up” (interview, 2004). Used wisely and with care, however, it will make it possible for the owner to overcome huge distances in an instant. In this regard, lakehusa helps to overcome the limits of space and time.

The Usage of Lakehusa in Gunakfe’i Generally, every man has the option of possessing and using a lakehusa object; however, the object has to be elicited through reciprocal transactions. Depending on its strength/grade, the prices for lakehusa in Bena in 2015 varied between five hundred and one thousand kina.13 Since this is quite a large amount of money for a person in rural Bena, only few men in the village can afford it. Further, it is not easy to find a man selling lakehusa. They do not operate in public, and one has to inquire carefully where, when, and how to approach them. Lakehusa are, however, necessary equipment for sorcerers, who use them for their various magic activities. People who are known to own lakehusa are therefore often suspected of being involved in poison magic. Nando pointed out that lakehusa plays a double role in poison magic; on the one hand it helps the sorcerers to complete their missions, and on the other it helps to cure the victims later. The evil sorcerer uses his lakehusa for his own security purposes, which include his ability to move around unseen by others and the confusion of the sight and thoughts of the intended victim that will consequently lose his or her memory and not remember the encounter with the sorcerer. However, lakehusa is also the means of reestablishing memory, of clearing the previously confused thoughts (strengthening the weakened mind), and saving the victims of magical poisoning. By licking a very small piece of the nurturing lakehusa, one can regain one’s “normal senses.” Licking the object means attaching nurturing parts of the spirits’ essence. Then the victim can be brought to a traditional healer/specialist for further treatment and can finally be cured. He nurtures the victim and in so doing creates the balance of nurturance and strength in him or her that is necessary for a healthy life.

Nando’s Lakehusa It was a hot and dry day in June 2004 when Nando appeared in front of our house and told me with a serious expression on his face to follow him. He wanted to show me something very special; a secret that he thought would be relevant for my research. Actually, according to Nando, I was not supposed to see it but he wanted to support my work and would show me a secret lakehusa, knowing that in so doing he might put the power of the object at risk. He had consulted a sorcerer, who had told him that it was safe to let me look at this magical object and elicit some explanations, but he was not allowed to tell me

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everything he knew, and he was instructed to take care that I did not touch it. After Nando had explained the secrecy of our mission, we left the village and went to a small hill behind his house where we sat down. He told me to get the camera ready and lowered his voice. His facial expression became stern and secretive and he began to whisper a short introduction on lakehusa magic in general. Then he suddenly pulled two small, round objects out of his shirt pocket and placed them carefully on a mat in front of him. These were his two lakehusa that he had purchased from a renowned sorcerer from a neighboring community. One of them was a third-grade lakehusa that Nando only used for healing purposes; the other one was a second-grade lakehusa for security reasons. He had paid five hundred kina and seven hundred kina respectively, but stressed that they were worth more and that he was given a good price because he had once supported the sorcerer. Nando thus received his lakehusa through gift exchange of partible persons. He told me that he usually carried his lakehusa with him in his shirt pocket, but other men would often hide theirs in or on the handle of their bush knives when they walk around. It is generally important that one’s lakehusa is within reach when required because it has to be physically attached to the person of the user, who must hold it in his hand or put it in his mouth for it to be effective. As Tau’s classificatory brother and as a popular warrior, Nando has to deal relatively often with life-threatening situations. Being bewitched and killed through magic is as much a danger to him as being attacked physically. He emphasized that he attaches his two lakehusa objects only for the purposes of security and healing and that he was not interested in exercising poison magic on others. In fact, he needs his lakehusa to ensure his own security on two levels: as a protection against magic and as a means of avoiding or escaping unexpected, violent encounters in which other persons act overly strongly towards him. Referring to the first threat, his lakehusa, as a part of ancestral strength attached to his person, protects him from a sorcerer’s magical influence. In other words, the object has become attached as a nurturing part of Nando’s person, and he becomes strong enough to withstand a sorcerer’s strength. If the owner of a lakehusa encounters a sorcerer, he will recognize him even if he is invisible to others. The sorcerer’s deception—stemming from the strength of his lakehusa—will not work on Nando when he also holds such an object. Just as the lakehusa works on the eyes of the victim (by disabling him or her from seeing the person that attached it to himself), in this situation it is working on Nando’s eyes by making him strong enough to see his adversaries. It seems as if his lakehusa works here to block the vision-distorting detachment of the attacking sorcerer by weakening the latter’s object with its inherent strength. Nando’s lakehusa will also protect his strong thoughts. It grants him immunity against the weakening and concurrent confusion of his

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thoughts by the sorcerer and thus gives him the chance of leaving or fighting him.

Lakehusa: Companion, Double, Body Guard With the help of lakehusa, a man can also create either a double of himself or a fictive companion that appears in the form of another man. This strategy helps to prevent an attack by the sorcerer in the first place. Nando explained, “I go to the garden by myself. I walk alone and the sorcerer who watches me sees me walking with another person. I myself do not see that other person. But the sorcerer will see that I am with someone. Because of this other person, the sorcerer won’t kill me. He will let me go” (interview, 2005). The sorcerer does not attack a man if he is with another person. His strength would not be sufficient to weaken two or more people at the same time; his plans would become clear to others, and his project would be endangered. The strength of the group would be a threat to the sorcerer. As in the conduct of gunakfe’i attacks, where different persons combine their strength to kill the victim, strength is here increased in groups. Certain situations in Nando’s life require that he himself becomes invisible to others in order to pursue certain secret activities. He may need to spy on enemies to find out what they plan to do, or he may need to hide from strangers who outnumber him and might kill him if they saw him walking around by himself. In some situations, the creation of a double helps him to either distract people from his “real” person or suggest that he is not alone and thus enhance his security by doubling his strength. Interestingly, Nando’s double can only be seen by others, not by Nando himself. “All the others and the enemies see two people walking. This happened often to me. They see me in town and ask me ‘With whom are you going around?’ and then I understand. I won’t tell them that I am alone. I trick them and say that I am going around with some visitor or in-law” (Nando, interview, 2004). Nando called this function of lakehusa “body guard.” To him this was the most important aspect in lakehusa magic because his main concern lay in assuring his and his family’s safety. When his son Tiyo waited for him near the market in Goroka while Nando was busy, Nando always gave him a matchbox. Inside, so he told me, was his lakehusa. On one such occasion, some relatives who saw the child waiting asked him later who the boy next to him was. Tiyo, not knowing what he held in his hands, was then confused because he was alone. Nando, however, knew that Tiyo’s double was next to him, visible to others but not to Tiyo. An interesting aspect of this perception is that lakehusa actually produces an external double of its owner or the person who holds it (such as Nando’s son in the example). This double seems to be a detachable

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part of the person, like an externalized meha’a, but is created in a somewhat ad hoc way through the attachment of lakehusa to one’s person. The strength of the object combined with the personal attributes of its owner make the double. A man’s double is especially practical in concrete situations of danger, for example, when one has to flee—to run away, as Nando said: To run away, I take one stone or stick and hold it together with lakehusa. I put it in front of my face and make myself invisible and nobody can see me. I hold the stone and then I throw it. All men will see a man like me running into the direction into which I threw the stone. They will say, “Nando was here but now he is running away in that direction,” and they will follow him, but I walk on the other side and disappear. When I throw this stone or stick it becomes like me, and everybody can see him [it] go. They can see the man going, and they will tell all the others so that they will turn around and follow this stone. And I will just walk off. And this stone will go into the bush and make a lot of noise, and they will surround it, but I am already far away. (interview, 2005)

It is another object—a stone or a small stick—that, through close physical contact with the lakehusa, internalizes its power and when detached from the owner turns into the sort of double that distracts others from the real person. In situations of tribal fights, this double—also not seen by the person himself but by all others—will support the man’s group and fight in his position at the front line while the man himself fights in a more secured position in the background. In this case, the double will use the same weapons as the real man does and undertake the same actions, but in the front line. Nando explained, “I hold a gun or bows and arrows and I want to challenge the enemy. One man [the double] will do the action in the front line and I will stand here [in the back]. This man will go first and all enemies will see him and attack him. They will shoot him, but he will get up again and go here and there … and me, I will stay on the side. I won’t see this man. But all opponents will see him. This is in tribal fights. Which action I make, he will also make, but he will take lead and be in the front. And the other man in the fight is just like you. I have a gun; he will also hold a gun (interview, 2005). The double of a man thus has three main forms and functions. First, it is the man’s companion, invisible to him but visible to others, and protects him from being attacked by sorcerers or enemies through its mere presence. Second, it can appear in order to be a distraction, to run away and make others follow him while the man takes off in another direction. Third, it can combine the two issues of “body guard” and distraction in the form of a co-fighter in tribal wars, where it appears, as in the first case, as a protective double invisible to

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the man but visible to others; however, here it becomes active and fights even in the front line to protect and support the man as well as to distract the enemies from his real person.

The Lakehusa Double and Meha’a A lakehusa double cannot be equated with a person’s meha’a since it is not seen as an externalized version of something that actually resides “in” the person; instead the double is produced in specific situations out of the lakehusa itself. The double is an externalized (detached) copy of a person’s meha’a. Like meha’a, it appears as the exact image of the living person, has the same age, the same physical attributes. A boy’s doppelgänger, like his meha’a, is also a “boy.” Meha’a has the main characteristic of being an advisor, an inner voice; however, in situations of sickness or death, meha’a is detached from a person’s body and can appear as a person’s double. If externalized it is usually a warning to others. The main function of the double, on the other hand, is to protect the person who holds the lakehusa object. The doppelgänger does not advise the person internally as meha’a does but goes even further and physically protects him from danger. In this regard, meha’a and the double both seek to nurture the person by giving support in the form of advice and protection (protective nurturance). They cover different fields, however. Meha’a represents mainly the inside, whereas the lakehusa double is acting on the external level. Such a double can, as Nando’s wife Mahiname (name changed) told me, also transmit messages or announce the real man’s arrival. Mahiname, who officially does not know about Nando’s lakehusa (but unofficially apparently does) told me that one night she was alone at home with her children while Nando was with the other men in the men’s house. She was already sound asleep but woke up when she heard the creaking sound of the gate opening. Then she heard a knock on the door, but when she opened it nobody was outside. According to her, it was Nando’s double that announced his arrival: “He [the double] came before papa. After that he himself came. This ‘thing’ came and knocked on my door and I knew that now soon the second man, the real Nando, would come” (Mahiname, personal conversation, 2005). Often, according to Mahiname, people would tell her that they had seen Nando standing in front of the gate of the village church although Mahiname was with him in their house at the time. Mahiname apparently knew about the “second person” that can be produced, but she did not (publicly) make the connection with Nando’s lakehusa, since she pretended to have no idea about its existence. However, referring to her husband’s double, she remarked with a certain ambiguity, So mi save em i gat dispela samting, “so I know this thing exists” or “so I know he has got this thing,” which led Nando to grumble, sapos em i go kol nau, em bikos yupela ol meri

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save nau, “if it becomes cold/useless now, it is because now you women know about it.” Nando uses the word “cold” to describe a state of inefficiency or weakness that was caused through a loss of strength.14 The statement that an object has become “cold” implies that a set of exchange relations—in the case of Nando’s lakehusa, for example, the relation between the object, the ancestral spirits and him—has been cut off; that no nurturing exchange takes place. If a lakehusa is hot, it works. It can even make its owner invulnerable in fights, according to Nando: “If I have lakehusa and some men ambush me and want to shoot me into my heart, the spear will come towards my body and then bounce back. The same goes for bullets” (interview, 2004). Thus, lakehusa does not only grant immunity from a sorcerer’s manipulative spiritual powers but also from direct physical attacks. When I interviewed Tau, who is no less of an expert in matters of lakehusa than Nando, he summarized the five main functions of lakehusa as follows. First, it grants security through producing a double that functions as bodyguard. Second, it can make a man invisible so he can flee or hide from enemies. Third, sorcerers can use it to manipulate others. Fourth, it supports a man in tribal fights and can distract people from the owner. Fifth, it is a means of healing people who have been affected by magical poisoning. Lakehusa Healing In order to receive a lakehusa healing, an affected person has to lick the object and in doing so attach parts of its strength to him/herself. Tau told me proudly that he had saved eighteen people so far in Napamogona from dying of gunakfe’i with his lakehusa, among them Mama Polako. He had bought his thirdgrade lakehusa mainly to save himself and his wife and children from being poisoned through magic, but due to an increasing number of gunakfe’i victims in the village, he began to serve the whole community. All his “patients,” said Tau, recovered instantly after they had licked on the object. During such healing sessions, Tau does not use magical words or spells. According to him, the strength that has been inserted into the object during its production is enough to cure the ill. However, the affected persons will not be fully healed by this application. In the case of witchcraft, a sorcerer has to be consulted after the victim’s initial recovery. Only he can finalize the victim’s cure. Lakehusa only brings the victim back to his or her senses because the strength of the object overrides and removes that of the sorcerer, but it does not heal the whole person. Tau said, “They will lick it and will automatically come back to their senses. In one second. It is to open the mind, and then a sorcerer can come and help him [the victim]. If you are very, very late, it is beyond your control. While you are getting the sorcerer you must hold the lakehusa in your hand. You will hold the other person’s life in your hand” (interview,

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2004). Here, lakehusa nurturing healing powers depend on the exercise of the person’s meha’a, namely the conscious, advising, judging part of the person that Tau refers to when he speaks of someone coming “back to sense” and “opening up the mind” of the victim. Generally, the hot lakehusa strengthens the whole person; it lets sikrafu’i grow and clears meha’a of the confusing and bad influences of sorcery. As Tau pointed out, a lakehusa with which a poisoned/sick person was treated is seen as being or containing the person’s life force. If, for example, on the way to the sorcerer, the lakehusa that was used to cure a person is accidentally dropped, he or she will die. Tau’s remark about holding the person’s life in one’s hand when carrying the lakehusa to the sorcerer implies that the object is, in this process, seen as containing parts of the person as well as that of spirits. The question is, which parts? Given that Tau referred to this personal aspect as “life-force,” (personal conversation, 2004) it seems likely that the detached part of the person that is actually carried in the object is his or her sikrafu’i, strength.15 However, there are more kinds of strength inherent in lakehusa than a person’s sikrafu’i. The lakehusa is produced by men under the endurance of separation, of detachment from and denial of female nurturance—and thus under the demonstration and practicing of strength. Producing a lakehusa requires great strength by each participant. Only men who possess great sikrafu’i can sustain the production process in which the nurturance— nogoya’a—of ancestral spirits and of specific magical words are “put into” the lakehusa, thus empowering the object with their personal parts of nogoya’a. It is not one combined essence that enhances lakehusa but rather differently combined parts of nurturance and strength (of ancestors, of the men who produce it, of the secret words, of the user) that pull in the same direction. These strings of strength and nurturance evolve from and mirror exchange relationships, for example, between specific ancestral spirits and the men who evoke them (and attach them to the object) or between them and their clients. Exchange relations have made the lakehusa strong; so strong that it can even create a person’s doppelgänger, as discussed above. It is created through the strength of combined parts of nogoya’a that are inherent in the lakehusa, and by attaching it to one’s own person and thus adding one’s own essence— parts of one’s own person. The meha’a of the living and dead persons and powers that are involved in the production of the lakehusa impart their essence into the object and thus exchange it with the owners/users of the objects who also add parts of themselves, their nogoya’a—and in some cases sikrafu’i—to the charm. This process is expressed, for example, in the physical attachment of body substances that contain a person’s essence to the lakehusa. To become invisible, one has to chew bits of it and must not swallow the spit; to be cured, one licks it; to create a double, one throws a stone that one has held together

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with the lakehusa; to fly, one chews parts of it, spits in the hands, and claps them on one’s leg. In Napamogona, Tau has a reputation for healing gunakfe’i victims. His social position in the village rises with his readiness to help, especially since he does not charge for the cure, unlike magical experts. Hiring a sorcerer to save gunakfe’i victims costs about two hundred kina for one treatment. Thus, by beginning the healing process with his lakehusa, Tau saves not only people’s lives but also some of their money, and in doing so he enforces future exchange. Those who are cured and their kin are obliged to reciprocate at a later stage.

Conclusion The examples of magical practices I have described and analyzed in this chapter reveal that magical exchange in Bena cannot be separated conceptually from more seemingly mundane acts of exchange and agentive exchange. Like these, magical practices involve a specific manipulation of the flow of nurturing vital essence, nogoya’a, in exchange. The way in which this flow is influenced determines the rise and fall of a person’s strength and nurturance and thus his or her exchange relationships. The different kinds of magic in Bena that I have described in this chapter share some further features. In all the practices, this flow of essence is channeled through different material objects or substances that receive strength through nurturance—nogoya’a—that is attached to them. Such strong magical objects are considered to be containers and transmitters of essence detached from a variety of persons—and in this regard are like persons themselves because they are plural in their composition.16 Thus magical practices work on detached parts of persons and spirits that, when they become attached to the victim or benefactor, create a new balance of nurturance and strength in him or her.17 In magical practices, the flow of nogoya’a is manipulated through the exertion of excessive strength, which in most cases corresponds with the denial of sources of nurturance.18 Hence the ideally reciprocal balance of essence flow between exchange partners shifts to benefit one side (which becomes stronger) and to disadvantage the other side (which becomes weaker)—without reversing the situation at a later stage through reciprocation; in other words without the intention of building a relationship. Exchange between sorcerer and victim in Bena magical practices is therefore generally characterized by negative reciprocity. It is a short-term and one-way exertion of excessive strength that aims at changing the balance of nurturance and strength inside the victim, usually by depleting him or her of nogoya’a and thus weakening sikrafu’i. It is not surprising that the reactions to supposed magical attacks resemble those

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to failed exchange and concurrent feelings of unrequited reciprocity (Kirsch 2006: 95f.). They are usually strong and violent. Throughout Papua New Guinea, anthropologists have observed that magical practices have changed significantly since precolonial times and that “witchcraft- and sorcery-related beliefs are being transported around Papua New Guinea, and Melanesia in general” (Forsyth and Eves 2015: 1f.). Not only have sorcery practices proven to be resilient to the influence of Christianity and modern life—they even appear to be on the increase and to take more drastic forms (Forsyth and Eves 2015: 1f.; Urame 2015: 23). Through the merging of Western goods—for example, tins, mobile phones, guns, and chemicals—into indigenous sorcery beliefs and practices19 and through the impact of money on local exchanges, sorcery is strengthened in Bena society. More people have access to it because sorcery practices become “commodified and increasingly able to be ‘bought’ at local markets as new modes of accessing power, meaning that a far greater range of people have access to them than previously” (Forsyth and Eves 2015: 6). There is in fact a little corner of the large Goroka market where vendors from different regions of the country sell specific magical objects and substances with instructions how to use them to perform a desired spell—usually love or healing-magic. Generally, with the influence of foreign cultures, the access to and variety of forms of sorcery in Papua New Guinea appears to be increasing rather than fading (Urame 2015; Zocca and Urame 2008). LiPuma (2001: 153) observed in Maring culture that “modernity was … conducive to the advance of sorcery insofar as it created new forms of violence and inequality that people must deal with and explain.” I can confirm this argument for Bena. All of the magical practices analyzed in this chapter are still applied in Bena today and, in spite of the strong objection of the churches, have remained part of everyday life. They have, however, adapted to new circumstances, and new elements and ideas have been incorporated. The weakening attachments that are used in gunakfe’i today consist mainly of Western goods (empty tins, screws, etc.) that are seen as containing more non-nurturing strength than previously used items (leaves, etc.).20 The incorporation of new elements into magical practices thus reflects an extension in regard to the detachment and attachment of (non-nurturing, excessive) strength and so provides stronger and “hotter” (more effective) options to change the balance of nurturance and strength in the victim of a magical attack. The parts of nogoya’a that these new objects have attached to them represent in magical practices destructive strength, an ascribed strength that mirrors the Bena perception of the relationship between the Western world and themselves; a relationship that has so far been characterized by overly strong and “hot” behavior on the side of the colonial powers. The influence of elements and categories of Western culture has, as I hope to have shown, not changed Bena ideas about magic. Rather, specific elements

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were chosen and merged with them. The basic notion of the exchange of “essence” between partible persons and a resulting change in the balance of nurturance and strength in and among them remained. Similar to my arguments on the change of life-cycle rituals, the changes that magical practices undergo seem to be related to Bena ideas of balancing strengthening and nurturing parts through exchange; it seems that new ideas or goods that support and extend this scheme (for example, by offering new sources for nurturance and strength) are easily adopted. This proves that the dichotomies of “tradition” versus “modernity” and “Western dominance” versus “Bena inferiority” cannot be tenable because they imply a static conception of different—even opposed—states of being that does not consider the dynamics of cultures and therefore does not reflect reality. Western and Bena ideas are not perceived as being oppositions in a fixed and static hierarchy nor does one replace the other. Instead, they are linked in specific ways by partible persons, agents active in exchange that aim at changing the balance of strength and nurturance in and between exchange partners through personal detachments and attachments of productive (nurturing and strengthening) or destructive (weakening) parts of personal essence, nogoya’a.

Notes 1. Specific measures to improve the state of being are taken: either retaliation is required and the witch or the responsible person is killed, or something is done to appease them so that they take back their magical curse. The victims of magic have to be treated by a sorcerer to be healed. 2. The reader should not assume that this description covers all the magical practices of Bena, nor that the cases mentioned were the only ones that occurred in the village during the time frame. Rather, I selected some that I witnessed and some that were frequently discussed in the village. 3. I elaborate on lakehusa objects in detail later in this chapter. 4. The terms “magic man,” “sorcerer,” and “witch doctor” are used as synonyms by the people I spoke to. There are certain fields of specialization, however. One sorcerer might be a big healer and thus most of the time referred to as witchdoctor; another may be known for his specialization in pig magic and so forth. 5. The views that people put to me about this were sometimes contradictory. Some people told me that meha’a could not be affected by magic and that it was “only” sikrafu’i that was weakened; others said that magic would affect meha’a in the same way as sikrafu’i, namely by “stealing” nogoya’a and thus weakening (confusing) him or her. 6. The teamwork of sorcerers has been reported as a common feature of poison magic in various parts of PNG since the last century (Hoeltker: 1940–1941, 1966). 7. Even the presence of dogs will prevent him from approaching the victim, since dogs are said to react very sensitively to sorcerers. 8. To me, an interesting aspect in this story is that everybody agrees on such retaliation

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practices, not doubting the guilt of the suspects. Even the suspects’ wives and relatives had no doubt about their involvement in the killing. Koliopa Tete told me that there are actually nine different forms of poison magic. Magic words often include the names of specific ancestral spirits that are asked for support. The precise formulae, however, are secret. The words are secret but said to be powerful in themselves. All I know is that they contain names of ancestral spirits and of the victim. It is about two to three hours walk from Nosaga to Lupopa’hi, the center of today’s Napamogona. In the course of the ongoing fights between 2006 and 2010, Nosaga was destroyed and evacuated. Since 2011, the Napamogona are repopulating the mountain; however, the grounds of Nosaga and below are a source of frequent dispute between the Napamogona and the neighboring tribe. A one thousand kina lakehusa “roll” is about the size of a man’s finger. The adjectives “hot” and “cold” have widely been used in anthropology to describe features of Melanesian societies. Basically, there are two different approaches to the matter. Authors such as Levi-Strauss (1969, 1971) and Sahlins (1985), for example, use the terms hot and cold in an “etic” way, as part of their own theoretical apparatus, to make a distinction between types of societies. In contrast, other anthropologists, such as Keck (1999), Mosko (2007), and Wassmann and Dasen (1994), are talking about concepts they have found to be operative within Melanesian societies. In the context of my work in Bena, the second approach is relevant. States of being “hot” or “cold” express degrees of strength, life-force, and effectiveness of a specific object or person. This assumption is supported by other practices in which a person’s sikrafu’i is extracted and forced into another object or living being, such as fifa magic, which for reasons of space is not included in this text. The strength of these objects needs to be activated and enhanced through the induction of a sorcerer’s strong nogoya’a as well as that of ancestral spirits and powerful magic words. The latter can here also be understood as detached parts that include the sorcerer’s and the named spirits’ strong essence. According to Bena thinking, magical practices have significant effects on other persons’ bodies, their health, their motivation, and their will. The magical (personal) strength permeates objects and victim. This points to an understanding of person, thing, and place that Hess (2005: 93) described as “simultaneously dividual and permeable.” For further discussions of magic in relation to the concept of person and place (personal autonomy; relationship between persons, objects, and place, etc.) see Gell 1998; Hess 2005; Merlan and Rumsey 1991; This refers to all magical practices in Bena except those that aim at healing or protecting a person; then nurturance is added to increase his or her strength and nurturing capacities. For more details on the impact that the usage of modern goods in Papua New Guinean sorcery practices has on social order, especially in relation to violence, see Urame 2015: 23–35. Being strong refers also to the physical qualities of such goods. Metal tins or screws, for example, do not break or rot but last (as opposed to leaves).

 Chapter 6  Sanguma

The “Essence-Suckers”

One of the more recent but most ubiquitous phenomena that my interlocutors in Bena and in other regions of the Highlands encounter, and something they deeply fear, is sanguma. Sanguma is the name of an exclusively evil, non-nurturing, and excessively strong force that possesses people and turns them into sanguma witches. By describing and analyzing different sanguma cases that happened in Bena during my attempt to account for its increasing popularity, I will explain how it relates to the magical practices described in the previous chapter and show how sanguma ties in with indigenous notions of balancing nurturing and strengthening aspects in and among persons through the exchange of different parts of nogoya’a. In doing so, I hope to provide further evidence for my argument that there is no such thing as a static traditional Bena belief system and thus no dichotomy between tradition and modernity, but rather that elements of different cultural and temporal contexts have merged in accordance with the indigenous notion of partible person and exchange. My interlocutors told me that the term sanguma has its origins in a Sepik language where it was used for a specific “practice of sorcery or witchcraft as well as a person or group who perform the practice” (Gesch 2015: 123). From the Sepik region, sanguma presumably traveled to Chimbu, where it changed some of its features and was transformed into today’s popular sanguma practice, then spread all over the Highlands. Most of my interlocutors from the Eastern, Western, and Southern Highlands stressed that sanguma still existed in its worst and cruelest form in Chimbu. According to Laycock (1997: 274), the term sanguma most probably originates in the Monumbo language, a non-Austronesian language, and is best translated as “assault sorcery” (see also Glick 1972). The first reports of sanguma appeared in 1906, made by the German missionary Father Franz Vormann (1910), who described it as a kind of death magic (see also Hoeltker 1940–1941). It was predominant especially in the coastal areas and the nearer inland of the East Sepik and Madang provinces. Reports of sanguma practices from different areas (Gehberger 1977; Laycock 1997; Mead [1938] 2002) support the assumption that the practice

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came to the Highlands relatively late via the Sepik and the mountain ranges that separate the Eastern Highlands from Madang. The early documentation of sanguma shows some basic common features of the belief, some of which are still found in modern sanguma practices in Bena, while other early features are reminiscent of different types of poison magic. They have experienced processes of transformations and adaptation. Laycock (1997: 273f.) writes, for example, that a sanguma attack “involves a physical attack on an individual in a lonely place” and that “the act of sanguma is carried out by men … on a single individual at a time.” The victim recovers temporarily from the sanguma attack but forgets about the incident, cannot name the attackers, and dies few days later. This, and the further characteristic that “needles … are inserted into the victim” (Laycock 1997: 274) are very reminiscent of the Bena gunakfe’i. Other features the early sanguma practices shared were, according to Laycock (1997: 273f.), that “sanguma is an antisocial act in the way that other magic or sorcery, even witchcraft need not be” and that “there is no magical protection against sanguma.” Wherever and whenever it may have originated, regional differences in sanguma beliefs and practices reflect its spatial and temporal spread throughout Papua New Guinea. There are significant differences in regional sanguma beliefs. For example, in the East-Sepik, sanguma suspects are usually male and similar to sorcerers (see Gesch 2015), while in most Highlands areas it is women who are suspected of being sanguma witches (Haley 2010; Himugu 2015). What all the different ideas about sanguma share is primarily that sanguma “are believed to never use their powers to do good; they are committed only to doing evil” (Schwarz 2011: 10).1

Sanguma in Bena As in other regions of the Highlands, sanguma is very much in evidence in modern Bena. The term sanguma is used both for an evil force that enters and possesses people, and for the people who, possessed, become sanguma (evil witches). Once sanguma has entered a person, he or she becomes its instrument and is forced to harm others mainly by consuming their inner organs and by drinking their blood, thus depleting them of their nogoya’a and weakening them. In Bena, Hagen, and Ialibu, I often heard the English word “Dracula” used as synonym, which reflects this main common trait of sanguma witches. The analogy with vampires is obvious. However, if the latter are “blood suckers,” sanguma witches in Bena can best be described as “essence suckers.” The evil sanguma force turns people into antisocial and destructive beings whose only ambition is to feed themselves (the force) by greedily taking from others without reciprocating. By eating another person’s inner organs, by sucking out someone’s blood, or by consuming the flesh, sanguma witches

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nurture themselves on detached parts of other persons, and in doing so they withdraw the victims’ essence and become stronger themselves. The sanguma’s strength thus embodies exclusively the negative side of exchange of vital essence. Like many magical practices, it is the exercising of excessive strength on others, without the desire to reciprocate with compensating nurturance. It is driven by greed, or one may even say it is greed (see Courtens 2008: 49f.). In the early reports, it is mentioned that sanguma witches are exclusively male and that they plan and organize their attacks together in secret conspiratorial groups (Laycock 1997: 279). Gesch (2015: 111–129) reports of male sanguma witches and exclusively male sanguma “colleges” in the EastSepik. However, in today’s Bena, it is usually single (including widowed or divorced) women who are accused of being sanguma. Given the Bena perception of women as potential threats to men’s strength, this is hardly surprising. Women “naturally” possess the ability to detach destructive (weakening) parts of nogoya’a from their persons and weaken men when men accidentally attach it to themselves. On a less conceptual level, women in the Highlands are usually strangers in their husband’s community and are therefore generally regarded with a certain amount of mistrust. If something goes wrong in their surroundings, inmarried women are often suspected of having applied some form of magic (for example, love magic to distract their husband from his other wife) or having purposely weakened a man out of greed or jealousy (for example, by serving him food during her monthly period). Generally, the activities of sanguma witches are antisocial and destructive. Tau was emphatic about this: “Everything they do is for destruction. Everything. They can extract all your knowledge or suck all your blood out, remove one of your organs, kill a person, or your garden may become unproductive. Even if you plant on new grounds the food won’t grow because this thing will drain out everything there. This is what they do. They take a person’s life, destroy the property and the residence, his knowledge, everything they do. So nowadays this work becomes more popular” (interview, 2004). Tau repeatedly pointed out that sanguma can detach a person’s knowledge as well as parts of other persons’ advice and information that were attached to a person in exchange. In this context, knowledge refers mainly to a person’s mind or self-consciousness. Like sorcerers in magic, sanguma witches can break their victim’s will and confuse and weaken their meha’a. The victims are not aware that they have been entered and eaten by sanguma witches until concrete signs—for example, loss of weight (representing a decrease of nurturance)—raise suspicion. In a similar way, sanguma witches themselves are victims of an aggressive strength/force. They have no other choice than to obey the force’s demands and are thus similar to a victim of gunakfe’i: mentally manipulated and confused. They are not their “true self ” because they have attached sanguma-strength to their persons, which takes over their

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thoughts in the same way that a sorcerer’s spirit changes a person’s thoughts and actions when placed in his or her mind. Like gunakfe’i victims, their own will, their meha’a, becomes either replaced with parts of the sorcerer’s or weakened to such an extent that it cannot give advice anymore. This, of course, has an impact on the balance of nurturance and strength inside the person. He or she gains in strength but loses nurturance and hence becomes sanguma, greedy. Instead of giving helpful advice and leading the person in a constructive way to reciprocal social exchange, a sanguma witch focuses only on nurturing herself by depleting others of their vital essence. In doing so, she becomes overly strong and more dangerous to others. As Tau said, sanguma also has the power to stop a person’s crops from growing by sucking out the nogoya’a from the land they are planted on. The ground then lacks the capacity of nurturance, becoming weak and infertile.

Appearances of Sanguma Sanguma practices in Bena share a number of characteristics that have been reported of witchcraft in other Melanesian cultures. These comprise an extreme appetite for meat and greed for people’s blood and inner organs, supernatural travels, nightly activities in which witches appear as “lights that travel in the sky” (Rodino Sagrista 2015: 44) and the capacity to leave the body and transform one’s self into another being or phenomenon in order to harm others (e.g., Bartle 2005: 227–235; Courtens 2008: 48f.; S. E. Lawrence 2015; Rodino Sagrista 2015: 41f.; Schwartz 2011: 10f.; Stewart and Strathern 2004: 119f.). One of my main interlocutors on the topic of sanguma in Napamogona was my fatherly friend Inaku’e. He had come across various sanguma incidents himself and seemed to be very informed on the matter as well as relatively relaxed when talking about it. According to him, sanguma witches appear in different forms and shapes in Bena. They can be seen as strange lights or heard in the rustling of the leaves in the wind; they can appear as the witch’s double or they may enter animal hosts such as cats, dogs, rats, or lizards and use them for their activities. Especially if these animals are seen near graves or display greedy behavior do they raise suspicion. Inaku’e told me, “If a person dies and they want to take it [the flesh] you will see them as animals at the graveyard, like a very big dog or a fat pussycat. They want to take the inner organs from the body and eat them” (interview, 2004). The idea that witches can take the forms of animals is not unique to Bena but has been reported for many Melanesian cultures. At the YWCA Goroka, I was once criticized by a friend from Hagen/Western Highlands because I fed the three security dogs and allowed them to sit near the table while we had dinner. My friend was quite upset about my behavior and told me that I was inviting the sanguma to take part in our meals. If I did this too often,

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they would eventually come and enter us as well. She implied that by feeding the dogs I would nurture the sanguma (entering an exchange with sanguma), who would then seek further nurturance and feed on us. In Bena, people are especially concerned about animals near burial places. After a funeral, some young men or close relatives of the deceased stay near the grave and watch over it. They want to ensure the spirit’s smooth passage into the world of ancestral spirits. Sanguma that enter the corpses and eat the flesh disturb this transformation and push it into a negative—greedy—direction. This will have a negative impact on the situation of the living. Therefore, fresh graves are carefully protected from approaching sanguma. According to Inaku’e, “The people who watch over the graves see them and shoot them. If you shoot them, it is not like you shoot a pussycat or a dog. They cry like a man because you hit a man’s [person’s] spirit so the man cries out. He will scream inside the house. You hit it there but the person in the house will cry. For example, my late wife is buried here and I watch over her grave. I see a fat cat and I shoot it there. If my mother is sanguma, Dracula, and she is at home, she will cry out loud when I hit the cat. Polako will hear it, Kila will hear it, she will scream so loud” (interview, 2004). It is interesting that the animal is seen as a host or container for the spirit of the evil sanguma witch. Like a lakehusa object in magic, it becomes overly strong through the attachment of strong essence; and, as in many other magical practices, detached essence refers back to the person it is detached from. Therefore, hurting the animal means hurting the person who is sanguma. Every action undertaken with the animal reflects back on the sanguma witch herself. If the leg of the animal is cut, for example, the sanguma witch will feel pain in her leg at the same spot, sometimes even have a cut in her leg as well (without having been physically approached). When I asked Inaku’e about other appearances of sanguma witches, he told me that one could see them at night flying around with their backs glowing. “We can see this light. I see this spotlight shooting through the night, it flies here and there, in any direction. Every Wednesday we see them. Every Wednesday, that is the time when they are going around. So we sit on the mountain and watch them. The group on the hill [refers to Mekfimo and Jogijohi residence] can see us down here. They see where sanguma are. They count the lights they see and tell us” (interview, 2004). In addition to the external characteristics of sanguma witches, Inaku’e brings a temporal dimension to the sanguma belief when stating that sanguma usually operate on Wednesday nights (this was the case at least in Lower Bena in 2004). According to Inaku’e, they used to be active during Friday and Saturday, but had shifted their activities to Wednesday nights. Inaku’e could not explain why this change in their schedule occurred, but insisted that it was a fact. Other people confirmed this statement. It is difficult to find a convinc-

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ing explanation for the link between sanguma activities and a Western weekly time schedule. Inaku’e speculated that a possible reason for their actions on Friday and Saturday nights might be that Friday is the usual payday in PNG. This implies that people then spend money on food and goods and might thus have more nurturing essence in them than on other days. The shift to Wednesday might be due to the increase in popularity of sanguma. People knew they were around during the weekend nights, and they might have increased their sanguma hunts on these nights. If this is the case, then further changes should occur. Generally, sanguma can move around whenever they like (even during the day), but they are said to prefer roaming around at night. Inaku’e insisted on showing them to me and took me out on a Wednesday night to watch sanguma. On the following day I wrote the following in my field diary: Sanguma have backs that shine at night like lamps. When Inaku’e told me this I must have somehow looked unconvinced because he insisted on showing them to me. So when night fell, we went out and he showed me some strange lights that were moving around in the far distance. It’s true, I don’t know what they were, but I am still not convinced that they are the glowing bottoms of evil witches that fly around on Wednesday nights. PNG logic can be quite bizarre for outsiders. So must my logic be for Inaku’e because when I argued that these lights could be lamps or torches or even fireflies, he reacted as if I was stupid or insane. No, of course it’s sanguma, no one around here had so bright torches, fireflies were so much smaller and I should rather think than trying to give ridiculous explanations. So much for intercultural understanding. As a matter of fact, sanguma is omnipresent here and the community is scared (especially on Wednesday nights). (Field diary, 3 June 2004)2

There are some features of sanguma that seem to be specific to Bena. First, Bena sanguma feed mainly on human flesh and blood. It may be of living people or of fresh corpses, but they rarely eat lamb flaps or stored meat as is the case in some areas of the Southern Highlands (Donica Nandie, personal conversation). However, they occasionally eat pig meat that is prepared for a mumu. Such meat is crucial in exchange. By eating the meat, the sanguma feed on the nogoya’a that is attached to it. In depleting the meat of its nogoya’a (and the people of their meat), they affect exchange relationships between people in a destructive way—they disturb the flow of nogoya’a between the participants and thus weaken them. Generally, however, Bena sanguma prefer human flesh and blood to pig, because, Inaku’e told me, it gives them more strength. In other words, human substance is perceived as being more nurturant. Another feature of Bena sanguma is the belief in actual sanguma communities that have a distinctive hierarchical order and a sanguma queen who

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dominates and rules the group. These communities are not regional nor do they depend on common residence. In Bena, sanguma operate quite independently, although they know each other. However, they do meet on special occasions to celebrate their existence with gruesome feasts that often involve cannibalistic activities. Then they consume flesh and receive instructions from their sanguma queen.3 This trait has been mentioned by Laycock (1997: 279), who refers to sanguma in the 1930s in the Sepik region as an “organization with initiation” that “may well have involved such features as eating the corpses.” It also brings to mind the practices of witches in Milne Bay, who have a reputation for cannibalistic gatherings (Kuehling 2005; S. E. Lawrence 2015; Stephen 1987: 286–288; Timoti, personal conversations, 2016) or in the Western Highlands (see Rumsey 1999; A. Strathern 1982). Unfortunately, I could not find any data on the structure and hierarchies of such early sanguma organizations. For Bena, however, I can say with some certainty that there is no feeling of unity or solidarity between different sanguma witches. They are described as selfish and greedy and even denounce each other if they get paid for it. Group meetings have the purpose of momentary exchange (common consuming of flesh) but not of establishing long-term relationships. Sanguma do not nurture each other, but rather they share a common source of nurturance and strengthen themselves together in occasional gatherings. For the usual sanguma practices in Bena, sanguma organizations do not seem to play an important role. Numerous regional and temporal ideas have been integrated into sanguma. A very recent phenomenon in this context is the borrowing of ideas from Western horror fiction and incorporating them into the belief. The increase of Hollywood horror movies circulating in and around Goroka town gives rise to new ideas on the concept of sanguma. The previously mentioned use of the term “Dracula” reflects such merging.

Bena Vampires? Horror movies are eagerly watched in small video shops in town or on the generator-powered TV in the village. They have an immense impact on the Bena conceptions of evil spirits, witchcraft, and magic.4 According to Inaku’e, “It is the same as Dracula. And there is one like Blade. Blade fights the vampires. OK. This exists” (interview 2004). Nando once told me that he was very concerned about a series of sanguma cases that haunted the village in 2002. In an ambitious move, he tried to find out who the responsible sanguma witches were. Being the proud owner of a television, a video set, and a generator, his plan was to show the American splatter movie “Blade” to the people in the village and carefully observe their reactions. His idea was that sanguma witches would react differently to

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the film than “normal” people. They would not be scared but rather enjoy the blood-sucking and identify with the vampires who played a main role in the movie. By seeing their reactions, Nando thought he could identify the witches and consequently take measures against them. The little grass house was full of people crammed together in front of the TV. The air was full of laughter and excitement that, during the course of the film, however, turned into screams of fear. While watching Blade, the vampire-hunter, fulfilling his mission, everybody was supportive of him and horrified by the evil vampires. Nobody appeared to sympathize with the bloodsuckers in the slightest. After the screening, the people were so scared that they refused to walk back home through the night. Instead, everybody slept in his TV house. In this case, no sanguma could be identified, and Nando concluded that none of the witches had been present. Images of Western horror fiction have shaped people’s idea of sanguma in new ways but did not change it conceptually. Again, one finds that the incorporation of Western ideas and the concurrent changes relate to the Bena idea about the balance of nurturance and strength through exchange between partible persons. The idea of vampirism is similar and compatible to that of sanguma because both share a number of common characteristics (depleting the victim of blood/essence, weakening it, and then turning it into an overly strong, evil, antisocial being). Furthermore, the concept of “Dracula” extends that of sanguma in some parts in its strength: Dracula nurtures himself only on the most nurturing parts of essence, those inherent in human blood. Given their conceptual congruency, it is not surprising that elements of Christianity are also integrated into sanguma prevention methods. Just as Dracula fears the strength of the cross, sanguma witches fear the strength of the Holy Spirit and the name of Jesus; and the vampire’s fear of garlic is mirrored in sanguma’s dislike of ginger (with the perception of ginger as a strong and hot plant in magical practices preceding Western influence).

Sanguma Witches in Bena Sanguma witches in Bena are said to be mostly women who have intentionally or accidentally internalized the evil sanguma strength. It can be purchased deliberately, or it can be forced upon a woman. It happens, so I was told, that women actually want to buy love-magic but are tricked by the (sanguma) “vendors” and receive sanguma instead. Other women decide to become sanguma and buy the force consciously—possibly because they want to harm someone (retaliate an insult) and have no other means of doing it. Others may be manipulated by sanguma witches. Occasionally, sanguma also finds its way into a person through the manipulation of a sanguma witch. In such cases the witch approaches the victim and forces him or her into an exchange by “giving” her sanguma. This form of “giving” is not nurturing and does not

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lead to reciprocal exchange. Rather, the witch exercises her strength on the victim and, like a sorcerer in gunakfe’i, replaces or weakens its meha’a. The forcing of sanguma into another person is, like the manipulation of meha’a in gunakfe’i, an antisocial and negative form of exchange in which the victim is weakened through the excessive strength the sorcerer forces upon him or her. Inaku’e explained: “If a sanguma woman wants to give you sanguma, it is very easy. They say it is simple. It is not difficult. You go around and the woman tells you ‘Hey, look at this [over there],’ and you say ‘Oh, now I am scared, what is going on?’ When you say this you get sanguma. Very simple. Or sometimes you go around with your mates and they want to give you something. You take it, you get it. Or you go somewhere and see a pig—they all have their dolls, we call them their dolls, like goat or dog or rat or even lizard. These things give it [sanguma] to you” (interview, 2004). In Inakue’s words there are a number of aspects reminiscent of elements of magical practices as described in chapter 5. It seems, for example, that sanguma can be attached through vision by looking at any object or animal the witch points to (an object that has parts of her strength attached to it). Gibb’s (2012) made similar observations in Simbu, where it is believed that sanguma witches can force sanguma on others by staring at them. The evil force can further be attached to a person through physical contact with an object that possesses sanguma strength. Lakehusa objects have similar effects: when seen by the victim (held in front of him or her by the sorcerer), they distort the person’s vision and weaken meha’a. They can make the sorcerer invisible to others and create doubles. Interestingly, sanguma witches can also appear as exact images of persons. Once sanguma is internalized, the witches have no choice but to harm, weaken, and even kill others by consuming parts of their persons. This process involves the externalization of the witch’s spirit. The sanguma witch’s meha’a leaves the body while the woman is asleep, and roams through the night, greedily searching for flesh and blood to feed on. On her nocturnal journeys she may be seen as a strange light; she may move around in the form of the person’s exact image, or enter animals, preferably flying foxes, rats, cats, and dogs. In the form of an animal, she can feed on the flesh of corpses or leftovers from slaughtered pigs. She may take the form of a snake or lizard and crawl into a coffin to feed on the corpse, or appear as a hungry rat around the house, or as a filthy, greedy dog straying around the fireplace. Once she has found her victim—in Bena, preferably a living human—the sanguma witch’s meha’a sucks the vital essence out of its body and feeds on it. She thus accumulates strength, because she does not reciprocate, and becomes overly strong and even more dangerous to others. The transformational process that a sanguma witch pursues while she is “traveling” outside her physical body is a process of personal detachment. No

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matter which form of appearance a sanguma witch takes, it is a part of her person that acts. This detached and externalized part of her person is either her meha’a—through the sanguma force overly strong but now evil—or a replacement, a negative copy, of her meha’a, created by the attached sanguma strength. Its only aim is to strengthen itself, to grow without giving or nurturing. It therefore enters other people and eats them from the inside, thus weakening them gradually until they die. Sanguma witches therefore affect the balance of strengthening and nurturing aspects in persons and social relationships. All of their activities are of a destructive nature, and even if they do not feed on another person, but instead on pig meat or land, a withdrawal of nogoya’a and a weakening of the victims always happens. When a sanguma witch wakes up, she will remember all of her nightly activities. Therefore one can argue that, in the case of a sanguma possession, a person’s meha’a is not “knocked out,” as is the case in a gunakfe’i poisoning, where the victim forgets the encounter with the sorcerer. This suggests that in sanguma, the victim’s meha’a is either excessively strengthened through the attachment of sanguma (through the attachment of aggressive parts of others’ nogoya’a), or it is temporarily replaced by the evil “copy” or replacement of his or her meha’a.5 In any case it is forced to use its hyperstrength in an antisocial and destructive way. Although the sanguma strength can be purchased, a sanguma witch cannot be hired like a sorcerer to conduct killings. Nobody but the force itself directs the witch, or the witch’s meha’a, and the killing she undertakes has the one selfish purpose of nurturing her regardless of other people’s interests. Sanguma witches therefore display antisocial behavior in its extreme.

Sanguma Suspicions and Accusations Interestingly, most of the sanguma suspects in Bena are married women residing at their husband’s locality. All of the eight sanguma accusations that were made in Napamogona and in Sogomi during my stay referred to inmarried women (see also M. Strathern 1987). The phenomenon that inmarried women are particularly vulnerable to being suspected as witches is common in many patrilineal Melanesian societies.6 Courtens (2008: 52), for example, in West Papua found it striking that “accusations of witchcraft nearly always fall on women descending from other villages.” These women have no family background of their own to support them in their groom’s community. The relations that an inmarried woman has to her group of origin and those she maintains after her marriage can become a threat as well as a benefit to the group of the husband. This depends to a great deal on the woman’s will and ability to adapt to the new community. If her behavior is seen as antisocial and “bad” by her husband or her in-laws—if she acts overly strongly and does not

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nurture her husband’s family as expected (for example, if she does not work hard enough in the garden, is too selfish when it comes to food distribution, or does not follow her in-laws’ advice)—she may become the cause of tensions between different clans or even the cause of a tribal war. In other words, failure to detach and attach sufficient nurturance leads to suspicion. Such behavior makes a woman liable to suspicion of sanguma. However, it is not always and exclusively inmarried women who become suspects. One example that Inaku’e gave to me indicates that women of one’s own kin can also be sanguma suspects: “If my daughter gets sanguma and becomes hungry for blood and flesh, she can get my two sons and suck their blood. After a while, when you can see that they become sick, you will know. Some other sanguma will come and speak out. They come and say ‘your daughter is the one that eats all the people.’ Or if he dies, if my daughter eats my son—then I must go and take her life. I must kill her” (interview, 2004). It does not take much to become suspected of being sanguma. Generally, “witches are said to be unsociable, unfriendly, bad-tempered, uncharitable, and prone to unusual or suspicious behavior” (Schwarz 2011: 10). The most obvious sign that indicates the presence of sanguma is greed. However, sometimes it is in its reversed form that it is expressed. If a woman does not eat meat with others, she might be suspected because she “must have eaten her share during the night” when she roamed around as sanguma. If she eats excessively on the other hand, or does not share or contribute enough to the community, she may be sanguma because she cannot hide her greed. If she displays any kind of strange behavior, such as lurking around graveyards or not attending communal gatherings, she may be sanguma. Even staring at someone in a too-greedy way or demanding something from others (clothes, food, etc.) may raise suspicion. A woman who has a deep sleep may be sanguma because if the sanguma inside her leaves the body and travels around to harm others, her sleep must be quite deep; and a woman who does not bleed heavily when injured may be sanguma, because sanguma have only a little blood in their bodies (hence the greed to consume it from others).7 An overly strong woman can be sanguma because she may have gained her strength from others without reciprocating, and a filthy and ragged-looking woman may be sanguma because she appears needy (and therefore must be greedy). A very fat woman can be sanguma because she has consumed too much of others’ essence, whereas a very skinny woman could be sanguma because she develops an insatiable hunger for flesh. According to Inaku’e, sanguma witches also look dirty. They may wash in the river like other women but will be dirty again some minutes later. “We are suspicious of women who lose weight. If their skin is dusty and the clothes they wear don’t fit them and if they lose weight and only want to eat raw meat. And they may wash but their skin will stay dirty then we know they are sanguma” (Inaku’e, interview, 2004).

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Inaku’e’s description of sanguma witches conforms with that of Highlanders from other regions, where sanguma witches “are said to look dirty and unhealthy; be skinny and always hungry, especially for meat; walk around at night; have strange behavior during funerals and visit cemeteries” (Rodino Sagrista 2015: 45; Zocca and Urame 2008). Further, strange lights that appear around the suspected witch’s house at night may be an indication of the presence of sanguma. Lights, like sanguma, represent uncontrolled strength. From suspecting a woman of being sanguma to publicly accusing her takes a while and is always linked causally to some “inappropriate” and antisocial behavior she displays or to an unexpected event or hardship that takes place in the village. If a person becomes sick and dies, a sanguma witch may be held responsible for the death. If crops fail to grow as they should, if business enterprises are not working as expected, or if a person’s possessions do not function anymore (cars breaking down, etc.), it all may be attributed to the weakening influence (nurturance detaching without reciprocation) of a sanguma witch. Inaku’e mentioned that he learned only recently that the public accusation against a woman (not the gossip and suspicions that lead to it) is usually made by another sanguma or even by a sanguma king or queen. (This idea to me seems to be a special Bena sanguma trait; at least, I have not heard it in other areas.) Inaku’e explained the process: After some time of having the suspicion we call a sanguma queen or king. We call them king or queen. They come and tell us that this woman is sanguma and this is our proof. We call her name and they say, “This is true, she is a sanguma woman.” The sanguma women … try to find money and oppose the [other] sanguma. They come and they say, “This one is a sanguma” or “This woman eats you.” This is something that we have just found out. No normal man will stand up and say “This is a sanguma.” No way. Only sanguma challenge other sanguma. They want to get money and eat so some take two hundred, three hundred, or four hundred kina to speak out. (interview, 2004)

This statement shows that sanguma in Bena are not only antisocial in their destructiveness and greed towards other persons but also act against other sanguma. It further reveals that money has been incorporated into sanguma related practices as a new source of nurturance.

The Witch Hunt In modern Papua New Guinea, the number of public accusations of suspected witches is increasing (Haley 2010). Between 2013 and 2014, three cruel “witch” killings in Papua New Guinea even made the headlines in international media and triggered discussions on the problem of witch-hunts in

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the country (Forsyth and Eves 2015: 1f.; Rodino Sagrista 2015: 46f.; Urame 2015: 23). Unfortunately, however, no reliable date on the number of cases of sorcery- or witchcraft-related violence in Papua New Guinea is available. “The fear of reporting, and the fact that most incidents take place in remote areas, make the little data available not reliable” (Rodino Sagrista 2015: 47). In 2010, Minister Dame Carol Kidu reported to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women that she estimated the number of sorcery-related killings in the year 2009 only in Simbu province to be around two hundred (Rodino Sagrista 2015: 47). A study by Richard Eves and Angela Kelly-Hanku (2014: 14) clearly revealed that victims of witch hunts in the Highlands are nearly exclusively women (thirty out of thirty-two victims were women) and that the perpetrators were exclusively male. When asked about their motivation to kill, they claimed that they wanted to clean the community of “dangerous and undesired elements” (Rodino Sagrista 2015: 48), a view that in most cases seems to be supported by the community members. Accusing a woman of being sanguma has very serious consequences for her life. She may be bashed up, injured or—and unfortunately this is the most common way of dealing with supposed sanguma—tortured and killed. In September 2004, I wrote the following paragraph in my diary: I can’t help thinking of the medieval witch hunt in Europe; it becomes so obvious that accusing a woman of being sanguma is an easy way of getting rid of her. Usually such an accusation leads to the woman’s death, a death under torture. I recently met a woman from Ialibu who got married to a man from Okapa and was accused by him of being a sanguma witch. She took her husband to court because of his wrong accusations. I found it incredibly brave of her to publicly address this issue. She said that her husband wanted to get rid of her because he had a new girlfriend but couldn’t afford the payments involved in divorcing her, so he simply accused her of being sanguma. The fact that he had lost some weight during the last year was proof enough for most people to believe him. The accusation had terrible effects on her life—people stopped buying her fruits at the markets, didn’t talk to her anymore. She felt threatened and feared that people might kill her. I read her case-report and couldn’t believe all the things that man had done to her. He tried to kill her with the bush knife while she was asleep, but she managed to escape. He tried to burn her house at night, took her money, the children, and her car. Then he took off with the new woman, who supports the sanguma accusations against his first wife. Men can easily use such accusations to destroy a woman’s reputation and indeed a woman’s life. However, it’s also about women accusing other women; in these cases jealousy is often involved (first wife accusing the man’s second wife or vice versa). Generally it appears to me to be mainly a means of getting “unwanted” women out of the way. (Field diary, 10 September 2004).

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This case, which I partly witnessed in court, revealed a use and strategizing of sanguma accusations against women that are pursued mainly by men with the aim of getting rid of unwanted wives or of retaliating for some imagined “damage” the accused woman is thought of having brought on the man or his kin. A husband may blame his wife for what went wrong in his career and justify his divorce by publicly accusing her of being sanguma. He may also blame her if he or one of his relatives suffers an unexpected sickness or encounters other hardship. Obviously, accusations of a similar kind have been made in the past as well; however, with the increasing popularity of sanguma, they are becoming more frequent, and the sanctions today are more severe. Not only is a marriage at stake but also a woman’s life. Being married to a supposed sanguma witch is a good excuse to get divorced without having to face any severe consequences from the wife’s or one’s own kin. The accusation of being weakened through a supposed sanguma witch—in the above case “proven” by the man’s loss of weight—is often enough to ruin a woman’s life. This shows again that the idea of being non-nurturant and weakening to others is the worst reproach one can make towards any person. It represents a danger in the balancing of nurturance and strength and thus a threat to the Bena understanding of “positive” reciprocal and nurturing exchange. It is therefore strongly associated with harmful magical practices, and in modern times with a modification of those in the concept of sanguma. The case described above was not the only one of that kind I came across. However, it was the only case where the woman stood up publicly against the accusers and defended herself on judicial grounds. All the mischief her ex-husband had done to her—damaging the car, beating her up, and so forth—was generally justified by the assumption that his wife was a sanguma witch. The only argument that supported the man’s accusation was the fact that he had lost weight during the marriage. According to him, his wife had not nurtured him well but, being a sanguma, actually fed on him and his essence. She thus grew stronger while he became weaker. This gave him the “right” to deal with her in most cruel ways, and it would even have been socially acceptable (although, of course, illegal) if he had killed her under such circumstances, especially since the accused woman had married in from a distant locale and had no relatives nearby who could support her. The fact that all his attempts to kill her failed probably contributed to the general assumption that she was a sanguma witch. Sanguma witches are thought of as being overly strong and thus nearly invulnerable. It now becomes clear that a change in the perception of applied nonnurturing exchange and the new measures taken to stop and retaliate against it occur today by tailoring innovations from the outside (e.g., Dracula) to fit existing understandings of exchange of nogoya’a. In other words, accusations are grounded in the argument that sanguma witches deplete their victims of

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nurturance, and these arguments are used at the same time to manipulate indigenous norms of reciprocal exchange—if his wife is sanguma, a man can divorce her without having to compensate the woman’s kin by returning the bride-price. He can in fact terminate the relationship with the woman and her family without fear of reproaches for being non-nurturant himself.

Sanguma cases in Napamogona and Sogomi There were a number of supposed sanguma cases that occurred while I was staying in Bena. The first one I heard of concerned Mama Polako. She told me that a sanguma witch had tried to weaken her. The suspect was the wife of her neighbor, a woman who had already been suspected of being sanguma because of her demanding and greedy behavior. Once when Polako was walking down the village road, this woman approached her and demanded her new skirt. Polako was angry at the aggressive tone in the woman’s voice and refused to give it to her. When Polako returned home that night, she could not sleep but became very sick. She heard some strange noise coming out of the pile of clothes next to her bed. When she looked, she saw a rat running away. She took her skirt and noticed that the rat had bitten a big hole in it. To Polako it was clear that she had become a sanguma victim. The rat embodied the woman’s evil spirit taking revenge because Polako had not acceded to her request. It destroyed the skirt that Polako refused to give away. Polako’s sickness was caused by the same spirit that began to feed on her intestines. Only through eating specifically treated ginger mixed with salt and praying did she recover. Receiving nurturance and regaining her strength, she was thus able to reestablish the desired balance of nurturance and strength in her person.

David’s Sanguma Case The second case, also a minor incident compared with those that followed, concerned my classificatory father-in-law, David. Slowly but steadily he developed an increasing pain in his joints and his body that became so bad that he could not move anymore but just lay down inside his house, suffering from pain. As usual, speculation about what (or who) may have been the cause for his deteriorating physical condition began. In October 2004 I noted the following in my diary: There is a case right now—Esi’s husband David has been sick for a while. In Goroka hospital nothing could be diagnosed, except that he had some inexplicable loss of blood. That was the proof for everyone here. He is a sanguma victim and, as one can imagine, now the speculations on who the local sanguma is are running wild. Suspicions are taking over and a “glasman” from Asaro (a man with second

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sight) has been consulted to reveal the sanguma identity. Luckily, he couldn’t say who it was but only stated that there were several sanguma around, but that they didn’t intend to kill David. They “just” wanted some of his blood. Mama Polako came and prayed over him, together with the pastor of one of those fundamentalist American churches, and now people are confident that the sanguma can’t get hold of David anymore. Thank God, because if it was known who the sanguma was, she (the “witch”) would be killed. I really ask myself what I should do if one of these cases gets out of hand and someone is executed here. What would the ANU Ethical Committee suggest, I wonder. No intervention? (Field diary, 9 October 2004)

After the prayers and after he had consumed specially treated ginger, David began to recover. However, during the following months his condition worsened again, and it was not until we went to a private doctor in town that his disease was diagnosed as gout. Although this did not stop sanguma suspicions, it diminished them. When David finally responded to the medicine he was given by the doctor, the accusations ceased. David’s case illustrates the influence of Christianity on sanguma belief. Very often people assured me that Jesus em winim sanguma, “Jesus wins over sanguma.” Praying is therefore a method of protecting people’s bodies from the entering of the sanguma strength as well as a way of forcing it out of the victims. Here, the strength of Jesus is seen to be superior to that of sanguma. Prayers, similar to magic words, are attached to the victims of sanguma attacks in order to strengthen them through their nurturing essence (detached from God himself). The intensity and psychological impact of such praying sessions can be compared to exorcisms. The victim screams, shivers, and sometimes speaks in strange tongues (the sanguma’s voices) while the praying believers force the evil power out of the body. By introducing the strength of Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit into the exchange relation with sanguma, it becomes possible to weaken the evil power and force it to detach itself again from the victim. Nando told me that there is a maximum of seven sanguma that can possess one person. He related this statement to the Bible—according to him, sanguma are demons, and the number of demons that Jesus exorcised from the possessed pig was seven (Matthew 8:28–43). Nando’s precise numerical figure provides another example of the merging of different cultural elements, here represented in the introduction of Western numerical systems into magical practices in Bena. There is a magical power in numbers, not only because they represent a system that is in many regards perceived to be stronger, but also because they can be used to define aspects of time, space, or person independently of personal perception. Quantification gives people power (see Crump 1990; Urton 1997). Numbers have therefore easily been incorporated into various aspects of Bena life. However, they often signify something other

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than their numerical account. Once, during the provincial elections in UnggaiBena in 1997, I asked a local election officer about the number of voters registered in his district. He hesitated for a moment, then answered slowly, “One-thousand and … two hundred … twenty … errr … seven” (Knapp 1997). Clearly, he had no idea of the precise figure. Giving a numerical figure was here more important than giving the right figure. I had similar experiences in various administrative contexts in Papua New Guinea—for example, when being asked to please call again at 2:47 or 3:23 PM—as well as when asking people for distance or duration. The usage of numbers signifies knowledge and strength. Quantifying phenomena such as sanguma makes them graspable and defeatable. It also relates them to other sources of Western “strength”—for example, Christianity.

The Sanguma Witch from Mekfimo Clan The time between February and July 2004 was a particularly strange and challenging time for the Napamogona. Several deaths occurred, two of them even on the same day (which gave rise to the assumption of gunakfe’i poisoning), and several persons became unexpectedly sick. The community was busy arranging funerals and feasts to end the mourning period, finding out the reasons for the incidents, retaliating, and checking if any sanguma were around and, if so, how many. After various inquiries and “research” on the last topic, one particular woman from Mekfimo clan became a main suspect. She was said to be responsible for the illnesses of a number of people because she was sanguma. A sorcerer from a neighboring community had been consulted, and he could see that she was possessed by the evil force. Specialists in sanguma matters are called glasman in Tok Pisin. They are said to see through people in a sort of x-ray manner and visualize their insides. Here, one is again confronted with the importance of vision in magic and sanguma. Sorcerers have the strength to see through a person’s surface and detect their inner spirit. They can see if persons have been filled with screws and leaves as in gunakfe’i or if they have internalized the evil sanguma strength. In this case, the woman was identified as possessed by sanguma. The sorcerer stated, however, that she had not killed anybody (yet) but only weakened her victims. As a consequence, she was bashed up badly by her relatives and other people from Napamogona. However, Nando told me, no matter how hard the men hit her with tree branches on her back, the woman did not fall, and the strong branches burst into pieces. When the men later attacked her with bush knives, they cut her skin, but the wounds closed again magically—so I was told—and she did not carry any scars. The knives bounced back. Her skin was like a car tire, Nando said. This overly strong condition was taken as proof for her sanguma nature. During her ordeal, around two hundred people were

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present and had gathered at the community place in the village center. The woman was in the middle, surrounded by her torturers. Suddenly, so I was told later by Polako, her eyes began to glow bright red, just like the rear lights of a car. Again, vision plays a great role in magical contexts. Her glowing eyes expressed the excessive strength she had attached to herself. A ray of red light came out of them and scanned the audience.8 At the same time, a lizard appeared which had crawled out of her vagina (so people assumed) and ran quickly away from under her skirt. The attendants were scared, screamed, and ran away. The woman was left alone and is now still living in the village. The case has since then never been solved. Luckily, in this case, the woman was not killed. To my mind this depended on the fact that she had not actually killed anybody with her sanguma activities but only weakened her victims. Since the latter recovered, the woman was not further persecuted, but she continued to be feared, especially by the children in Napamogona. Inaku’e told me, “If she does something wrong in the community, we will kill her. If she does not do anything bad, she can stay. As long as she does not touch anybody or anything in the community” (interview, 2004). Thus sanguma witches are not necessarily persecuted or killed. Only if they threaten to weaken their own community will they be punished.

A Sanguma Killing A woman from Sogomi village, accused of being sanguma, had a less fortunate destiny. When I came to visit the village in June 2004, I saw the remains of a burnt house and was told that a sanguma witch had been killed on this spot the previous day. I could still see the woman’s remains, as some bones were left in the ashes. She had been suspected of feeding on the blood and inner organs of a popular local leader who became weak, sick, and finally died. According to my interlocutors from Sogomi, the woman had displayed greedy behavior and had been full of jealousy against others. She had also refused to visit the local church, a fact that created deep mistrust against her. She was a non-Christian, and therefore generally suspect. Her husband had died mysteriously some years before, and since then she had given rise to various suspicions about her integrity, resulting in the accusation of her being sanguma. Some people had watched her behavior and observed her house during the night. They claimed to have seen strange lights floating around her house and the witch herself flying out of the door with a glowing back. They watched her fly through the night in search of blood and finally witnessed how she entered a dog that strayed near the grave of the deceased leader. This was the final proof that she was a sanguma witch. The consequences the community drew from this “proof ” were horrific. First, they questioned her under torture until she admitted her evil nature and confirmed that she was sanguma. Then

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the young men put a wire around her throat and dragged her along the village road, slowly strangling her. The woman died in incredible pain and suffering. The community watched the procedure, apparently without doubt as to its rightness. Quite the contrary, people supported the cruel act by shouting further insults to the tortured woman. When she was dead, her body was dragged into her outhouse. The house and the outhouse were then burnt to the ground. My attempts to discuss the matter with the people—also by referring to Europe’s medieval past with its witch hunts—failed completely. People were concerned and commented, “You have done terrible things by killing all these innocent women. We only kill the real witches.” After insisting for a while, I had to change the topic because I noticed that some people became tense and said that if I did not believe what they said about sanguma, they would not talk to me anymore. Later, Nando warned me that asking too many questions about sanguma can be dangerous because it can raise suspicion or attract sanguma. So I decided not to dwell further on this topic, at least not too deeply. The sanguma cases that I have described are only some of those that happened during my stay in Bena. I have specifically chosen these because they describe different degrees of sanguma destruction and accusations. They range from minor incidents with less severe or no consequences to more severe and even fatal ones. Generally, it is no exaggeration to say that witch hunts of frightening dimensions are taking place in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea today (e.g., see Gesch 2015; Haley 2010).

Sanguma Prevention and Treatment There are different methods that can be used to prevent being affected by sanguma. The most common way to protect oneself is to carry some ginger in one’s bilum, preferably together with a five-toea coin. These two objects have attached to them different parts of strength that are superior to that of sanguma when combined. Ginger, especially when strong magic words are attached to it, is in Bena culture—as in many other Melanesian cultures as well (Courtens 2008)—a “hot” and strong plant, full of nurturing essence. During my stay, I noticed that most of my interlocutors had a small ginger root in their bags or even trouser pockets. Sanguma witches in the Highlands are said to have a distinct distaste for ginger, a somehow interesting analogy to the vampire’s dislike of garlic in European fiction. However, in this context it is crucial to consider the overall importance that ginger has in various Bena magical practices. When treated accordingly, it functions as a container and transmitter of nogoya’a, and it is used to cure bewitched people. Here, its strength-producing nurturance is conjoined with that of Western money. It is plausible that sanguma, a new form of strength that bears elements from Western and indigenous cultures, can only be conquered with the

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combined (superior) strong essence of old and new objects that one attaches to his or her person, like words of prayers or money.

Conclusion Throughout Melanesia, it is “conventionally assumed that the main reason for female witches to practice witchcraft is envy or greed” (Courtens 2008: 49) and that this has been the case since sanguma was first reported (Laycock 1997: 280). The descriptions of sanguma in Bena in this chapter support this argument. Sanguma is here clearly linked to the notions of greed and envy. It is an undesired form of exchange that works on negative reciprocity; it embodies antisocial acting par excellence: taking without giving, nurturing one’s self by feeding on other persons’ vital essence. In her greed or jealousy, a Bena sanguma witch does not represent nurturance but excessive strength. Aggressively, she seeks nurturance and finds it by depleting other persons of their nogoya’a. Sanguma witches are thus exclusively evil, display antisocial behavior in the extreme, and are dangerous not only to single persons but to a whole community and its value system. They do not participate in exchange but merely take without reciprocating any nurturing aspects. Sanguma represents the complete inversion of positive social values. What Munn (1986: 3) wrote about Gawa witchcraft expresses very well what sanguma does to the system of social values in Bena communities: “In the extreme … positive value is not simply negated but is subverted and envisioned under the sign of its own destruction.” In Bena, sanguma transforms positive, social, nurturing, and strengthening aspects for social relations (and thus for the person)—for example, the nurturing advisory function of meha’a—into negative, self-centered, greedy, antisocial, and overly strong behavior. Sanguma does this in the same way that special kinds of sorcery do. A sorcerer who applies gunakfe’i to another person displays similar traits to those of a sanguma witch. Both are manipulating the flow of essence to their own advantage and the victim’s harm. However, there is a fundamental difference between the two. A sorcerer is expected to act in this way. It is his “job” to exercise magic, and, even though he is feared, he is generally respected and stands in exchange relation with others (for example, with those who pay him). He has the skills to manipulate the flow of nogoya’a in exchange in certain directions, but he is not necessarily evil or antisocial. In fact, he possesses a perfect inner balance of nogoya’a and sikrafu’i, and in the same way that he can kill a person with his strength, his nurturing powers also allow him to heal a victim of a magical attack. A sanguma witch, on the other hand, only does things for her own benefit in an exclusively destructive manner. She is one-sided evil. A sorcerer, even when acting in an antisocial way, is still part of what Munn (1986: 3) called a “di-

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alectical process” which is “synthesized within the community’s attempt to control these negative transformative possibilities.” Unlike an active sanguma witch, who nurtures herself through the vital essence of the community, he does not weaken the community as such. The forceful and negative form of exchange in sanguma brings with it unrequited reciprocity and creates anger, even rage, on side of the affected persons or those who fear to become affected in the future. As described by Inaku’e and Nando, the usual way to detach a harmful sanguma witch from the community is to torture and kill her. If a sanguma witch, however, does not weaken members of her own group but focuses her activities on other communities, she may be left in peace by her relatives (although she will be disliked and avoided by most of them). In Bena, where suspected witches are usually women, sanguma provides an additional explanation for the effects of weakening female attachments, and a justification for the witches’ detachment from the community through witch hunts. It is here not only perceived as antisocial greed (Laycock 1997: 279f.) but as female antisocial greed. This may relate to the Bena assumptions that strong parts of female nurturance weaken men and that women are generally greedy to detach nurturance from their husbands without reciprocating; for example, in sexual intercourse that does not lead to pregnancy (here women are said to feed on the man’s nurturing semen only to satisfy their greed and without reciprocating nurturance by giving birth). Haley (2010: 227) contributed an important argument by emphasizing that the changing roles of women in modern times give reasons for more jealousy and gossip that can lead to sanguma accusations and violent actions from men: “It is typically women, especially those who are seen by men to have rejected their customary obligations or to have failed to conform to local gender and sexual stereotypes, who are accused.” In modern Bena, sanguma accusations have become an oppressive means to threaten, harm, and even kill women without risking overly strong reactions from her family (see Gesch 2015; Haley 2010). Modern sanguma in Bena reflects social changes that occur in the encounter with foreign people, goods, ideas, and temporalities. This encounter brought with it new options for nurturing exchange relationships but also new reasons for envy and greed (LiPuma 2001). It is therefore not surprising that sanguma activities and accusations are increasing in modern times. They are also adjusting. The changes I observed, however, appear to be shaped by precolonial Bena ideas about exchange or, more precisely, the balancing of nurturance and strength in exchange. Western elements that promise strength become readily adopted into sanguma belief. When attached, their strength affects the balance of nurturance and strength in and among persons. But is the option to gain strength the only trigger for the attachment of foreign cultural elements to one’s own culture?

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That sanguma witches are today often referred to as “Dracula” points to additional important criteria in agentive culture change: similarity and compatibility. Vampires have a lot in common with Bena sanguma witches. Primarily, of course, vampires and sanguma share an evil nature that feeds on the living, thereby harming and killing them. They are further both driven by their thirst for blood to satisfy their greed, and they possess excessive strength. They can fly, transform themselves into animals, and roam at night. The vampire’s dislike of garlic is mirrored in sanguma’s aversion to ginger and so forth. This striking conceptual similarity between sanguma witches and vampires brings with it their compatibility. However, modern sanguma is not only compatible with preexisting Bena cultural categories because of its conceptual similarities; it also represents their extension. Sanguma strength is more dangerous to others than, say, the strength detached in gunakfe’i. It is uncontrolled and potentially aims at everyone. In this regard, it extends the controlled strength of sorcery; it is added to the Bena concept of negative exchange as a new, more extreme, and in this regard stronger, form. Based on this analysis, I argue that new elements are integrated into or conjoined with Bena witchcraft and sorcery when they fulfill two main criteria: they need to display similar features as preexisting conceptual categories of exchange, and they must provide an extension to these categories in regard to the exchange of vital essence and increase in personal strength.

Notes 1. For more comparative data see Courtens 2008; Forsyth and Eves 2015; Gesch 2015; Gibbs 2013; Haley 2010; Himugu 2015; S. E. Lawrence 2015; Rodino Sagrista 2015; Schwarz 2011; Zocca 2010. 2. Strange lights in the Bena area have also been witnessed by a number of visitors from overseas (Rolf Gandert, personal conversation, 2005). They described them as round balls of greenish light that moved fast and in a zigzag through the air. Possibly these occurrences are forms of ball lightning. This is something that needs to be investigated by natural scientists. 3. I tried to find out who the sanguma queen in the area was, and I did get some hints. However, for reasons of my own security and for the safety of my adopted family, I did not pursue the idea of actually interviewing her. I was told that she might refuse to admit her sanguma nature and that my approaching her could lead to all kinds of trouble, in the worst case even to myself becoming a suspect. 4. In a personal conversation, Nicole Haley told me about the impact that watching Harry Potter movies had on the ideas people in Kopiago/Southern Highlands developed on Western culture. In this case, it was assumed that there were actual schools in Europe where witchcraft was taught. The story was taken as true. 5. Unfortunately, I could not say with certainty which of the two is the case. Some of my interlocutors told me that sanguma kills a person’s meha’a; others claimed that

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sanguma “takes over” meha’a; and still others said that a person keeps her meha’a but that it is temporarily “switched off ” when sanguma is active (Polako, Inaku’e, Tau, Esi, Donica, personal conversations, 2004). 6. For comparison, see S. E. Lawrence’s (2015) description of the high status of female witches in the matrilineal societies in Milne Bay. 7. Interestingly, for ordinary people to have their meha’a leave their bodies indicates that they are weakened. The detachment of meha’a from the body is a sign of lack of nurturance, weakness, and probably approaching death. For sanguma witches’ spirits that leave the body, this does not seem to fully apply. They also leave the body to find nurturance, but this externalization apparently does not weaken the woman. This suggests that it is not the woman’s meha’a but its replacement, created by the sanguma strength, that leaves the body. 8. This particular feature may have originated only recently from Western horror fiction.

 Chapter 7 

In Exchange with God Christianity in Modern Bena

In this chapter, I want to pursue the analysis of syncretic elements in presentday Bena belief and concurrent social, religious, and magical practices, which I began with the analysis of sanguma in the last chapter. There I have suggested that the choice of the new elements and the way they are incorporated and understood in Bena culture depend on the similar features they display and on their supplementing or extending character in regard to preexisting Bena ideas of the flow of nogoya’a, which is perceived as a part of person attached in agentive exchange. Cultural change as it is expressed in Bena syncretism, I argue, is thus a strategic temporal process that takes place in accord with the agentive, dividual, and partible concept of Bena person. In the following, I will examine this proposition by analyzing the role of Christianity in Bena today. My focus lies on the investigation of syncretic elements in Christian belief and practices in modern Bena in relation to gift exchange. I will show that the syncretic changes are not all random or things just happening automatically as if by osmosis, but through existing modes of thought and action—that is, exchange, and with it a balancing of strength and nurturance. In other words, I will attempt to show how culture change happens strategically (as opposed to randomly) in Bena Christianity by analyzing it with reference to the indigenous concept of person and the exchange of nogoya’a, which involves a changing of the balance of nurturance and strength inside and among persons. The history of Christianity in Papua New Guinea is a long and broad field—too wide to depict in this book and too often described by missionaries, historians, and anthropologists to repeat extensively at this point (e.g., Barker 1990a,b; Jebens 1997, 2005; Kirsch 2006: 49f.; Mrossko 1986; Strong 2004; Wagner and Reiner 1986). For the Eastern Highlands it can be noted that the early and most influential missions were Lutheran, Catholic, and Seventh-day Adventist (SDA). In 1932—shortly after the Highlands had been “discovered” by the Leahy brothers on their quest for gold—Lutheran missionaries were the first to follow the administration into the Gahuku-Gama and Asaro districts near Bena (Langness 1967: 64; Read 1952: 232; Simpson 1954: 60).

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Two years later, Lutheran missionaries paid their first visits to Bena during an expedition into the Highlands at a place called Rabana in the higher Bena valley. This first encounter led to the establishment of a Lutheran mission near the old Bena Bena airstrip. About the same time, the SDA mission arrived in the area and during the following years gained increasing influence. Generally, missionaries had to cooperate with the colonial administration. Strong (2004: 105) points out that the German-dominated “Lutheran forays into the highlands were accomplished amidst the backdrop of Australian anti-German sentiment framed by two World Wars” and that “Lutherans sometimes detected in government policy regarding missions an attempt to single them out as ‘German.’” To some, it seemed that the national colonial administration favored the founding of SDA missions over Lutherans (Cottle 1956–57: 8). Missionaries of both churches played an important role in making contact with people in the Bena area, primarily because they attracted them with trade items and medical care (McRae 1974: 24). In Newman’s (1962b, 1964) terms they provided unexpected new sources of nurturance (represented, for example, in their medicine, which could cure sick victims of magic) while at the same time displaying strength (for example, through their demands regarding the change of traditional practices and their replacement with a Christian lifestyle). Strong noted that the increasing engagement of Asaro people in the exchange relationships with early missionaries was grounded in their expectation of receiving new forms of wealth. He gives the example of newly introduced building materials and styles into Asaro culture. One of Strong’s informants claimed that the missionaries “seemed like wealthy spirits coming to build new houses on the land” and that the mission itself “was not just the project of white missionaries” but became “incorporated quickly into the personal projects of New Guineans” (in Strong 2004: 110f.). With regard to leadership, this meant that “the mission presented new opportunities much as ‘business’ did” (Strong 2004: 111). In Bena terms, people felt they could gain nurturance and increase their strength through relationships with the new Christian exchange partners. However, it took a while for Christianity to become established. The first public baptisms were held in the area in 1951 (Strong 2004: 107). Gradually, exchange relationships between missionaries and Bena people intensified, and the number of Christians rose. During the following years and especially since the country’s independence in 1975, numerous Pentecostal churches and sects have found their way into the Highlands and have gained in popularity (Jebens 1996; see also Robbins 2004). According to the census of 2000, 96 percent of the country’s population identified themselves as members of a Christian church. Today, the Roman Catholic Church still has the largest number of members in Papua New Guinea, followed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Church, and the Seventh-day Adventists (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and

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Labor: Papua New Guinea, International Religious Freedom Report 2002).1 Today the influence of Lutheran and SDA missions is still predominant in Bena, albeit threatened. The Lutheran mission especially is shrinking because it is losing members to various Pentecostal churches. In the Papua New Guinea International Religious Freedom Report 2002, it is noted that “the Pentecostal Church in particular has found converts within the congregations of the more established churches, and nearly every conceivable movement and faith that proselytises has representatives in the country.” A large body of literature discusses the increasing popularity of Pentecostal churches in the Euro-American context and their success in the non-Western world (e.g., Barrett and Johnson 2002; Casanova 1994, 2001; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Corten 1997; Maxwell 2000; Meyer 2004; Robbins 2004). Scholars give different reasons for this increase, ranging from broader sociological arguments about the role of “deprivation and disorganization”—that Pentecostals offered the socially deprived “an ecstatic escape, hope for millennial redress, and an egalitarian environment in which everyone is eligible for the highest religious awards” (Robbins 2004: 123)—to arguments about similarities between Pentecostal and “traditional” practices—represented, for example, in the engagement in “highly ritualized interactions”—that led to a smooth acceptance of the new belief (MacDougall 2013: 135; see also Blumhofer 1993: 210f.; Corten 1999: 42f.; Stringer 1999).2 Both of the two churches in Napamogona—the Seventh-day Adventists and the Foursquare Church—belong to such charismatic movements, which focus on the relationship between humans and God through Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit. In contrast to, for example, Protestant churches, Pentecostal churches place the emotional, event-driven encounter with God at the fore of their religious practices. People become “filled” with the strength of the Holy Spirit, which they receive from God, as Mama Polako explained. They become empowered by God through the gift of the Holy Spirit with special agentive skills, such as speaking in tongues and having prophetic visions or healing powers. Often when a person is sick, the pastor and other church members of high status are consulted. They are perceived as possessing the strength to heal victims of magic by nurturing them with God’s words (detached parts of God’s strength). Sickness is here seen as the result of a prior weakening interpersonal exchange (depletion of nogoya’a) and can be cured only by nurturing the weakened person to reestablish the right balance of nurturance and strength in him or her. Before I delve deeper into the specific Bena approach to Christianity, I would like to draw attention to a basic feature of the encounter between indigenous belief and Christianity that anthropologists have identified throughout Papua New Guinea. It is the association of Christianity with white superiority and dominance (e.g., Bashkow 2006; Kirsch 2006; Robbins 2004, 2013).

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This “superiority” is perceived in many aspects: in the white people’s material wealth, in their spiritual strength (expressed, for example, in their apparent immunity against sorcery), and in their power to establish a new social organization in form of a foreign political system. “Whitemen” (Bashkow 2006) have further been merged into stories of origin, where they are often pictured as founding ancestors. The Orokaiva, for example, trace their origin from three white brothers who had children with a black woman (Bashkow 2006: 222); in various cultures of the Sepik and Madang areas, myths circle around the theme of two brothers who separated and founded white and black peoples (Burridge 1960, 69; P. Lawrence 1964; Leavitt 2000; Tuzin 1997). Such stories share two central themes. First, the white characters are portrayed as stronger and more successful than their black siblings or offspring. Second, the white party leaves or is separated from his black counterpart, who remains and hopes for the other’s return with generous gifts. These motives express the perception of a white “superiority” in economical, spiritual, and political fields while “seeking to account for people’s tragic disinheritance from whitemen’s material prosperity” (Bashkow 2006: 222). The hope is to change their own “inferior” situation through fruitful exchanges with “whitemen” (Bashkow 2006: 222). Christianity enhances such nurturing exchanges. It may be one way to achieve prosperity. There is no doubt that economy, Christianity, and politics have been deeply entwined in Papua New Guinea since the arrival of the first “whitemen” (Bashkow 2006: 138f.) and still are today. As Tomlinson and MacDougall (2013: 2) point out, “One can only understand what is Christian in Oceania through understanding what is political, and one can only understand what is political by understanding what is Christian” (see also Kirsch: 48f.).3 I take this proposition as a premise in my analysis of Bena Christianity insofar as I found that both politics4 and Christianity are by Bena persons interpreted and valued in the same terms of (nurturing or weakening) exchange relationships. Central and most important to Christianity is the relationship between the believer and his or her divine creator, God.

Huma and God The Bena name for the Christian God, the creator and ruler of the universe, is huma. This name was used in pre-Christian times to describe or address the original ancestor, the founding father of the Bena (language group). In some areas, it is still used that way today. While most people in Lower Bena told me that huma was the creator and corresponded to the Christian God, interlocutors from more remote Upper Bena said huma was an ancestral spirit—the founding ancestor of all people in the region.5 The question whether it was Bena people or missionaries who translated and interpreted huma as God re-

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mains unanswered, but in each case the reasons for this identification must have lain in (supposedly) similar features that both names encompassed (see Strong 2004: 117 for comparison with Asaro usage of the name; see Jolly 1996: 232ff. for a profound discussion of the problems involved in such translation processes of Christianity). People in Bena described huma as a creator/male founding ancestor of the Bena, an idea that is not at all contradictory to that of the Christian God who is addressed as “Father.” Specific exchange rituals were undertaken in order to receive huma’s blessings in the form of nurturance. Whenever a new garden was planted and the first crops harvested, men would put aside a certain share—for example, the first bunch of bananas grown—and leave it for huma. They detached parts of the essence of their land (and with it of their own essence) for huma to attach it to himself. This exchange is still practiced in Napamogona today, and men often leave the first flowering coffee trees in their gardens untouched for huma. By giving parts of their first harvest to huma, persons nurture their relationship with huma. In return, huma detaches nurturing parts of his person and provides me’i nogoya’a, the nurturance of the ground. The land will then be fertile and garden crops will grow well. Apart from his importance as giver of this fundamental nurturance, huma does not play a significant role in the everyday lives of persons in Bena. Although he is perceived as the most powerful ancestral “spirit,”6 huma is—according to my information—not usually called upon in magical practices, nor is he associated with a person’s afterlife. The use of the name huma in reference to the Christian God reflects a conjoining of cultural elements, here names with their cultural and religious connotations, founded on a fundamental similarity of God and huma in terms of Bena understanding of exchanging nogoya’a/nurturance (Jolly 1996: 238f.). Tau interpreted huma as God and explained this idea with the similarity of the interaction of humans and huma/God. Humans stand in an exchange relationship with huma/God and although the specific ways in which this relationship is conducted differ, the fundamental principle of receiving a good and healthy balance of nurturance and strength through it is the same. Subconsciously, according to Tau, people in Bena always knew about the existence of God and even practiced exchange with him, but ol i no bin klia tumas, “they were not too clear about it.” The arrival of Christianity clarified and supplemented some Bena ideas on the exchange of nogoya’a between creation and the creator. In Bena terms of exchange, the Christian God showed a striking resemblance to his Bena predecessor insofar as both concepts represent powerful sources of nurturance. In both cases, a vital form of exchange takes place, promising an increase in a person’s life-force and strength. God strengthens people through his (nurturing) blessing and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and huma strengthens them by giving nogoya’a to the land. The living depend on God’s or huma’s

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nurturance in order to grow strong and become nurturing to others. It is therefore crucial for humans to maintain a good (reciprocal) exchange relationship with God/huma. To receive vital essence from God/huma—in the form of blessing or nogoya’a—people give parts of themselves to him. Like the Christian God, huma does not depend on the relationship, but humans do. Their position in this exchange is and remains characterized by inequality. People depend on God’s and huma’s “good will,” which they reinforce by giving gifts (detaching parts of themselves)—in the case of huma by offering parts of their harvest, and in the case of God by living their lives according to his rules, therefore following certain ritual acts that involve nurturing exchange. The Christian God, like huma, possesses characteristics of an ancestral spirit who, in Bena understanding, is excessively strong and can direct his strength in the form of nurturance/vital essence to the benefit or to the disadvantage of living persons. Like huma, God may punish (weaken) persons by being too strong and refusing to nurture them when they do not give him their obedience—that is, not offering him parts of themselves: their sacrifices, prayers, etc.—to elicit his reciprocation in return. My previous description suggests that the apparent similarities in the concepts of huma and God—the centering on exchange involving the detaching and elicitation of nurturance—have provided the foundation for their syncretic merging. As Tau implied when stating that Bena people already knew about God when Christianity arrived, the similarities of God and huma made it easy to receive the Word from God via the same sorts of detachments and attachments in exchange. However, it is more than resemblance that facilitates this syncretism. In the example of huma and God, a further crucial trait of conjoining cultural elements comes into focus. It seems that people tend to attach to their persons elements of an unfamiliar culture easily when they perceive them as supplementary to prior elements of their own personhoods. God supplements huma in many ways. One can say that he offers an extension from the local to the global. Huma created “the Bena”; God created all humans as well as heaven and earth. Huma is thus the “father” (male founding ancestor) of the Bena, while God is “father” of all people(s). Huma’s nurturance gives life to the land and people; God is the source of all growth. Standing in an exchange relationship with huma ensures nurturance, growth, and strength; committing oneself to God ensures the same, as well as special skills and, ultimately, shelter from evil forces. Having no relationship with huma results in a lack of nurturance and endangers the wellbeing of people; having no relationship with God means living in sin, being depleted of nurturance, and being forever doomed. Huma grants nurturance in this life but does not play any role for a person after his or her death; God also gives nurturance and thus strength to the living but transcends death and even ensures the flow of nogoya’a in the afterlife.

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Thus God’s strength conceptually corresponds closely with huma’s strength, but it extends it by offering more options of nurturance than huma. The terminological correspondence and the concurrent conjoining of the ideas of huma and God therefore point to two main features: the conceptual similarity of huma and God in reference to the exchange of nogoya’a between him and the living, and the extension of huma through God, the latter representing the “ultimate” source of nurturance whose nurturing powers override huma’s. Implicit in the supplementary use of the terms God and huma is the understanding of an agentive exchange relationship between a person and God/huma, expressed and confirmed in various Bena interpretations of different elements of Christianity. In this context, the roles of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in Bena Christianity—or, more precisely, in the exchange relationship between people and God—confirm that the conjoining of Western elements and Bena culture happens on the grounds of their compatibility with preexisting concepts of exchange.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit The birth of Christ, celebrated at Christmas, symbolizes the dawning of a new set of exchange relationships—that between all living people and God, through Christ. Easter is the perfection of this relationship. I was told by Steven, a young upcoming pastor from Napamogona, that Christ’s death on the cross signifies that he voluntarily gave his essence to all living people. The blood of Christ, said Steven, would “clean and strengthen us” so we would be “strong enough” to eventually face God (Steven, personal conversation, 2003). By sacrificing himself—by giving his blood with his nogoya’a—Christ nurtured and continues nurturing people so much that they grow strong enough to become God/huma’s exchange partners. Jesus relieves people of their sins; that means he takes away negative (non-nurturing and destructive) parts of their persons that are detached from them and attaches them to himself. Polako’s statement that olgeta sins bilong mipela em save karim, “he carries all our sins,” implies such detachment and reattachment. Carrying the detached sins of all people, of course, requires a lot of strength. Being the Son of God and the mediator in the exchange between God and human persons, Jesus possesses such strength. Polako once stressed that Jesus could easily have changed his mind, gotten off the cross, and abandoned people, but instead em givim laip bilong em long klinim na strongim mipela, “he gave his life to clean and strengthen us.” He chose to sacrifice his sikrafu’i in order to free people of their sins and he nurtured them with the nogoya’a inherent in his blood. This process is repeated in the exchange that takes place in the Holy Communion where Christians symbolically consume Christ’s blood and his flesh, thus internalizing/attaching his nogoya’a to become strong and in return commit their lives to God.

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The fact that nogoya’a is here equated with the gift of Christ is another key instance of the conjoining of Bena and Christian belief. It shows that Christ’s death is in line with Bena understanding of nurturing exchange. It also reflects the idea that taking on overly strong parts of persons (here the maximum possible amount in the form of all the destructive and negative parts of mankind, represented in the sins)7 weakens and leads to death. Jesus lost, or rather sacrificed, his sikrafu’i because he allowed people’s sins to weaken and physically kill him with their excessive strength. However, being the Son of God, his strength reaches beyond physical death. He gives away nogoya’a, loses his sikrafu’i, and dies on the cross—but soon he reappears, stronger than before, transformed from a living person into a spiritual being that in Bena terms corresponds to his strong (ancestral) meha’a. By accepting negative parts of persons and replacing them with nurturing powers, Jesus cleans and strengthens people. Only through this exchange are they in the position to enter a relationship with God. Jesus is “uniquely qualified to receive the sins of humanity as gifts to be attached to his person” and only “people who accept the truth of his resurrection as the Son of God are enabled to receive God’s blessing” (Mosko 2005). Only through the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ can the relationship with God be entered.8 The resurrection of Christ, his ascension to heaven, and the reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost show the manifestation of this relationship on a spatiotemporal level. Jesus (more or less in the form of a strong and nurturing ancestral spirit) connects the past with the present in overcoming death and practicing exchange (for example, in the form of miracles) with the living. He then moves on to heaven—the land of God—but remains the link between the present world of the living and the timeless world of God that overlaps with the world of ancestral spirits.

Angels, Demons, and Ancestors In Bena Christianity, ancestral spirits are associated with spiritual beings in heaven and hell. I was told that the spirits of persons who had led a “good” life (nurtured others) were with the angels and God in heaven, while the spirits of those who had been greedy and sinful resided in hell with Satan and the demons (Jolly 1996: 240f.; Mosko 2001: 268). According to modern Bena belief, Christians and good persons9 are transferred into spirits (enemehi) after death, allowed to “sit next to God” (Polako, personal conversation, 2005), and participate in an ultimate form of nurturance in heaven/paradise where an abundance of blessing, strength, joy, love, and happiness exists and all weakening and destructive aspects of persons are extinct. Redeemed souls, or rather the spirits of persons, represent in heaven the perfect balance of nurturance and strength inside them, an ideal that can never be reached in physical

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life on earth. Polako expressed it like this: Ol amamas na stap na ol i no bisi long painim kaikai, “they remain happy and are not busy with finding food.” In heaven, the continuous flow of nurturance from God is granted forever because God has accepted the ancestral spirits “sitting next to him.” With an eternal inner balance of nurturance and strength, these spirits or souls may thus be interpreted as the ideal state a person can be in. Such “good” ancestral spirits are also said to support God in his work on earth. Ol save wokim wok bilong God nau, “they do the work of God now” (Inaku’e, interview, 2004). They can heal sick people, give protection from magical attacks, and generally nurture the living. Exchange with these “good/nurturing” ancestors can here be interpreted as an indirect exchange with God/huma that does not necessarily contradict Christianity (although church doctrine may say something else). Persons who have sinned, on the other hand—who have exercised excessive strength over others during their lifetime, who have acted selfishly and greedily for their own benefit only, and who did not follow Christian values—will have to compensate at a later stage for the nurturance they stole from others. They are forced to suffer forever in hell where their spirits are cut off from sources of nurturance and eternally exposed to excessive strength. Ol i no amamas, ol suffer na ol stap wantaim Satan tasol. Ol i nogat strong blong ol nau, “they are not happy, they suffer and remain with Satan only. They have no strength of their own” (Polako, personal conversation, 2005). They are forced to labor for the devil himself, but instead of nurturance they are subjected to destructive/excessive strength, which further weakens them. Souls in hell, I was told, long for nogoya’a/nurturance and they are jealous of those who possess it (Naomi, interview, 2005). In their longing, they may take the forms of demons and harm the living, trying to find essence. On their quest for nurturance, they depend on Satan’s strength; if they succeed, they will only nurture Satan and not themselves. One could in this regard say that the lost souls have become parts of Satan’s person, detached when they seek nurturance from the living and attached again after they have found it. In other words, Satan nurtures himself through negative, agentive forms of exchange with the living via his wokman, “workers,” the doomed souls (Polako, personal conversation, 2005). These are angry, overly strong, and dangerous, and in their antisocial behavior they are alone in spite of having their fellow spirits. While souls in heaven are parts of God’s family and related to each other as “brothers and sisters,” souls in hell are not seen as Satan’s children but as his eternal servants (David, personal conversation, 2004; Monika, interview, 2004; Naomi, interview, 2005). They do not belong to one family but are forced into negative exchange. They want only evil and are jealous and strong—but strength without nurturance can only be destructive. This syncretic element—the conjoining of ancestral spirits into the realms of heaven and hell—shows that Christian and Bena belief systems are struc-

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turally similar, conceptually compatible, and supplementary to each other when analyzed in terms of exchange and personhood. Perceiving God as the greatest source of nurturance and therefore giving first priority to the relationship with him makes as much sense in Bena thinking as trying to keep previously nurturing relationships to ancestral spirits alive and avoid excessively strong evil spirits. The intention is to maintain relationships in an ideal balance of nurturing and strengthening reciprocity that results in the increase of the person’s sikrafu’i and provides him or her with nogoya’a so he or she can nurture others. The exchange between living persons and God in the present is therefore also characterized by its future orientation; gifts received in the past provide the resources for exchange in the future.

The Christian Dividual If one wishes to avoid hell and participate in the (nurturance) promising exchange with God, one must adjust one’s actions to God’s demands, represented in church doctrine. Religious practices are here understood as elicitory gifts to God. First, a person needs to be “born again.” This process is represented in baptism, where a person publicly hands his or her life over to God, and in doing so detaches parts of his or her person (sins). He or she is symbolically cleansed from previous sins (they are all literally “washed” away) and attaches in return the nurturing word and the blessing of God to him or herself. This involves the commitment to enter a long-term, binding exchange relationship with God. The baptized promise to adapt their practices to God’s will. The metaphor of a new birth further indicates a person’s disconnection from his or her “bad” (non-Christian) past and requires the dismissal of certain exchange relationships that are dangerously strong and negative from a Christian point of view. Such relationships may refer to ancestral spirits or other spiritual beings that were present in Bena magical practices and are in Christian terms associated with Satan and demons.10 Conversion, “being born again,” is the crucial marking point in a Christian’s life (Robbins 2004). Anthropologists have tended to interpret conversion in terms of a rupture and discontinuity of the converted person’s previous life (Burdick 1999; Robbins 2004: 127f.). Especially Pentecostal churches focus on the radical transformation that conversion brings with it, one that separates “people from both their pasts and from the surrounding social world” (Burdick 1999; Robbins 2004: 127f.). The newborn Christian leaves his past behind and begins a new life. He or she enters the new family of fellow Christians, which are considered “brothers and sisters.” This includes the relationships with foreigners, “whitemen” (Bashkow 2006). In God’s family, black and white persons become siblings. When becoming a Christian, a person takes on new exchange relationships that are perceived as promising more nurtur-

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ance than previous ones. The exchange of nogoya’a between members of the Christian family is linked to that with God and is thus more nurturing than that with non-Christians. Members of the same church community are supposed to always give each other support in times of need, share ritual practices, and contribute their strength for social purposes (for example, when they pray together for another person or something like world peace, etc.). Church membership further gives options for the extension of networks to Christians all over the world. Given this focus on the aspect of exchange in the Bena understanding and practice of Christianity, and considering its compatibility with Christian belief in terms of nurturance and strength as detached and attached parts of persons, one may conclude that there is a fundamental similarity in the Christian and Bena concept of person. Mosko (2005) noted that “regardless of most denominational differences, Christians would appear to be by definition persons composed of multiple parts. In the course of their lives they enter into relations with the devil, Jesus, God and other spiritual beings (Mary, the Saints, the devil’s minions) and fellow Christians. These relations consist in Bena in the exchange of nogoya’a in order to increase one’s sikrafu’i so that one can continue nurturing others (“positive” exchange, associated with God/huma and fellow Christians), or to take other person’s nogoya’a away and weaken them in order to strengthen oneself (“negative” exchange, associated with Satan and evil/doomed ancestral spirits, witchcraft, and magical practices).

The “Dark” and “Bright” Side of Religious Exchange Some churches claim that pre-Christian exchange rituals are sins (Mosko 2005) and imply that the relationships nurtured in such practices are sinful and polluting. Ancestral spirits could have sinful parts attached to them and act like demons (depleting nurturance from oneself ); non-Christian exchange partners could be evil and greedy and cheat and weaken one; elements of “traditional” exchange—for example, the display of naked skin according to traditional Bena ritual dress code—could lead to involuntary attachments of Satan’s person, represented, for example, in uncontrolled sexual greed or excessive jealousy. Thus fundamental Christian doctrine enjoins people to disconnect themselves from their past (past practices and relationships), pictured as evil, satanic, or “dark.” As in many other Papua New Guinean cultures, Christianity is valued highly in Bena and described as having brought light into a pre-Christian state of darkness (see Bashkow 2006: 139; Courtens 2008; Scott 2013). When persons in Bena refer to such “dark times,” they use the Tok Pisin term dak, which implies a valuation (“dark” being associated with fear, danger, and death) as well as a temporal/historical reference (the

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time before the missionaries’ arrival). Although I could not find a corresponding adjective in Bena language, in which people usually describe these times as afonifihi gana’a, “the time of my grandfathers/ancestors,” the concept of dark versus bright (or light) as categories representing “bad” and “good,” past and present, and Satan and God has been readily incorporated into Bena Christianity (Jolly 1996). This particular syncretic merging of dichotomies is founded on the similarity of Bena and Christian associations with the terms. Darkness is dangerous and feared by a people who need to be aware of enemy attacks, especially at night. It is, moreover, the time when spirits roam the land and sanguma witches pursue their hunts. Darkness is the time of uncertainty, of greatest vulnerability, and of evil forces. It is therefore not surprising that the introduction of Satan as God’s opponent—being described by missionaries as the “dark force” etc.—and the concurrent association of Satan with magical practices convinced Bena Christians to accept the term “dark.” The opposition between darkness and light and its connotations can easily be interpreted in Bena terms of exchange. The two aspects represent the opposition between the destructive exercising of excessive strength (by dark forces such as Satan, demons, witches, sorcerers) on the one hand and the perfect balance in the flow of nurturance and growth of strength (through the light of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit) on the other. This dichotomy of visual metaphors thus refers to antisocial versus socially appreciated behavior, to greed versus generosity, to weakening/non-nurturing versus strengthening/nuturing relationships, to magical practices versus exchange with God, to the time before versus the time after the arrival of Christianity in Bena, and so forth. However, not all pre-Christian elements of Bena culture fall into the category of being “dark.” In none of the interviews I conducted was the term ever used in reference to a positive exchange of nogoya’a, the provision of nurturance in exchange. Het pe exchanges, for example, have never been described as belonging to or originating in the “dark times.” The same applied to female initiation. In fact, it seems that the Pidgin term dak in its Bena usage captures only states of non-nurturance and excessive strength. Although widely used, magical exchange practices that work on the principle of manipulating the balance of nogoya’a and sikrafu’i inside a person had already been considered “negative” in terms of Bena exchange before the arrival of Christianity. Sorcerers were (and are) consulted and feared, and poison magic was (and is) applied in times of conflict but it has never been described as something good or as something one should do. Poison magic, like sanguma, is considered antisocial and destructive. This kind of self-centered magic never had a positive moral connotation in Bena. Inaku’e told me that people who apply poison magic (or who ask a sorcerer to apply it to someone) are secretive, like sanguma witches, and usually do not admit to their deeds because they fear the retaliation of the community or the victim’s relatives.

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The communal response to the weakening of persons through magic with fear, aggression, and violence confirms the negative perception of such practices. Christianity in Bena takes up this understanding of negative exchange in magical practices but supplements and extends it. While “traditionally,” magic was feared but nevertheless accepted as an undesired but sometimes necessary (anti)social fact, church doctrine aims at preventing persons from applying it at all. In this context, Christianity brought with it the chance to disconnect one’s being from this bad past and practice a Christian lifestyle that ensured good times and an abundance of nurturance in the future. Most Bena Christians today view magical practices as satanic and perceive most “cultural beliefs and practices, including traditional ceremonies, healing practices, certain forms of talk, sociability and exchange, as incompatible with Christianity— not only irrelevant to a Christian future but a potential impediment to it. Such things had to be relegated to the past and not revisited” (Schieffelin 2002: 7). To me, the crucial point is the perception that certain forms of exchange are incompatible with Christianity while others are not. Nurturing reciprocal exchanges are seen as crucial for a person’s fundamental wellbeing because they contribute significantly to the creation of the right balance of nurturance and strength in him or her and in exchanges between his or her maternal and paternal kin. They do not contradict the Bible; in fact, the complex kinship system described in the Old Testament especially and the stories that go with it resemble in many ways a Bena understanding of genealogy, but in the Bible it is much more precise and deeper (Genesis 4–5). The same goes for the descriptions of obligations in exchange (Genesis 20–21:8; Genesis 26–27). Pre-Christian Bena forms of nurturing exchange and those of Christianity that are conceptually compatible are valued positively and treated as desired practices because they provide nurturance. Non-nurturing and weakening exchanges are not acceptable for Christians. They do fit into the Christian belief system because they show similarities with practices associated with Satan, a despised but nevertheless central figure in Christianity; however, precisely because of this they are morally condemned. Confusion arose in this context over contact with dead spirits. According to Bena understanding, these are not per se aggressive or harmful. They may act overly strong when provoked but they can also provide nurturance for their descendants. Christian doctrine, however, does not differentiate benevolent from malevolent ancestral spirits and has put a general taboo on exchange relationships with them (Jolly 1996: 240f.). Cutting off such exchange relationships equals cutting off relationships to the past and implies an agreement never again to employ capacities acquired in the past in future transactions. In other words, ancestral nurturance is to be replaced by divine nurturance. In chapter 5, I quoted the old JogiJohi Clan leader who said that visits by ancestral spirits had been frequent in his youth but have become less fre-

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quent since the introduction of Christianity and have nearly ceased today. He said that the spirits stopped visiting their descendants—they “did not come anymore” (Koliopa, interview, 2004)—and implied that they still existed but that the relationships with them were cut off because people turned away and focused on exchange with newly introduced “spirits”—Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God. People (officially) decreased their engagement in exchange with the ancestors and stopped nurturing them. Interestingly, in the example given here, this negative reciprocity did not lead to angry, overly strong reactions on the part of the spirits. They simply left. This may indicate that the strength of Jesus is superior to theirs and stops them from harming living Christians. There are, however, still many people in Bena who practice exchange with their ancestors. It is true that such rituals have become less popular, but at funerals, for example, many taboos are observed to ensure the smooth transition of a living person’s meha’a into that of a deceased person. The rage of the ancestors is still feared and their support still sought in times of crisis. Then persons tend to activate all possible spirits—angels and ancestors alike. Whenever the Napamogona go into a fight, they practice different kinds of war magic and pray for God’s support. If a person is sick, prayers are thought to heal him or her, but he or she will additionally be given magically treated ginger that contains different parts of personal and ancestral strength and helps in case of a gunakfe’i or sanguma attack. Thus there is neither a sudden interruption of “traditional Bena belief ” by elements of Christianity nor a replacement of old concepts by new ones. What Saussure stated long ago, that “the principle of change is based on the principle of continuity” (in Sahlins 1985: 153), is obviously true for Bena. This suggests that all culture change works on the continuity of specific cultural a priori categories. Robbins’ (2004) work on the impact of Christianity on Urapmin culture shows a feature of culture change that I have found in Bena, too. A certain compatibility of cultural ideas/elements is a necessary requirement for their conjoining. Robbins describes, for example, how compatible the precontact Urapmin cultural emphasis on “moral deliberation” and on difficult moral choices in everyday life was with the Christian notion of sin. According to Robbins, the main motivation for Urapmin conversion to Christianity is rooted in preexisting cultural categories such as this feature of their morality. Further, the Urapmin value of innovation—expressed, for example, in the creativity and innovative strategies of Big Men in order to appeal to others—and the concurrent flexibility of choices and actions provided nurturing grounds for Christianity. Robbins (2004) then takes up a model derived from Sahlins and emphasizes the role of humiliation in culture change: initiated by severe moral condemnation from colonial officers and evangelists and a general feeling of inferiority, a feeling of humiliation developed in Urapmin persons.

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As I have pointed out in the introduction to this book, I have certain objections to the emphasis that Robbins puts on “adoption” and “humiliation.” Robbins relies much on Sahlins’s and Dumont’s cultural structuralism and concurrent models of culture change and explains adoption in these terms. Since culture in this approach “is seen as fully specifying the terms in which action is framed and motivated” (Rumsey 2004: 585), Robbins creates a sort of paradox with his model of adoption: if culture provides the terms and categories for (any) action, it must necessarily do so for modes of culture change—a process that takes place in relation to preexisting cultural categories (see Rumsey 2004: 591).11 For Bena, I argue that what Robbins refers to as “humiliation” is instead a pre-Christian concept of “weakness” as opposed to strength, the latter being dependent on the acquisition of nurturance (nogoya’a) in exchange. The term and concept of being “weak” (depleted of nurturance) implies, like humiliation, the inferiority of one party in the exchange relationship with another. However, being weak indicates in Bena a personal unbalance of nurturing and strong parts, an undesired state that, unlike “humiliation,” can be changed. A weak Bena person—or a weak Bena cultural category for that matter—may regain its strength through strategic agentive acting—through being nurtured (receiving nogoya’a) in exchange. A humiliated person, on the other hand, will remain in the unbalanced state of inferiority in exchange unless fundamental changes take place, with crucial parts of it being dismissed and replaced by new ones, not conjoined with them.12 Thus humiliation leads to adoption and enforces a structural change of cultural categories, while being “weak” does not. In other words, although the indigenous concept of becoming or being “weak” has an aspect of humiliation to it, culture change in Bena is certainly not founded on humiliation as a cultural category by itself.13 Instead of a feeling of humiliation leading to the adoption of new cultural elements, I found in Bena that the motivation to accept or reject foreign elements depended on their valuation as nurturing or as weakening in exchange relationships. The main criteria according to which the indigenous analysis values new cultural elements are whether the concurrent exchanges are of a positive (nurturing, reciprocal) or negative (weakening, nonreciprocal) nature. In this regard, culture change in Bena seems to consist of the innovative reproduction of cultural categories rather than their fundamental change or their replacement with new ones. People are, as Bashkow (2006: 242) pointed out for the Orokaiva, “selective about which foreign influences they adopt, and … tend to transform those they do adopt by interpreting them from their own cultural standpoint.” The Bena “cultural standpoint” in regard to the incorporation of new elements into Bena belief is rooted in the specific understanding of exchange and personhood. Culture change presents itself here as the merging of elements that share similar features with and supplement aspects of Bena conceptualizations of person and

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exchange relationships.14 The reduction or termination of past exchange relationships occurs in order to establish new ones that are perceived as stronger and as promising more nurturance. Thus the syncretic conjoining of Christian elements with elements of Bena belief does not indicate a change—or rupture—in the conceptual perception of the mechanisms of exchange relationships nor does it undermine the partibility of Bena personhood. Rather, it shows the compatibility of the accepted elements of Christianity with such of “traditional” Bena belief, founded on their similar and supplementary character.

The Second Coming Christianity brought with it what was understood to be a gradual disconnection of Bena persons from their past, the “dark times” of ancestral spirits, fears, and magic. Church doctrine encourages people to distance themselves from their past and focus on their present activities in order to receive future benefits. All over Papua New Guinea (as elsewhere), Christians expect Christ’s return to earth, when evil forces will surrender to God’s strength and mankind will be separated into those who are saved and those that are doomed, according to their deeds and faith in their lifetime. The Second Coming, the time of revelation and judgment of Christians and non-Christians, is located in the future; but whether one will be sent into heaven or hell depends on (exchange) activities in the present. Like many people in Papua New Guinea, the Bena expected the dawning of the new millennium to initiate the apocalypse. In 1999, the two churches in Napamogona had an intensified period of prayers and charismatic worship sessions that prepared believers for the imminent return of Christ. Throughout the year, the number of “crusades” in the region increased, as well as the number of baptisms and charismatic religious “outbursts” of people who had prophetic visions. There was also an increase in stories that were told in relation to the apocalypse, expressing an impressive amount of creativity in the syncretic conjoining of biblical and Bena ideas (see below). However, in spite of high expectations, the year 2000 came and went without any noticeable apocalyptic occurrences. As a consequence, the Napamogona turned towards a more flexible form of preparing themselves. They chose a management by crisis approach. The return of Jesus was certain but it would happen unexpectedly. David, himself a convinced Christian, explained the unexpected Second Coming by quoting scripture: “Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed” (Revelation 16: 15; personal conversation 2004). One would need to be prepared for whenever that moment occurred. Wanem taim em bai kam mipela mas redi na i stap, “whenever He will come, we must be ready” (Polako, personal conversation, 2004).

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As in everyday life where, for example, families have a couple of extra pigs in store in case an unexpected contribution is required, each person needs to be ready when God offers to exchange. Only when a person has exchanged with God through Christ (accepted his vital essence/nurturance/nogoya’a/blood and reciprocated by leading a Christian lifestyle, regretting past sins, and distancing him or herself from the past) will he or she receive a place in heaven and enjoy an abundance of nurturance in the future. As with indigenous exchange practices, religious practices in Christianity encompass different temporalities. They link past, present, and future. Living according to Christian values today ensures future nurturance. Present and future, however, depend on transactions made in the past, namely Christ’s sacrifice of his life that provided the option to enter an exchange relation with God in the first place. Bena Christians live in anticipation of the Second Coming and are very creative in interpreting certain “signs” as indicators of fulfillment of certain biblical prophecies and/or of the approaching apocalypse. Unusual events or unknown situations (which frequently arise in intercultural contact) give rise to speculations about the future and are often associated with Christianity.

The Number of the Beast One of the stories that circled in Napamogona in 2004 concerned the dawn of the apocalypse. The reason the story emerged was that one of my sisters had witnessed something very strange in the supermarket in Goroka town. Excitedly she told us back in the village that she had seen a white woman who paid in the local store merely by holding her hand against the cash machine. My sister insisted that this woman did not use any money, nor did she use a credit card. Instead, she saw that a number was tattooed on the back of the woman’s right hand, a number that allowed her to purchase goods without “paying” in a regular way. This event was eagerly discussed in the village and, after they unsuccessfully inquired if I knew anything about this practice, my relatives agreed that it was a clear sign of the Beast’s presence in the world. Mama Polako quoted the passage Revelation 13:16–18: “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” My interlocutors concluded that the woman had the number of the Beast attached to her body. She purchased goods by using the number’s attached “strength,” which is, according to Bena and Christian interpretation, the detached strength of the Beast itself. The fact that the Bible explicitly talks here about the Beast in names and numbers and in relation to exchange fits very

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well into Bena belief. As mentioned in the previous chapter, numbers signify and give power. Being able to pay with the number, the woman displayed excessive strength. She was able to take/receive nurturance in the form of goods and reciprocated only with parts of her (or rather the Beast’s) strength. In this way she forced her strength on others. The above Bible passage mentions that some day all forms of exchange will depend on such power relationships; in the time of the Beast’s regime, shortly before God’s final victory over evil, all exchange will only happen in dependency on the strength of the Beast, expressed in the use of its number and name—a scenario that my Christian Bena relatives dread but intend to face. Christians are the chosen people who will not carry the mark of the Beast on their body and who will refuse to enter into an exchange relationship with Satan. They will rather endure hardship by being cut off from certain exchange relationships (implying their temporary weakening by Satan) in order to remain in their relationship with God, Satan’s most powerful enemy, and gain ultimate nurturance in a long term. Again, the similarity in the features of religious elements and their supplementing nature have led to the syncretic conjoining of Western elements with Bena culture. Satan detaches part of his strength and attaches it to his name and to a number. In Bena belief, names are perceived as containing a part of the person and are therefore associated with certain taboos—for example, that people do not call each other by name in public but use the appropriate kinship term, etc. Names have strength in Bena. They are often given in memory of a certain person and refer back to that person. They possess detached parts of that person.15 Like names, numbers are strong because they always refer to exchange. Western numbers are seen as possessing Western strength attached to them (see Crump 1997). The number 666 refers back to the strongest evil spirit, Satan, and therefore provides persons with excessive strength—but not with nurturance. By taking on his number, persons are instead forced into the exchange relationship with the devil and, consequently, into evil, antisocial behavior and, finally, into hell. Only maintaining a strong relationship with God, whose strength overrides Satan’s, prevents exchange with Satan and eternal suffering. This example demonstrates that Christian ideas and concepts do not contradict Bena models of personhood and exchange. Rather, the dividual aspects of partibility of persons implied in Christianity (Mosko 2005) correspond to a Bena understanding of exchange relationships, or at least can easily be read in such terms.

God’s Shortening of Time Closely related to the expectation of the approaching apocalypse is the perception that time is accelerating, even in Bena. A number of persons in Napa-

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mogona, but also in other regions of Papua New Guinea, told me that they observed a general “shortening” of time. Here is one example: “In the old times, we stayed for a long time before we went to work and when we came back we heated stones [for a mumu] and later in the afternoon we stayed together until it got dark and went to sleep. But now, in this time, the time goes fast and we have no time to stay and the time is not so long anymore, it became shorter. … I feel that the church and all that has shortened time. The church came and the time became shorter. When the church came here, the man above [God] shortened the time. Maybe he wants to come. That’s what I think. God shortened the time” (Lapun, interview, 2004). The man who told me this was an old inmarried man from Henganofi who lived with his children in Napamogona, his wife’s village. He was not the only one who explained the increasing speed of life to me in relation to God. Two other men from Napamogona and various people in the Southern Highlands and Enga also thought that God shortened time because of his approaching arrival. Some people even gave me precise figures. An old Engan leader from Mala village near Wabag told me that God had reset the clock of the universe and taken away three hours of each day. Accordingly the days now are only twenty-one hours long, and they would become shorter still until no time was left. The perceived shortening of time is here clearly linked with the anticipation of an apocalyptic future. In his Revelation prophecy, John describes the appearance of an angel (with a book that John “eats” later) who promises the dissolving of time: “Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven. And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it, and said, ‘There will be no more delay! But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets’” (Revelation 10:5–7). The specific Bena addition to this biblical prophecy consists of the idea that time may not dissolve suddenly but that it gradually becomes less or moves faster towards its end, a process that started with the arrival of churches in Bena. This assumption is grounded in my interlocutors’ personal perception that, since then, days have become shorter and continue to do so; a perception that depends on the measuring of time in relation to social practices that today seem to take longer than they did before the arrival of Western culture in Bena. In other words, people feel that they get less done in the same time frame as before. This impression is common for people in Western contexts as well—how often does one hear people in Germany, the United States, or any other Western nation complain about time just “flying” by. However, in many Western societies today, this is linked to economy rather than to Christianity.

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The speeding up of time is seen in reference to a capitalist, profit-oriented economic system with a “time is money” attitude that depends on clock-time and a new temporal structuring of people’s lives and schedules (Gupta and Ferguson 1997, 1998; Hall 1983; Levine 1997). Given the presence and importance of Christianity in the everyday life of my interlocutors in Bena, one can assume that the introduction of clock-time, which happened more or less concurrently with that of the Christian calendar, and with the increase of church demands on people’s time has contributed to the perceived acceleration of time in Bena. Time may seem to pass by faster because one has to fulfill additional tasks, such as, for example, attending church services and participating in religious activities. In other words, the (new) exchange relationship with God and fellow Christians is time-consuming and leads to a “lack” of time in regard to other exchange relationships and concurrent social practices.

The Impact of Christianity on Time Schedules and Relationships The introduction of Christianity is the most obvious Western influence on the structuring of time in Bena villages. It determines to a great degree the social practices and exchange relationships of most people in their chronology and duration. With the church, the measuring of time in weekly periods began. Sunday—or, for the Seventh-day Adventists, Saturday—has become the day of rest and, especially, the day of worship and social gatherings. In line with the Old Testament, it is also an offering (of time and respect) to God and thus a transaction between Christians and God. The engagement of Christians in church activities, however, is not reduced to attending the weekly service. On various evenings during the week, church meetings are held. Young Christians in Napamogona meet on Wednesday evenings for Bible study, worship, and organizing church events (“crusades,” special festivities, etc.). The women’s groups meet on Tuesdays, and cleaning the church grounds (cutting the grass, planting flowers, renovating the building, decorating the church, etc.) is usually done on Fridays or Saturdays. Not all members take part in each of these transactions. If, however, big events are organized, such as a “crusade” or a charity meeting, church members are expected to contribute their strength and support church activities. It is then that conflicts between the church’s demands and personal or social obligations occur. A prioritization of exchange relationships takes place. Church doctrine sometimes prevents members from attending social events such as exchange rituals, or at least reduces their participation. This is due to the church’s demands that certain past indigenous exchange practices should be abandoned. People should no longer engage in transactions that result in the acquisition of undesired, weakening personal parts. But it is also due to a

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Christian’s temporal obligations towards church activities, which he or she accepted by becoming a church member. Tau told me that “some are committed Christians that belong to some church organizations. Because of the church doctrine or the church beliefs, they do not attend [communal events]. Whatever they planned, they are strict about it and they make sure that they finish this work (personal conversation, 2005).

Mama Polako: A Committed Christian’s Exchange Dilemma Committed Christians sometimes reject their participation in traditional feasts. Their absence from social gatherings for religious reasons is generally tolerated but occasionally leads to tensions, especially if it becomes a burden for others who have to take on the work of an extraordinarily “busy” or strict Christian person—a person like, for example, Polako. If one neglects the principle of reciprocity too often by not contributing in the numerous minor communal exchanges or by completely distancing oneself from such practices for religious reasons, the exchange of relationships between persons in the community becomes disturbed. Such Christians are criticized as not sufficiently supportive (nurturing) of their family: Ol ken lotu tasol ol i no ken lus tingting long femili bilong ol, “they can go to church but they must not forget their families” (Inaku’e, interview, 2004). According to many of my interlocutors, Christians who neglect their family obligations in exchange have misunderstood Christianity and are following a wrong belief. “Real Christians,” ol trutru Kristen, I was told, would actually display opposite characteristics: they would be “better” family members, “better” husbands and wives, “better” mothers and fathers—meaning they would increase their nurturing support towards their kin, not decrease it. They would even participate more in village politics and exchanges in order to influence the situation in their community according to nurturing Christian values in, for example, the fields of medicine (establishing of medical aid posts, etc.), education (Sunday schools, etc.), and clan affairs (settling of disputes, peace negotiations, etc.) (Inaku’e, interview, 2004).16 Polako is today a member of the Assembly of God Church but entertains relationships with Christians of all denominations. Like many Christians in Bena, she has accepted and rejected her church membership as components of her person several times. Her latest church is a Pentecostal congregation that seems to focus less on the joyful aspects of Christian belief and rather on the fear of God. The Bible is interpreted in a very literal way and the approaching apocalypse is expected to happen any moment. The most crucial aspect in the church doctrine of many Pentecostal churches, however, is that members are discouraged from sustaining close relationships with non-Christians and even with fellow Christians who belong to other churches. Close contact with

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non-Christians is here associated with exchange with Satan; at least that is what Polako told me once (personal conversation, 2004). The pre-Christian Bena idea of weakening versus nurturing parts of essence is in this church doctrine enforced and, one could argue, supplemented through the creation of an even stronger dichotomy of evil versus good. According to this understanding, anyone who is not a Christian must be in a relationship with Satan. It can be dangerous to Christians to be too close to such persons because of Satan’s inherently damaging—weakening—influence on their persons. Old “bad” relationships (with non-Christians) should be replaced with new “good” ones (with fellow Christians). Instead of attaching “bad,” weakening parts of non-Christians, one should focus on the most nurturing exchange with God and his family. Becoming a full member of God’s “selected” family involves here reducing or even breaking up (supposedly weakening) previous relationships and devoting one’s life to the church, thereby offering parts of oneself to God (detachment of sins, but also of time and “essence” given in Church work and participation in services, etc.) in exchange for the nurturing gift of Jesus’ essence and the Holy Spirit. Most of the Christians in Napamogona attend one of the two village churches. Some join the Baptist church in the neighboring village of Sogomi. For many years, Polako was the only person who regularly left the village early on Sunday mornings to attend the church service in town. She came back in the evening or stayed overnight in Goroka and returned home on Monday; sometimes she stayed away for days because of church meetings or volunteer work. Occasionally she took her grandson Samuel with her, but often he remained in the village by himself and spent his time with other children. Some of her relatives criticized Polako’s frequent absence from the village (which was not only due to her Christian activities but also to her volunteer work, which was, however, spurred on by her Christian conviction). Her engagement in activities outside the village context, the nogoya’a she detached in them, changed her exchange with Samuel. A common reproach was that Polako did not provide sufficient nurturance towards him. This was literally expressed, for example, in the statement that she sometimes forgot to provide food for him and that he became thinner. Although Polako tried her best to be a good, nurturing mother and fulfill her personal role in the village context, her activities outside the village context made her dependent upon the support of others to help her with Samuel’s education as well as with her everyday tasks. Her frequent absence made it necessary for others to nurture her, look after her property, provide her with garden food, and help her in everyday work such as washing clothes, fixing things around the house, and so forth. As I have discussed earlier, she depends on well-functioning social relationships in the village that allow her to be away and pursue her Christian lifestyle and volunteer work without losing her rights

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at home. According to relatives and friends, Polako’s membership in fundamentalist town churches had changed her as a person. People criticized her for neglecting relationships with them and found her growing disapproval of local feasts and rituals and her lack of participation in such contexts inappropriate. Tau and Polako were both committed Christians, but they represented different spatial and spiritual domains. Tau, the educated man who decided to live as a subsistence farmer in the village, was active in the local Foursquare Church. He regularly attended the services and was occasionally involved in the organization of “crusades” in the near area. In his belief, he had found a way of adopting specific Christian values (honesty, dignity, truthfulness, and especially discipline) along with elements of his ethics as a Bena warrior. He said he believed in the strength of God and that God would be on his side whenever he went into battle. He described himself to me as a warrior of true values and emphasized that he would only fight for the righteous. The Old Testament “eye-for-an-eye approach” fit well into his perception of retaliation and to him justified the various fights he led. Tau saw the fighting of evil forces as part of his obligation to God and to the community and was therefore also supportive of sanguma witch hunts. He tried to embody the assertively strong side of Christianity rather than its nurturing aspects. Interestingly, Tau changed his attitude towards Christianity, or at least towards the church, during the years 2005 and 2006, shortly before the fighting began. He then gradually stopped attending the services. Polako’s spiritual battle does not display excessive aggressive strength but rather productive nurturance and protective strength. She gets up in the middle of the night and prays loudly to keep demons and evil spirits away; she prays to heal people and protect them from sanguma attacks; and she is in a continuous exchange with the Holy Spirit who has taken on the role of her meha’a in telling her what to do and what not to do. Unlike Tau, Polako sees her Christian obligation as spreading the good news among others, and her volunteer work is usually mission related. If people accept Christian values as parts of their persons, according to Polako’s assumption, a great deal of hardship will cease; for example, the spreading of AIDS and domestic violence will decrease, and so will non-nurturing practices such as stealing or killing. Tau and Polako share the view that more discipline (strength) and more binding values (reliable sources of nurturance) are required to save the community’s—and the nation’s—wellbeing in the long term. However, while Polako enforces the perseverance of Christian values only (such as the first commandment according to Jesus) and concurrently postulates the dismissal of many past exchange relationships, Tau supplements Christianity with “traditional” Bena ethics. He speaks with great respect of the virtues of his ancestors, strong-minded men who had greater physical and spiritual strength than young people today. According to Tau, their strength depended on their

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general discipline, which derived from the hardship they experienced—for example, in initiation (the endurance of physical pain)—and in their exchange relationships over vital essence with ancestral and other spirits. In other words, it consisted to a great degree of knowledge about the mechanisms of exchange (the detachment and attachment of nogoya’a). Tau applies magical practices and does not see them as opposed to Christianity. God/huma is the highest and most powerful being, but in everyday life the support of strong ancestral spirits is an additional source of nurturance. Although ancestral spirits are perceived as inferior in strength to God, their nurturing essence can be added (detached from them and attached to persons) in times of need as a useful sort of “second insurance.” Like most Bena Christians, Tau does not replace his “old” relationships with new Christian ones but adds them to the list of important relationships in his life and person. In fact, he tries to reestablish past relationships. Once he planned to consult the spirits about a conflict inside the community that was threatening to escalate. He wanted their advice on how to proceed and information about the weapons the opponents possessed. Before he went to this séance, he complained to me that getting in contact with the spirits had become difficult today because klostu ol lus tingting long mipela tu ya, “they also have nearly forgotten about us”; but according to him the relationships with them can and should be reinforced—for the benefit of the community. Polako totally opposes this view. In her opinion, any kind of exchange with ancestral spirits implies exchange with Satan and therefore contradicts Christian belief. To her, the Christian God is an exclusive God who does not allow other gods—or spirits for that matter—next to him. Practicing exchange with ancestors is in Polako’s view a sin. It implies taking upon one’s person overly strong, non-nurturing bits of the devil and, by means of this attachment, changing the balance between nurturance and strength. Some forms of less traditional and more prosaic exchange between persons in the village—for example, gambling and drinking—are also associated with Satan and his dangerous strength by most Bena Christians.

Wasting Time and Strength: “Useless” Forms of Exchange One reason why Polako rarely attends informal social gatherings in the village is the gambling, drinking, smoking, and gossiping habits of her relatives. From a Christian point of view, she dislikes such practices because as sins they connect people with the devil and they disconnect people from God. They trigger greed in the minds of those who practice them and change people for the worse. By giving priority to their habits or addictions, persons detach crucial parts of their essence in an exchange that is usually not reciprocated. Consequently, they lose strength and the ability to be nurturant in other re-

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lationships. They neglect Christian as well as pre-Christian Bena values of exchange. Those who gamble always give away nurturance, usually without receiving any in return. They become greedy and—not unlike victims of sanguma or magic attacks—are on a continuous, interminable quest for vital essence, in this case in the hope of attaching the nurturance of Western money to their persons when they win. The desire to attach alcohol or cigarettes works on the same principle. Both drugs seem at first instance to be nurturing; after the consumption of a few beers, people feel strong and often act overly strongly/aggressively; smoking tobacco is said to make one “hot” (strong, effective). In reality, however, Polako claimed, they have a destructive, weakening impact on persons, just like the strength of Satan has when it is attached. Alcohol consumption turns men and women into “animals” who then only yield to their impulses, leading to uncontrolled sexuality and promiscuity and even to AIDS, says Polako. Smoking weakens and sickens persons and in the case of smoking marijuana confuses and weakens spirit and body. All these vices weaken persons and their relation with God. On the other hand, they strengthen relations with the devil. This has an impact on relationships and balances of nurturance and strength between persons, too. In order to finance their vices, they withdraw money but also nogoya’a from other relationships without reciprocating, and they often fail to nurture their family because “they feed only their greed” as Polako put it (personal conversation, 2004). Gossiping is a further case in point. The association of gossip, rumor, and sorcery has been discussed by Stewart and Strathern (2004). Suffice it to say here that gossip shares some features with sorcery. It is often driven by jealousy and greed, can harm and even destroy others, and is often planned strategically with such purpose in mind. Good Christians, said Polako, avoid participating in gossip—a task that can only be achieved if one keeps a distance from communal gatherings and local gossipers. Accordingly, Polako’s new house and garden in Napamogona are fenced in, and she only receives select visitors. Unlike on other premises in the village, people do not simply “drop by.” Such distant behavior towards relatives, however, gives reason for gossip. Polako complained to me uncountable times that she had become the center of village gossip and lies. Tau totally shares Polako’s dislike of gambling, gossiping, alcohol consumption, and smoking and makes an effort to reduce these habits in the community. However, he does not primarily object to it because of his Christian belief. He is instead concerned about the waste and misuse of people’s time and strength on such “useless” and “dangerous” non-nurturant activities. The threat he sees in these relatively recently introduced habits lies in the decrease in people’s strength and discipline. People become addicted to gambling and are then weakened by their greed; drinking breaks down self-control and lets people act in anti-nurturant, uncontrolled, and aggressive ways. Being ad-

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dicted to smoking is a sign of personal weakness and therefore of a lack of strength. All these vices weaken people physically and spiritually and make them vulnerable to attacks of evil forces or enemy groups. Tau sees the lack of strength and discipline in Napamogona as the main danger for the wellbeing of the community: “I see two things that consume most of the people’s time and bring big new problems into the community. The first thing I see is gambling. Gambling! They can sit there from morning until night or late in the evening, and sometimes they even continue throughout the night and the following day. That happens. And I see, when they do this, they lose some hours during which they could do something else to get something in return; and I see that gambling consumes people’s time and they misuse the time for good things and lose it by gambling, that’s why I mention it” (Tau 2005: personal conversation). Tau’s critical statement on gambling practices in Napamogona is focused on the danger that gambling poses for the nature of exchange relationships in the village. He stated that, by nurturing gambling, people miss out on doing “something else to get something in return”; in other words, they replace nurturing social exchange relationships (for example, to their kin) with unhealthy, weakening new ones (to other gamblers), wrongly assuming they could gain nurturance through them and increase their strength by winning money. Their behavior is antisocial in so far as such people often fail to nurture their families and sometimes even directly weaken their relatives financially by borrowing and losing their money. Some villagers have committed themselves to gambling so much that they neglect even fundamental everyday nurturant tasks such as cooking or looking after the children. Instead, they spend most of their time at the communal place playing cards. Gambling is thus a reason for many conflicts in marriages, with husbands accusing their wives of neglecting the families in favor of card games, or women accusing their husbands of losing all the money and threatening their family’s wellbeing. During and after the coffee season, gambling increases due to a greater cash flow in the community and is often accompanied by the drinking of alcohol. Tau bemoaned Bena drinking habits: In Western societies you see that maybe after a meal you take one glass or two glasses. But we here in PNG, we are not like that. If you give me one glass, I will be angry with you. I won’t be satisfied with you. And you, you are from the outside and it is normal for you so you will give me one glass. But we will not be happy with you because why did you influence me by giving me one cup already and then refuse to satisfy me completely? So we here, if the men want to drink, as long as they get six packets up to one carton, that is enough. But this one glass is not enough. So this kind I see here, this other thing that takes people’s time is alcohol. … When I say alcohol I mean that the men are not easy about drinking one or two

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glasses. They go for bottles and bottles or half a carton or one carton or even two, three cartons. They do this and are drunk for the whole day, and on the next day they are tired and hang around and don’t use their time to do their work. So alcohol consumes time. (personal conversation, 2005)

The problems Tau addresses here in regard to alcohol consumption in the village revolve around the Bena understanding of exchange that seems threatened through this drug. Alcohol consumption, according to Tau, enforces greed and affects people’s self-control. It temporarily gives them excessive strength but in the long run weakens them so much that they are not strong enough to keep up vital nurturant relationships with others. In the above quote Tau further points to a specific Bena attitude towards consumption that needs some explanation. In Bena, one will observe that eating habits are slightly irregular. People might not eat anything throughout the whole day (except maybe for some fruit) and then eat incredible amounts of sweet potatoes, rice, and vegetables at one sitting in the evening. The same applies to drinking. I observed that my interlocutors did not drink their daily water in small amounts throughout the day but rather in larger quantities two or three times a day. If one eats or drinks in Bena, as a rule, one does so until one is “full” and “satisfied.” One tries to attach as much nurturance to oneself as possible. It is considered very impolite to give someone less food than he or she would need to be satiated or take the water bottle away in order to save some for later. This pattern is reflected in alcohol consumption. Drinking alcohol does not serve the function of quenching one’s thirst but rather is designed to satisfy a person in regard to his or her state of drunkenness. In other words, one drinks alcohol in order to get drunk—totally drunk—and therefore does not stop before this state is achieved to satisfaction. This is unfortunately usually not achieved until physical collapse. As Tau said, offering someone a beer in Bena implies the intention to give him or her more, so much until he or she is fully nurtured. Not giving enough is worse than giving nothing, and stopping before the state of satisfactory drunkenness has been achieved is impolite and often leads to aggressive reactions on the side of the invited persons. This behavior somewhat differs from the Western ideal, where alcohol drinking is seen rather as a traditional social practice that strengthens communication and relationships and accompanies social gatherings but is not their main purpose. Achieving a state of complete drunkenness is in Western culture not generally a person’s aim when drinking and has a rather negative, sometimes funny, connotation. However, the Bena approach is not as dissimilar to a lot of drinking situations in Western cultures as one might think. Alcohol-induced aggressive outbursts happen in the local bar down the road, and most everyone who has been to a party knows the picture of staggering drunk. The Western ideal, however, is to be in control of these habits and not let things get out of hand;

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the Bena approach, on the other hand, is to get as much of it in as possible, for one does not know when the next opportunity to eat, drink, or get drunk—to receive (supposed) nurturance in abundance—will arise. This trait of Bena consumption partly explains why the drinking of alcohol has such a huge impact on social exchange relationships. It is not because, as I heard some missionaries complain, people are weak and, like children, “have no control over themselves” or because they do not know about alcohol addiction. Rather, the excessive intake of alcohol, if available, depends on the Bena understanding of gaining as much strength as possible by taking opportunities to the fullest when they arise—for life is full of unexpected events and there is no certainty that another drinking session will take place soon or at all.17 Alcohol is perceived by its consumers as a source of nurturance to increase one’s strength, Tau and Polako agree. Being a product of strong Western culture, it is likely to possess parts of Western strength attached to it, and by influencing their minds it indeed gives people the feeling of temporary strength and self-confidence. This is, however, in Tau’s and Polako’s eyes, an illusion; in reality alcohol and gambling represent a weakening form of exchange in which persons lose nogoya’a. Polako sees alcohol as a token of Satan, a means he uses to weaken and manipulate persons. By confusing people’s enemehi (their spirits) and their nubune (body), he withdraws their nogoya’a and forces his strength on them while nurturing himself on parts of their persons, their essence. His strength increases and so does his power over his “victim,” until he or she finally has no choice but to follow his or her addiction. In this way, alcohol consumption falls into the same category as sanguma practices, poison magic, and gambling—it is a negative, non-nurturing form of exchange grounded on the exercising of excessive strength and forceful depletion of nogoya’a. In its antisocial nature it is dangerous to the community.18 Drinking and gambling are thus forms of negative exchange, like magic. Since the latter is associated with Satan in Bena Christianity, it is unsurprising that the associated vices are also regarded as evil and related to Satan by Bena Christians. Elements of Western culture are here explained in Bena terms of exchange (see Tau’s comments above) that conform in this context to a great degree with Christian terms of exchange (see Polako’s comments above). From slightly different angles but with a similar conceptual notion of exchange relationships and personhood, both approaches lead to the same valuation. Both Polako and Tau judge the habits described as non-nurturing and weakening forms of exchange that endanger persons on a physical and spiritual level; in Christian terms, they are sins that disconnect persons from the exchange relationship with God. In Bena understanding, they are first of all threats to exchange relationships in the community. From both perspectives, persons are perceived as losing their strength and becoming depleted of nogoya’a.

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Committed Christians in Bena give priority to their relationship with God over their relationship with, for example, nonreligious relatives who practice sinful habits. Since they do not want to exchange relationships with Satan or exchange with persons under his influence they avoid participation in and even presence at social events where such practices occur. This reduces their options of attending public affairs and social gatherings. On the other hand, however, it opens up new relationships. When a person becomes a Christian, he or she enters his or her new and greater family and, being now a child of God, is related to all fellow Christians as brother or sister (Mosko 2005). The exchange practices in this new family share basic features with other forms of exchange in Bena, with dividual persons detaching parts of themselves (for example, investing time, praying, singing, etc.) and in return receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit from God, making them strong. Among themselves, Christians exchange help and support—time and nogoya’a. The exchange relationships a person has in his or her Christian family begin to overlap, sometimes to compete with, or in extreme cases even to replace kinship relations. One can imagine the delicate act of balancing social and religious demands and what kind of inner conflicts such Christians must face. They cannot always avoid being in touch with non-Christians or “sinners,” but they attempt to minimize their relationships with them to a “necessary” level. They are also not reluctant to express their dissatisfaction with their relatives’ sinful behavior. Polako’s adopted father Lofo, for example, is a man who likes to drink and play cards. He sometimes used to ask Polako for money and, being his daughter, she usually nurtured him with gifts. With her stricter approach to Christianity, however, this has changed. Today Lofo rarely asks his daughter for money because he fears her overly strong replies and harsh criticism of his sinful lifestyle. The lack of interest in church and Christianity by her adopted family had led to a weakening and decrease of Polako’s relationship with them. It was one of the reasons that Polako had temporarily turned more to Esi and David and her (biological) nephews for everyday support. The short-term return to her biological family, however, upset her adopted relatives again and made it even harder for Polako to reactivate the relationships with them at a later stage, when she could not cope with the difficulties in the relation to her biological family alone. It has now become evident that Christianity, or partaking of Christian exchange relationships, does indeed have an impact on a person’s other exchange relationships. Temporal commitments to the church as well as to church doctrine often prevent Christians from nurturing nonreligious relationships; yet from a Christian’s point of view, a person’s general network of relationships is not threatened. Quite the opposite—committed Bena Christians see themselves as gaining strength by replacing “old” and weak relationships with stronger new ones, with God representing the ultimate source of nurturance

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and thus the exchange relationship of highest priority. Not-so-committed Bena Christians (the greatest number of people, I should say) do not replace but rather add the new relationships to the old, giving higher priority to one or the other depending on the context.

The Exchange of Knowledge: Church Services in Napamogona According to Polako and others, receiving God’s blessing is more or less equivalent to receiving nurturance, which people rely on for their strength in subsequent relationships. In order to be in the privileged position of exchanging with God, one has to commit one’s life to him and adjust one’s actions to the Christian doctrine. One needs to be ready to detach parts of oneself and give them to God—for example, through participation in the weekly church service. During my stay in Bena, I visited the Foursquare Church in Napamogona several times. Each Sunday morning around nine o’clock, one hears three loud, metallic gongs. They come from the small hill on the north side of the village, where a woman hits the metal rim of an old car tire fixed on the branch of a tree in front of the church. The signal can be heard clearly throughout the village, and people prepare themselves. Finally, when all family members are washed, neatly dressed, and combed (when they have detached dirt from themselves), they leave for the church service. People arrive at different times, some at nine, others only at half past ten, and it does not seem to bother anybody if a person shows up late. The church door remains open during the service and people frequently come and go. The first people to arrive are usually two guitarists, who begin to play Christian songs. Gradually the church fills with members of the congregation who add their singing to the music. Most of the songs are in Tok Pisin, some in Bena, and people know the lyrics by heart. The singing (which can be described as a detachment of words and breath) continues for about an hour and follows a dramatic pattern that increasingly emotionalizes the attendees. The songs begin slowly, then become more energetic until everybody is up on their feet and jumping. They finally quiet again, with people waving their hands in the air, weeping, and crying the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Now the songs merge with prayers, detached gifts to God. The air is filled with soft mumbling, some in Bena language, some in tongues. After a while, the pastor begins the sermon. On the Sunday I attended, David was to preach. In his Sunday outfit, he looked different—sterner than in everyday life. He started with a prayer in which he asked the Lord to bless his words and give him the strength to tell his truth to the people. When he felt filled with the Holy Spirit—when he attached God’s nurturing gift—he began

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his sermon.19 The topic was the sin of idolatry and the superiority of God’s strength to that of other “gods” or spirits. David started by reading the story of the prophet Elijah who proved to the people of Samaria that their god Baal was inferior to the Christian God (1 Kings 18:16–45). Baal, at that time a popular god, was according to the Bible worshipped with sacrifices of food and blood. He was a god who represented life-force and fertility but also temple prostitution and promiscuity as part of his cult. In Christian terms, followers of Baal lived a sinful lifestyle and were doomed. Elijah challenged them to a spiritual battle on Mount Carmel and proved Baal’s weakness and God’s superior strength. While the pile of dry firewood was not lit by Baal, regardless of the sacrifices his followers offered, Elijah’s wet wood was kindled by his God and burned. My interlocutors could relate to this story in many ways. The Baal cult was a pre-Christian belief that focused on nurturance (fertility) and involved food exchange (sacrifices) as well as body substances in its religious practices. These features are reminiscent of pre-Christian Bena belief and its magical practices, as my adoptive cousin Steven told me in a discussion after the service. The offering of food to Baal is familiar to and compatible with Bena belief, where ancestral spirits are given pork, or a bunch of bananas is left for huma to ensure future nurturance; blood sacrifices to Baal were interpreted as offering parts of one’s nogoya’a in reciprocation for Baal’s nurturance (fertility of the ground, etc.). However, Elijah had proved that exchange with spirits other than God is useless. In spite of sacrifices and offerings, Baal did not light the fire—did not display his strength—but God did. This shows that the idol worshipped possesses no strength and/or is not reliable in exchange. The audience laughed aloud when David mentioned that Elijah pointed out, ironically, how busy Baal must be or that he might be sleeping and therefore not supportive of his followers (see 1 Kings 18:27), a statement that would perhaps have reminded his audience of the nature of strong ancestral spirits who may or may not respond to their descendants’ requests. The Christian God, however, is said to be stronger and more reliable. He keeps his promises and provides Christians with nurturance. In contrast, exchange practices with idols, ancestral spirits, or any other spiritual being outside God’s heavenly realm are weakening and destructive, therefore sinful and associated with Satan. After he had explained the story of Elijah and the victory over Baal, David quoted Jeremiah 2:13: My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

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According to this passage, people who worship idols/nurture relationships with ancestors commit a double sin. First, they turn away from God, metaphorically referred to as “the spring of living water”—the source of life—and then they try to find water in self-made wells that are weak and dry. Of course, the use of metaphors of fire and water corresponds to Bena experience in everyday life and are very compatible with Christian connotations of water as a source of life and fire representing strength in nurturing and destructive ways. But there is more to the syncretic conjoining of these elements with Bena belief than their practical and metaphorical correspondence. I do not take it as mere coincidence that David chose a Bible passage that pictures God as “the spring of living water” and referred metaphors of water and dryness to life/ strength and death/weakness. As I have mentioned earlier, the term nogoya’a can also be translated as “source of water” or “spring water.” Nogoya’a is generally pictured as liquid (for example, in body fluids) and as nurturing. God can in this Bible passage thus literally be translated into Bena as source of nogoya’a, whereas other noumena, such as Baal or ancestral spirits in Bena exchange, are “dry,” bereft of nogoya’a, and weak (at least weak in relation to the Christian God).

Conclusion In Bena, we find a religious syncretism that may strike the outside observer, at first glance at least, as quite random and, at most, as odd. However, it becomes clear that such syncretism “consists of an integrated, albeit transformed rather than ‘confused,’ mixing of indigenous and exogenous religious elements” (Mosko 2001: 261). The examples given in this chapter confirm this argument and further show that religious syncretism in Bena is systematic and exchange-oriented. It aims at fitting different forms of belief and related practices together in a way that maximizes and extends the options of attaching nurturance (or strength) in exchange relationships, with God being the ultimate and greatest source of nurturance or nogoya’a. I have shown that two basic criteria are fulfilled when Western elements are incorporated into Bena culture. Syncretism is here first grounded in the similarities between the conjoined cultural elements with respect to understandings of exchange and the partibility of persons. These similarities show the compatibility between the systems in terms of their grammar of partible personhood and their values of nurturance and strength, or good and bad. The common assumption is that one should prioritize nurturing exchange that brings with it an increase of (primarily protective) strength, and avoid non-nurturing relationships that involve acts of excessive strength; the assumption is a feature of Christianity as well as of the pre-Christian Bena value system. This

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conceptual similarity may be the reason why Christianity has not diminished or ended the belief in sorcery and witchcraft but has instead given all magical practices “a Christian label: Satan” (Courtens 2008: 54). The examples of “wasted time and strength” and their similar assessment in relation to Christian and Bena understandings of exchange are further examples that confirm the compatibility of the two systems and explain their syncretic conjoining. The second aspect is the supplementing character that the new elements are perceived to possess for Bena exchange and the dividual in regard to balances of strength and nurturance among and inside persons. In this respect, the Christian God extends the idea of huma (God is more nurturing than huma), and Satan that of malevolent ancestral spirits (Satan is stronger than spirits). Seen from this angle, syncretistic elements—for example, the conjoining of magical concepts with Christian belief or of Western horror fiction with ideas of witchcraft—no longer appear random or confused but strategically developed in accordance with pre-Christian ideas of exchanging nogoya’a. Christianity works so well in Bena because of its similar and supplementing character in regard to Bena belief and understanding of exchange of strength and nurturance as parts of partible persons. Seen according to these premises, culture change becomes culture ex-change. The exchanged objects—including material and nonmaterial “goods”— have parts of persons and cultures attached to them (as extended persons so to speak). When culture change is treated as culture exchange it can be approached by analyzing structural similarities and the supplementary function of elements of different cultures instead of explaining syncretistic elements merely as random outcomes of a hierarchical encounter between a dominating and a dominated culture.

Notes 1. There are also various minority religions, including the Baha’i Faith (approximately fifteen thousand members) and Islam (about two thousand members). 2. Other fields of research concerned the relation between Pentecostal churches and politics (for example, the Pentecostal articulation of a “vision of united nationhood” (MacDougall 2013: 134; see also Eriksen 2009; Tomlinson and MacDougall 2013), their exclusive and sect-like character (Robbins 2013: 205f.), their diversity and the question whether or not they brought with them rupture and disconuity of culture (Barker 2013; Robbins 2004). 3. For reasons of space I cannot elaborate further on the relationship between Christianity and politics here. A great source of information on the topic is the volume Christian Politics in Melanesia (Tomlinson and MacDougall 2013). 4. See Knapp 1997. 5. The deification of ancestral spirits is not a new phenomenon, and I view this as a typical example. In addition to huma, I was given three other Bena terms that refer to

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God. Mijagu’vo is the “man above”; Goklumagu’vo is the “man in the clouds”; Sipi’vo is a “big man”—an expression that is used for God but also for successful Big Men. There is no Bena term that could be translated exclusively as “spirit.” Rather, as in the case of sorcerers, spiritual beings possess their specific names and can only partly be subsumed under the same terminological expression. Sins may, according to Christian understanding, show a person’s weakness; in preChristian Bena understanding, however, sins—in the sense of “bad” antisocial behavior—indicated excessive strength instead. It was forced on others to weaken them—as for example in “sinful” magical practices, in fighting and killing others, in stealing another man’s wife, etc. One could even argue that Jesus himself could be understood as an enormously powerful exchanged “object.” God has sent his son into the world in order to enter into an exchange with people. His son had attached to him parts of God’s strength, which was received by mankind through the nurturance inherent in Christ’s blood. Most of my interlocutors told me that persons who had not heard of God but lived a life in accordance with Christian values would be saved and go to heaven. In chapter 6, I mentioned that Tau described the sanguma force as satanic and sanguma witches as being possessed by demons. This association is not surprising. Sanguma, embodying antisocial and greedy behavior (and thus a negative form of exchange in its extremes), resembles Satan in its destructive strength. Sanguma witches, possessed by demons (the force is attached to them), become Satan’s servants. Robbins (2004: 4) was aware of this dilemma and argued that the “motives for culture change must originally be given in the terms of the culture that is changing.” However, the resulting adoption of the new culture then changes the preexisting cultural categories. The original motives for the change (coming from the traditional culture) are then rendered obsolete (Robbins 2004: 4). Humiliation can lie in an imbalance of exchange partners,if understood as “what one experiences when one is caught out trying to convince people that one has prestige or powers that one has no right to claim” (Miller 1993; Robbins 2005: 12). Westerners often “out-give” indigenous people, thus creating a feeling of inferiority and humiliation that might lead to all sorts of consequences, from adoption of Western culture to aggression against it. Exchange certainly plays a crucial role here. Stewart and Strathern portrayed moka -exchange as a classic case of “develop-man” (see Robbins 2005), with people (as agents) actively engaging in Western market economy but doing so “in exchanges patterned along traditional lines in efforts to enhance prestige and avoid humiliation as they traditionally understood them” (Robbins 2005:13). This has, however, not worked as expected, and as a result the moka system broke down, leading to destabilizing and unpredictable effects that function as outlets for emotions that have previously been lived out in moka. Unlike the Urapmin, who interpret “will” as sinful or problematic because one should only follow God’s will, the Bena do not seem to be caught in this kind of inner turmoil. Humiliation can also be related to the concept of person. Silverman (2001: 160f.), for example, pointed out that Western individualism in some ways worked well for the Tambunum notion of person, but the lack of emphasis on the social side of person in Western culture made them feel unable to follow their own cultural balance of individual and social parts of person. The inability to balance these two sides of themselves made them feel humiliated. Wardlow (2006: 35f.) discusses humiliation among the

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Huli in reference to cultural notions of emotion, person, and action and identifies the indigenous concept of madane, (disappointment/resentment/righteous indignation) that relates to exchange and person. Humiliation is, in contrast to madane, an emotion that only makes sense in cultures with individual concepts of person. She holds that madane characterized early encounters with the West but has been transformed into the Western humiliation—i.e., an indigenization of humiliation has taken place. This aspect became very explicit during my wedding in Bena in 2005. All of the invited overseas guests were given names of deceased persons from Napamogona. Once their new names had become public, the reactions to the visitors by people from the village changed. Casual encounters on the village road, for example, led to emotional outbursts where people called the guests by their new names, thereby remembering the deceased and to some degree actually acting as if it were the deceased who had appeared. In the peace negotiations that have begun among the Napamogona recently (see conclusion), Christians played the crucial role. Three local pastors counseled both sides until they agreed to negotiate. The intensity of drinking also depends on the irregular availability of alcohol. People cannot always afford to drink and therefore do it excessively when money is around— for example, during coffee season. Alcohol has become a huge problem for people in PNG today, not only in regard to their time investment and concurrent abandonment of social obligations. Domestic violence, unfortunately a common phenomenon throughout the country, is often alcohol-induced. I witnessed several cases where drunk people in the village fought, and I heard of men who violently abused their wives or children; I also witnessed fights between drunken women. I was myself the victim of a violent encounter with a drunk stranger. Violent behavior today is on the increase, partly due to greater alcohol consumption. Sermons in Papua New Guinea can run to an impressive length, sometimes up to two hours. The sermons I heard in Pentecostal churches did not differ greatly from the preaching in fundamentalist Christian churches. They focused on extensive elaborations and interpretations of Bible passages by using strong moral dichotomies (good/ evil, God/Satan, heaven/hell, etc.) as categories or reference points for personal and social practices and by relating the resulting “moral imperatives” to “temporal dichotomies” such as past/present or present/future (Schieffelin 2002: 12–13).

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Expect the Unexpected Scientology in Napamogona

To supplement the analysis of magical practices, sanguma, and Christianity in terms of exchange, personhood, and culture change, I will now examine a comparatively new belief system that was introduced into Bena only recently, well after the syncretism with Christianity had taken place. During my research in 2004, local members of the Church of Scientology tried to establish their religion in Napamogona. The arrival of this new body of belief, ritual, and exchange led to different reactions among the villagers. In this chapter, I will describe syncretic aspects of culture change that were concurrent with the new church’s arrival. By analyzing how my interlocutors perceived the new ideas, how they reacted to them, and which standards they valued and judged them by, I hope to shed some more light on the mechanisms of culture change in Bena. Christianity has been by far the most successful belief system to promote its values in the Eastern Highlands today, but not the only one. A number of other religious movements—for example, the Mormons1 and the Church of Scientology—are attempting to establish themselves in the area. However, being confronted with a strongly Christian population, they face some difficulties in gaining supporters. In the following, I will describe how the Church of Scientology, operating under the name of I HELP2 tried to convince people in Napamogona of their beliefs and try to explain the unexpected outcomes of this encounter. In February 2004, a totally unexpected event changed the course of everyday life in Napamogona village. Wanpela bikpela samting i kamap long Napamogona, “something great happens in Napamogona,” were the words that Mama Polako shouted towards me when I came back to the village from a short break. John Travolta na Tom Cruise bai kam long ples, “John Travolta and Tom Cruise will come to the village.” Although I had at that stage of my research already reached the point of generally expecting the unexpected, Mama Polako managed to surprise me with this statement. As it turned out, a new development organization by the name of I HELP had introduced itself to the villagers. I HELP is the abbreviation for the International Hubbard Ec-

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clesiastical League of Pastors, a part of the Scientology organization, which is described on the official Scientology website as follows: Specially trained Scientology ministers who do not serve on the staff of churches, missions or other church organizations but who provide auditing and introductory services in the community are called Field Auditors. They work alone or in groups. Field Auditors and their groups are assisted by the International Hubbard Ecclesiastical League of Pastors (I HELP). Based in Los Angeles, I HELP was created to provide auditors who minister religious services outside organized churches and missions with the guidance they need. I HELP provides religious materials, publications and assistance so these ministers can minister Scientology religious services to those taking their first steps on The Bridge. (“Bridge” = the broad path the Scientologist follows through auditing and the study of Scientology materials is known as The Bridge. This embodies an ancient concept—a long-envisioned route across a chasm between man’s present state and vastly higher levels of awareness).3

I HELP thus represents a part of the Scientology organization that focuses on “field work” (mission) and the training of future ministers, who may at a later stage establish a new Church of Scientology in the location. According to my information, I HELP had arrived on the shores of PNG sometime in 2003 and had apparently founded a small education center in the city of Lae. A woman from Napamogona who lived with her husband in Lae had become one of the first PNG trainees. She underwent the common “auditing” processes and was on the first step of her career to become a member of the Church of Scientology, implying that she would be allowed to train other newcomers on their first level of participation. Being convinced of I HELP’s promises in regard to development,4 she supported the overseas organizers’ idea to find a second base in the Highlands and suggested her village Napamogona as a suitable location. On her visit, she proposed this idea to the local leaders, stressing that a new school could open in the village, which would grant people education and give them access to development. People from different areas, so she promised, would come to attend different courses at this training center in Napamogona. I did not personally speak to that woman, but my relatives told me that she mentioned the arrival of three thousand computers from Australia. Access to fifty-two different educational training courses would be available to the villagers. Besides, John Travolta and Tom Cruise would come to Napamogona in April for the opening of the school. One way to interpret this development is that a new, potentially very nurturing exchange partner appeared on the horizon, and the Napamogona were to decide if they wanted to enter an exchange relationship or not. The benefits this relationship would bring to the community were indeed very promising. People in the village understood that they would receive a superb education

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and, after the completion of their courses, would be given a certificate that would allow them to find paid jobs in town. Further, the school would improve the infrastructure to the village because the road would be paved and power supply would be brought in. With a steadily rising number of students and school staff gradually moving in, more people would come to Napamogona and the villagers would have the chance to earn some money by charging the students and staff for accommodation or selling them their food. In Bena terms, the new relationship sounded very nurturing and thus as contributing to the wellbeing—the strength—of the Napamogona. The issue was discussed in the community, and finally the leading men came to the conclusion that it was worth a try. However, they decided not to sell any land to the organization, a decision that was influenced by Tau and Nando, who emphasized the importance of land ownership in the community. Before the Napamogona would agree to give away parts of their land as a grand investment into a dawning relationship, the newcomers would have to prove themselves. Thus the local leaders decided to lease some land to I HELP but maintain the option of claiming it back in case of disagreement. I HELP approved, and a parcel of land in the village center Lakosa was prepared for the school project. The Napamogona committed themselves to build two big schoolhouses for a start; there was hope that more buildings would be established later—for example, accommodations for teachers and supervisors. Spirits were high when I arrived. The Napamogona hoped that their village would become a center of education in the Eastern Highlands, even in the country, and with this gain fame and wealth. An unexpected opportunity for a new exchange relationship had occurred, and the Napamogona were going to be ready for it. Since two Hollywood superstars were expected, one needed to get prepared and organize their welcome. Rumors that people had seen Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and “Xena princess warrior” (the heroine of a New Zealand fantasy soap opera, which has become very popular in Papua New Guinea) in town—or that some relatives had seen them at Port Moresby airport—spread. The arrival of the superstars in Napamogona was scheduled for the beginning of April, and the community worked hard throughout March, focusing mainly on the building of the two big schoolhouses near the central place. Obviously, this activity had an impact on people’s time schedules and on their exchange relationships. However, in the beginning things ran smoothly because the whole community was supportive of the idea and most members contributed in one way or another to the preparation. Young men cleared the village road from weeds. Others chopped down big bamboo pipes and trees for the building material. Women cut kunai grass for the roofs and carried it to the building site. Men and women felt under a greater time pressure than usual because they wanted to finish the building in time but had to fulfill their everyday tasks as well. A lot of everyday work was therefore accomplished

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by elder persons and by children. Consequently, some children missed out on their school lessons. Instead they helped their grandparents with garden work while the parents were working on the new buildings. For a period of several weeks, everybody was very busy and enthusiastic. The stories became more elaborate and so did expectations concerning the new project. People put time, effort, even money (for example to buy tools or nails) into the exchange relationship with the I HELP staff. In terms of Bena exchange, they detached parts of themselves—nogoya’a—by initially nurturing the new exchange partner, hoping to ensure a long-term reciprocal relationship, grounded on the expectation of future reciprocity and nurturance. After some time, however, doubts began to arise concerning the real intentions of I HELP. Rumors about its connection with the Church of Scientology spread, and especially Christians in Napamogona wanted to know more about the doctrine of this new church. Mama Polako was the first to possess Hubbard’s book Dianetics, in which the new belief was explained.

Basic Ideas of Scientology Belief In order to understand the Bena reaction to I HELP or Scientology doctrine, it is important to know at least its fundamental principles.5 The Church of Scientology was founded in the early 1950s by the former Science-Fiction author Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. His book Dianetics, first published in May 1950, provides the basis for Scientology belief. According to Scientology, the physical universe consists of MEST, an abbreviation that stands for Matter, Energy, Space, and Time. A living organism therefore consists of these four parts and is connected and brought into life through Thetan. Theta is a Greek letter (É, ÉΔ) representing spirit or thought; the lying Theta “∞” is the symbol for eternity. The Thetan—and with it every person—is immortal but exposed to many negative influences that hinder its full development. In Scientology ideology, a person encompasses three parts: the Thetan, the mind, and the body. According to Hubbard, “mind” consists of an analytical and a reactive part. The analytical part makes and stores experiences in order to solve problems. This part thinks in categories of differences and similarities. The reactive part stores physical and emotional pain and attempts to direct persons in accordance to a stimulus-reaction scheme. If, for example, a person hears the sound of an ambulance alarm, he associates it with a possible personal accident of his and feels pain, suffering, fear, loneliness, or anger, sees life as bad and threatening, and reacts physically by sweating or even fleeing (avoiding the pain). In Dianetics, Hubbard claims to have developed a technique for ridding oneself of the negative consequences that the reactive part of the mind has on personal development. This technique, fundamental

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to the participation and to all further advances in the Church of Scientology hierarchy, is called “Auditing.”6 Scientology members aim to regain the spiritual powers of a Thetan, a process that involves “cleaning” oneself—for example, through intensive auditing sessions—and in doing so advancing from a previous Pre-Clear person to a so-called Clear. Such “cleaning” can easily be seen as a process of detaching negative, “polluted” personal parts. Through repeated and ritualized practices of detachment, a person can acquire the state of being a Clear. In this stage, he or she has entirely detached his or her own reactive mind. Now a person is ready to attach new nurturing knowledge that will bring him or her to another level of awareness, allowing him or her to live more in accordance with the greater universe. According to Hubbard (1950), Thetans have existed before the creation of mankind and originate from other planets. Their stay on earth is explained by their relation to Xenu, the ruler of a confederation of twenty-one suns and seventy-six planets, who brought them here. These messages, which Mama Polako found in Hubbard’s book, gave rise to suspicion. Polako and other Christians realized that the members of this new “church” did not believe in God but rather “in the stars and the moon” (Polako, interview, 2004) and that they were not Christians. These news disturbed some of the village elders as well as the Christians who had until then been in favor of the school. Slowly, some members of the community became unsure about the project, but most of them were at that stage still willing to take the chance and try to see whether it would work. During this time, three deaths occurred in Napamogona. First a middle-aged woman from Mekfimo clan died from a brief and unexpected sickness. Her death was interpreted as a gunakfe’i killing. During the following days, most of the people in the village were involved in the funeral and mourning period; her relatives were also busy with finding the culprit and retaliating for her death. In the following week, two more people died, only one day apart from each other. Two old leaders, one from Mekfimo, and one from Jogijohi clan, passed away. Now the village had to face the troubles of organizing two more funerals, two mourning periods, and two feasts to mark the end of the main mourning period, the pinisim sori in Tok Pisin. Large exchange ceremonies had to be organized. It was not only the shared emotional burden and the loss of two renowned leaders that occupied the Napamogona but also the fear of returning ancestral spirits that had to be settled through exchange. It was a labor-intensive time in the village. Every family had to contribute, join in the mourning, and help to soothe the dead spirits. Not surprisingly, the work on the school stood more or less still for some weeks. After the pinisim sori feast for the late sorcerer, the coffee season slowly began. The villagers had to set priorities in their use of time, and most of them decided to devote their time to the picking, drying, and selling of coffee beans rather than to finishing the I HELP

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schoolhouses. This choice was influenced by the fact that April had gone by and neither John Travolta nor Tom Cruise had shown up in Napamogona.

Becoming a Member Instead of Hollywood superstars, two Papua New Guinean teachers arrived in Napamogona in May and began teaching in the half-finished buildings. A number of new I HELP students from various areas in Papua New Guinea followed; most of them came from coastal areas and had been trained by I HELP before. Soon the school began to operate on a basic level. Everyone who wanted to participate in the classes was asked to pay a tuition fee. The fee depended on the number of courses a person wished to attend, ranging from a minimum of fifty kina to several hundred. Only a few people in Napamogona paid these fees. Most of them decided to wait before making such a nurturing personal detachment and see how the project would develop first. They still hoped that the school would open up new nurturing exchange relationships as had repeatedly been promised by the school staff. As a matter of fact, the Church of Scientology is engaged in development projects throughout the world. The organization presents its “development” activities as follows: “As Church members progress up the Bridge and increase their own understanding and awareness of themselves and their fellow men, it is natural that their attention turns to the world around them and that they assume responsibility for the conditions they find there. Charity and social responsibility are natural outgrowths of their spiritual values. And compared to similarly sized congregations, Scientologists pride themselves in performing more hours of community service per capita.”7 If we use the vocabulary of exchange, Scientologists first detach negative parts of their persons, then acquire/attach nurturing “understanding,” which makes them strong to nurture others by giving “development.” According to the Scientology website, “The Scientologist’s approach to betterment activities is results-oriented: to handle the immediate human or community need, while addressing its underlying causes so lasting results and long-term improvements are achieved.”8 On these grounds, Scientology runs literacy projects, anti-drug campaigns and claims to defend human rights. Only at second glance does it become clear that with such communal support comes a strict net of obligations that new church members accept personally when entering relationships with the organization. Critics of Scientology speak of “brainwashing” techniques that exploit personal weakness—in times of crisis, for example—to manipulate persons in the organization’s interests (Atack 1990; Miller 1988). According to such criticism, it is the church leaders’ long-term aim to gain new members and to make them psychologically dependent on the organization, thus forcing them to continue nurturing them in exchange.

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Members are required to devote a great amount of their time to participating in church services and events but also to daily training sessions in which they learn and attach the fundamental values of Scientology belief. Church staff members are expected to devote most of their lives to Scientology. Still, the organization stresses the individuality of its members: “All Church staff are dedicated individuals. Staff in missions and churches generally work a 40hour week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and return to their homes and families at the end of the work day. Other staff work evenings and weekends. Staff also devote 2 1/2 hours of each day to Scientology training and auditing so they themselves can continue up The Bridge.”9 One of the aims of Scientology is to acquire new staff all over the world, also in the Pacific region. Churches have been operating in Australia and New Zealand for years and have recently begun to spread towards Papua New Guinea.

Auditing Practices The process of Auditing (from Latin audire, to hear) is described by Scientologists as a specific form of personal counseling. Persons are asked questions that aim at finding and locating psychic “events” that cause emotional pain, which is seen as the main reason for most psychic problems. This involves a deep intrusion into a person’s self through a special form of talk between auditor and the so-called Preclear (the person who is audited) during which the auditor follows an exact pattern of Study Technology and poses questions which the Preclear has to answer. In such auditing sessions, often an E-Meter is used. This is an electronic device that works on the principle of a lie detector; according to Scientology it detects the “psychic” wounds a person has by reacting to the Preclear’s answers. The E-Meter is used as a means to observe the conscience of the audited persons. Specific techniques involved are, for example, the repetition of certain questions, sometimes for hours, and the observation of the person’s reaction to it. Independent psychologists have described such auditing practices as a psychological technique that can lead to dependence and the readiness to be manipulated.10 Inaku’e, who claimed to have seen the “magic machine” in the new school, told me that it looked like two tinned fish cans joined together with wire and connected to a screen. This machine, said Inaku’e, would extract all negative and bad thoughts from people’s minds, thus cleaning them and turning previously bad persons into good ones.11 Inakue’s detailed description of the way this machine works shows that the new belief and its ritual practices were interpreted by my Bena interlocutors in terms of exchange and partibility. My sister Christine was one of the first students in the newly opened school in Napamogona. Her intention was to receive (to attach to her person) education, something she had missed out on previously. She wanted to improve her

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literacy and get a “certificate” that would qualify her later for work in town. She paid her fifty-kina fee and was ready to learn. However, so she told me, instead of being brought straight to her lessons on her first day in school, she was allocated a personal supervisor or trainer, in this case a young man from the coast. He explained to her that she would have to undergo a daily “auditing” procedure before entering the classroom. According to Christine, “auditing” in this context means “telling secrets.” In order to be open to the new knowledge that awaited her, so the man told her, she would need to free herself from all her negative thoughts and clean her mind by confessing all her secrets to him. Only then would she be clean enough to become a member of the organization; only then would she be in the position to participate in the promised (nurturing) exchange of knowledge and become a better, more successful (stronger) person. From this description it becomes clear that Scientological practices are structurally similar to exchange between partible persons, or at least that they can easily be read in these terms. In auditing practices, for example, an “unclean,” “polluted,” and “weak” person detaches bad (weakening, polluting) parts, which her strong supervisor then attaches to his person (by adding the bad information to his personal knowledge). He is apparently strong enough to take this attachment without being weakened. By using specific auditing techniques (and technical devices as the E-meter) he is able to transfer attached negative parts into strength. The knowledge about people’s “secrets” makes him “strong” towards them. It gives him strength that he can force on them later—for example, by psychologically manipulating them or by means of simple blackmail.12 In return for these attachments, the supervisor gives seemingly “good” (nurturing) parts of knowledge to the audited person for attachment. This makes the person stronger and more nurturing in the relationship to the church and other members. My sister, like most of the Napamogona, reacted to the auditing procedure with great suspicion. When asked to confess her secrets, she insisted she had none. Her supervisor, however, asked her to trust him and repeated the same questions, always asking her to give away her secrets. When she still refused to confess, he asked her to do a test that would confirm or refute her statement. For this experiment she had to hold two metal “tins,” one in each hand. These “tins” were connected with a wire that led to a monitor, so she told me, where different lines showed up, indicating that my sister spoke the truth or lied. Apparently, the E-Meter was used in the auditing sessions in Napamogona. The use of this “magic machine” (which, according to Inaku’e somehow also involved crystals that suddenly lit) first impressed people very much, but soon it gave rise to suspicions and tensions. Polako commented on this practice: “They monitor our lives and I am not clear why they want to monitor our lives. I don’t think that they have the right to monitor our lives. Only God, He

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sees us and judges us, but no man on this earth has the right to monitor our lives” (interview, 2004). Polako’s fear was that the new “church” would begin to control and manipulate the lives of people by first getting to know all their secrets and then monitoring them continuously. Their intentions remained unclear, but Polako assumed they wanted to gain power over the lives and souls of people. In terms of Bena exchange, the new guests aimed at taking on detached parts of Bena persons—here in the form of their personal secrets— and thus increase their strength and their power over them. The question was whether they would reciprocate with the promised nurturance or not. If people gave away their “secrets,” they would strengthen the strangers and allow them to later exercise this strength excessively by forcing it back on the villagers. As a consequence, the latters’ thoughts might become confused; their spirits would be weakened by this strength until they finally would be weak enough to be totally controlled by the organization. According to Polako, a great deal of mistrust was justified. Given further that this church was not grounded on Christian belief, Polako and other Christians in the village began to associate it with evil forces— Satan. The exchange practices the organization displayed resembled negative forms of Bena exchange and were therefore structurally similar to magical practices and evil forces (weakening others by forcing one’s strength on them and then taking away detached parts of their persons to strengthen oneself but without reciprocating with nurturance). Even persons who were not-so-committed Christians became increasingly suspicious. My sister, for example, angrily left the school after several attempts of “cleaning” her in auditing sessions had failed. When she talked to me about her decision to quit, she laughed and asked me ironically what kind of secrets she should have told her male trainer—maybe when she had her last period? She found his behavior intrusive and totally ignorant of taboos and rules in the conduct of social relationships in Bena. Although the auditing practices work in the framework of partible personhood and are thus actually compatible with Bena culture, Christine did not accept them because by asking inappropriate questions, her supervisor asked for the wrong detachments. As a woman, she would never tell a strange man, a coastal man above all, any of her secrets. Further aspects of the teachings upset her. From the few lessons she had taken, she gathered that what she learned had more to do with the “brain” of people and with the way they think than with basic subjects like writing or mathematics that she was interested in. A literacy course was offered, but one could not attend any of the classes without the auditing and without participating in obligatory lessons that were meant to “educate” people in accordance with Scientology ideology. When my sister compared her notebook to that of “normal” students in other schools, she found that her topics were different from theirs. When she inquired more, she found out that

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the promised certificate would not be recognized by any public institution and that the contents of the teachings had little to do with “normal” education and finding work. Suspicions in the village increased even more, and the enthusiasm regarding the new exchange relationship faded. As a consequence, the schoolhouses remained unfinished, the roofs were only partly covered, and walls were missing. Nevertheless, some auditing sessions and classes were held. People in Napamogona were again told that they needed to finish the buildings quickly because Tom Cruise was now on the way to Papua New Guinea and so were the computers. According to Inaku’e, people were further told that they would have to follow their obligation to recruit new members if they wanted to become members of the organization. During this time, there was a slight split in the community. On one side were committed Christians like Polako who now publicly opposed the project and tried to convince the rest of the community. On the other side were those who still hoped for a nurturing exchange with the newcomers and were therefore supportive of it. The latter saw the fulfilling of I HELP’s demands as an investment in a strong future relationship. This shows that Scientology practices did not contradict the Bena conception of exchange and partibility of person; but they were grounded in a different understanding of which parts were actually transactable. Further, the Bena and Scientology attitudes towards reciprocity in exchange differed. Having offered land and labor, people in Napamogona expected a return before they were willing to continue nurturing the relationship to the newcomers. However, instead of reciprocating, I HELP increased the demands. My interlocutors complained to me about the new directive that each person who joined the organization should recruit thirty new students. Together, the community of Napamogona should find three thousand new members to get the school started and help it grow. However, in spite of their high demands, the members of the organization had so far not delivered anything to the community that would justify these demands. The school asked for land, support, money; they wanted to monitor people’s lives and force them to recruit other members—but their promises had not yet been kept. Tensions between the I HELP students and staff and the community rose. Representing a negative form of exchange (so far at least), the approach of I HELP was not compatible with the Bena ideal of nurturing exchange. Quite to the contrary, it seemed to become a non-nurturing and rather weakening kind of relationship—a characteristic that clearly recalled harmful sorcery and witchcraft.

Failed Exchange? By June, none of the announced Hollywood stars had shown up in the village. Inaku’e was the only Napamogona person who tried to justify this. He

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conjectured that Tom Cruise and John Travolta were waiting for the village schoolhouses to be completed, and as long as the village was not prepared, they would not come. Most other people, however, had a different opinion. They began to feel deceived (not nurtured) by the newcomers. Suspicion increased even more when people witnessed my unsuccessful attempts to get an interview with one of the school’s teachers. We wondered why none of the staff was available for an interview with me. Tau concluded angrily that ol mas haitim sampela samting, “they must be hiding something” (personal conversation, 2004). Further aspects contributed to the community’s increasing dissatisfaction with the organization. Some people had already paid their fees but not yet received anything in return. Most people in Napamogona began to feel that this exchange relationship was only to their disadvantage. Tau told me, “We wasted our time, energy, working force, and material, like nails, and what did we get? It seems as if they are lying to us. Some of us paid their school fees already. But they never got a valid certificate. And the money, they don’t give it back. We have enough of their ways now and it seems as if the community will make a decision and force them to leave our village (interview, 2004). Finally, the community decided to terminate the relationship with the church. The first visual consequence of this decision was that work on the schoolhouses stopped completely. The contact between the staff and villagers decreased. While some of the coastal I HELP students had often played volleyball with local teenagers, they now withdrew from public places and reduced their presence in the village. Fewer classes took place. The situation dragged on until finally two I HELP representatives from the coast, a man and a woman, visited the village. Unfortunately, I was not there on this occasion, but was told that the two guests arrived in a big black Toyota with mirrored windows. My relatives found their behavior arrogant. I was told that they spoke English so fast that very few of the Napamogona actually understood what they said and that they did not explain well what they wanted. The following was understood: the woman talked about the grounds the organization owned overseas, especially in Hawai’i and New Zealand. She addressed especially the women and encouraged them to become active members, promising that some of them would then be invited to New Zealand where they could stay on the organization’s beautiful property, meet other members from all over the Pacific, and receive money for their village school. After this friendly introduction, the man talked. He complained about the school buildings not being ready yet and threatened that if people were not engaging more in advertising the new school outside the village borders, they would not benefit from any of the school’s advantages but remain “bush kanaka.” He further stressed that all participants were obliged to pay their fees and that otherwise the school would leave Napamogona and give its benefits to another community.

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According to my interlocutors, the guests failed entirely to convince the Napamogona of the benefits I HELP had to offer. The Napamogona claimed that they had turned back to their normal lives because the organization had not fulfilled the promises. People had realized that the expected reciprocity in this new exchange relationship was not granted at all and had therefore stopped their active involvement in the exchange. On this occasion, they demonstrated their disappointment by simply ignoring the visitors and their requests. I was told that the representatives left Napamogona—and were never seen again. I was told that they shouted “You will never be ready for us” when they left the village, implying, in Bena terms of exchange, that people were not “strong” enough to enter a relationship with them. My interlocutors reacted to such statements with humor. The fact that the I HELP group also did not establish itself in Goroka, but dissolved because most students left, was for a while a popular topic for jokes that circled in Napamogona.13 My relatives turned the failure of connecting with a seemingly new source of nurturance (that had proven itself to be an illusion) into a benefit for the community. Of course, the leaders had plan B in store. Work on the half-finished houses was slowly taken up again. One of them was turned into a community building, where people now sit together sheltered from rain, and the other is used for storage purposes.

Conclusion Although Scientology practices are structurally similar to a Bena understanding of exchange in terms of partible personhood, they have failed to convince people in Bena. They were not conjoined with Bena culture but were tried, examined, and then dismissed. The reason for the failure of I HELP to establish itself in the village did not lie in any fundamental incompatibility of the Scientology and Bena concepts of exchange; both seemed to be working in terms of interpersonal transactability and partible personhood. Rather, they parted company because of their different approaches to the question of which parts were to be transacted, and to what outcome. The organization’s failure to fulfill local expectations towards the exchange relationship by not considering concurrent taboos and demands in social practices led to mistrust and anger. Instead of entering a positive (nurturing) exchange relationship, people feared that it would turn into a negative (weakening) form of exchange. The newly introduced “religion” did not contradict Bena mechanisms of exchange in their structure. In fact, like Christianity, it operates with a similar understanding of exchange and personhood—namely the exchange of detached parts of persons. Similarity, however, is not enough for the syncretic conjoining of different belief systems. The relationship to the I HELP organization represented the “bad,” undesired, and dangerous side of Bena exchange.

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The organization’s exchange practices revealed themselves as negative and weakening in Bena understanding. If something is clearly perceived as a threat to people, they will obviously try to avoid its incorporation into their own personal and cultural context. Thus, in spite of an underlying structural similarity of I HELP and Bena in terms of exchange, people did not incorporate the new elements into their lives. Before dismissing them, however, they tested whether they could have a supplementary function to Bena belief. The interpretation of the auditing process and the use of the “magic machine” as an object that could clean people’s minds was perceived as similar to and an extension of confession in Christian belief. There the priest is the mediator between Christians and God. Through his strength, he is in close contact with God and can ask God for his forgiveness in the name of the sinner. Sins, when they are confessed and regretted, are then forgiven. However, it is the relationship to God that is the center of this exchange, not to the priest. I HELP supervisors seemed to take on a similar role to that of priests but, given that no concept of God was involved, they were positioned as the central exchange partner for new members. Since they did not reciprocate to their students with detached parts of their person (for example, by talking about their own “secrets”) but mainly responded with further demands, an unequal relationship developed. Supervisors and teachers promised faster nurturance than priests—expressed in material and spiritual goods—but the Napamogona found that they did not fulfill their promises. The new elements of I HELP belief and exchange did not supplement Bena belief in any way. The fact that Christianity had established itself in Bena long before the Church of Scientology arrived contributed to the latter’s failure in PNG. The techniques of I HELP resembled indigenous forms of harmful magic and were associated with Satan. Especially Christians considered involvement in such practices dangerous and undesired. The idea that a person’s life should be monitored—and consequently controlled—by strangers was received with greatest suspicion, even disgust, or with ironic distance. Some parts in the Bena dividual are not detachable. In the same way a person needs to detach parts of him or herself in exchange, he or she keeps some aspects (secrets) to his or her self; and a violation of this right is interpreted as a threat to a person’s (or community’s) sovereignty. This interpretation, however, is grounded in the fear that the exchange partner will use the received detached parts—in this example secret personal information—to exercise strength over the weakened exchange partner. If one possesses personal information, and with it the attached parts of that person, one becomes stronger and can exercise excessive strength to one’s benefit and to the disadvantage of the “victim.” Thus the auditing process represents an unequal exchange that bears the danger of becoming a threat to the person who gives his or her secrets away. In this regard it embodies negative exchange and recalls magical practices.

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This chapter adds to the conclusion of the previous chapter, where I argued that two basic criteria are fulfilled when Western elements are incorporated into Bena culture. Syncretism is here grounded in the similarities/correspondence that the conjoined cultural elements or concepts share in reference to their understanding of exchange and the partibility of person, and on the supplementing character the new elements are perceived to possess for Bena exchange and the dividual. By giving an example of failed culture change in Bena, I have shown that the similarity of cultural concepts alone is not sufficient for their conjoining. Although Scientology practices share the partible approach to personhood and work with an exchange of personal detachments that can easily be framed in Bena terms of nurturance and strength (nogoya’a and sikrafu’i), they were not conjoined with Bena belief because they embodied the negative, weakening, and undesired side of Bena exchange. In their non-nurturing character, they resembled magic and, even worse, practices associated with Satan. Like other weakening elements of Western cultures—for example, drinking beer or the habit of gambling—Scientology practices promised nurturance at first glance but in fact withdrew it and weakened persons while increasing the organization’s strength. After realizing this, the Napamogona reacted by cutting off the relationship. They began to ignore the newcomers. In other words, they stopped nurturing the relationship through withdrawal. This failed syncretism can be explained in Kirsch’s (2006: 95f.) terms of “unrequited reciprocity.” Kirsch holds that “exchange provides the measure of the person in terms of what he or she is able to elicit from others” and, as a result, “the failure to fulfill exchange obligations … is experienced as a negative assessment by the person who does not receive his or her due.” He further emphasizes that “the experience of unrequited reciprocity can be dehumanizing” (Kirsch 2006: 80). The “dehumanizing experience” that the Napamogona felt in their relationship with I HELP was expressed in their assumption that the organization would weaken the community by taking (money, support, time, even secrets of persons) without reciprocating in adequate ways. Sahlins (1972: 195) defined negative reciprocity as the “unsociable extreme,” which Kirsch (2006: 95) called “the closest analogue for unrequited reciprocity in the anthropological literature”14 and a mode of exchange “in which persons maximize their opportunities and status at the expense of others.” As I have explained in the previous chapters—and as anthropologists have shown for many Melanesian cultures (e.g., Courtens 2008; Kirsch 2006; Munn 1986)—antisocial and greedy behavior in exchange is closely associated with witchcraft and sorcery. The Bena analysis of the encounter with I HELP worked along these lines. Similar to the Yonggom reaction to the Ok Tedi Mining Company (see Kirsch 2006: 120f.), the Bena framed their conflict with I HELP “in moral terms that invoke the absence of an appropriate social relationship” between

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the organization and the villagers (Kirsch 2006: 121). Scientology offered conceptual similarities, but it did not supplement preexisting Bena ideas of acquiring nurturance in any way. Rather, it displayed characteristics of unrequited reciprocity that a desired Bena exchange should not have—non-nurturance and excessive strength, both traits of harmful sorcery and witchcraft. The organization’s attempt to establish a training center in the community was therefore bound to fail.

Notes 1. A Mormon temple has been built in Goroka, and the sight of neatly dressed white American males addressing people has become frequent. The temple building itself— on the southeastern fringe of the town—convinces with its grand and generous architecture and with its bright white stone. 2. See “The International Hubbard Ecclesiastical League of Pastors,” Scientology Newsroom: The Official Media Resource Center for the Church of Scientology, accessed 25 April 2017, http://www.scientologynews.org/church-structure/international-hubb ard-ecclesiastical-league-of-pastors.html. 3. See “Ecclesiastical Structure: Individual Churches of Scientology and Their Congregations,” excerpted from The Church of Scientology: 40th Anniversary, posted on Church of Scientology Human Rights News Forum, accessed 25 April 2017 http:// www.theta.com/goodman/eccstruc.htm. 4. It is one aim of IHELP to educate people and fight illiteracy. 5. It is not the purpose of this chapter to refer extensively to the various important criticisms on Scientology by ex-members and others. Scientology is often described as a dangerous sect, and many facts strengthen this assumption. It is my intention here to show the similarities and dissimilarities of Scientology belief with Bena ideas of exchange—nothing more. 6. For comparison, see the Scientology website www.dianetics.org/#/videos, accessed 25 April 2017, and Atack 1990; DeWolfe and Corydon 1992; Miller 1988. 7. Source: www.scientology.org/religion/management/pg001.html, accessed 25 April 2017. 8. Ibid. 9. “The Ministry of the Scientology Religion,” excerpted from The Church of Scientology: 40th Anniversary, posted on Church of Scientology Human Rights News Forum, www .theta.com/goodman/ministry.htm, accessed 25 April 2017. 10. “Scientology.” Wikipedia: Die freie Enzyklopädie, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scien tology, accessed 25 April 2017. 11. I have not seen this “magic machine” myself, nor have I had the chance to witness any of the auditing sessions or classes. Unfortunately, the school staff refused to be interviewed by me, and when Tau and I went to look for the teachers, they were never around. My impression was that they did not want me to investigate their activities and avoided contact. Therefore, the data I gathered is clearly Napamogona-biased. 12. This was, according to many interviews with my interlocutors, the main fear of the Napamogona.

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13. I did not witness this event but only refer to the information my interlocutors provided after the incident. I have not met the representatives, nor did I have the chance to talk to members of the staff. 14. Kirsch (2006: 95) uses the term “unrequited reciprocity” as an extension of Sahlins’s model of “negative reciprocity.” According to Kirsch, negative reciprocity is a term too neutral and too impersonal; it neglects interpersonal and emotive connotations as well as a focus on the “excluded other.”

Figure 8.1: David Papua’e, 2013

Conclusion

In this book, I have described and analyzed aspects of Bena culture primarily in regard to the changes they have undergone since their encounter with Western cultures. In my analysis, I have tackled the issue of culture change from the angle of person and exchange, with the focus on the way culture change is actively performed in Bena. I found that it is not a random process that happens simply because of the spatiotemporal encounter of elements of different cultures, but can instead be seen as a form of agency closely related to specific Bena notions of person and exchange. This argument draws in part on that of Sahlins (1985) concerning the reproductive transformation of cultural categories, which takes place on the grounds of certain preexisting categories. My data support Sahlins’s (1985: 153) argument that “the principle of change is based on the principle of continuity” (see also Saussure [1916] 1983). I have also found, in accordance with Sahlins, that the transformation of cultural categories is an agentive process. In chapter 1, for example, I focused on the role that is played in processes of cultural change by certain personal strategies, such as the modification of clan history in order to ensure land rights in the future, or the incorporation of strong Western elements such as guns and money into Bena warfare. I have found out that such strategies may differ in their forms but derive from the common, Bena-specific cultural understanding of personhood and (ideally) reciprocal exchange. Under these premises, Sahlins’s model of agency alone seemed to me insufficient to explain culture change in Bena. In order to do so, one must know first the indigenous perception of such agency, and therefore of person and exchange. Two authors have become especially important in this context. The theoretical approach of Marilyn Strathern and the ethnographic data of Phillip Newman have helped significantly, in my analysis, to supplement Sahlins’s work on culture change. They provided the framework along which I have structured my line of argumentation. My main argument—that culture change in Bena can best be understood as culture ex-change, with exchange being grasped in Bena terms as an ideally reciprocal, nurturing, and strengthening flow of vital essence between partible exchange partners—has its theoretical foundation primarily in their works. With M. Strathern, I found that the “new Melanesian ethnography” (Josephides 1991) offers a new and, to my mind, very useful path towards the analysis of culture change. Here, agency

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is approached in terms of partible personhood, composite persons, and the decomposition or deconception of persons (Battaglia 1992; Gell 1998; Mosko 1992, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2010; Munn 1986; M. Strathern 1988; Wagner 1986). It is suggested that “Melanesian social interaction and relationship consist in the detachment of a part of oneself, say, and the attachment of that part to another person” and, further, that “the attachment of the part of a separate person to oneself triggers the reciprocal detachment of another part of oneself which is attached to the initial giver. Thus there is no clear separation of persons from things, or subjects from objects” (Mosko 2001: 260) and place (Hess 2005). My data strongly support this proposition of the “new Melanesian ethnography” and show further that it can provide the way to a new approach in the analysis of culture change. Crucial is here the combination of anthropological and “indigenous analysis” (Kirsch 2006: 2–3). According to numerous recent anthropological works on Melanesia—as well as from my own experience in Bena—indigenous perspectives on the world are indeed formed through social relations (e.g., see Bashkow 2006; Courtens 2008; Crook 2006; Kirsch 2006; Scott 2013); social relations shape one’s view and even determine what is seen (see Kirsch 2006: 78). I have therefore taken social relations as the source of reference for Bena perspectives on cultural changes. They are closely tied to specific understandings and practices of exchange and reciprocity. Bena exchange is characterized by the idea that any form of exchange (between persons, or between persons and spirits or land) consists of an exchange of nogoya’a, “vital essence.” Nogoya’a, inherent in every living being (including land), nurtures persons and thus helps them to increase their strength, sikrafu’i, so they can nurture others. My Bena relatives translated the term nogoya’a as “spring water” and literally as “nurturance.” In his outstanding ethnography on the Gururumba, who are neighbors of the Bena, Newman had found a strikingly similar concept of such “vital essence.” He has, however, neglected to explore it specifically in terms of exchange and personhood. During my research, I found that nogoya’a cannot be fully understood unless analyzed in relation to these aspects. I have therefore examined the Bena concept of person and synthesized Newman’s ethnographic framework with Marilyn Strathern’s more theoretical approach. Her idea of person as “dividual” and “partible” allows one to explain indigenous notions of personhood and, further, link them to the agentive changes that Bena persons exercise in the processes of transforming cultural categories. It has also helped to clarify and supplement my ethnographic data on the role of nogoya’a in Bena culture. I have shown that nogoya’a is a part of every person, strategically detached and attached in exchange with others, with the intention of increasing personal strength. I have further shown that the detachment of certain parts of a Bena person—for example, the meha’a or body fluids—from the rest of the persons

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involves detachments of nogoya’a, and is thus seen as indicating or leading to a change in the balance of nurturance and strength inside a person. The balancing of nurturing and strengthening aspects inside and between persons also seems to be the main focus of Bena life-cycle exchanges as described in chapter 4. With regard to the changes these cultural practices undergo, I found that they are transformed in different ways. The main underlying reasons for the dismissal or decontextualization of certain exchange practices—for example, male initiation—and for the continuation or even reinforcement of others, such as het pe exchanges in female initiation, lie in the different effects they have on the balance of nurturance and strength in persons. My data confirm that exchanges that focus on the productive side of long-term binding reciprocal nurturance, such as het pe, are modified and supplemented with new cultural elements (such as money or alcohol) but remain structurally consistent, while life-cycle rituals that are primarily occupied with assertive and strong aspects of nogoya’a, such as male initiation, decrease or are put in a different context of exchange (for example, when male initiation is staged for tourists). This suggests that the modification, as well as the dismissal, of exchange practices is carried out in accordance with the indigenous category of reciprocal and dividual exchange. The transformations of magical practices that I described and analyzed in chapter 5 support this argument. Magical practices are still part of everyday life in Bena today and they play an important role in Bena culture. My data reveal that they are perceived as specific forms of exchange. Magic in Bena involves an exchange of “vital essence” and leads to a difference in the balance of nurturant and strong parts of the persons involved. I have shown that this exchange is in most magical practices a nonreciprocal and negative form that weakens the victims by depleting them of sources of nurturance. Through the use of strong magical objects that have parts of the sorcerer’s strength as well as that of ancestral spirits attached to them, Bena sorcerers manipulate their victims by forcing this excessive strength on them. Similar to warfare, most magical practices in Bena thus represent a negative, nonreciprocal, and non-nurturant form of exchange. The modification of certain magical practices—for example, through the introduction of Western elements such as empty tins or coffee beans into gunakfe’i—is conducted in line with such ideas. These new elements are incorporated and represent assertive strength: tins are durable, strong objects, but depleted of their nurturing content they become “rubbish”—dangerously strong and non-nurturing. Put into the belly of the victim, they clearly have a weakening effect on the person, in the same way that nails or screws have, and possess strength similar to that of magical objects such as lakehusa. The latter are, of course, stronger because they have ancestral strength attached to them. This suggests the conceptual compatibility of certain elements of Bena and Western culture in regard to the exchange

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of nurturing/strengthening or, here, assertively strong/weakening aspects of personal essence, nogoya’a. I therefore argue that one of the prerequisites for the conjoining of elements of different cultures in Bena is their fundamental compatibility in regard to the Bena idea of changing balances of nurturant and strong aspects in and between persons through exchange of essence between partible persons. My data on sanguma, a relatively new phenomenon of witchcraft in Bena culture, strengthen the argument of compatibility as a precondition for the acceptance of new elements in the processes of culture change. The conjoining of various New Guinean ideas of witchcraft with Bena notions and, finally, with that of Western horror fiction in sanguma is a good example (chapter 6). Sanguma witches are also called “Dracula,” and, indeed, their main characteristics are reminiscent of vampires. They greedily “suck out people’s blood and eat their inner organs,” thus depleting them of their vital essence and weakening them. Like vampires, they also possess excessive strength, appear in different forms, fly, and operate mainly at night; they like graveyards and practice cannibalism. In terms of Bena exchange, sanguma witches represent an extreme form of “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2006: 95f.) and antinurturance. They can even transform nurturing parts of persons—for example, the nurturing advisory function of a person’s meha’a—into weakening ones. In this way, sanguma practices, like other magical practices, involve detachments and reattachments of excessive strength with the result of weakening the victim. There are, of course, ways to prevent sanguma attacks—for example, through the use of ginger. The witches’ distinct dislike for ginger—a root that is used in nearly all Bena magic and said to possess strength and nurturing capacities—can protect people, in the same way that garlic hinders vampires from approaching a person wearing it. These similarities in vampire and sanguma belief indicate the compatibility of the two ideas. Elements of vampirism “fit” into Bena witchcraft and are interpreted and conjoined with it by Bena agents according to the effects those elements have on the exchange of parts of personal “essence.” Seen under these premises, culture change becomes in Bena culture ex-change. The exchanged objects—including material and nonmaterial “goods”—have attached to them nurturing or weakening parts of persons and cultures (as extended persons, so to speak). Whether certain elements of new belief systems are accepted and integrated into Bena culture depends on their compatibility with Bena ideals about the nature of exchange relationships. The latter are valued in relation to the nurturance they provide. However, conceptual compatibility is not the only criteria for the “reproductive transformation of cultural categories.” In Bena today, sanguma witches are often described as being “possessed by demons” or by an exclusively evil “satanic” force. Elements of Christianity have been conjoined with those of magic and

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witchcraft, too. Bena Christians referred to magical practices as wok bilong Satan, “Satan’s business,” and described sanguma as a force/strength directly from hell that entered persons in the form of demons. Christianity is considered a means to successfully oppose and fight the evil sanguma power. Jesus, em winim sanguma is a phrase often used in discussions on the topic. The strength of Jesus, who represents, as God’s son, a detached part of God’s person, overrides that of Satan (chapters 7 and 8). Through Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, Christians have access to the greatest sources of eternal nurturance and become strong enough to withstand magical or sanguma attacks; like vampires, sanguma witches fear strong religious symbols such as the cross or water used in baptism. The influence that Christian belief has on the Bena assessment of magic and sanguma, and the strength that Bena persons ascribe to the Christian God, have led me to the suggestion that the conjoining of new elements with elements of Bena culture depends on more than their compatibility in terms of exchange. In order to be taken on and incorporated into Bena practices, the new elements further need to promise a supplement or extension of previous cultural categories in regard to the exchange of nurturance and the concurrent increase or decrease in personal strength. I have dealt with this topic in more detail by describing and analyzing the role of Christianity in today’s Bena with a focus on the syncretic merging of elements of Christian and pre-Christian Bena ideas of exchange (chapter 7). I have confirmed my suggestion that compatibility and supplement/extension in regard to indigenous conceptions of exchange and person are the prerequisites or main criteria for agentive culture change in Bena. The understanding of person as dividual and partible, and of exchange as an exchange of nurturing vital essence, is, I have shown, not at all contradictory to the Christian idea of the relationship between God and humans. Christian rituals—for example, receiving the communion—can easily be interpreted in terms of attaching God’s nogoya’a, his nurturing essence (inherent in the detached blood and flesh of Jesus), to one’s person. The way my Bena relatives interpreted various biblical stories supports this argument (chapter 6). The Bena interpretation of becoming a Christian can thus be described as entering a new, nurturing, reciprocal exchange relationship with God, which strengthens persons to the greatest degree possible: eternally. From the Christian perspective, person is also perceived as partible. Mosko (2001: 260f.) rightly pointed out that Christians “appear to be by definition persons composed of multiple parts” because they enter relationships that involve personal detachments and attachments with God, the Devil, fellow Christians and so forth. Sins are, for example, detached, while nurturing blessing is attached to the Christian person. This shows a fundamental similarity in the two concepts of exchange underlying the different cultural forms of belief. In other words, Bena belief is compatible with Christianity because it follows structurally similar patterns of ex-

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change. It is, however, more than that. In some respects, Christianity is valued as supplementing preexisting cultural categories. I have given the example of the founding ancestor huma, who has terminologically and conceptually been conjoined with the Christian God. The latter not only shares certain characteristics with huma but promises more nurturance and seems stronger. Thus God extends huma’s capacities in regard to the exchange of nogoya’a. These examples confirm for Bena what Mosko (2001: 261) suggested for religious syncretism in Mekeo: that “the mixing of religious elements implicated in the detaching and attaching parts of persons, although deriving from different cultural orientations, is viewed by the actors in consistent terms”—in Bena, in terms of exchanging “vital essence.” In the process of cultural contact, existing cultural categories are here not replaced with new ones; rather, elements of the different cultural categories are conjoined according to preexisting categories. I have not found in Bena what Robbins (2005) called “humiliation,” a condition that he took to be the reason for the replacements of cultural categories among Urapmin. The persons I met in Bena certainly perceived Western culture as stronger in some aspects, especially in the field of economy, but they did not show any sign of feeling culturally inferior in regard to their cultural categories in general. They felt weaker in some respects but stronger in others and certainly not generally inferior. Although the Bena concept of becoming or being “weak” has an aspect of humiliation to it, culture change in Bena is not grounded on humiliation as a cultural category by itself. The fact that Western culture is seen as stronger in some aspects does not call into question the fundamental Bena ideal of exchange, which implies the possibility of acquiring desired strong elements from Western culture without thereby changing the Bena category of exchange of nogoya’a itself. In Bena, I found that elements of different cultures are valued in terms of compatibility and their supplementary nature; they must provide nurturance and promise strength to become attached to Bena culture. Therefore, Mosko’s (2001: 261) assessment that “Melanesian religious syncretism can be taken as integrated and systematic rather than confused” holds true in Bena. What Sahlins (1992) called “developman” is in Bena a striving for cultural extension where new elements are conjoined with elements of preexisting cultural categories in accordance with these categories, in order to extend or improve the options for personal agency and, with this, for the extension of exchange. Thus, at least according to the Bena perception, one may speak of culture exchange and can approach it by considering and analyzing structural similarities and the supplementary function of elements of different cultures instead of explaining syncretistic elements merely as random outcomes of a hierarchical encounter between different cultures. If one can then assume that culture change as it is expressed in Bena syncretism is a strategic process that develops in accordance with the specific

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Bena understanding of person as partible, and an exchange of vital essence, and if one can further conclude that the main criteria for the acceptance of new cultural elements into Bena culture are their compatibility and their supplementary character to preexisting cultural categories, the opposite must be true also. Anti-syncretism, the rejection of new elements, must then work on the same principles. Are specific elements of Western culture dismissed or rejected because they contradict cultural exchange values or do not extend Bena culture? I investigated this question by giving an example of anti-syncretism and failed culture change. Members of the Church of Scientology failed in their attempt to establish the organization in Bena (chapter 8). This is, I have shown, not because their “philosophy” fundamentally contradicts Bena ideas of partible personhood. Like Christianity, it could easily be read in such terms. However, compatibility alone is not enough to convince Bena persons to incorporate specific new elements into their cultural practices. Although they were first optimistic, people soon discovered that the nurturance-promising relationship with the newcomers turned out to be rather nonreciprocal and weakening instead. This negative form of exchange was like behavior displayed in magic or warfare, and was therefore also associated with Satan. The fact that the so-called Scientology Church proved to be non-Christian contributed to this opinion. People in Bena reacted in the same way they react to witchcraft or physical attacks: with mistrust and anger. They finally displayed their strength by forcing the organization to leave the village. In other words, the new exchange relationship did not fulfill the cultural ideal of reciprocal exchange. Rather, it triggered feelings of “unrequited reciprocity” (Kirsch 2006: 79ff.), became associated with undesired practices of sorcery and witchcraft, and was consequently dismissed. Unfortunately, as both observer and participant, I witnessed the Bena way of forcefully displaying strength on various occasions. The most extreme experience in this regard was the warfare that began in my fieldsite in 2006 and that has not been completely resolved at the time of writing. Considering the loss of more than a hundred lives, it feels somewhat cynical to assert that the personal experience of tribal warfare has contributed to my understanding of the processes of culture change and “exchange” in Bena. However, it is important to highlight that all participant observation—not only during peaceful times but also during extreme or extraordinary periods such as a war—needed to be incorporated into and ultimately informed my analysis of Bena exchange. Fighting—caused by a number of exchange-related events and representing the culmination of long, ongoing tensions caused by provocative behavior in exchange practices from two families of the same clan—had begun in Napamogona with the murder of a teenage boy by Nando’s men in 2005, which sparked the first violent outbursts. Strong elements of Western

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culture, such as firearms and money, played a crucial role in the conflict and were strategically incorporated into the following warfare. They gave Nando the strength to begin and sustain the fight, and they enabled his enemies to retaliate strongly by shooting and kidnapping some of his relatives. I had not visited the village since the killing and was staying in Goroka town when, one day, David came and asked me to return to Napamogona to publicly position myself in the conflict. At that point, six persons—four children and two women from Nando’s close family—had been taken hostage (detached from their close relatives) by the family of the murdered boy and their allies, the Tutubilo’i. They were locked inside a small house in the village. Nando had fled with the closest members of his family and was at that time hiding somewhere in the bush. One can imagine that I found myself in an extraordinarily difficult position. Being Nando’s classificatory daughter, I had become suspected of financially supporting (and thereby strengthening) him. People were wondering which side I was on. I knew that I had to follow the request to clarify my position in public but felt conflicted about going to a place where six persons were imprisoned and abused, persons I knew and liked. Finally, I returned to Napamogona and gave my speech in the communal place in front of a crowd of people, stressing my neutrality. I emphasized that I came from a different culture where violence and fights were socially not accepted. I said that I had no right to interfere in any way with Bena issues but that I would choose to withdraw completely from the community if the hostages were not released. It was a very emotional event: we all cried, but I made it clear that I (and with me all my wantoks, the white people I had brought to the village on various occasions) would never return to Napamogona; that there had been an option to establish good and long-lasting relationships but that this option was bound to be destroyed if innocent women and children continued to be imprisoned. I further stressed that neither I nor any of my white wantoks would support any side and that exchange relationships were now cut off because we would not financially support warfare. Interestingly, this argument did have an impact on the audience, albeit a small one in relation to the whole picture. My male relatives (mainly members of Polako’s adopted family) discussed my points thoroughly and with intensity. Finally, they approached me and gave a public response in the communal place. They stressed the importance of their relationship with me and with my wantoks and accepted our decision to distance ourselves and remain neutral during the fight. They wanted us to return, however, when the matters were resolved. Regarding the hostages, they argued that they were the last means to pressure Nando and that releasing them was therefore not an option. However, they suggested a compromise: the hostages should be taken to my house where they could stay under my care—I could “have” them. But they would not be allowed to leave the area around the house. Guards would be positioned to ensure that they remained in the fenced

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property. Of course, concerned as I was for the safety and wellbeing of the hostages, I agreed. This stand-off continued for six weeks, throughout which I was unable to leave the village except to secure food. This example supports my argument that Bena culture change can best be read in terms of strategic agentive ex-change of nurturing and/or strong parts of persons. People clearly reacted to my arguments in relation to such exchange values, and I played that card to help the hostages without consciously realizing it. I threatened to detach myself from the community, and with me also other persons, all of us representing (options for) very nurturing exchange relationships. In spite of the ongoing turmoil, people tried to shore up their relationship to me as much as possible under the circumstances. They proved the importance of this relationship by handing the hostages over to me. Unfortunately, months later, after my departure, the situation escalated completely. The hostages were “freed” by Nando and his allies, fighting increased, and, finally, the whole village was burned to the ground. People had to flee and find residence with relatives in town or in other communities, and the clans of the Napamogona tribe became scattered. Although I knew about the frequency of warfare in the Highlands, I was deeply shocked when I witnessed such a conflict myself, and I must confess that it has shaken and disturbed my relationship with my Bena relatives (and Papua New Guinea in general) for some time. I do not support the argument that one has to experience everything one talks about personally (I wish I had not), but I must admit that I have gone much deeper into the realities of Bena life (and death) than I ever expected to. In spite of all the hardship that was going on, I have found incredible support and care from my Bena relatives, especially in times of crisis. Unlike me, they did not fall into shock or depression when the first killings occurred, but continued with their lives as well as they could. They no doubt had experience with such situations and worked instead at developing strategies for changing them, appearing to remain strong and confident. They nurtured me physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and comforted me, although their own troubles were greater than mine. I cannot express in words how grateful I am to all of them. Coming to the end of this book feels as strange as it felt to sit in front of an empty sheet of paper, trying to think of the first words. What has happened in Bena since I began the process of writing? Of course, the situation in Napamogona has changed. Through the forceful destruction of their land and, finally, their separation from it, people became cut off from their main source of nurturance. Their current aim is to regain their grounds (and with them reattach parts of their ancestors’ nogoya’a to their persons). Many negotiations have taken place since 2007. In 2010, the conflicting parties agreed to a ceasefire, and since then most people have returned to their land, cleaned up their gardens, and rebuilt their houses. Mama Polako and Samuel had fled to rela-

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tives in Lae and only came back to the village in 2012. Tau also returned and built his house in the southern part of the village to protect the clan-land from hostile attacks from neighboring tribes. Nando is still living with a neighboring group of the Napamogona, but has signaled his readiness for peace. When I revisited Napamogona in 2015, the conflict had ceased, but tensions between the conflicting parties could still be felt. Although everyone seemed to opt for peace, no official peace ceremony had yet been held. The reason for this, according to the village elders, was that neither party had gathered enough money to compensate the other side for their losses in battle. Nando claimed that he and his men had killed ninety-nine warriors from the neighboring tribe, while he had lost only twelve of his men. It is hard to imagine that Nando could quickly find sufficient funds to compensate the deaths of such a large number of people. He told me that he intended to pay the compensation bit by bit; in 2015 he had managed to compensate five deaths. It remains to be seen whether and when an official peace contract will be signed and how much room there is for negotiating the amount of the compensation payments. In a recent phone conversation, David told me that Tau and Nando were now strongly promoting peace and that they had openly visited the village center for the first time after their escape. Their ambition was to make peace with their clansmen and the neighboring tribes. This is not as surprising as it may seem at first glance. Being refugees with only some close family members left on their side (others were scattered, kidnapped, dead, or had left them), short of money, and without access to their own gardens, Tau and Nando were forced to change their strategy. Their latest plan is apparently to return to Napamogona grounds and secure them in the long term, a task that can only be accomplished if clan-internal relationships, as well as those with previously hostile neighboring tribes, are improved and reestablished. The difficult task is to decrease the feeling of unrequited reciprocity that triggered anger, rage, and warfare on both sides. However, since all parties seem to be tired of fighting, there is a good chance that compensation payments can be negotiated to the satisfaction of most, David explained. At the end of our conversation David said with a comforting tone of hope in his deep voice that peace might now return to Napamogona. Then he asked me when I would come back. My new house was built, he said, and the guavas in my garden were ripe.

Conclusion

Figure 9.1: Tree near Tani Iyape’s house, Napamogona

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Index

adoption, 34–37, 42, 52–53, 59, 74, 121, 236 agarabi, 56–57 agency agentive acting, 54, 121–123, 222, 236 culture change, 236 partible agent, 34–44 alcohol, 48, 74, 90, 93, 144–45, 151, 154, 157, 246–49, 256 Aminohi (mountain), 56 amuya’a, 65–66 ancestor ancestral spirits, 50–51, 105, 112–14, 229–30, 235, 245, 253 founding ancestor, 225–28 human ancestor, 54–58, 66, 76, 121–25, 146–47, 182 Asaro (people), 159, 213, 222–23, 226 Azande (people), 162 Baal cult. See religion banana, 70, 77, 87, 96–97, 113–14, 126, 142, 146–47, 226, 252 Baptist. See religion belhat, 146 Bena, 33–60, 64–74, 77–81, 84–59, 162–66, 169–78, 181, 184–85, 188, 195–97, 199–260 Big Man, 68, 255 bilum, 59, 87, 104, 128–30, 217 birth, 124–31, 231 body substances, 43, 70, 101, 112, 116– 18, 125, 128–29, 136–37, 140, 145, 150, 170–71, 200–9, 213–14, 216, 228, 238, 252 body substance “polluting” female, 43, 157, 232 strength (see sikrafu’i) bow and arrow, 137, 183, 191

cane-swallowing, 136–40, 152–54 Catholic. See religion Chimbu (territory), 36, 69, 94, 142, 147– 49, 199, 284 clan, 34–44, 47–60, 65–67, 70–74, 77–83, 94–95, 110, 113, 121, 124, 127–35, 139–42, 147–48, 151, 154–56, 174, 181–84, 209, 215, 234, 242, 261, 273, 279–82 maternal, 38, 42, 72, 75, 82, 123–56, 234 membership, 40–42, 51–53, 60, 73, 80, 119, 154 birth, 41 new, 52 sibling clans, 52, 58, 225, 231 solidarity, 41–44, 72, 127, 140 compensation payment, 38–39, 84, 91, 94, 128, 134, 138, 173, 282 concept of exchange, 33–39, 43–45, 85–88, 124–55 of person, 35, 44, 99–123, 222, 232 courting. See yafa vo’alovo cultural category adoption, 34 exchange, 33–52, 57–60, 64–135, 138–43, 146–57, 161–67, 171–73, 176–82, 189, 193–207, 212–14, 218–81, 284 male initiation (see neheya) new, 2–28, 58, 220, 235–36 preexisting, 36, 92, 97n28, 220–22, 235–36, 255 cultural continuity, 231, 235 culture Western, 36, 66–69, 72, 90–93, 134, 141, 145, 150–53, 162–66, 169, 202, 240, 248–49, 255 Melanesian, 59n4, 68, 72, 121n1, 163–64, 198n14, 202, 208

297

Index

Department of Agriculture, 65, 122 descent, 40–44, 51–53, 56–58, 67 despotism, 38 domestic violence, 77, 244, 256 East Sepik (territory), 199 economy Napmogona, 45–46, 64–97 Western economy, 45, 93, 155 exchange cultural category, 33–52, 57–60, 64–135, 138–43, 146–57, 161–67, 171–73, 176–82, 189, 193–20, 212–14, 218–81, 284 gne (see gne) gu’i nimi, 128–31, 133–34, 157 het pe (long-term), 35, 40–42, 58, 84–85, 124–40, 151–157, 162, 148–55, 162, 233 luta’a, 75, 127–34, 138, 140, 148, 156 of vital essence (see nogoya’a) Farokave (person), 55–56, 78–79, 82–83, 181 Fore (people), 43, 127–28, 134, 148, 156 Foursquare Church. See religion Gahuku (people), 47, 57, 222 gambling, 66, 90, 93, 145, 245, 245–49 gejana (poison magic), 175–77 gender, 34–35, 43–45, 49, 58–59, 94, 99–100, 106, 118–20, 153, 219 gift, 46–48, 65–74, 82, 86, 92–94, 99, 102–3, 111–12, 122, 126–34, 137–38, 143, 147, 151, 156–57, 189, 222–31, 243, 250–51, 284 Gimi (people), 127 gipina (tribal leaders), 65, 69, 91 givim stori (ritual), 144–46, 149 gne (exchange), 110, 127–29, 131–34, 156 Goroka, 48, 55, 65, 68, 74, 83, 86–87, 90, 97, 125, 139, 151, 173, 180, 190, 196, 202, 205, 213, 238, 243, 268, 271, 280, 284 Goroka Show, 139 gossip, 39, 46, 59–60, 73, 96, 145, 210, 219, 245–46 grandchild, 130–32

grandfather, 55–56, 67, 72–75, 123, 130, 139, 153, 156–57, 181, 233 Great Men, 68–72, 93–95 gu’i nimi (exchange), 128–34, 157 gunakfe’i (death magic), 110, 163–78, 186–90, 193–96, 200–2, 207–8, 215, 218–20, 235, 261, 275 Gurumba (people), 100–2, 106, 116, 119, 122–23, 274 haus paia (ceremony), 144, 147–49 hauslain, 170 Health care, 73 Henganofi (people), 240 het pe (lit. head payment), 40–42, 84, 126–40, 148–55, 162, 233 Huma (god), 225–32, 245, 252–54 in-laws, 79, 111, 129, 140–42, 156, 208–9 Jogijohi (clan), 49–52, 55, 70, 79, 135, 140–42, 174, 181–84, 234, 261 kinship, 39–43, 48, 58–60, 69, 72–75, 78, 100, 121, 130, 143, 156, 234, 239, 250 Korufego (villiage), 55 lakehusa (magical object), 35, 163–66, 184–98, 203, 207, 275 locality, 41, 45, 52, 71, 208 Lower Bena (territory), 36, 150, 203, 225 luta’a (exchange), 75, 127–34, 138–40, 148, 156 Lutheran. See religion Madang (territory), 199–200, 225 magic delaying-plans (see yago ologo vefa) lugefa magic, 181–82 magic man, 197 magical objects (see lakehusa) magical practices, 196, 162–98, 212, 255 pig magic, 182, 197 poison (see gejana; see name) poison, 117, 166–68, 174–76, 185– 88, 197–98, 233 war magic, 235

298

Markham (village), 73–74 matrilineage, 127–28 Mekeo (people), 278 Melanesian culture, 59, 68, 72, 99, 119– 21, 124, 163–64, 198, 202, 208, 217, 273–74, 278, 284 Monekere (territory), 51–53, 64, 83–84, 94, 97 Monumbo (language), 199 Mormons. See religion mumu (ceremonial banquet), 77, 114–15, 147, 158, 204, 240 nami (ancient poison magic), 163, 173–74 Napamogona clans, 51–52 Founding fathers, 113, 181 hamlets, 53, 84 people/tribe, 31, 46–67, 73–91, 94 village/grounds, 51–57, 64–73 Jogijohi (clan), 49, 51–52, 55, 70, 79, 135, 140–42, 174, 180, 183–84 Matahusa (clan), 51, 55–56 Mekfimo (clan), 51–52, 55, 70, 110, 135, 142, 182–84, 203 Napayufa (clan), 51–52, 55, 79, 182 Sigoyalobo (clan), 34, 37–38, 44, 51–57, 74, 79, 82, 94, 135, 181–82 neheya (male initiation), 95, 100–101, 118, 134–140 nogoya’a (vital essence), 41, 57–59 , 70–71, 74, 80, 85, 99–138, 129–43, 145–57, 162–73, 176–85, 187–88, 194–233, 236–38, 243–46, 249–54, 260, 270, 273–79, 281 Nosaga (territory), 55–57, 114, 181, 198 nurturance. See nogoya’a Okapa (village), 111, 122, 163, 211 pa’i nohiti (female initiation), 127, 140–49 patrilineage, 42, 52–54, 127–28, 138 person notion of, 100–1, 119 partibility of, 72, 119–20, 237–39, 253

Index

strength of (see sikrafu’i) vital essence (see nogoya’a) personhood concept of, 34, 44, 49, 100, 119–20, 124–26, 155, 227, 231, 236–39, 253, 257, 265, 268–70, 273–74, 279 piercing, 136 pig and meha’a of person, 107, 111–12 exchange good, 36, 67, 70, 92, 95n10, 97n27, 102, 130–31, 134, 141 meat as cure, 106, 123 pig killing/slaughter, 91, 108, 115– 16, 125, 130, 167, 173, 207 raising, 45–46, 91, 111, 144, 183 taking, 56 poison man, 163, 169 prepared food, 146 psi’I (magic ritual), 136 pulim asrop (death magic), 163 Ramu Valley (territory), 36 raw meat, 127–32, 209 reciprocity, 93, 107–9, 125–33, 143, 150–51, 162, 171–73, 195, 201–2, 231–42, 246 reciprocity between land and people, 57, 93, 133, 231 negative (unrequited), 71, 80–85, 93, 138, 195–96, 219, 235 religion Baal cult, 80, 92, 222–24, 241, 252–53 Baptist, 243 Catholic, 222–223 Foursquare Church, 79–80, 224, 244, 251 Lutheran, 80, 222–224 Mormon, 257 Scientology Church, 7–10, 24, 257– 71, 279, 284 United Church, 223 residence, 40–42, 45, 48–54, 111, 121, 140, 149, 152, 181, 185, 201–5

299

Index

rituals cleansing, 43, 118, 123, 136–39, 152–53 initiation, 34, 43–44, 47–49, 72, 79, 87, 102, 118–20, 123–27, 136–59, 168, 194, 218–21, 233, 275 life-cycle, 91, 100, 124–61, 197 sanguma (witch), 199–221, 222–35, 244–46, 249 Scientology Church. See religion Sepik (territory), 36, 199–201, 205, 225 sikrafu’I (strength, life force), 41, 99–109, 120, 155, 166–70, 218, 228–29, 231–33 singsing, 146, 150 social identity, 43 social relationships, 34–41, 54–60, 65–70, 86–88, 91, 100–5, 117–21, 243 social structure, 40–44, 53, 58–60, 119 Sogomi (villiage), 208, 213, 216, 243 Sorcery, 162–163, 168, 171, 194–200, 211, 218–20, 225, 246, 254, 266, 270– 71, 279, 284 soribel (empathy), 146 spear, 137, 193 spirits ancestral, 57, 90, 99–101, 202–7, 223 Holy Spirit, 228–29, 233 of the dead, 90, 107–17, 137

of the living, 105–17 steamed food (mumu), 108, 115, 128–31, 147, 167, 171 story of origin, 52–54, 75 sugarcane, 129, 147 tabu, 5, 13 Tok Pisin (language), 66, 126–28, 134, 156, 163, 179, 215, 232, 251, 261 Unggai (territory), 34, 72–73, 215 United Church. See religion unrequited reciprocity. See reciprocity, negative Upper Bena (territory), 36, 65, 135, 139– 42, 147–48, 152, 225 Urapmin (people), 235, 255, 278 vital essence. See nogoya’a warfare, 34, 37–54, 58, 64–72, 81, 84, 93–95, 133, 139–40, 153–55, 273–75, 279–82 witchcraft, 36, 79, 162–63, 186, 193, 196, 199–202, 205, 208, 211, 218–20, 232, 254 witchcraft. See magic yafa vo’alovo (courting), 149–51, 154 yago ologo vefa (magic), 178–81