Culture, Kin, and Cognition in Oceania: Essays in Honor of Ward H. Goodenough 3484zk292

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Copyright Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
SEX, SHIT, AND SHAME: CHANGING GENDER RELATIONS AMONG THE LAKALAI
THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF REPRODUCTION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO KINSHIP AND GENDER (NEW GUINEA HIGHLANDS)
THE ETHNOGRAPHER AS DETECTIVE: SOLVING THE PUZZLE OF NIUTAO LAND TENURE RULES
TRIBAL WORDS, TRIBAL WORLDS: THE TRANSLATABILITY OF TAPU AND MANA
LAND, SEA, GENDER, AND GHOSTS ON WOLEAI-LAMOTREK
RASHOMON IN REVERSE: ETHNOGRAPHIC AGREEMENT IN TRUK
SOCIAL STRUCTURE AS PROCESS: LONGITUDINAL PERSPECTIVES ON KWAIO SOCIETY
CONTRIBUTORS
REFERENCES CITED

Citation preview

° | culture, kin, e@

@ @ IN OCEANIA:

ANd COGNITION ESSAYS IN HONOR

of ward h. GoodenouGh

edited by MAC MARSHALL JOHN L. CAUGHEY

a special publication of the American Anthropological Association number 25

Published by the American Anthropological Association 1703 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009

Scholarly Series Editor David D. Gilmore

Production Editor Lyle L. Green

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Culture, kin, and cognition in Oceania : essays in honor of Ward H. Goodenough / edited by Mac Marshall and John L. Caughey.

p. cm. — (A Special publication of the American Anthropological Association ; no. 25) Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-913167-31-2

J. Ethnology—Oceania. 2. Oceania—Social life and customs. 3. Goodenough, Ward Hunt. I. Goodenough, Ward Hunt. II.. Marshall, Mac. IJ. Caughey, John L., 1941— IV. Series.

306° .0995—dc20 89-6843 GN662.C8 1989

CIP

Copyright © 1989 by the American Anthropological Association All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-913167-31-2

CONTENTS

v / Acknowledgments

1 / Introduction John L. Caughey and Mac Marshall

17 / Sex, Shit, and Shame: Changing Gender Relations among the Lakalai Ann Chowning

33. / The Cultural Construction of Reproduction and Its Relationship to Kinship and Gender (New Guinea Highlands) Anna Meigs

43. / The Ethnographer as Detective: Solving the Puzzle of Niutao Land Tenure Rules Jay Noricks

55 / Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds: The Translatability of tapu and mana Anne Salmond

79 / Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts on Woleai-Lamotrek William H. Alkire

95 / Rashomon in Reverse: Ethnographic Agreement in Truk Mac Marshall

107 / Social Structure as Process: Longitudinal Perspectives on Kwaio Society Roger M. Keesing

119 / Contributors 121 / References Cited

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank the Graduate College, University of Jowa, for financial assistance in support of the artwork for this volume. Shirley Ahlgren and Joan Crowe at the University of Iowa efficiently and patiently typed most of the manuscript, for which we are deeply grateful. We also appreciate the typing assistance of Jenny Tringali and Kathy Lopresti at the University of Maryland. Cynthia Charlton prepared the original artwork, and Will Thompson made some minor changes as the manuscript moved toward completion. Jerry Smith shared important materials with us, and Ruth G. Goodenough was most helpful all along the way. Denny Gilmore has been an honest, demanding, and extremely supportive editor who played a significant role as the project took shape. Christopher Reichl and Sharon Rorbakken, research assistants at the University of lowa, cheerfully checked bibliographic entries. Last, but by no means least, we thank our contributors for their forbearance as they worked with us over several years and through multiple revisions to complete this volume. Mac Marshall and John L. Caughey

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INTRODUCTION John L. Caughey and Mac Marshall , This collection of essays exploring current issues in the study of Pacific cultures is intended both as a contribution to Oceanic cultural anthropology and as an honor to Ward H. Goodenough, whose work has had a tremendous impact on modern cultural anthropology in general and on the field of Oceanic anthropology in particular. Goodenough has contributed significantly to defining the issues presented in the pages to follow and to developing methods and theories with which to explore them. He has also influenced directly the thinking of the authors represented here, either while they were his students at the University of Pennsylvania or his younger colleagues in the field of Oceanic anthropology. _ We begin this introductory chapter with a discussion of Goodenough’s ap-

| proach to culture. Next, we provide a sketch of Goodenough’s biography and identify influences important to the development of his anthropological thinking. Finally, we show how the essays in this collection build on Goodenough’s legacy and contribute to current issues in Oceanic anthropology.

Goodenough’s Theories of Culture Goodenough has made enormous contributions to anthropological thinking about the concept of culture and the process of cultural description and analysis. He is acknowledged widely as one of the major theorists and pioneers of that major trend in contemporary anthropology in which culture is understood not as patterns of behavior but as an ideational or conceptual system. Goodenough’s formulation of this approach to culture first emerged in his classic 1951 monograph, Property, Kin, and Community on Truk, in which he explored the culture of Romonum, a small island in Truk Lagoon, Eastern Caroline Islands, Micronesia. Subsequently, he articulated his powerful vision of culture in three seminal essays published a few years later (1956a, 1956b, 1957). Goodenough’s view of culture 1s quite fully embodied in the following passage, one of the more influential and oft-quoted passages in modern anthropology: As I see it, a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate

in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must

consist of the end product of learning: knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term. . By this definition, we should note that culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior, or emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them. [1957:167] .

The influence of this conceptualization of culture has moved in three related directions. In the first place, it led to the establishment and development of the l

2 Caughey and Marshall ‘‘school’’ or paradigm within cultural anthropology now generally referred to as ‘cognitive anthropology.’’ This approach involves the rigorous, formal analysis of the internal conceptual structure inherent in the culture under investigation. The classic example 1s Goodenough’s (1956c) path-breaking paper, ‘‘Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning.’’ Arguing that the methods of descriptive linguistics could be adapted to the description of other cultural systems, Goodenough demonstrated how one could take a cultural classification such as the set of terms Trukese use to refer to categories of kinsmen, analyze the distribution of denotata for each term and arrive at a model of the criteria that accounts for the

distribution of terms and reveals the underlying conceptual structure. Such a model provides a rigorous theory of cultural knowledge; it formally represents what one has to know to operate in this area, that is, to offer acceptable and appropriate judgments about classifications of kinsmen which conform to Trukese usages. His article then served as the charter model for a host of analyses of the structure of terminological systems that comprise one significant aspect of cultural knowledge. It inspired explorations of many kinship systems but also of other

classifications ranging from color terms—discussed briefly by Goodenough (1956c)—to a host of other areas including classification of firewood among the Tzeltzal to kinds of ‘‘flops’’ recognized by skid row tramps in Seattle. Goodenough’s article was particularly influential in Pacific anthropology and led to nu-

merous explorations of terminological systems throughout Oceania. ! | Goodenough established a second major trend in the study of cultural knowledge in his article, ““Residence Rules,’’ also published in 1956. Here he elaborated on a point briefly developed in Property, Kin, and Community on Truk and

argued that anthropology has been weakened by a failure to distinguish clearly between the outside analytic language which anthropologists use to compare different cultures and the conceptual frameworks actually employed by the people of the society under investigation. Following Kenneth Pike’s lead (1967), Goodenough drew on the distinction in linguistics between phonetics, which refers to frames of reference for comparing the sounds of different languages, and phonemics, the effort to identify the sounds significant within a given language. He then referred to the former as an etic approach and the latter as an emic approach. He argued that anthropological terms like “‘matrilocal’’ and ‘‘patrilocal,’’ which specify where a couple goes to live at marriage, were useful in comparative anthropology in that they provided a summarizing statement which characterized the dominant residence pattern of a given society. However, he also showed that these outside terms were not adequate for cultural description because they obscured the structure of indigenous frames of reference. As he wrote in his Truk monograph, they will not help an outsider ‘‘decide on where he should live should he marry a Trukese woman in Trukese fashion’’ (1951:11). Since such terms merely characterize the dominant pattern, they do not contain information on why some people choose an alternative to the common rule. Furthermore, cultural investigation of Trukese emics shows that people are motivated in choosing where to live by factors other than living with a particular kinsman—the motive implicit in

the anthropological concept. The Trukese use a variety of factors in deciding where to live after marriage with the result that there are various different household arrangements found in Truk, only the most common of which can be characterized by anthropologists as ‘‘matrilocal.’’* Goodenough went on to argue for the development of methods aimed at exploring and representing the knowledge

Introduction 3 that people actually use in making decisions about how to behave. This formulation led to the development of another major trend in cognitive anthropology, the work on decision-making models. Once again, Goodenough’s formulation influenced a variety of theoretical and ethnographic writing not only on the subject of residence rules, but also on many other areas of social life. Again this trend proved especially fruitful in developments in the Pacific:and islands of Southeast Asia, resulting in classic works such as those by Conklin (1955), Frake (1964),

and Keesing (1970a).° Goodenough himself has continued to elaborate and develop this cognitive ap-

proach to culture in general theoretical works (such as Description and Compar-

-ison in Cultural Anthropology [1970] and Culture, Language, and Society [198 1a]), in further refinements of componential analysis, and in articles exploring aspects of Pacific conceptual systems. The cognitive approach he helped initiate and develop has led not only to case studies of classification systems and rules for behaving; it has also spurred a major reorientation to traditional areas of anthropological investigation. This involves the premise that “‘the things people say and do,’’ their customs, institutions, and social arrangements are to be ana- “* lyzed as products of their culturally constituted systems of knowledge, the conceptual standards with which they perceive, think, and behave. People use their standards as guides for all the decisions, little as well as big, which they must make

. in the course of everyday life. As the members of a community go about their affairs, constantly making decisions in the light of their standards, the patterns characterizing the community as a whole are brought into being and maintained. [Goodenough 1964:11-12]

This cognitive approach has resulted, for example, in major shifts in anthropological approaches to Oceanic social organization. It led not only to important work on the kinds of social groupings recognized in indigenous classifications (e.g., Goodenough 1955), but also to analysis of cultural principles of affiliation and recruitment, including adoption, that result in particular social groups (e.g., Carroll 1970). Following Goodenough’s (1951, 1955) lead it has also involved new emic studies of principles of land tenure and the ways these systems affect kinship and political groupings (e.g., Lundsgaarde 1974a,b). This orientation also led to a variety of cognitive studies of social organization from the perspective of role theory. Goodenough first brought this orientation to bear in the chapter on ‘‘Status Systems and Kinship Behavior’’ in his 1951 monograph and developed it in a variety of later works notably his influential (1965a) essay, “‘Rethinking ‘Status’ and ‘Role.’ ’’ Here, he argued that an adequate understanding of the cultural organization of social relationships required, first, analysis of the kinds

of people, the social and personal identities, into which the people of a given society sort their fellows and, second, analysis of the expectations and obligations governing the relationships of people operating in matching social identities. This work inspired a variety of cognitively oriented studies including those of Keesing (1970b) and Caughey (1980). Among other contributions, this approach helped to further understanding of how membership in kinship groups is not a total or continuous condition but rather involves the assumption of different social identities in different social contexts. One can operate as a member of one kinship group

at one moment, then assume.a nonkinship identity, such as curer, then assume membership in yet another kin group by activating yet another social identity, etc. (see Keesing, this volume).

4 Caughey and Marshall Amid the paradigm wars and uncertainties about culture theory in modern anthropology, the cognitive approach has been criticized on a number of different fronts. According to some critics it provides an overly formal and rational view of human motivation, spuriously suggests that all participants in a society share a universal body of knowledge, and ignores issues of culture change, including political and economic considerations.* Despite such attacks, the formal analysis of cultural knowledge set in motion by Goodenough and developed and refined by Goodenough and other anthropologists is alive and well as one of the stronger paradigms in the anthropology of the 1980s. For example, Holland and Quinn’s volume, Cultural Models in Language and Thought (1987) is a collection in which anthropologists and other cognitive scientists address current issues in this area of inquiry. In the introduction to this book the editors cite Goodenough’s 1957 definition of culture as knowledge as the charter statement of the volume’s “*cognitive approach’’ (1987:4). While Goodenough is acknowledged properly as one of the major founders and contributors to the development of cognitive anthropology, hisowninterestshave ~~~ never been confined within the boundaries of the more narrow formulations of this approach, nor has Goodenough identified himself particularly with this par- — adigm. In numerous other publications including Cooperation in Change (1963a), Culture, Language and Society (1981a), and a variety of articles he has explored aspects of culture and culture description that range well beyond the formal models of terminological systems or decision-making structures. In these writings he has been concerned with how attention to the ideational conceptual system must be connected to other kinds of analysis. This broader orientation also has had a wide influence on cultural anthropology generally and on the anthropology of Oceanic cultures specifically. The influence here is harder to delineate since this more general work builds on, adds to, and merges with a variety of other work in American anthropology, which has called for humanistic understanding of the ‘‘native’s worldview’’ as part of a comprehensive anthropological approach, and which extends from Boas and Malinowski through Sapir, Linton, Redfield, and Hallowell on to various modern formulations that draw eclectically on a variety of thinkers in anthropology. Thus, for example, Shweder and LeVine’s Culture Theory (1984) represents a general con- ;

cern with meanings by practitioners of anthropology who have been influenced , not only by Goodenough and cognitive anthropology but also by many other writers interested in meaning and worldview, including Geertzian interpretive anthro- — pology. Similarly, many Pacific studies that are not narrowly cognitive in orientation have been influenced indirectly by Goodenough’s contributions to general

anthropological thinking about culture and culture description as well as by Good- , enough’s direct and indirect contributions to issues in Oceanic anthropology. It is significant, then, to a proper assessment of his work as a whole that Goodenough’s writings are much broader than the more narrow and delimited versions of the cognitivist approach. In fact, his work provides important perspectives on issues that cognitive anthropology is commonly said to neglect or ignore. For ex-

ample, cognitive anthropologists, like interpretive anthropologists, sometimes are accused of inappropriately representing cultural meaning as uniformly shared among the members of a given society. In fact, Goodenough has provided some of the most penetrating discussions of how culture is both shared and not shared.. Insisting, first of all, that if culture refers to learned knowledge it is the property

Introduction 5 of individuals not groups (1966:i11), Goodenough has gone on to illuminate some

of the complex ways in which certain cultural traditions—language, dress, etiquette—do become widely shared by individual members of a society. He has also provided important insights on how all societies, simple or complex, are **multicultural’’ (1976). In the first place, some traditions are unevenly distributed in the personal knowledge systems—which he variously refers to as the ‘‘private cultures’’ or “‘propriospects’’—of different kinds of group members; women may acquire knowledge not shared by men and curers will possess knowledge not shared by clients. Furthermore, Goodenough suggests that any individual’s propriospect will contain a unique version of widely shared traditions and may also include knowledge not shared by any other member of the group—for example, knowledge of a language or curing system acquired through temporary residence in another society. The sum of all knowledge in the propriospects of all members of the group represents that society’s “‘culture pool’? (Goodenough 1981a:107—

119). : While cognitive anthropologists often have been accused of constructing static

models and ignoring culture change, Goodenough, in Cooperation inChange and‘ Culture, Language, and Society, as well as in his writings on Truk and on other Pacific cultures (including his 1955 essay, ‘‘A Problem in Malayo-Polynesian Social Organization’’) has offered many important insights on and descriptions of culture change. Whether change involves culture drift, public change procedures,

| or conflict-laden utopian or revitalization movements—and whether or not change is connected to external dimensions such as environmental factors—Goodenough has shown that the direction of change is always systematically structured by the forms of knowledge in the general culture pool and the way these forms of knowledge affect individual and collective decision-making. The influence of environmental circumstances on their decisions is necessarily affected by what people want, unconsciously as well-as consciously, for themselves and for their society; and both their circumstances and their wants are mediated by the limitations of their individual propriospects, which include the several cultures, traditions, recipes, and so on, of which they have personal knowledge, and which represent what they have individually made of their previous experiences. The intended and unintended effects of their decisions on the future content of the culture pool, on the environment, and on the structure of institutions—insofar as people are aware of these effects— _.feed back upon their definitions of purposes in the future and on their perceptions of the choices then available for implementing those purposes. [1981a:119]

While cognitive anthropology’s focus on conceptual systems is sometimes said to ignore emotional and psychological aspects of motivation, Goodenough again has given these issues considerable attention, as in his work on the dynamics of self-representation, self-maintenance, and self-esteem. This psychological sen_ $itivity is evident, for example, in his early essay on premarital affairs on Truk where he showed that an important reason for the Trukese preoccupation with such affairs has to do with the ‘‘ego satisfaction’’ which the particular patterns of risk yield to participants in these relationships (1949a:618). This interest in social psychology is also given a prominent place in his theories of culture change, notably in Cooperation in Change (1963a), and in his later work on self-maintenance and religion (1988b). To be sure, Goodenough has offered some important perspectives on conceptual aspects of supernatural worlds as, for example, in some of his work on Trukese ghost beliefs (1963a) and in his influential analysis of the conceptual system underlying Micronesian esoteric navigational knowledge (1953). However, most of

6 Caughey and Marshall Goodenough’s work on religion is social psychological in orientation. He suggests in fact that ‘‘people’s major emotional preoccupations . . . are the stuff from which the phenomenon of religion arises’’ (1974a:182), and he has brought this orientation to bear in his work on Trukese religion (1974a, 1981b) and on

self-maintenance and identity (1988b). These formulations offer significant | models for how an interest in ideational culture can be combined with attention to psychodynamic questions of emotional conflict, and self-conceptualization and self-maintenance. Much of the considerable body of work dealing with the self in Pacific island cultures has been directly or indirectly influenced by Goodenough’s formulations. This includes, for example, Valentine’s (1963) study of Lakalai ethnopsychology and Caughey’s (1980) study of self-conceptualizations and motivation on Truk, as well as White and Kirkpatrick’s (1985) impressive collection of essays, Person, Self and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies. Goodenough is cited repeatedly throughout the text and is thanked for his contributions to the meetings that led to the collection. Goodenough’s sense of culture as an ideational system extends, then, in three related directions, all of which have been of signal importance to cultural anthropology in general and Oceanic anthropology in particular. In the first place, it has provided a foundation for cognitive anthropology with its emphasis on the formal representation of conceptual frameworks. Secondly, Goodenough’s sense of culture as a distinct, ideational, nonbehavioral construct has allowed for more refined analyses of social organization in such traditional areas of anthropological inquiry as kinship, land tenure, and political organization. Finally, Goodenough has taken this sense of culture beyond the boundaries of cognitive anthropology and developed major representations of cultural diversity and sharing, culture change,

and the relationship of social psychological considerations to systems of knowl- | edge, especially as these connect to issues of self-maintenance. If, as Keesing argues (1987b; this volume), the important insights of cognitive anthropology need to be integrated into more general social and cultural theories, then Goodenough’s own work provides important leads as to how this may be accomplished.

Intellectual Biography: Influences on Goodenough’s Approach to Culture Ward Goodenough’s creative thinking about culture developed within particular social and cultural contexts. Here, we offer a brief sketch of Goodenough’s biography with special attention to influences that were significant in the development of his anthropological thinking. Ward H. Goodenough was born May 30, 1919, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, | where his father, Erwin R. Goodenough, pursued graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School. A year later the family moved to Europe, traveling back and forth between Germany and England, while his father studied for his doctorate at Oxford. In 1923, they returned to the United States as Erwin Goodenough took a position in the History of Religion at Yale where he remained for the rest of his career. The eldest of four children, Ward grew up in an academic atmosphere and de-

veloped an early fascination with literature and classical music, both of which were strong family interests. Upon returning from Europe at the age of 4 Good-

Introduction 7 enough was fluent in German as well as English. His father sought to help him retain his German and these experiences may have influenced his lifelong interest in and skill at languages. After eight years at the local elementary school, Goodenough was sent to Groton School in 1932. At Groton, Ward was active in dramatics, debating, music, football, and gymnastics. He concentrated academically

on the study of history and languages. a

In 1937, he went to Cornell University where he was a member of Telluride House, a scholarship house and a center of cultural and political life on campus. Reflecting on these experiences, Goodenough feels that the intellectual atmosphere and high standards there helped to shape his interest in and approach to scholarship. Both at Groton and Cornell he concentrated heavily in languages— he had 6% years of Latin, 5 years of Greek, 3 years of German, 1 year of Middle High German, 2 year of Old High German, 2 year of Gothic, 3 years of French, 3 years of Old Icelandic, and 2 year of Swedish. Goodenough majored in Scandinavian Language and Literature, particularly Old Icelandic (referred to by some of his college friends as ‘‘Old Outlandish’’) and this led into an interest in the inner worlds of ancient Scandinavian cultures ° and the unfamiliar concepts with which these were ordered. By the end of his junior year at Cornell, he had decided to pursue academic work in graduate school but was undecided about a graduate major. In 1938, he met his future wife, Ruth Gallagher, who was studying social psychology. Through her he was drawn into

] a circle of friends, mostly social science majors, who were influenced by the social psychologist Leonard Cottrell, who had arrived recently at Cornell from the University of Chicago. Cottrell was an engaging lecturer and his courses drew numerous students. It was, Ruth Goodenough recalls, an exciting place to be at the time, ‘‘We took what we were learning very seriously and talked and argued about it all hours.’’ Within the group of friends were several students who, like Ward Goodenough, went on to distinguished careers in social research. These included David Schneider, who also went into anthropology, and sociologists Alex Inkeles, John Clausen, and Nelson Foote. The fall semester of his senior year—at his future wife’s suggestion—Goodenough enrolled in a course in personality theory with Cottrell. Partly at his fa-

ther’s urging, he also signed up for a.course in anthropology under Lauriston Sharp, who recently had returned from fieldwork in Australia with the Yir Yoront.

These two courses were of great significance in influencing Goodenough to choose a career in anthropology and in establishing a basis for his thinking about culture and psychology. | _ From Cottrell’s course, I learned that our sense of self—cognitively, kinesthetically, and affectively—emerges out of our experience of ourselves at the hands of others. It emerges, that is out of the transactions that take place in ‘‘self-other’’ relationships. From Sharp, I learned that something anthropologists called culture, that is learned, not transmitted biologically, also emerges from and is sustained by the transactions that take place in “‘self-other’’ relationships. Culture and the sense | of self were somehow both products of the same processes. It seemed silly to me to think of these as belonging to two totally different domains—one cultural and the other psychological, as so many anthropologists have insisted. But it also was evident to me that while theory was able to say something about the processes by which the self and culture come into being, they could not provide any

very good procedures for describing the content of either one. Here was a challenge.°

Goodenough decided to pursue graduate studies in anthropology at Yale, where he began in the autumn of 1940. He married Ruth Gallagher in February 1941, and she joined him in New Haven for the spring semester. The first year at Yale

8 Caughey and Marshall Goodenough was introduced to cross-cultural studies as he served as a research assistant in the Cross-Cultural Survey under George P. Murdock’s direction. He also had courses with Bronislaw Malinowski, John Dollard, Irving Rouse, Clellan Ford, and Wendell Bennett. Goodenough was particularly interested in Malinowski’s approach and in how behavioristic psychology and psychoanalytic theory might apply to anthropology. He also had a full year course with George Trager, then a visiting lecturer, in phonetics and phonemics. This work was fundamental to the development of his approach to social science. This last course was an inspiration to me, because it provided the answer to the question bothering me from the year before: how to get at content. The linguists were the one group who had devised rigorous procedures for arriving at testable hypotheses regarding the content of specific languages— both content in the sense of the nature of the sounds that had stimulus value for speakers of that language (i.e., its phonemes) and content in the sense of its own grammatical structure as ‘‘rules’’ governing the arrangement of the elementary stimulus forms into more complex combinations and sequences of combinations. It seemed sensible to me to try to put the linguistic approach to content together with the psychologists’ and anthropologists’ concern with process in order to make a full-

fledged behavioral science. I have been at work on one corner or another of this ever since. - ;

Drafted into the Army in November 1941, Goodenough spent ten months in the

infantry before being brought as an enlisted man to the Pentagon, where he worked with the field staff of the Research Unit of the Information and Education Division of the War Department under Samuel A. Stouffer doing work on attitude and opinion research. During this period he became interested in Guttman scaling that, like descriptive linguistics, offered a rigorous method for systematically ordering qualitative materials. This interest led to his first publication, ‘‘A Technique for Scale Analysis’’ (1944), and later provided a basis for ordering rights and duties in his work on status systems and role theory (1951, 1963b, 1965a). At the end of the war, Goodenough worked briefly in the Corrections Branch of the Army Adjutant General’s Office, reviewing cases of court-martialed men as to the prognosis for future social adjustment. Here he received a brief but inten-

sive experience in clinical social psychology. ;

Returning to New Haven with his wife and two young daughters, both of whom were born during the war, Goodenough resumed graduate studies at Yale in 1946. During this period he studied with Ralph Linton, whose work on conceptual di-

sources of inspiration. ;

mensions of culture, role theory, and culture and personality were important I dedicated my book Cooperation in Change to Malinowski and Linton because of the heavy influence their ideas and approaches had on my own thinking about the problems of social and cultural change and the meaning of customs and institutions to the people who follow them.

However, Murdock, who at that time was working on cultural evolution, continued to provide the strongest influence. When I got back to Yale in 1946, I worked as Murdock’s research assistant. He was then working on his book Social Structure, and J had the opportunity to follow its development fairly closely. Having an office next to his was a great thing for me; because whenever he would get an idea, he would come rushing in to try it out on me. The result was some very exciting discussions. He did me a return favor, too, letting me come and try my ideas on him. I had the good fortune to have a most rewarding apprentice relationship with him at that time.

Goodenough’s association with Murdock’s work in Social Structure strongly influenced his sense of culture change, but it also led to some dissatisfaction with Murdock’s comparative approach. This concern helped inspire Goodenough’s attention to constructing more adequate descriptive accounts of particular cultures.

Introduction 9 As Goodenough wrote later, Murdock’s effort to systematize the conceptual framework that students of family and kinship had been using made its shortcomings more clearly apparent. The result [of this comparative orientation] was that groups of different structure were often reported as patrilineal or matrilineal, depending on which they seemed more closely to resemble statistically, the ethnographer failing to provide the evidence needed to ascertain the principles by which they were actually organized. Anything that could not be forced into either of these pigeonholes was said

to be in a residual category of bilateral kin groups. [1964:9] |

In 1947, Goodenough accompanied Murdock and four other researchers to Micronesia for seven months of fieldwork on Truk. The islands of Micronesia were to be temporarily administered by the U.S. Navy, and a decision was made to ~~ conduct intensive anthropological research in the area with an eye toward development of effective administration. Forty-two social scientists were thus sent to Micronesia under auspices of the Navy and the National Research Council as part of the Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology (CIMA). Yale was assigned to the investigation of Truk, and out of this research experience came

Goodenough’s Ph.D. dissertation, ‘‘A Grammar of Social Interaction,’’ (1949b) _ subsequently reworked and published as Property, Kin, and Community on Truk (1951). This monograph stands as the premier publication resulting from CIMA, one of the enduring classics of Pacific ethnography. It is a brilliant in-depth exploration of the principles by which Trukese land tenure and social structure are

: organized. Those of us who have worked on Truk continue to be impressed with the depth and accuracy of his analysis. It has had a profound effect on Pacific ethnography. It also introduced, albeit in emergent form, most of the major ori_ entations in Goodenough’s approach to culture and cultural description, including most of those discussed above. As has been shown, some of these orientations were already apparent before Goodenough went to Truk; however, there were special conditions of the Trukese research that facilitated the development of his thinking.

First, the researchers were forced by the situation to work exclusively in the Trukese language since the handful of English-speaking Trukese already were employed full-time by the local administration. ‘This. situation, the presence of a linguist to aid in the study of the language, and Goodenough’s own facility with and interest in language, allowed Goodenough to achieve a level of fluency in the local language and conceptual system that was still unusual in fieldwork of the time. Goodenough’s interest in describing the principles of particular cultural systems was enhanced by two additional circumstances. Toward the end of his field-

| work, Goodenough was adopted as a ‘‘brother’’ by Eive Rewi, a young Trukese man of approximately his own age. Partial integration into the local kinship system led to a sharpened interest 1n discovering and formulating understandings of

what one needed to know to operate acceptably in roles within that system. This interest was intensified by the applied orientation of the CIMA research project. The necessity of providing understandings that would help administrators who had to make rulings on local problems such as land tenure disputes, shifted the researchers’ attention away from traditional anthropological comparative concerns toward the structure of the local cultural system. As Goodenough wrote in

his introduction to Property, Kin, and Community on Truk: , The possibility that our work might have practical applications, far from proving a handicap, served in the writer’s opinion to raise the standards of scientific rigor and led to ethnographic results which

10 Caughey and Marshall in some instances far exceeded his expectations. The problem of rendering an ethnographic account that can be of practical use to administrators boils down, we feel, to trying to give the reader a basis for learning to operate in terms of the culture described in somewhat the same manner that a gram-

mar would provide him with a basis for learning to speak a language. To seek to do this implies that a culture is as susceptible of rigorous analysis and description as is any language. The demonstration of this proposition is, in fact, a long-range objective towards which the present study was undertaken as an exploratory step. [1951:10]

On returning from Truk in 1948, Goodenough took an instructorship in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he worked with William Howells and—showing his characteristic ability to concentrate—wrote his dissertation in the busy office he shared with three other instructors. After receiving

his Ph.D. in 1949, Goodenough and his family left Madison for Philadelphia. There he accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania where he has remained throughout his career. In the early years at Penn, Goodenough worked under Loren Eiseley, then chair, and A. I. ‘‘Pete’’ Hallowell, who influenced his thinking about cultural evolution, world-

view, and the relationships of self and culture.° In 1951, Goodenough returned to the Pacific for a brief period of fieldwork in the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) and to survey the Papua New Guinea area for an appropriate fieldwork site. In 1954, he led an expedition to Lakalai, New Britain, taking with him graduate students Ann Chowning, Charles and Edith Valentine, and Daris Swindler.’ For Goodenough this was a difficult trip. He contracted malaria and was ill much of the time. Despite this, his research resulted in several publications dealing with Lakalai social organization (Chowning and Goodenough 1965-66; Goodenough 1962). By the mid-1950s Goodenough’s developing orientation to culture as an idea-

tional system was formulated in the three classic essays discussed above. As Goodenough recalls it, he developed componential analysis under the following circumstances. I had finished describing how I understood Trukese kinship terminology to work in writing my dissertation. There were a set of terms that I said formed a system, and then there were some ‘“‘special’’ terms that were left over that I described separately. It occurred to me to ask myself how I knew that some of the terms went together in a system and the others did not, but were left over as special terms. I knew it, but what was the basis of that knowledge? Could I objectify to myself what I was intuiting and what my intuition left me certain was right? A little reflection was all ittookto see that the terms that made a system had mutually exclusive sets of denotata; and being complementary, differences between these sets could all be described in terms of intersections of the same set of discriminating variables. What differentiated the sets of denotata at the same time defined the significance of the terms. When I was asked a few years later to write something for a festschrift number of Language in honor of Kroeber, it struck me that what I had done in this regard in my dissertation on Truk could be worked up for an audience of linguists with reference to classic problems in linguistics having to do with the role of meaning in the analysis of forms and, the thing I was making a point about, the role of forms in the analysis of meaning. I used the term ‘*componential analysis’’ in the title of the paper as an afterthought, the idea being to give linguists in their own jargon some idea of what my approach to meaning was going to be. It was in the course of

, doing that paper, that | came more fully to appreciate the possibilities of getting at the content of culture through semantic analysis of the lexicon by which much of culture is encoded. But J still feel that this approach is far from being sufficient in itself to get at all of a culture’s content.

During this same period Goodenough continued to work on the relationship of culture to social psychological issues including identity and self-maintenance. As indicated above, this interest was initially sparked by his undergraduate course with Leonard Cottrell at Cornell, and developed further through his graduate stud-

Introduction 1] ies with Malinowski and Linton and during his fieldwork on Truk and New Britain. As applied to religion, his psychological orientation also was influenced by his father, whose books on religion he cites frequently in his writings on this subject.® Goodenough also credits his wife, Ruth, who took an M.A. under Cottrell,

for helping him to develop his approach to this area: She has greatly influenced my thinking, helping me to make social psychological interpretations of behavioral phenomena a routine part of my life and of our life together. This has-had definite carryover into my work as an anthropologist, perhaps best seen in my book Cooperation in Change.

In this book Goodenough combined cultural and social psychological approaches to examine the fundamental problem of ‘‘achieving cooperation among individuals and groups of individuals each with different purposes and values and each ' with different customs and traditions—in implementing programs for change’’

(1963a:11). The writing of Cooperation in Change occupied a considerable amount of both Ward’s and Ruth’s attention from 1952 to 1962, including a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1958. The project began when their former teacher, Leonard Cottrell, requested Good-

enough to prepare a manual for people engaged in development work in under- “ developed communities. His dissatisfaction with an early version of this manuscript led Goodenough to revise it several times, resulting in a significant contribution to work on the interface between culture as a conceptual system and social psychological issues including human self-conceptualizations and perceptions.

} In 1964, Goodenough returned to Truk with his wife and their two youngest children. They took up residence in a traditional style house on Roménum and carried out 11 months of fieldwork. Ruth studied adoption while Ward, working Closely with his adopted brother, Eive Rewi, and another adopted brother, Boutau K. Efot, carried out interviews on the Trukese status system, began work on the

| Trukese-English dictionary, and investigated changes in Roménum social organization.” Over the subsequent quarter century, as Goodenough continued to develop his thinking about culture, he has influenced and been influenced by a quite extraordinary set of colleagues at Penn including, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace,

William Davenport, Igor Kopytoff, Dell Hymes, Ruben Reina, Peggy Sanday, and Erving Goffman. He has also had significant contacts with numerous other colleagues through his extensive professional activities and work at other institutions. Goodenough served as President of the Society for Applied Anthropology in 1963, worked as editor of the American Anthropologist from 1966-70, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1971, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979-80, and served as President of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in 1987. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at several universities — including the University of Hawaii in 1982-83 and as a Fulbright Lecturer at St. Patrick’s College in Ireland in 1987. As he approaches retirement, Goodenough continues to work creatively in several different areas. He composes music and writes poetry (e.g., Goodenough 1988a)—his interests here paralleling his scholarly research in that he takes particular delight in the underlying structures of both of these artistic forms. He also continues his scholarly research and writing. This includes, for example, work on the relationship between culture and psychology, such as his recent article on ‘‘Self Maintenance as a Religious Concern’’ (Goodenough 1988b) and work on early European history and prehistory (e.g., Goodenough 1988c), both of these

12 Caughey and Marshall interests having begun during his undergraduate years at Cornell. Goodenough also continues to exert a significant effect on Oceanic anthropology.

Goodenough’s Contributions and Current Anthropological Research Cultural anthropologists working in Oceania today are necessarily influenced by Goodenough since they are operating with scholarly traditions which his publications of the last four decades have helped significantly to establish or redirect. Goodenough continues to contribute to these traditions; his recent publications include an essay on Trukese cosmology (1986) and he is currently at work on a second volume of the Trukese-English dictionary and on a monograph treating traditional Trukese religion. Goodenough’s continuing influence in Pacific anthropology also stems from two other important factors. First, is his long and still active role in various organizations concerned with Pacific anthropology, notably the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, and his high repute inthese _—_—is organizations. Second, Goodenough has been active in training numerous Pacific anthropologists and he has been extraordinarily generous of his time in encouraging and helping students and younger colleagues who have worked in the Pacific. This influence is evident in the work of the eight contributors to this book. All of them (including Marshall, Alkire, and Keesing) had extensive contact with

Goodenough as younger colleagues in Pacific anthropology and five of them (Chowning, Caughey, Salmond, Meigs, and Noricks) were also graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania with Goodenough serving as their dissertation adviser. In the chapters that follow, these authors grapple with issues of continuing and current concern in anthropology. In so doing they all build directly and indirectly on Goodenough’s contributions. Following Goodenough, all of these chapters are based on in-depth ethnographic research in Oceania and all are concerned with ethnography as a scientific enterprise. Unlike some current anthropologists who stress ‘‘the possibility of alternative interpretations of everything to the exclusion of any effort to choose among them’’ (Kirk and Miller 1986:15), concern with ethnographic validity is a theme that runs through all of these chapters. Thistheme =| involves attention to a variety of issues and approaches taught and practiced by Goodenough, including use of long-term ethnographic research as a means of dealing with the complexities of culture change (chapters by Chowning and Keesing), concern with the ways in which Western and/or etic concepts obscure native conceptualizations (chapters by Salmond and Meigs), focus on the problem of informant reliability (chapter by Noricks), and inquiry into issues of disagreement _ and agreement among different ethnographers who have studied the same culture (chapters by Marshall and Alkire). Also following Goodenough and connecting to a continuing interest in anthropology (e.g., White and Kirkpatrick 1985), the authors of all of these chapters are concerned with analyzing the conceptual systems by which people think about themselves and their worlds. All of the chapters include, and two of them (chapters by Salmond and Meigs) focus on, systematic analysis of native semantic categories and rules. However, as with Goodenough’s work, none of these authors is content to dwell exclusively on the explication of native cognition. The effort to adequately represent emic systems is seen as one part of a larger concern with anthropological description, comparison, and culture

Introduction 13 theory. Thus the authors of these chapters explore relationships between systems of knowledge and other basic realities of Pacific societies including kinship, gender, social identity and other aspects of social organization (chapters by Chowning, Keesing, Meigs, Marshall, and Salmond), land tenure (chapter by Noricks), religion (chapters by Salmond and Alkire), and social-psychological issues (chapters by Alkire and Chowning). , In 1954, under Goodenough’s supervision, Ann Chowning and three other doc-

toral students from the University of Pennsylvania embarked on a team research project among the Lakalai of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. As Chowning recounts it, unlike some of his colleagues, Goodenough encouraged her—

indeed, recruited her—to do fieldwork in New Britain at a time when some male anthropologists retained the cockeyed notion that fieldwork was too dangerous for women. In “‘Sex, Shit, and Shame: Changing Gender Relations among the Lakalai,’” Chowning adds to recent anthropological understandings about the role of shame in human affairs (e.g., Epstein 1984; Gilmore 1987) by showing how the Lakalai ‘‘anal shame complex’’ connects to changing patterns in Lakalai social . relationships. In so doing she develops ideas from Goodenough’s work in social organization, social psychology, and culture change, and contributes a richly detailed ethnographic case study to the current literature on gender and emotional patterning in Pacific Island societies (e.g., Errington and Gewertz 1987; Linden-

| baum 1987; M. Strathern 1987, 1988; Whitehead 1987). Chowning draws upon data gathered in Lakalai in 1954 and on subsequent visits to illustrate Goodenough’s observation that shame and humiliation provide a powerful motivating force in human action. Examining the ‘‘male anal shame complex’’ as they encountered it among the Lakalai 35 years ago, Chowning offers possible reasons for its existence and seeks to account for its recent demise by drawing on Goodenough’s theories of culture change. Also focusing on gender issues, in ‘‘The Cultural Construction of Reproduction , and Its Relationship to Kinship and Gender,’’ Anna Meigs lays bare the concepts and rules with which the Hua of Papua New Guinea think about the seemingly universal categories of reproduction, kinship, and gender. Much of Meigs’s published work has been devoted to detailed analysis of Hua emic categories, in which she has sought to follow Goodenough’s call that anthropologists should seek to describe cultural phenomena in ways that fit the data of particular cultural systems. In her chapter here she works from Goodenough’s premise that etic terms suitable for cross-cultural comparison in anthropology (e.g., ‘‘matrilocal’’ 7 and ‘‘patrilocal’’) are inadequate for description of specific cultures. Meigs car_ Ties this insight a step further by demonstrating how our Western, etic categories _of ‘‘kinship,’’ ‘‘male,’’ ‘‘female,’’ and ‘‘reproduction’’—widely employed in anthropology—tfail to capture adequately Hua cultural ideas. Her chapter offers a new perspective on debates about the fluidity of New Guinea social groups and social identities, and provides significant documentation of the culture-boundedness of kinship and gender as focal categories of anthropological research (cf.

Collier and Yanagisako 1987): Jay Noricks completed his Ph.D. under Goodenough’s direction, giving particular attention to componential analysis of Niutao (Tuvalu, Polynesia) kinship and social identity relationships. In ‘*The Ethnographer as Detective: Solving the PuzZle of Niutao Land Tenure Rules,’’ Noricks builds on another aspect of contem-

14 Caughey and Marshall porary Oceanic research which Goodenough helped establish: the significance of comprehending land tenure rules as a means for understanding social organization (cf. Crocombe 1971; Lundsgaarde 1974a). The problem Noricks encountered was how to deal with contradictory and, as it turned out, deliberately falsified information about Jand tenure. He solved this dilemma by uncovering a general pattern

in Niutao thought, and showed how conceptualizations of land as an extremely : important valuable led people to engage in various strategic interactions (including providing false information to others, ethnographers and islanders alike) in order to protect and consolidate their own land claims. Noricks’s chapter provides a valuable perspective on a significant and neglected problem in the study of Pacific land tenure systems, and it also offers an instructive model for advancing ethnographic validity through investigating and explaining disagreement in informant testimony.

In ‘‘Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds: The Translatability of tapu and mana,’’ Anne Salmond explores the meanings of two concepts long recognized as central

to the worldview of New Zealand Maori and certain other Pacific Island peoples. ~ Salmond begins by examining a problem in ethnographic semantics: as words like ‘‘mana’’ and ‘‘taboo’’ have been borrowed from Polynesian languages and incorporated into Western anthropological (etic) frameworks, their meanings have become assimilated into Western frames of reference. Having established this, Salmond goes on to argue that it is essential to transcend these imposed barriers in our own thinking in order to recover the original and changing meanings these terms have had within Maori culture. To accomplish this she combines the results of her own ethnographic research and her fluency in Maori with meticulous analysis of historical sources, a technique Goodenough also has employed in some of his research on Micronesian religion. By carefully analyzing historical texts, including early records of Maori chants, Salmond demonstrates how the meaning

of tapu and mana can be recovered by explicating their place within the Maori cosmological system. Her work provides a model for historical-semantic analysis and a major contribution to Maori epistemology; it also offers an important per-

spective on current debates about mana and tapu as key concepts in Oceanic thought (cf. Keesing 1984, 1985). | William Alkire takes up an issue of long-standing interest in Micronesian anthropology in “*‘Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts on Woleai-Lamotrek,’’ namely, - the relationships between religious beliefs and patterns of social organization. In undertaking this analysis Alkire draws on Goodenough’s published record that Trukese believe everyone has two souls, which Goodenough suggests may serve as repositories for feelings of ambivalence toward parents. Alkire argues that the supernatural world in the Woleai-Lamotrek area conforms to a widespread Carolinian dualistic pattern that reveals itself also in relations between land and sea, internal and external domains, women and men, sisters and brothers, and patterns of lineage organization. The conclusions Alkire reaches about ghosts and gods in the central Carolines build creatively on Goodenough’s (1986) recent comparative study of Trukese and Pohnpeian cosmology in achieving a synthesis between ‘‘single soul’’ and ‘‘dual soul’’ theories in traditional Oceanic religions. One major issue in contemporary anthropological theory is how disagreements between ethnographers illustrate possible observer bias or other problems with the accuracy and rigor of ethnographic data collection (e.g., Heider 1988). In ‘‘Rashomon in Reverse: Ethnographic Agreement in Truk,’’ Mac Marshall joins the debate over the replicability and reliability of ethnographic research. Goodenough’s

Introduction I5 path-breaking work in Truk in the late 1940s has contributed indirectly to this exercise by providing a baseline for much of the work others have conducted in the years since. The fundamental validity of his ethnography has been demonstrated by the other researchers who have worked in Truk, even as the internal variability in Trukese society and culture continues to be documented and explained. Among several now famous examples of ethnographic disagreement (e.g., Redfield and Lewis on Tepotzlan or Freeman and Mead on Samoa) is Fischer’s dispute with Goodenough over what the residence rules were on Roménum Island, Truk. In his chapter here, Marshall is concerned not only with such disagreements, but also with the many instances—frequently overlooked—in which

the work of one ethnographer is corroborated by that of others. To investigate _ ethnographic agreement he examines how different researchers have treated three subjects in Trukese society: patterns of alcohol use, patterns of adoption, and conceptualizations of valued personal identity or character traits. By drawing on material from Truk and surrounding atolls (‘‘Greater Trukese:Society’’) Marshall documents the agreement that exists on these three topics and sheds light on likely

reasons for such consensus. ° Another major trend in contemporary anthropology is to join ethnography and

history to produce more accurate and sophisticated anthropological accounts (e.g., Colson and Scudder 1988; Marshall and Marshall 1990; Moore 1987). In ‘‘Social Structure as Process: Longitudinal Perspectives on Kwaio Society,”’ | Roger Keesing takes up the complex problem of how social systems develop and change over time. He does this through detailed case studies of social groups drawn from his long-term research with the Kwaio (Malaita, Solomon Islands), and by building on Goodenough’s insight that social systems should be viewed as processes in time. Kwaio social group structures are analyzed as the outcomes of processes that are themselves the result of cultural principles governing decisionmaking, an idea drawn from Goodenough’s inspiration that cultural rules might be described and analyzed in ways similar to the rules of a grammar. Keesing also relates his material to Goodenough’s work on social identities, particularly to the idea that a person’s group affiliation is part of a social identity relationship which an individual assumes, even though this relationship is neither total nor continuously operative. In the course of his chapter, Keesing discusses some of the limitations that have become apparent in the more narrow formulations of the cog-

nitive approach; however, he goes on to argue and to demonstrate that these models have continuing power as tools for social analysis. Keesing concludes by suggesting that these insights will necessarily be important components of more

general social and cultural theories. It seems evident to us that Keesing’s prediction is correct. As indicated in our discussion of the contributions to this volume, Goodenough’s work continues to provide inspiration, directions, and reference points for much of the work being done in contemporary Oceanic anthropology. In reflecting on Goodenough’s continuing influence, all of the contributors to this book strongly and gratefully share the sentiments expressed in the tribute to Goodenough offered in November 1986 on the occasion of his receiving the American Anthropological Association’s Distinguished Service Award. The dedication reads as follows: In your uncompromising commitment to anthropology as a science and a discipline and in your contributions to cultural theory, ethnographic method, and the study of kinship and language, you have given your colleagues the legacy of your clear and endlessly clarifying thought.

16 Caughey and Marshall Notes 'For further discussions and examples of componential analysis and other formal analyses of terminological systems, see Goodenough (1968, 1970), Hammel (1965), Spradley (1972), and Tyler (1969). For assessments of Goodenough’s work on conceptual systems, see M. Black (1973) and Keesing (1974). ?For more on Trukese residence rules, see Bohannan (1963) and John L. Fischer (1958). 3For further discussions and examples of decision-making models and other how-to-do-it analyses see Quinn (1975), Spradley (1972), and Tyler (1969). “For a critical comment on cognitive anthropology see, for example, Harris (1968). >The material in this biographical sketch is based on published sources, cited throughout, on personal communications from Ruth Gallagher Goodenough, including an unpublished letter to John Caughey dated May 5, 1988, and, finally, an unpublished letter from Ward H. Goodenough to Rick Ball dated November 12, 1971, responding to an inquiry about the development of Goodenough’s thinking about culture theory. °For appreciative comments on Hallowell, see Goodenough (1974b), and on Eiseley, see Goodenough (1984). "For more on this expedition, see Goodenough (1954), and Chowning (this volume). ®See, for example, Goodenough (1974a). For an example of his father’s psychological approach to religion, see E. Goodenough (1965). For a discussion of the Trukese dictionary project, see Goodenough and Sugita (1980).

SEX, SHIT, AND SHAME: CHANGING GENDER_

RELATIONS AMONG THE LAKALAI

oF Ann Chowning

action. “

The feeling of humiliation and shame, is one of the most important motivating forces in human —Ward H. Goodenough (1963a:189)

In 1954 ] was amember of a team, led by Ward Goodenough, which discovered that one of the more distinctive features of social relations among the Lakalai of New Britain (Papua New Guinea) was extreme shame felt by a man if a woman, other than his closest female kin, knew anything of his anal functions or referred

| to them. The behavioral correlates were many, and particularly affected husbandwife relations. Although men often stated that their feelings of shame were a burden and a handicap, they saw no way of losing them. When I returned to Lakalai

at intervals over the next 20 years, I also saw little sign of reduction in anal shame | except among a few men who had lived outside Lakalai for many years. Yet in 1987 I was surprised to hear a man in his late fifties, who had seemed wholly traditional in his attitudes when he was younger, announce that now, ‘‘I meet my wife on the path to the privy; she goes in as I emerge.’’ Younger men were said, by themselves and their elders, to have abandoned all shame about defecation; indeed, such attitudes were said to be those of the ancestors. What follows is an attempt to describe what I shall call the male anal complex as it was described to us, to try to account for both its origins and its disappearance, and to correlate the differing manifestations of the complex with Lakalai gender relations as a whole. Not only was I indebted to Ward for getting me to Lakalai in the first place, but I have made use of some of his insights in attempting to understand recent changes |

in the society. .

In addition to a physical anthropologist, Daris Swindler, and me, the 1954 team included two other graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania, C. A.

and Edith O. Valentine. In notable contrast to some of his colleagues, two of whom tried to dissuade me from anthropology because they thought fieldwork was too dangerous for women, Ward wanted his ethnographers to include two women as well as two men. Because I was more interested in gaining field experience than in investigating a particular topic, | was content to have a topic assigned to me, which would, with luck, form the basis of my Ph.D. dissertation. In addition, each team member had the responsibility for ensuring that particular subjects were covered, in the interests of producing a relatively comprehensive Lakalai ethnography. There was, of course, no ban on one person’s investigating a topic for which another had the primary responsibility, and all notes were shared among us. 17

18 Ann Chowning My special topic was selected on the basis of Ward’s impressions obtained during a brief preliminary visit to Lakalai in 1951. Our research made it clear that matters were not precisely as they seemed at first: | was supposed to investigate the effects on women of being excluded from ceremonies, and their degree of exclusion turned out to be minimal. Consequently, I shifted to what Ward eventually described as ‘“women’s social and economic life.’’ He described his own topic as “‘social organization,’’ and Edith Valentine’s as ‘*baby care and practices and customs connected with pregnancy and birth’’ (Goodenough 1956a:41). Ob-

viously, the overlap was considerable, as it was with topics investigated by Charles Valentine, from sexual behavior to ethnopsychology (see Valentine 1963), and my dissertation (Chowning 1958) owed as much to the work of my

colleagues as to my own.

Traditional Social Organization | Because Lakalai social organization has altered greatly in recent years, I shall ) begin with a synopsis of the traditional situation as it was reconstructed in 1954. Subsequent changes will be described later. Each Lakalai was born into a matrilineal clan and subclan,' which held land and much other property. These clans were dispersed throughout the mutually hostile Lakalai ‘‘territories’’ (Chowning and Goodenough 1965-66); it was the local segment, headed by its senior male,

that acted as a corporate group in matters concerning its members’ welfare. Nevertheless, clanmates did not live together, nor did they usually reside on clan land. Other village members were also considered kin, and almost all marriages were between people who already called each other by kinship terms. Postmarital residence was almost always virilocal. A married woman initially lived with her parents-in-law while her husband slept and ate in the men’s house. A man only visited his wife at night until she had borne three-children (or had been married an equivalent time), at which point he joined her, sometimes setting up a separate household. Usually, this was near the husband’s father during the

latter’s lifetime, but afterwards it might be near the wife’s brother. Sister-ex-

her husband’s true or clan sister. change marriage was favored, and often a woman’s brother would be married to

All marriages were paid for by the man’s father, aided by his kin, and by the mother’s brother with the aid of all local clan members. Recipients of the payment included not only clanmates but members of the girl’s bilateral kindred and any male gardening partners who would be deprived of her help. But despite the shift _ in residence, and the compensation to those who worked with and helped care for the bride, the specific reason for the marriage payment was that it gave the groom the right to have children by her. That payments were returned if the woman died young or left her husband early reflected this fact (we had no cases of childless marriages in our sample). The special knowledge a father was expected to teach his son was, like the shells given the parents-in-law, said to be ‘‘payment for the mother’s genitals.’’ It should not be assumed that a man’s children were regarded as his affines, but he continued to be conscious of his indebtedness to his wife’s lineage for the privilege of fathering them. A man needed to procreate and care for legitimate children in order to demonstrate that he was fully adult, and only a few generally despised men did not marry. The payment gave only partial rights, however; the children were still members of their mother’s descent group, though

Sex, Shit, and Shame 19 physically as much a product of the father as of the mother. If divorce occurred after children were born, the wife always moved away, taking two out of three or four children with her, and their father might find it impossible to maintain contact with them, whereas subclan affairs would keep the mother in contact with all of her children. Consequently, divorces after the birth of children were almost always instigated by the woman, who usually had another husband in view. Marriage was less appealing for women than for men, although all women married. Often it was against their desires: ““The women wept, but we did not heed them.’’ Prior to marriage, a girl could travel to other villages, participate in many ceremonies and dances, and enjoy sexual affairs so long as she did not become ___ pregnant or get a reputation for promiscuity. All this freedom ended with marriage; fidelity was enjoined on her and enforced by the close supervision of her mother-in-law, while her husband was expected to continue to enjoy himself until he became a grandfather. (Wives objected to their husbands’ affairs, but these were tolerated by the community as a woman’s adultery was not.) Furthermore,

once under the same roof as her husband, a woman was faced for the first time 6 with the constant threat of physical violence. Girls were rarely beaten by their parents, and, at least in theory, never by their brothers (see below). Husbands seem to have been a greater danger, judging from data collected before missionaries reached Lakalai (Hees 1913:346). Hees’s informants talked of severe beat-

| ings as ordinary occurrences. Our data indicate that the woman’s brother or father might interfere if the damage seemed excessive, and certain taboos limited the incidence of wife-beating. Nevertheless, it was common enough that a warrior would perform countermagic to weaken his right hand so that a blow intended to chastise would not inadvertently kill. Because the Lakalai practiced childhood betrothal as well as favoring sisterexchange, it seems likely that some young men ended up in marriages that they

would not have chosen, but the Lakalai did not mention such cases. The only marriage forced on a man resulted from his impregnating an unmarried girl. Most girls had only one lover at a time, and if he could be identified, the girl’s kin would threaten to kill him if he did not marry her. Otherwise, it was true that a man might

be prevented from marrying the woman of his choice because his family disapproved of her, her family disapproved of him, or the two sets of kin were at odds for other reasons and took this method of retaliation. But nothing was to be gained by marrying off a man to a woman he disliked, nor was the opposite situation ideal, since a reluctant wife easily might be tempted into adultery. If the marriage was arranged, the man was urged to practice love magic on the woman before the wedding took place. Nevertheless, both men and women said that traditional mar- Tiages often involved disregard of the woman’s feelings; at best, women we knew complained that they had been married too young and had had no opportunity to make their own choices. This was a complaint even of those whose marriages seemed to have turned out well. Marriage was as much a concern of the local branch of the clan as of the parents of the couple; the mother would defer to the male head of her subclan. Any clanmate had the right to veto a proposed marriage. If it did take place, all of the man’s clanmates were expected to contribute to the payments. Furthermore, if the local

: strength of a clan was beginning to decline, especially if it was one that owned land in that area, the head was supposed to bring in a marriageable girl from another part of Lakalai so that she could bear future members of the clan. Doing so

20 Ann Chowning involved dangerous travel to villages with which relations were usually hostile, although one could always depend on the loyalty of clanmates living elsewhere. Once the marriage had taken place, however, the clan as a whole became less important than the personal kindreds and coresidents (hamlet-mates; see Good-

hamlet.

enough 1962) of the couple. Although clan feuds were common and were often | thought to lead to sorcery within the village, they were suspended within the actual hamlet (a village ward, with its own name and men’s house) in which the couple lived. A marriage would not break up because the clans of the couple were quarreling, and a child did not have to worry about being poisoned within the Not only did the father contribute physically to the formation of the child, but the kin relationship also extended to the father’s whole clan. As the ‘‘offspring of the clan,’’ a child would be entitled to help from the father’s clan when necessary, whether in granting use rights to land or in financing the marriage of a boy whose

father was dead. With a few individual exceptions, parents wanted children of -- ~ both sexes, with a slight bias toward sons because they remained with the parents after marriage. Too many sons were a financial liability, however, and the clan. definitely wanted a preponderance of girls who would bear future clan members, though of course they also wanted and needed males in each generation. Precisely because they would give birth to more members, girls and women of child-bearing age were the preferred victims in clan feuds, so it was doubly necessary to keep up their numbers. The males of the clan were particularly concerned with this matter, and their concern had two obvious consequences. First, when one of a pair of twins was ordinarily killed because it was considered too hard to rear both, the boy was the victim if they were of opposite sex. (Possibly the mother’s brother was in a position to enforce this choice because, as a clanmate of the mother, he was less endangered by the blood shed in childbirth than was the husband, and so was more likely to be present at the birth.) Second, a boy was told never to strike his sister, except for going into his personal basket (a source of sexual attraction because it had absorbed his sweat); she was the ‘‘bud’’ that would carry on the lineage, whereas he was only a sterile ‘‘torn bud.”’

These were the only signs of special consideration given girls. Otherwise, as | they grew up they became increasingly subject to restrictions not imposed on boys. They typically began working much sooner, both around the house and in the gardens. A girl was admonished to be industrious and obedient, and to preserve her reputation, all in the interests of her future marriage, whereas a boy was encouraged to fight, display himself, and pursue extramarital affairs. The members of the masked society (valuku), who performed throughout the dry season, amused themselves by chasing and beating women along with children of both sexes. Sometimes a masker avenged himself by deliberately attacking the female kin of a man with whom he had quarreled. A woman who encountered men preparing masks or costumes was killed by sorcery, at least in theory. (We recorded _ no actual cases.) Worse, any woman who left the village alone risked rape; sometimes the presence of a female companion would not save her. Older men, seeing a pretty girl walk by, would remark to a young man, “‘If you were a real man, you’d rape her,’’ and some indeed did so, trusting their kin to defend them against the girl’s outraged kinsmen. One type of valuku had the privilege of raping any woman encountered alone.

Sex, Shit, and Shame 21 Girls and women did have occasional opportunities to use physical violence against men. The first of these took place at the menarche ceremony and marked the beginning of the girl’s menstrual restrictions, which, by general Melanesian standards, were not arduous. A menstruating woman could not cook, even for herself, or enter a men’s house or the adjacent feasting area, but she could garden, fish, and collect water. She was avoided by men; her husband would not only abstain from intercourse, but also would sleep in the men’s house during this time, while she remained in the family house. Even the food prepared for the menarche feast was dangerous for men to eat, being contaminated by the aura of menstrual blood,” but young men gladly participated in the ensuing vakakuala. In the most

~~ common form of vakakuala, boys and men stood drumming and dancing in the middle of a circle while women physically attacked particular ones with a variety of weapons, ranging from stinging nettles to burning torches to sticks, stones, and even spears. The attacks were serious enough so that a man might be scarred for life or even knocked unconscious (in which case the woman might help herself to

all of his ornaments), but the real object was sexual stimulation. The man could ., not dodge or flee, but the attack aroused his desires, and eventually he and the woman who attacked him went to the bush together. Vakakuala was a standard part of the ceremony attached to menarche, weddings and, above all, peace-making ceremonies between former antagonists, as when a clan feud was settled. In

| this last case, it was hoped that marriages would ensue to cement good relations between the groups. In addition, a vakakuala with a single ‘‘theme’’ in which the kind of weapon was specified was held when one village visited another for the dances that preceded mortuary ceremonies. At one level, the practice could be seen as affording women a chance of getting back at the men who frequently used physical force against them; the Lakalai did not think a woman was normally strong enough to fight off a man who attacked her. On another level, however, the practice could be seen as a test of masculine strength and endurance, as well as of a man’s sexual attractiveness. At the expense of a few bruises and, usually, minor wounds, the man demonstrated that he was a proper focus for female at-

tention. . SO

Vakakuala was a pleasure available only to unmarried women: a married

woman had no similar outlet. By the time a couple began living and working together it was expected that sexual desire had already diminished, or would rapidly do so under the influence of constant contact. A man was likely to beat a wife who complained of infidelity or neglect. An unhappy wife could take refuge with her own kin, but.unless the husband’s behavior was truly outrageous (not necessarily toward her but toward his wife’s male kin), she was not likely to be allowed to . Stay with them. Male solidarity was strong in Lakalai, and operated against the interests of women. Because the husband had to pay for the wife’s return, her kin did not mind her joining them, but it was rare for a woman to return home permanently, except in the very early months of marriage, often before the payments had been given. Once children were born, the parents almost always stayed together. Their doing so did not just reflect the wife’s brother’s desire to profit from returning his sister to her husband, but the general expectation that brothers-inlaw would be good friends, doubly so if they were married to each other’s sisters. Such pairs of men, once free of obligations to their fathers, often set up a new hamlet together, and in such a case an aggrieved wife was particularly likely to have no refuge from her husband. Even without this degree of cooperation, the

22 Ann Chowning Lakalai showed no trace of conflict between the father and the mother’s brother, who each had particular spheres of responsibility and were expected to unite in their concern for the same child, rather than dispute for the child’s allegiance, contrary to the allegedly inevitable conflicts in societies with matrilineal descent. Women did not, however, become the property of their husbands. If a man’s treatment of his wife seemed exceptionally brutal, her family would reclaim her and marry her off to someone else. Equally, if the big men of the hamlet saw an industrious woman married to a lazy man they would arrange a divorce and give her to someone who could profit from her labors. Because of fears of losing some of his children along with his wife, a man threatened with divorce might mend his ways, just as often he would if the first wife left when he tried to acquire a second one. In a few cases a dissatisfied wife found a lover who was not only willing to marry her but also able to buy off the aggrieved first husband and to finance the new marriage. Otherwise, a woman unhappy in her marriage had only

a few choices. She might surreptitiously practice contraception; doing so was. thought to weaken the husband physically as well as to nullify a principal reason | for his marrying. For brief periods, she might refuse to cook for him; men with exceptionally troubled marriages made sure that they could rely on extra female gardening partners to see them through these crises. Above all, she could rely on ~ the power of her tongue. In general, nagging was not tolerated; a man was reproached by others of both sexes if he did not beat a wife who constantly scolded him. But as has been mentioned, men were extremely vulnerable to references to the anus and anal functions. In the presence of women, an adult man did his best to pretend that he did not have an anus. If a woman saw him defecating, or noticed his breaking wind, he was unbearably shamed, but he was equally so if a wife publicly called him by such an epithet as “‘Swollen Anus.’’ If he was afflicted with diarrhea, his wife could not care for him; the only women who could do so were his mother and older sister, who had looked after him as a baby. The behavioral correlates were numerous. Goodenough has described one (1965b:270): the institution of the ‘‘defecation name,’’ given to any baby who bore the same name as a man of the village, so that the man will not be shamed by hearing a woman exclaim, ‘‘Oh, so-and-so has defecated.’’ The term koko ‘‘defecate’’ could never be used with ~ | reference to a grown man, and one should never ask a man who left a mixed group where he was going lest he be bound for the bush.? If others asked where a man was, the usual euphemism was, ‘‘He’s just strolling around,’’ but even that phrase had overtones of obscenity. The degree of shame involved was reportedly enough to drive a man to suicide. If a woman encountered him defecating in the bush, the supposed alternatives were that he could kill her, lest she speak of it, or kill him- | self, but it was reported that the woman might offer intercourse so that he would have-something to hold over her and so could trust her to keep quiet. If the shaming episode occurred in public, he had no alternative to suicide. Since a woman who drove a man to suicide was likely to be killed by his family in retaliation, women did not produce such insults lightly, but a man who mistreated his wife ran the risk that she might lose her temper so thoroughly as to say something unforgivable. Although men of different personalities varied in their susceptibility to shame (Valentine 1963), all felt shame about anal functions. This shame applied only when women were present; among themselves, men in a joking relationship (clas-

Sex, Shit, and Shame 23 sificatory, not true, brothers) made anal jokes, and much of the humor used between men focused on the anus. Nothing comparable existed among women. Some young women were reported to feel ashamed if the men knew they were going to defecate, but older ones certainly did not, and their “‘shame’’ could in | any case more appropriately be called embarrassment.* The same comment applies to realization on the part of the men that a woman was menstruating; she might stay at home rather than be embarrassed, but the subject was discussed freely in mixed company, and her reaction to exposure of her state was not dramatic. This confinement of extreme shame to one sex is particularly interesting in light __ of other views about the relative inferiority of women. According to men, women excelled in only one sphere: they were harder working than men (and the Lakalai

value hard work). Otherwise, they were characterized as physically weak and awkward. According to myth, women once made and wore the valuku masks, but men took them away because the women ‘“‘carried them clumsily, they did not

march well, and their breasts slapped unpleasantly against their stomachs as they e ran’’ (Valentine 1961:40-41). Female judgment was not to be trusted. Although in theory a firstborn of either sex had authority over junior siblings, in practice a woman was not allowed to look after the wealth of the sibling set unless she was married and could rely on the advice of her husband. Finally, men characterized

| women as emotionally volatile, given both to outbursts of laughter and to easy tears. Thus it was considered appropriate that serious matters remain in men’s hands. On the whole, women accepted the male view of their abilities and rights. The

one exception had to do with the valuku ceremonies. As Valentine’s account makes clear, the valuku society both stressed and partially accounted for male dominance over women and noninitiates of both sexes: The whole ritual cycle serves to express the predominant position of men. . . by dramatically drawing attention to strictly masculine knowledge and privileges, with its exclusiveness backed up by the threat of sorcery. [1961:37]

But the valuku was also a source of constant innovation, as people tried to win acclaim for new mask designs. The Lakalai valued innovation, and although conscious invention by women was confined to song lyrics, a woman might see a new mask design in a dream and describe it to a man, usually her husband, who reproduced it to her satisfaction. The importance of this ability was indicated by the statement of a woman as we watched valuku parading at a distance: ‘Women sleep, see the ghosts making masks, wake and tell the men, the mask is then called _ the valuku of such-and-such a woman.’’ Since men produced new designs by conscious invention as well as seeing them in dreams (see Chowning 1983), women’s contribution to mask design did not balance men’s, but it was still a source of pride. ‘“Active’’ women with assertive personalities were the female counterparts of the “men of anger’’ and shared the strong sense of humor of such men (Valentine 1963:445). These women had another way to demonstrate their independence of masculine opinions. On various occasions, either when in all-female work groups

or during dances, they acted out imitations of individuals of both sexes doing something they found funny. Women observers shrieked with laughter while men

ignored what was happening (and at the major ceremonies, tried to deflect our

24 Ann Chowning attention from it). Those mocked ranged from individuals with physical peculiarities, such as lameness, to deliverers of pompous speeches. I was told that residents of one’s own village were never included among those imitated (whereas unwary visitors were carefully watched for any behavior that might be worth im-

itating). Men of the village were, however, openly mocked when they were practicing dances behind inadequate coconut-leaf screens, their efforts to master the steps in no way helped by a chorus of jeers such as ‘‘ Voli made a mistake!’’ from laughing women outside the screen. Men also imitated women—both women in general, as when depicting childbirth and menstruation during ceremonies, and reportedly specific women when in all-male groups°—but not so often or so humorously as in the performances by these female clowns. Most of all, these imi-

seriously. 7

tators tended to attack excessive solemnity. The masculine criticism of female laughter masked the fact that women found amusement in matters that men took

In one performance I saw, women laughed over the contents ofaman’spersonal —s—© basket, with its love magic. The preoccupation of Lakalai men with attracting the

attention and admiration, as well as the sexual favors, of women was the single most important clue to the nonexclusion of women from Lakalai ceremonies. By all accounts, without a female audience the ceremonies would not be worth holding: they had only minimal religious significance (Goodenough 1971:288; Valentine 1961:38). Men sponsored the mortuary ceremonies in hopes of achieving high status for themselves, but other men participated in them, and underwent long periods of privation to make the associated spells effective, with the sole aim of attracting women. Lakalai men valued women not simply as the mothers of children, but as sexual partners, and the emphasis on love magic indicated that acquiring a desirable woman was likely to demand effort. Apart from constantly acknowledging their own desire to attract women, Lakalai men also allowed individual exceptions to their practice of denigrating feminine abilities.° Certain women managed to earn reputations as specialists in, for example, song composition and curing. Especially if such a woman had reached menopause, she was likely to be accorded a status denied most other women. Postmenopausal women might be expected to identify with male interests. So one elderly woman who had sent her soul, ina dream, torescue that ofachildreported ~~ that she had seen masks being manufactured in the spirit world and had memo-

rized a new mask design, which she taught to her husband the next morning. When I asked if the men had not feared her revealing to other women the highly secret processes of manufacture, the men assured me that of course she would not; she would be on their side. I only heard respectful comment on the abilities of female specialists, even younger ones. In addition, a woman might become the local head of her subclan simply because it contained no adult men. She was accorded the deference proper to her position by those who wished, for example, to | make gardens on the subclan land and needed formal permission to do so. But the most prominent women seemed to have attained their positions through a combination of special treatment by a father, and personal qualities. The one I knew best was Biato, the favorite child of a highly traditional big man, who also had two sons, one the firstborn, and two other daughters. Biato’s father taught her one of his male specialties, the art of carving designs on canoes, and also masculine love magic, which she performed for her brothers. Once, when an old man was making the usual statements that women were of no account, I asked, “*What

Sex, Shit, and Shame 25 about Biato?’’ and he said, ‘‘Biato is different.’’ On another occasion, he remarked that she made her husband a big man. Although Biato’s older brother openly resented their father’s comparative neglect of his other children, the younger brother treated her with respect, and when their father died, deferred to her (and not to her husband) on property matters. Her forceful personality, as well as her careful attention to all the duties of a virtuous wife, mother, and daughter, had as much to do with her eminence as the special treatment given by her father. Notably, she downplayed, and sometimes lied about, her knowledge of masculine specialties, performing for the private benefit of her close kin rather than displaying it publicly.

Possible Reasons for the Male Shame Complex It is difficult to understand the origins of a situation that, as far as the Lakalai are concerned, is wholly disadvantageous to men. A possible clue may be found in descriptions of other societies with a similar complex focused on the male anus, of whom the most famous are the Chaga of East Africa, featured by Bettelheim in Symbolic Wounds. Citing Raum, Bettelheim tells of the Chaga male initiation ceremony, which was described to women as involving the insertion of a plug in the anus so that **men thereafter retain their feces’’-(1954:234). To keep secret | the nonexistence of the plug, men had to avoid breaking wind before women and noninitiates, and could never be seen defecating. If afflicted with diarrhea, they called on age mates to care for them in the men’s house, lest a wife learn the truth. In old age, the plug was ostensibly removed, so that a wife could now help her elderly husband. Although some interpreters of this situation had correlated male concealment of feces with female concealment of menstrual blood, Bettelheim agreed with those who argued that the ‘‘plugging’’ had an additional meaning: an imitation of pregnancy. He noted that according to Raum, the women, who were not fooled by the story of the plug and “‘regard the men’s behavior with amused tolerance . . . realize that actually the secret is theirs; they say that when a woman becomes pregnant her source of blood is stopped up and that this is the original plug’”’ (1954:236). In support of this interpretation he translated pertinent passages from Gutmann, another student of the Chaga: The pretense of setting the ngoso [plug] . . . is justified by the Chaga because it was necessary in order to create and secure respect of the women. . . . The setting of the ngoso . . . should surpass the contribution of women [in becoming pregnant] so that even greater honors were given men. [Bettelheim 1954:238]

We have no specific evidence that Lakalai men consciously envied women the ability either to menstruate or to bear children, unless the mocking imitations of these processes during ceremonies be taken as an expression of such envy. Onlookers certainly interpreted the performances as humorous. Neither did the Lakalai express any concern about slower maturation of boys as compared with girls, nor did men engage in any bloodletting that could be viewed as an imitation of menstruation. Finally, they did not dramatize the separation of sexes in puberty rites (a point worth making because it has been misrepresented by Schwimmer).’ In short, if men did envy women, they did not express the fact in ritual. ‘Nevertheless, Lakalai men did give an outsider the impression of exceptional insistence on the natural inferiority of women. Here I am not concerned with the myth explaining that the valuku was taken from them by men; unlike some of my

26 Ann Chowning colleagues, I consider such myths to be too widespread through societies with very different everyday gender relations to mean much in themselves, and in any case the Lakalai version is clearly insulting to women. But even on my first field trip I felt that perhaps Lakalai men so often mentioned female inferiority because of a lurking fear that women were not inferior. Fieldwork in three other Papua New Guinea societies has only strengthened my initial impression.® It is tempting,

in the Lakalai context only, to link male attitudes with matrilineality, a counterbalance to acknowledgment of the greater importance of women to the descent group. Perhaps male shame about anal functions originally derived from an attempt by men to claim superior status. I was led to this interpretation by Lindenbaum’s description of a somewhat similar situation among the Fore of Highlands New Guinea. There, as in Chaga, grown men literally pretend that they do not

_ defecate. She reports: : , , Masculine status appears to be a large part of the issue. Thus, a man who farts in public, or one whose angered wife makes references to his feces, departs the group in shame to take up residence elsewhere. Initiation includes instruction about future use of hidden male latrines, to maintain the pretense that they do not defecate. Men thus present themselves as complete vessels, beings with

no natural functions. [1976:58]

Lakalai men did not literally pretend that they did not defecate; indeed, without initiation rites involving separation of the sexes (which exist both in Chaga and in Fore), it is difficult to imagine that such a ruse could be established. It does, however, seem plausible to see Lakalai behavior as deriving from an attempt by men to present themselves as in some sense superior to women, who are nevertheless irresistibly attractive as sexual and marriage partners. Here it is necessary to keep in mind the traditional Lakalai attitude that familiarity reduces sexual attraction. The lengthy separation of young married couples was intended specifically to maintain sexual desire. Both sexes avoided being seen eating by members of the opposite sex whom they wished to attract, but young men were particularly careful to eat away from public view. The corollary was that a sister, unless accidentally affected by love magic, would not be sexually attracted to her brother. She could and did eat with him, and he slept in her house when her husband was

away. It might be thought that a man would want to distance himself from his sister precisely because she was more valued by the descent group, but matrilineal

ties would make it impossible for the antagonisms involved in the anal shame complex to develop within the lineage. Men did not worry that their mothers or sisters might insult them verbally; only a real or potential lover or a wife constituted a threat. They were physically threatening as well, producing contaminating blood and weakening a man through sexual intercourse,” whereas a man could trust the women of his lineage (and contact with the mother in childhood in no way endangered him).

In the eyes of these dangerously attractive outside women, a man wished to appear superior, worthy of receiving the gifts that women tossed to the performers who attracted them in ceremonies. Lakalai men did not view women as animallike or subhuman; ideology strongly affirmed the bonds between those ‘‘of the village,’’ human beings of both sexes, as opposed to those ‘‘of the bush,’’ who

included all spirits and wild animals.!° But men gave the impression that they would like to regard themselves as superhuman, like Chaga and Fore men. At the same time, women knew that all men were alike, and in the most fundamental

Sex, Shit, and Shame 27 sense, like themselves. Still, just as their fathers taught their brothers to feel shame, so girls were taught from childhood to protect male self-esteem. It must be noted that Lakalai men do not consider their vulnerability to shame a matter for pride, any more than they acknowledge that it perhaps makes them emotionally weaker than women. The situation has been misunderstood by Epstein (1984). Working from Valentine’s article (and also having read Chowning [1958] on shame), Epstein ignores the question of anal shame and, because Valentine stated that those of inferior status are particularly vulnerable to shame, suggests that because women are considered inferior to men, women ‘‘were to be

-_ categorised in the local idiom, as ‘creatures of shame’.’’ A problem adding to Epstein’s confusion is our statement (Valentine quoting me) that to be respected, all Lakalai women must act more like the so-called ‘‘man of shame’’ than the ‘*man of anger.’’ What this means is that they could not, like the man of anger, roam around freely and engage in many sexual affairs. It does not mean that they could be easily shamed or embarrassed, if they had assertive personalities like : those women described above (see Valentine 1963:444-449). Epstein is right to cite the ‘‘contradictory views held of women in Lakalai society’’ (1984:21—22), but he is mistaken in treating masculine and feminine shame as only part of a single continuum. Women did not feel shame as men did, nor did they, by and

| large, so easily find themselves in shame-evoking situations, as in dealing with large groups and finding that one has unintentionally slighted a senior, or in trying unsuccessfully to make an impressive feast. Only senior women interacted freely

with large groups, as at funerals, and precisely the same denigration of female talents that gave the husband full credit for a successful feast also freed the wife from blame if it failed.

Changes in Traditional Attitudes and Behavior A number of changes in traditional gender relations preceded our first visit in 1954. Until the late 1960s, most of these changes resulted from the influence of Roman Catholic and Methodist (ater United Church) missions, that first came to Lakalai in the 1920s. These differed both in overall policy and in their willingness to interfere with traditional marriage arrangements, the Methodists saying that until Christianity was more firmly established, they would insist on church marriages only for those Lakalai who intended to become missionaries. By contrast, the Catholics wished all converts to adhere to their ideals of marriage and family life, with the father presiding over each meal and lecturing his family on correct conduct. Catholics also disapproved of clans, seeing clan allegiances as divisive, and of course, they forbade polygyny. (Even in 1987 there were several polygynous marriages among Galilo residents, none of whom was Catholic.) The two

missions nevertheless agreed on some points, notably that forced marriages should be abolished. Here they were successful, but not in their attempts to influence extramarital sexual behavior. Some men insisted to us that God would not have created sex and then forbidden people to enjoy it. The missionaries could and did, however, forbid public activities that led to sexual license. Vakakuala was abolished as part of menarche and marriage ceremonies, though it continued on a small scale at night-time dances. The churches were also particularly concerned to destroy the power of the older men, seen as a force for both conservatism and paganism, and tried to get them to reveal their secrets to their juniors. They

28 Ann Chowning seem to have been notably successful in much reducing the practice of sorcery, and also induced the elders to initiate very young men into the valuku society. As a consequence, the valuku society now became more clearly an alliance of all men against all women, rather than of elderly men against the rest of society. On the other hand, forms of magic other than sorcery were not mentioned by the churches, and new types were frequently introduced both by indigenous missionaries and by Lakalai who had been away to work. These included powerful love magic, some of which girls were supposedly unable to resist. At the same time, girls and women gained more freedom to wander around without fear of rape or abduction. Here the Australian administration was also influential. The abolition of warfare made travel outside territorial boundaries easier, and women took over one major task, the collection of megapode eggs, that once had been too dangerous for them because of the threat of enemy attack. On the whole, the colonial situation increased the labor burden for women, especially for those _ whose husbands went off to work on plantations. With access to a world outside : Lakalai, men shamed at home now had an alternative to suicide; a few years away allowed for forgetfulness. They could also escape the consequences of impregnating an unmarried girl. The new Australian laws undermined the old system in any case; they forbade the use of the spear, opposed forced marriages, and treated liaisons among the unmarried as of no concern apart from instructing the father of an illegitimate child to pay for its support. Few did so. Premarital pregnancies became increasingly common from the 1960s on, and although the girls were cared for by their families, it was often hard for them to find husbands except among non-Lakalai, a solution their parents and other kin often opposed. Nevertheless, most, if not all of these women whom IJ knew married within a few years. The divorce rate also rose, but in these cases the woman usually remarried without difficulty. Men still wanted children but became less worried about losing

claims to those of a first marriage: with personal desires rather than family ar- , rangements becoming the norm (particularly for second marriages), most men could expect to find a second wife if one left, and an increasing number of men married foreigners. Some younger men also expressed opposition to the demands of the matrilineal kin groups, wanting to pass on all their possessions to theirown - . children and to receive the products of a son’s education rather than to see any of it go to the matrilineage (apart from members of the son’s nuclear family). Matrilineality has certainly not broken down, but new strains have appeared along with the increased importance of cash crops, European education, and work outside Lakalai. Both churches opposed retention of all traditional taboos and avoidances. As a result the period of avoidance between the newly married disappeared, and they _ started living together immediately. In Roman Catholic villages menstruating women even cooked for their husbands, “‘now that they have soap to wash their hands.’’ There was, however, no reduction in wife-beating (though more chance that the abused wife might simply leave) nor in adultery on the part of the men. The freeing of women from traditional restrictions proceeded relatively slowly, against the wishes of parents of both sexes, who sometimes gave lip service to new ways without really supporting them. Biato, who told me that she did not want her daughter to be married against her will, as she herself had been, described her prolonged rage when the daughter later eloped. Education for girls also received an early setback when a foreign schoolteacher impregnated two of

Sex, Shit, and Shame 29 his charges. Nevertheless, even unmarried girls were not easy to keep at home, especially as vehicular travel along a nearby government road increased. The older women, too, began to move into male areas. In 1978, a Lakalai woman actually constructed a valuku mask of her own design (C. A. Valentine, personal communication), a sign of a complete breakdown of the taboo on female knowledge of mask construction. In 1983, the women of Galilo put forward Biato as a candidate for the most important elected office, that of village councillor, and although she was rejected by male conservatives (P. Lowa, personal communication), political self-assertion by women was something new. .. During the same period some young men, admittedly aided by the introduction of diapers, became willing to help care for babies. Even in 1954, a few men were reported to have abandoned shame about anal functions and, for example, to deliberately break wind in the presence of women. They -never entered privies openly, however, although some young men were reported to use them late at

night rather than risk encountering spirits in the bush. (All privies, built under ° government edict, were identified as belonging to married women.) Nevertheless,

most men retained the traditional feelings of shame with which they had been inculcated in childhood. In 1972, according to a linguist then living in Lakalai, shame drove a man to starve himself to death after his wife saw him suffering | from an attack of diarrhea (Johnston 1973:30). As late as 1974, the affines with whom he had been on very poor terms agreed that a man had no alternative to divorcing a wife who publicly called him **Excrement.’’ In Catholic villages, most men belonged to a priest-sponsored organization, the Kivung, that advocated a shift to “‘European’’ behavior, said to involve no feelings of shame. Men were enjoined to abandon feelings of shame in all social contexts; an aim was that ‘*in time men and women will defecate together, in one privy.”’ Change, however, accelerated from the late 1960s on (see Chowning 1966). New towns created in and near Lakalai territory, and a resettlement scheme for families from overpopulated parts of Papua New Guinea, brought the Lakalai into much greater contact with foreigners, some of whom considered them backward (see Valentine and Valentine 1979:67—69). Government schools proliferated, and Lakalai children of both sexes boarded in high schools. Clearly, it was impossible for boys to avoid using toilets. In the villages, too, population increased, and the clearing of bush for cash crops eliminated the bush areas behind men’s houses that afforded privacy for defecation. Only the sea could be used. Meanwhile,.men’s houses were not renewed as old ones collapsed, and with

the diminution of fears about pollution from females,'! husband and wife now lived and ate together from the time they were married. Furthermore, the need to clothe and educate their children united them in work on money-making projects in an entirely new way. Clans remained important, but with easy travel throughout

Lakalai, the importance of keeping up the local strength of the descent group seemed to diminish, and with it, the special position of women as those who maintained the line.'* For both sexes, an increasing number of spouses were foreigners. More and more marriage came to be seen, even by the middle-aged, as involving cooperation, sharing, and daily intimacy. Much of the traditional male worry about shame reflected not just what a woman might say, but what she would know about the man’s behavior. Under the new circumstances, all but the oldest and most tradition-bound men, some of whom built private men’s houses, not only had to shed feelings of excessive anal shame if they were to live comfortably,

30 Ann Chowning but also no longer worried that the wives whom they knew so well would be repelled at a man’s acknowledgment that he was as much a victim of natural functions as they were. !°

The changes in behavior undoubtedly had other causes as well. One was health. , The Lakalai think they are less healthy than in the past, and although they have not abandoned traditional curing, they value Western medicine, and have adopted suggestions about practices ranging from infant nutrition to the protection of food from flies. When they say that men have heeded the words of the government in using privies, this is the reason they cite. In addition, they have long acknowledged that they can deal more easily with outsiders if they get rid of their feelings of shame (see Valentine 1963:455-456), and the anal complex was certainly the aspect most likely to arouse derision from the foreigners in their midst. Finally, the influence of the educated young, members of a different subculture as aresult of their education and the influence of churches increasingly under the control of .

the Lakalai themselves, must not be underestimated. Socialization is a lifelong } process, and can proceed from juniors to seniors as well as in the opposite direction. In the late 1970s, the Valentines saw the difference between generations as only a source of conflict (Valentine and Valentine 1979:68), but my impression was different. While regretting the passing of some old ways, the elders want lives for their children and grandchildren that will be very different from their own, and also implicitly acknowledge how much change they themselves have undergone. Consequently, a man in his mid-fifties can describe as a custom of the ancestors the observance of anal taboos which in fact inhibited his own daily activity 30

years before.

Understanding Value Changes The degree of change within one lifetime, however well accepted by the Lak-

alai themselves, nevertheless came as a considerable surprise to me. Goodenough’s theories about the processes of culture change give some insight into what may have been involved. It must be remembered that, at present, individual Lakalai have reached different degrees and sorts of accommodation to circum- ~ stances that have changed radically since the 1920s. The problem of correlating individual variance with cultural standards has been well described by Gooden-

ough, who notes that the former is particularly important for the ‘‘theory of change’’ (1970:98-103). One of the insights for which I am most indebted to Goodenough is his insistence that any individual’s behavior is cultural so long as it is judged appropriate by other carriers of the culture. Older Lakalai men seem to avoid inquiring too deeply into the attitudes of their elders, as when one man said that he did not know how his stepbrother felt about anal shame, but many have reorganized their ‘‘private cultures’’ so that they can openly act in new ways, and all Lakalai of both sexes seem to have agreed not to teach the anal shame complex to their juniors. Older Lakalai have not, however, discarded traditional attitudes toward shame in other contexts, such as being caught in adultery. Most men seem to have welcomed those outside influences that helped them get rid of the one cause for shame for which they could see no benefits to themselves or to their society. Young people, observing both the new behavior and the new atti- | tudes of their elders, have ended up constructing a ““public culture’’ which for | them is very different from that once held by their elders as regards anal shame

Sex, Shit, and Shame 3] (Goodenough 1963a:261, 273-274). Meanwhile, circumstances for women have changed slowly so that they no longer need to resort to verbal aggression in their dealings with men; the churches, the village courts, and the new conditions of marriage have finally reduced the threat of male violence, !* and in the competitive modern world, men no longer unite against the interests of women. In the 1980s, it is indeed true that the Lakalai “‘‘no longer see or value old circumstances in the

same way’’ (Goodenough 1963a:269), but those I know best feel that the new | culture which they have managed to fashion offers advantages for both sexes. Even if eventually I can spend much more time back in Lakalai talking with the _-elders about how their attitudes and values have changed, it is unlikely that they will be able to reconstruct the whole process. What is clear is that although certain customs are said to be lost as each generation of old people dies, even the Lakalai in their twenties retain pride in their own culture, while simultaneously boasting of the innovations of recent years and of others planned for the future. Only an outsider would view traditional gender relations in Lakalai, including the male _ anal complex, in the way described above, whereas the Lakalai would agree with the anthropologists about the content of their new ‘“‘public culture’’ (see also Valentine and Valentine 1979).!° I remain grateful to Ward Goodenough for having chosen such a fascinating society for his students to investigate, for introducing me to the pleasures of research in the Pacific, and for endeavoring to teach me how to understand what we found there.

Notes Acknowledgments. My participation in the 1954 expedition was financed by the Department of Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, and the TriInstitutional Pacific Program. My return visits were supported by the Columbia University Council for Research in the Social Sciences (1962), the Australian National University (1968), the University of Papua New Guinea (1974), and the Internal Research Fund of Victoria University of Wellington (1987). I also made a brief visit in 1964 at the end of fieldwork in another part of New Britain that was supported by the National Science Foundation. In addition, I had access to the notes from a return visit made by C. A. and E. O. Valentine in 1966. I am indebted for the title of this chapter to Loren Eiseley, who suggested it as an appropriate title for my Ph.D. dissertation. 'These were called ‘‘sibs’’ in earlier publications (e.g., Chowning 1965-66, Chowning and Goodenough 1965-66). I have followed Goodenough (1970) here in calling them clans. In his earlier publications Goodenough also called the people “‘Nakanai’’ but later shifted to “‘Lakalai.’’ Women were excluded from some male feasts on grounds that spirits associated with food and water would endanger female health, especially in childbirth. 3] was once reproached for telling a visitor that Ward was in the privy, the Lakalai name for which incorporated the word koko. Only women openly used the privies that the Australian government officers forced people to construct. *Levy points out (1983:131) that ‘‘ ‘shame-embarrassment’ . . . seems to be a lexically unified cluster in many or perhaps most parts of the non-Western world.’’ This is certainly the case in Lakalai. It is also easy to overemphasize the first component when the term is translated by Pidgen sem, derived

from English “‘shame.’’ .

Here I rely on what I was told in answer to a specific question, whereas I saw many examples of female joking performances. | °A Lakalai man who attended a seminar I gave recently in Canberra on the topic of female status

objected only to my not mentioning this point (which I had cut from the oral version of my paper

because of time constraints). 7

7He includes the Lakalai among societies that ‘‘have an initiation system for adolescents . . . involving concepts of miraculous ritual rebirth and miraculous growth’’ (Schwimmer 1984:254). He cites only Goodenough’s (1971) description of mortuary ceremonies, which mentions

nothing of the sort.

32 Ann Chowning SNone of the others—the Sengseng and Kove of New Britain, and the Molima of Fergusson Island—had matrilineal descent. Of course gender relations may be equally difficult in societies lacking matriliny, as is made clear by abundant evidence including my own (Chowning 1980, 1987).

°We were never told that women were weakened or contaminated simply by contact with men, although one female enterprise, the dyeing of skirts, would not succeed if men were present. Contact with women weakened certain objects used by men, notably racing canoes, as well as weakening men themselves. Sexual secretions of the opposite sex were, however, considered dangerous if ingested by women as well as men. 'CPDomestic animals were in an intermediate position, ultimately subject to spirit control. Women

were in no way equated with them.

''Nurses at the mission hospital reported in 1968 that men no longer feared entering labor wards. Men themselves attribute diminished fear of excessive contact with their wives to the abolition of warfare. Most men and women do, however, avoid intercourse when the woman is menstruating, but a recent murder was attributed to a woman’s rejecting a (highly acculturated) man’s advances for that reason.

'2On this point, I differ somewhat from the Valentines, who stress the continuing strength of clan ties (1979:65) and say nothing about the shift to a strong focus on the nuclear family and on the desire of parents to accumulate cash, which first struck me in 1974. '3In a riddle told among men, and to anthropologists, the answer ‘‘Feces’’ is expected to the query, ‘*Who is a man who has a sharp nose, and when he sends you, you have to go?”’

'4One exception is violence from a drunken husband. In addition, some fervent Christians have adopted the attitude that discipline is necessary for the good of the victim. In 1987, Biato was outraged when struck by one of her sons who was trying to prevent her from attending a wake in another village

because he feared for her health. )

'SThe Valentines’ manuscript was read and commented on by many Lakalai as well as by me.

THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF REPRODUCTION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO KINSHIP AND GENDER (NEW GUINEA HIGHLANDS)

Anna Meigs . Ward Goodenough (1956b:37) concludes his famous article, ‘‘Residence Rules,’’ by noting that: Linguistics, with its already monumental achievements in comparative philology, took a great step forward as a science because linguists recognized that every language presents a new structure un-

. like any other, and only by developing rigorous methods for arriving at precise theoretical statements of these structures would it be possible significantly to advance farther the study of language in general. I think we may be coming to a point where substantial progress in cultural anthropology will likewise require concentrating on descriptive ethnography as a legitimate scientific end in itself.

In this article Goodenough distinguishes the categories, terms, and kinds of analysis necessary for cross-cultural research from those necessary for the adequate description of a single culture. More specifically, terms like matrilocal and patrilocal, on whose meaning anthropologists generally agree and which are admi-

| rably suited to cross-cultural comparison, are, as Goodenough demonstrates, inadequate for the description of the actual residence choices of the Trukese. By implication Goodenough makes the wider point that anthropological categories in general are inadequate for the description of specific cultures. Much of recent anthropology can be understood as an effort by its practitioners to divest themselves of the inappropriate etic categories and concepts that intrude upon their would-be emic descriptions. This chapter represents another such at-

tempt. Its focus is on the concept of kinship (being consanguineally or genealogically related), and on the twin categories of male and female by which to show that these, like Goodenough’s matrilocal and patrilocal, are terms inappropriate _to the adequate description of a single culture, in this case the Hua, a population of 3,100 horticulturists residing in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. My analysis focuses, as does Goodenough’s, on the complex underlying ideolog-

ical context—which in the Hua case has to do with the cultural construction of reproduction. After outlining this construction, I go on to an examination of the inadequacy of the standard anthropological concepts of kinship and of male and female for the description of the Hua data.

Hua Cultural Construction of Reproduction My thinking on the cultural construction of reproduction among the Hua developed out of my study of their food rules (Meigs 1984). All Hua foods are prescribed or proscribed to some category of person, and a very considerable portion of Hua discussions concerning their bodies deal with the issue of what is put into

oy 33

34 | Anna Meigs (and taken out of) them, important among which is food. All of the hundreds of Hua food rules fall into one of two types: absolute or relative. I will suggest that these two types reflect Hua understandings of two basic body processes. Absolute rules define a relationship between the consumer and acertainkindof food: prototypically “‘X person may not/must eat Y food.’’ The relationship between X and Y is determined largely by properties intrinsic to the food that may

be injurious or advantageous to the consumer. For example, . 1. A male undergoing initiation must eat soups made of kosidi’ zasa ‘‘leaves for growing.’’ (These leaves come from plants that grow fast. Hua males in general are preoccupied with the male rate of growth.) 2. A girl at menarche must not eat ekremu taro, a species of taro in which the inside exhibits dark discoloration. (If she were to eat this species of tarothe inside ~——’ of her body would become dark with an accompanying association of putrescence.) Absolute rules are about an idea of contagion. The law of contagion, described most clearly by Frazer (1922), states that things which have once been in contact retain a permanent trace of this contact. Thus it is that in the examples cited above a permanent transfer of physical properties is made through temporary or casual contact. For example, in the case of rule 1 above, the eating of leaves that contain the property of fast growth causes the growth rate of the eater to be altered; in the case of rule 2, the eating of a taro which has a dark interior transfers this property of discoloration to the body of the menarcheal eater. Relative rules, on the other hand, are about an idea of nurture, and the concept of nu is basic to them. Nu can perhaps be glossed as ‘‘vital essence’’ and resem-

bles the “‘soul substance’’ of the earlier literature (Frazer 1922; Levy-Bruhl 1971). Relative rules define a relationship between a consumer, a food, and a source: prototypically, ‘“X person may not/must eat Y food from Z person.’’ 3. A mature initiated male may not eat leafy green vegetables picked by his real __ or Classificatory wife or firstborn child. (These vegetables carry some of the nu of the wife or child and are therefore dangerous to the eater.) 4. An adult must not eat a pig raised by, wild animal shot by, or the prize garden

produce cultivated by his or her firstborn child or agemates, or her co-wives. (These substances are suffused with the nu of the producer, inasmuch as the labor involved in raising, cultivating, or killing these foods transfers nu to the food it-

self.) -

Nu, the central concept in relative rules, is associated in Hua thinking quintessentially with body fluids (blood, sweat, sexual substances, etc.) but also includes any body substance (hair, fingernail, the flesh itself) and is extended to include any product of the body (feces, footprint, shadow) or of its labor (in which category rule 4 falls). All foods contain nu because they are the product of someone’s labor. (This

statement applies, though with some differences, to gathered and/or hunted foods.) Nu is basic to life and growth. The fetus is created prenatally out of the semen nu of the father and menstrual blood nu of the mother and then nourished postnatally by nu in all its many forms: breast milk, blood (let from veins and fed growing children), sweat (rubbed from real and classificatory parents onto the skin of growing children), and, of course, food (understood to promote growth

Cultural Construction of Reproduction 35

basis of all nurture. |

and health by virtue of the nu it contains). Nu is the quintessential substance and

As mentioned above, all Hua food rules are either absolute or relative. These rules, furthermore, were traditionally relevant to every act of eating. As such, they are central to the Hua understanding of the process of eating and of the phys1iology of the body that receives the food. In this regard I suggest two propositions.

_ Proposition One: In the Hua cultural construction, food is a partial functional _. substitute for physiological process. In Hua thinking food creates effects in its consumer in one of two ways: either by the nu it transfers (nurture), or by the _ physical properties it transmits (contagion). Food is not understood primarily as a fuel that feeds body processes, systems, substances, and organs. Rather, food is both fuel and process. People grow and develop fast because they eat fast growing foods (the process of contagion) and _, because they eat foods containing the nu of people with whom they enjoy a positive relationship (the nu of unfriendly parties or of strangers will cause stunting of growth in a child and loss of strength and health in an adult). The sex of a child is determined not by innate processes but by the contagious properties of the foods

| the pregnant woman consumes: if she eats one of the several plants with testicle-

shaped components her child will be male.

The process of growth and development like that of health and illness is determined by what you put into (and take out of) your body, in other words by the twin processes of nurture and contagion, processes implicit in the food substances themselves. Again the idea is not a totally alien one (‘“You are what you eat’’) but one that is elaborated in an unfamiliar way. Proposition Two: Nurture and contagion are central to the Hua understanding of physiological process. The two processes of nurture (which may be positive or negative) and contagion (also positive or negative) represent a large part of the Hua understanding of body processes in general. A few examples: Reproduction occurs through the mixture of the nu substance of semen with the nu substance of menstrual blood. The fetus is nurtured by nu into existence. The Hua do not mention eggs, spermatozoa, hormones, etc. Specific features of the child’s identity are created through contagion. For example, consumption of cat, dog, or possum will cause the child to be inarticulate (because these animals are capable only of dri dri ge, ‘‘babble, confused stutterings’’) and so forth. Growth occurs through nurturant donations of nu from friends and the avoidance of nu from hostile parties. The rate of growth is determined by the contagious properties of the foods consumed (if one eats a fast-growing food, one grows fast; a slow-growing food, one grows slow). Aging is the obverse of growth. One ages because one has nurtured oneself out, drained one’s nu into the junior generation and because one has eaten foods that contain the contagious properties of old age: bent back, dry wrinkled skin, blurry eyes. Illness is the consequence of the receipt of nu from one’s enemies (whether in foods they have raised or in their actual body substances) and/or contagion from plants or animals that have physical properties associated with illness. Reproduction, growth, aging, and illness are determined in large measure by the substances put into and taken out of the body. The same processes that make for reproduction, namely nurture and contagion, make for growth, aging and illness. Reproduction is not a discrete physical state that terminates at birth. Rather, individuals develop and change throughout their lives in accordance with the same

36 Anna Meigs processes by which they were created prenatally. In Hua thinking reproduction is not a process that shuts down at birth, but one that continues through the postnatal | life of the individual and terminates only with death. As such, Hua individuals remain open and fluid, ““unfinished,’’ always being born in regard at least to their kinship and gender identities. (There is a sense, of course, in which the above statements could be made of Western conceptions of reproduction. We understand the newborn to be unfinished in many ways both physically and psychologically. Nevertheless, it is the case that we view the newborn as genetically fixed and finished, his or her sex as set, and his or her ‘“blood kin’’ as a preestablished and unchangeable group. It is in this respect that our view is substantially different

from that of the Hua.) Implications for the Understanding of Kinship and Gender )

Kinship, who one is related to, is established in the popular American view by the prenatal act of conception. By the time one is born, in fact at the moment of conception, it is established who one’s “‘real’’ kin are. The use of such terms as ‘real mother’’ and ‘‘real father’’ attests to the importance in this ideology of the presence or absence of what is understood as an actual physiological connection, as does the cultural fascination with genealogy. (Over fifty do-it-yourself genealogy books are currently in print in the United States. The recent phenomenon of adopted children searching for their “‘real’’ parents is additional testimony to the power of the notion that ‘‘real’’ kinship is determined by birth.) Kinship, according to this ideology, is a matter of shared blood (or genes) by which one is eternally and immutably related (see Schneider [1968] for discussion of ‘‘nature’’ and ‘‘blood’’ in American beliefs about kinship). Given that, in this familiar conception, reproduction (in its narrow physiological sense) terminates at birth, it is natural to suppose that no postnatal events can have any effect on this ‘‘real’’ kinship. No matter how much the adopting parent nurtures the child, that child’s ‘‘real’’ parent is always someone else. Watson (1983) calls this notion of kinship based”. . on the immutable transmission of prenatal substance nature kinship. Nurture kinship (also Watson’s term) is the idea that the physiological relationship of kinship can be produced, reinforced, or weakened through postnatal transactions, foremost among which are food exchanges. Almost 100 years ago, this very concept of nurture kinship was attributed to the Arabs by Robertson Smith: Now if kinship means participation in a common mass of flesh, blood and bones, it is natural that it should be regarded as dependent, not merely on the fact that a man was born of his mother’s body, and so was from his birth a part of her flesh, but also on the not less significant fact that he was nourished by her milk. And so we find that among the Arabs there is a tie of milk, as well as of blood, which unites the foster-child to his foster-mother and her kin. Again, after the child is weaned, his flesh and blood continue to be nourished and renewed by the food which he shares with his commensals, so that commensality can be thought of (1) as confirming or even (2) as constituting kinship in a very real sense. [1889:273—274]

For over twenty-five years anthropologists working in New Guinea have wrestled with the problem of the fluidity of populations in the area, in other words, with the fact that immigrants are rapidly included and given full membership status within groups that represent their mutual relationship as one of kinship (Anglin

1979; Barnes 1962; Brown 1962; Holy 1979; Kaberry 1967; Keesing 1970c; Kelly 1968; La Fontaine 1973; de Lepervanche 1967-68; A. Strathern 1979).

Cultural Construction of Reproduction 37 Recognition of the possibility of kinship through nongenealogical linkages is not new to ethnographic analysis of the New Guinea Highlands and perhaps has its origin in the notion that common residence may not be determined by an idea of common kinship but, conversely, that common residence in some way makes for the perception of common kinship (Langness 1964; de Lepervanche 1967— 68). “The sheer fact of residence in a Bena Bena group can and does determine kinship. People do not ~ necessarily reside where they do because they are kinsmen: rather they become kinsmen because

they reside there. [Langness 1964:172; emphasis in original] |

Strathern develops this notion with particular emphasis on food: Food, in fact, we may suggest, is a mediator between locality and kinship. A clear case is found with the Maring, among whom: ‘‘First generation non-agnates in residence are usually considered a members of other clans. Their children, however, appear to be considered members of the clan with which their father resides. The rationalization for this is that these children have been nourished by and grown on the products of local land and therefore may be claimed as members of the clan’’ (Lowman-Vayda 1971:322). J interpret the rationalization as follows. Clansmen are felt to share identity. One way of symbolizing this is in terms of descent-constructs (see Lowman-Vayda 1971).

. Such constructs posit that clansmen share substance in some way through their descent from an ancestor. Another way in which they share substance is through consumption of food grown on clan land. Food builds their bodies and gives them substance just as their father’s semen and mother’s blood and milk give them substance in the womb and as small children. Hence it is through food that the identification of the sons of immigrants with their host group is strengthened. Food creates substance, just as procreation does, and forms an excellent symbol both for the creation of identity

out of residence and for the values of nurturance, growth, comfort and solidarity which are associated primarily with parenthood. [A. Strathern 1973:28—29]

The notion that food may play an important role in a kinship ideology has been mentioned in a number of other recent New Guinea ethnographies. Schieffelin writes of the Kaluli of the Southern Highlands: A person’s mother is thought of less as the person who brought him into the world and more as a person who gives him food. Thus, a woman who-feeds a child comes to be thought of as his mother

after a time, and her children as his siblings. This becomes particularly apparent when the child gets married. Claims for a piece of the bridewealth are in part based on the contribution the person made to ‘‘giving the child food.’’ After marriage, an avoidance relation is observed between a man and his wife’s mother. If for some reason the girl was brought up principally by some woman other than her mother, it will be that woman to whom the avoidance is extended, even if the real mother is alive and present in the same longhouse community. In cases like this ‘‘feeding’’ amounts ap-

| proximately to adoption. [1976:64]

Counts and Counts, describing the role of food in adoption, say Food given is so loaded with significance for the establishment of kin ties that adoptive parents, male and female, must feed a nursing mother or risk the lapse of their claim on her infant. [1983:46]

writes, | |

Describing the Tairora (Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea), Watson It seems persuasive that the postnatal influences as seen by the Northern Tairora are far more significant than the prenatal ones, including procreation. Nothing of his specific destiny or character indeed, has been imparted to the newborn by his begetting. His strengthening, individuation, and his distinctiveness as a member of particular sib, local group, and phratry are stamped on him in the course of his subsequent development as a person. [1983:273]

Jorgensen, in the introduction to his anthology on procreation ideologies in Papua New Guinea, writes:

38 Anna Meigs What all these cases have in common is that it is possible to intervene in the constitution of the person by strategic manipulation of food. [1983:8]

I want to reexamine this hypothesis about the relationship of food in particular but also of nu in general to the “‘constitution of the person’’ (especially in regard to kinship) through one particular Hua case: that of the food and avoidance rules enjoined upon a female or directed toward her during the course of her life cycle. As a child in her community of birth, the young female need observe very few prohibitions and almost none are directed toward her. Once menarche occurs, however, the situation changes as her menstrual fluids are considered to be siro na, literally, ““dirty thing,’’ and a number of food and avoidance rules are put into

effect in order to protect other members of her natal community, in particular young initiated males, from her pollution. With marriage, a dramatic change oc- . curs, at least in most cases (I am uncertain about the rules applied to the relatively small number of Hua brides who come from within the Hua vede ‘‘people’’). No initiated person in the husband’s community, including the husband himself, can eat any food that she has produced, prepared, or served (regardless of whether or not she is menstruating). Nor may any initiate eat from an earth oven into which she has placed leafy green vegetables. If a male of the husband’s community (in-

cluding the husband) eats food that a hauva a’ (literally “‘new woman,’’ and meaning a relatively recent bride) has produced, prepared or served, then he will have ingested siro na ‘‘dirty thing,’’ the consequence of which is stunted growth or loss of strength and health. Numerous other rules proscribe contact with the

shadow, hair, sweat, body oil, etc., of hauva a’ (i.e., with her nu). Once the woman has borne a child, the number of proscriptions decreases, and with every subsequent child she bears they further decline. By the time her children have begun to grow up, she may assume the status of ropa a’ *‘mature or venerable woman’’ and older initiates may freely eat leafy green vegetables that she has © picked, although younger initiates and her husband still may not do so. (The rule regarding leafy green vegetables is the most prominent relative rule in the system -

just as the rule prohibiting possum is the foremost absolute rule, see Meigs [1984].) In an informal ceremony held after approximately fifteen years of marriage, the proscriptions on eating leafy green vegetables picked by the wife are terminated. The wife gives her husband some leafy greens, and his classificatory elder brother tells him to eat them freely, as if they came from the hand of his own mother. The final transfiguration of a woman occurs after menopause. If she has had more than three children, she is formally initiated into the men’s house, and like male initiates, must herself obey the kind of proscription of which she was formerly the target. My original analysis of these proscriptions was focused on female reproductive fluids (menstrual blood, vaginal fluids, and fluids associated with childbirth) and on their status as siro na, that is, pollution. According to the Hua, each girl at menarche is endowed with a full quotient of reproductive fluids that are gradually reduced by each menstrual period, by each act of sexual intercourse, and, most dramatically, by each childbirth. By menopause the woman has spent her quotient; if she has had three or more children, according to the Hua, she has fully spent this quotient and now is ‘‘like a male’’ on the inside: clean and white. The general and overall pattern of proscriptions on the female is that of a dramatic rise at menarche followed by a steady reduction until menopause at which point there is a near total termination (women with one or two children) or complete termi-

Cultural Construction of Reproduction 39 nation (with three or more children). The close parallel between the appearance of reproductive fluids in the female at menarche and the application of prohibitions to her, the steady decrease in the amount of her fluids through her reproductively active years and the overall pattern of decrease in prohibitions, and finally the disappearance of her fluids at menopause and the termination of prohibitions strongly suggest an analysis of these prohibitions in terms of female pollution (cf. _. Meigs [1984] for such an analysis). There is a problem, however, with any analysis exclusively in terms of pollution: it does not account for the fact that the number of prohibitions observed and directed toward a woman dramatically increase with her marriage (although at this point her reproductive fluids are already on the wane).

The question I now address is: what explains the postmenarcheal increase in, prohibitions, that is, the increase in proscriptions applied to females at marriage? This question brings us back to nurture kinship, the way in which kinship can be altered by postnatal transactions in nu. First, it is important to establish that the Hua understand bgotva’ auva ‘‘one

| skin, one body,’’ that is, ‘‘kin’’ as a group that shares nu. Those who are not bgotva’ auva are understood by the Hua to not share nu. Common residence in Hua thinking leads inevitably to shared nu. One cannot live with people without sharing nu: one unavoidably inhales their body odor (a form of nu), absorbs some of their sweat and body oil in the course of casual contact, ingests some of their saliva in the course of sharing foods and utensils, comes into contact with their excreta in the course of sharing a restricted domestic space, and, of course, incorporates their nu in the course of eating foods they have produced, prepared, or served. (It is precisely because this nu exchange is implicit in everyday living, that these transactions are so heavily hemmed in with proscriptions. ) Common residence, then, leads to shared nu and the creation of nurture kinship, just as common birth leads to shared nu and the creation of nature kinship. Conversely, the lack of shared residence (in the absence of common birth) means no

shared nu and, thus, no kinship. Nonkin and strangers (those with whom no shared nu exists) are those who possess an alien nu, one that is untried, and potentially dangerous. Contact with the nu substances of any nonkin/stranger is proscribed. Such nu, like the reproductive fluids of women, is called siro na **pollution.’’ The consequence of its ingestion, like that of ingesting female reproductive fluids, is loss of strength and health for the adult and stunted growth for the child. The Hua bride usually comes from outside the Hua community. She specifically

is not supposed to be bgotva’ auva, ‘‘kin.’’ Her nu is alien and untried to her husband and to many though not all members of his community (she will find some bgotva’ auva in her husband’s community: women married in from her own natal community or children of such women). I argue that the increase in the num-

ber of prohibitions applied to the female at marriage originates in her status as outsider and nonkin in her husband’s community. Like any nonkin, her nu is considered to be dangerous pollution and as such is proscribed in numerous food and avoidance rules. The confusion comes in trying to discriminate that portion of the prohibitions that derives from the siro na of her reproductive fluids and that which derives from the siro na of her status as nonkin. Clearly, though, the first increase in prohibitions (which occurs when the woman first menstruates in her natal com-

munity among her kinspeople) may be attributed to the former and the second

40 Anna Meigs (which occurs when the woman moves to her husband’s community) may be at-

tributed to the latter. ,

My argument is that the development of nurture kinship between the husband’s community and the bride accounts for part of the decrease in prohibitions applied to her. With this in mind it is necessary to underscore that the Hua conceive of nu as a substance that travels. If nu could not travel, then there would be no postmaritally negotiated nurture kinship and the complete or near complete cessation of proscriptions would be impossible. In other words, the alienness of the wife’s nu and the prohibitions that it engenders would never cease. Nu travels in innu-

merable ways. According to males, husbands pass nu (semen, sweat, body odor, and breath) to their wives in the course of having sex with them. Thus itis, men ~ . say, that women grow fat from having sex while men are weakened. The approved role of parents is to pass nu to their children in both prenatal and postnatal

transactions. So conscious are the Hua of this ideology of nu transfer that they even have rules regarding its approved direction of flow: from parent to child is appropriate, the reverse is morally contemptible and disgusting. To produce, prepare, serve, and eat food is to involve oneself, in Hua thinking, in an enormously complex cycle of nu transfers. Each piece of food contains the nu of its producer, preparer, and server. To eat that food is to eat some of those people’s nu and, in the process, to take into one’s body a small bit of theirs, and thus, potentially, to alter one’s kinship. The mere fact of the woman’s residence in her husband’s community involves her in this kinship altering cycle of nu exchange. In conclusion, I argue that two factors make for the particular profile of prohibitions outlined above: first, the appearance at menarche and subsequent decline of female reproductive fluids and, second, the initial status of the wife as posses-

community (and vice versa). . : sor of alien nu and the subsequent mixing of her nu with that of her husband’s

Nurture kinship underscores the idea that in living together people exchange nu

and that these exchanges have important implications for how they understandthe = degree of their physiological relatedness, that is, their kinship. And, further, that how people understand their kinship has, at least in the Hua context, important implications for the enjoining of proscriptions. Returning now to the earlier point about the openness of the Hua notion of reproduction: nurture kinship is clearly consonant with the idea that reproduction is an open and continuous process from conception to death. In other words, where reproduction is not “‘finished’’ by birth, then kinship cannot be so ‘‘finished’’ either.

Gender An open notion of reproduction leads not only to an open and fluid notion of kinship but also of gender. In Hua thinking there are two alternate gender categories. There is vi ‘‘male’’ and a’ ‘‘female,’’ which sort on the basis of genitalia and kakora and figapa that sort on the basis of nu. The former (the genital categories) could be called nature gender and the latter (the nu categories) nurture gender. The former are settled prenatally, the latter postnatally. Each pair of categories has its own particular context of relevance, vi/a’ being relevant primarily in mundane contexts (division of labor, modes of dress, of sitting, of sleeping, of carrying a load, etc.) and kakora/figapa in ritual contexts (food and avoidance rules, eligibility for residence in the ‘‘men’s’’ house, knowledge of the secrets of the flutes, etc.).

Cultural Construction of Reproduction 4] Kakora are said by the Hua to be ‘‘like males (vi)’’ and figapa ‘‘like females (a’)’’ yet both categories include people of both genital descriptions. Kakora and figapa are differentiated, in fact, not by genitals but by the amount of female nu. Figapa (the ‘‘like female’’) category contains much of this, kakora (the “‘like male’’) contains little. Nu, to repeat, is in blood, hair, sweat, food, and so-forth. In other words, it travels. ~All children are figapa because of nu nurture from their mothers; male adolescents become kakora because of the deliberate removal of the substances of female nu from their bodies (via nose-bleeding, vomiting, sweating; see Meigs 1984 for further discussion). After a period of relative emptiness of female nu these kakora start sleeping with their wives and eating foods from their wives’

gardens and/or food that these wives have prepared or served. As a consequence . they receive female nu in female sexual fluids, in contact with their sweat, in breathing in their body odors, in the foods that these women have produced or prepared, and so forth. By old age they have received enough that they lose their kakora status and become again the figapa that they were in their youth. As such,

: they no longer need observe the food and avoidance rules of the kakora. In addition, they are no longer eligible for residence in the “‘men’s house’’ (correctly

called ‘‘kakora house’’). |

Turning now to a’ (genital females), because of their possession of female nu, they remain figapa until after menopause when it is judged that their female substances have been removed by repeated menstrual periods and acts of sexual intercourse and childbirth. At this point these women are reclassified as kakora if they have had three or more children. The initiated women, according to my male informants, traditionally took up residence in the ‘‘men’s’’ house, were shown the secrets of male society, and observed many of the food and avoidance rules

customary for kakora. | oe ,

Herdt (1981) describes a similar notion of gender fluidity among the Sambia, also of the Eastern Highlands. Birds, for example, are reckoned to be female

when young, then to be male in maturity, and finally to go back to femaleness in old age (1981:90—94). Humans as well, according to some Sambia, are basically female; to create a male one must intervene with rituals of masculinization. Absence of attention and care in the performance of these rituals can occasion a lapse into hermaphroditism (1981:208). Poole (1981) describes a different but related pattern of gender fluidity among the Bimin-Kuskusmin. Like the Hua, they initiate some postmenopausal women. In Poole’s analysis these women serve as symbols or metaphors for the way the Bimin-Kuskusmin think about gender. Specifically, they understand gender as a matter of the combination of male and female substances. These combinations can be altered, transformed, changed. According to Poole, Bimin-Kuskusmin gender concepts, rather than being static, immutable images of male and female

in simple contrast, involve a recognition of process, of flow, of transition, and of dynamic (and different) balances in relation to (different, and similar) substances that are given form in their articulation. [1981:116]

In fact, the role of the postmenopausal female ritual leader is to implement alterations in these balances: Thus, as a ritual specialist, she removes, transforms, or embeds male and female substances in the bodies of females and males, respectively. On occasion, she is instrumental in the control of the

4? Anna Meigs dynamic balance and flow of both male and female substances in the bodies of either men or women. Then she ‘‘represents’’ the male-in-female and the female-in-male in everyone. [1981:157]

Male and female for the Bimin-Kuskusmin, as for the Hua, are revealed not as opposed and immutable givens, but as the alterable consequences of various different balances in the degree of “‘male’’ and ‘‘female’’ substances present.

~ Conclusion In talking about residence rules, Goodenough states that: Whatever may be the purposes of an ethnographer in describing a culture, he has the duty of describing it in terms which fit the phenomena. If he is going to describe residence, for example, he cannot work with an a priori set of residence alternatives, albeit he has defined them with the utmost care. He has to find out what are the actual residence choices which the members of the society studied can make within their particular socio-cultural setting. [1956b:29]

Of course, the same is true of kinship and gender, but because we understand these to be biologically given phenomena (at least in their narrow physiological senses), it is difficult for us to realize that they are also, down to their very roots, cultural constructs. As Goodenough said, it is our goal as anthropologists to describe cultural phenomena in ways that fit the data. This is easy to say and monumentally hard to do. Ward Goodenough’s commitment to this goal and the intelligence and honor with which he has pursued it have made an indelible mark on the discipline.

Notes I acknowledge the helpful comments and criticisms of John Haiman, David McCurdy, Jim Stewart, Anne Sutherland, and Jack Weatherford.

THE ETHNOGRAPHER AS DETECTIVE: SOLVING THE PUZZLE OF NIUTAO LAND TENURE RULES Jay Noricks Ward Goodenough’s work has been instrumental in demonstrating how the status Pacific Islanders enjoy as kinsmen and common descent group members depends significantly on their relationships to land through traditional principles of land ownership and land use (Goodenough 1951, 1955). Understanding the Niutao system of land tenure was crucial to the development of the model I present elsewhere (Noricks 1981a, 1983) of the Niutao system of kinship and descent. Yet, it was not until I was well into the final stage of fieldwork that the principles of land tenure became clear. The difficulties I experienced in achieving this clarity serve to illuminate another important dimension of the connections between social relationships and land tenure rules. In particular, they dramatically reveal how local reporters’ (I prefer this to ‘“‘informant’’) statements about both landholdings and land tenure principles may be significantly affected by the social circumstances of their own landholdings. Niutao is one of the nine atolls and reef islands making up the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu. At the time of my fieldwork in 1970 Tuvalu formed the Ellice Islands portion of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. The reef island of Niutao had a resident population of approximately 900, with between 300 and 400 others working at the phosphate mines of Nauru and Banaba. My wife and I traveled from the University of Pennsylvania to this tiny (approx. 2.52 km?) island of fishers and horticulturists so that I could conduct my dissertation research on both specific and general ethnographic questions. The more specific questions had to do with the nature of ranking or any other hierarchical ordering of social identities on a small, ecologically limited, Polynesian low island. Ultimately, I was concerned with describing Niutao conceptions of person from the Niutao point of view (e.g., Noricks 1981b). In order that these conceptions be understood within their cultural context I made my broader goal the collection of data that would permit a general ethnography of Niutao kinship and social organization (Noricks 1981a). The pursuit of this broader purpose made mandatory a clear understanding of the principles of land tenure. My late closure on this subject was partly due to the complexity of the traditional system and to real confusion by some Niutao regarding the principles that presently determine land ownership and its inheritance and the degree to which these principles differ from rules and tradition prior to the Lands Commission of 1948. A more troubling reason for my not earlier grasping the essentials of Niutao land tenure was false information provided by some otherwise sincere reporters. Considered together the complexity, confusion, and falsehoods presented a puzzle whose solution required the ethnographer to play more the role of detective 43

44 Jay Noricks and sifter of clues than the role of compiler of facts and recorder of tradition. In this role of detective, I describe here the process by which I came to understand the system of land tenure on Niutao and how it is interrelated with other cultural systems. As the story unfolds it will become apparent that an individual’s personal and kin group’s landholdings are likely to affect how the person speaks about, and

probably how the person thinks about, land tenure rules.

The examination of this case of ethnographic discovery is instructive for several reasons. First, it illustrates the well-known anthropological principle that the ethnographer’s initial attempts at model building must be tentative. As research con-

tinues and more data are gathered the early models, if not scrapped altogether, _ must be improved upon until they are consistent with all reliable information collected in the course of fieldwork. This narrative also illustrates a second well- known anthropological finding: that culture is an interrelated whole and that this applies to the ideational order of culture (e.g., Goodenough 1963a:68—69). While individual subsystems can for a time be investigated in relative isolation, eventually the overlap with, impingement upon, and consistency with other subsystems must be thoroughly evaluated. When the conceptual inconsistencies are too great, then there is something wrong with the model. Finally, and most importantly, this chapter illustrates that the preceding two principles depend on careful recognition of a third point: that anthropological fieldwork is completely a human enterprise, requiring the evaluation of reporters’ statements in relation to the special circumstances, concerns, moods, and imputed veracity of particular individual human beings (see Goodenough 1980)—-including the ways these are conditioned by local cultural assumptions and values.

Gift Lands On Niutao as on many other Pacific Islands (e.g., see Caughey 1977) landisa _ | primary determinant of a person’s sense of self-worth. Indeed, the more land a person controls the greater is that person’s prestige and importance in the eyes of others. More practically, land provides the food upon which landowners subsist. A person without land is called a fakaalofa, a term frequently translated as **pitiable person’’ and carrying some of the connotations of the English concepts _ ‘“squatter,’’ ““foreigner,’’ and ‘‘charity case.’’ Because Niutao is so small in relation to its population there is now public recognition that there will soon be insufficient land to provide sustenance for all who live there. For these and other reasons people maximize the number of plots of land on which they can make some sort of claim. The traditional rules that determine the allocation of land therefore had to be one aspect of my ethnographic inquiry. The focus of the present investigation is upon that aspect of land tenure concerned with. gift lands. Ordinarily, land is divided among the descendants of the founders of an estate in the course of the developmental cycle of cognatic descent

groups (Noricks 1983). When a person holds title to land in his own name, as opposed to shared ownership with others, he can divide the land among his heirs or stipulate that they will hold the land in joint ownership. Normally, a man’s heirs are his children or grandchildren, for his brothers and sisters or their descen-

dants will have received their own shares in the ancestral estate when the man originally gained his own title. I refer to gift land as any land a man bequeaths to people other than his direct descendants.’ In Niutao, the most common gift land

Ethnographer as Detective 45 is that given to an adopted child or grandchild. Occasionally, land is given as payment to someone for nursing the donor during an extended illness. In the past there were other reasons also for the transfer of gift lands. Before land became scarce in relation to population size, it could be given in return for the construction of a canoe. This was much more important in the past than nowadays when many are skilled at canoe building. In one case at the end of the 19th century, land was given in return for a grave site and proper burial. When I began fieldwork in Niutao, I was aware that the official land tenure laws relating to Niutao gift lands were unusual both for Polynesia and for Oceania more generally (see Lundsgaarde 1974a). In the Polynesian area, for example, it is rare

for an individual to have the right to permanently alienate his land from his descendants and his wider kindred (see Crocombe 1974; Lundsgaarde 1974b). According to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony Lands Code for the Ellice Islands (1962), any type of Niutao gift land except for that given to an adopted child is a permanent and irrevocable gift to the recipient and to-any heirs the recipient may

| designate. Gift land for adoption is also permanent unless the adoptive child has no children of his own, in which case the land reverts to the donor. Elsewhere in Tuvalu there is considerable variation in the disposition of various types of gift lands. For example, on Funafuti, a gift for nursing or a gift for kindness is a lifetime gift only. On Nukulaelae and Nukufetau, a gift for kindness is permanent unless the recipient has no children of his own. On Vaitupu, the donor may stipulate whether or when a gift for kindness is to revert to the donor line. On Nui, a gift to an adopted child reverts to the donor line whenever the recipient’s line of descent fails to reproduce, regardless of the number of generations since the gift. Nui and Niutao are thus extreme cases within the Lands Code; on Nui, there 1s the expectation that gift land will ultimately revert to the donor line; in Niutao, the gift land never reverts once the adopted child has children. According to the 1969 verbal reports of government officials at the administrative center on Funafuti, the Lands Code is based upon local custom for each island as determined by the Lands Commission of 1948. The first thing I wanted to ascertain was whether the Lands Code represents the way things actually worked on Niutao. If it did, I also wanted to know whether things were different before the Lands Commission or before the arrival of missionaries in 1870. The first Niutao person with whom I talked about land matters was Two Warriors, a man who had befriended my wife and me, and helped out considerably during our early period of adjustment.” Two Warriors stated that a person has complete rights of disposal of all of his land. He may give it to anyone he wishes for any reason and, once made, the gift is permanent. The donor line has no further rights or claims to it. In essence, this is entirely consistent with the Lands Code. Two Warriors further reported that this was true at all times in the past as well. I conducted all interviews with Niutao people in the Tuvalu language. Because I had only been in the field about four months at the time of the first interviews with Two Warriors, I was not yet fluent in the language. I could not therefore be certain that I had phrased my questions properly or that I had completely understood Two Warriors’s responses. Consequently, I asked him the same questions again on several other occasions as my language fluency increased. Two Warriors was always consistent in his responses and adamant in his position that a person had complete rights of disposal of land, including the right to permanently alienate land in his possession from his own line of descent.

46 Jay Noricks In evaluating Two Warriors as a reporter of his own culture, I took into con- | sideration the consistency of his reports, his apparent earnestness to see that I properly understood Niutao culture, and his standing in the community. He is a highly respected man, formerly an island chief. At the time of our first discussions he was 57 years old with a reputation as a knowledgeable person. J had no reason at the time to doubt his reporting.

Land for Adoption Because the apparent land tenure situation was unusual for Polynesia, I wanted _ to confirm Two Warriors’s reporting of it with others. The next person with whom || ] had extensive discussions about land matters was The Light, a man of 60 years 7: of age, a master builder, and also highly respected in the Niutao community. I was introduced to him by Two Warriors. Over a period of two months (the fifth and sixth months of fieldwork) we discussed a range of topics, including building, leadership, adoption, marriage, and the rules of land tenure. The Light confirmed Two Warriors’s reports in almost every way. A landowner can do anything he wishes with his land at present and could do so in the past also. He has the right to completely alienate land from his own line of descent. Once made, a gift is permanent. There is, however, a single exception to the permanency of gift land. When land is given to an adopted child, and the child leaves his adoptive parents while they are still alive to return to his natal kindred, then the adoptive parents have the right to take back the gift of land. This one exception turned out to be directly relevant to a claim The Light had before the Niutao Lands Court at the time of our discussion. A gift of land had been made some years previously by The Light’s now deceased grandfather to Young Friend, the adopted son of The Light’s unmarried sister. Following a great quarrel between Young Friend’s adoptive mother and his wife, Young Friend left the house of The Light and his sister, the house in which he was raised, and with his wife and two children established - . his own nuclear family in a temporarily vacant house belonging to his close, consanguineal kin. The Light claimed that by the act of severing household relationships with his adoptive family, Young Friend forfeited his right to his gift land. In evaluating this single exception to an otherwise consistent picture of rules for gift lands, I became concerned that if there was one exception there might be others as well. Neither The Light nor Two Warriors would admit to any other exceptions, however. Another possibility was that there was no exception to rules regarding the permanency of gift lands. Might The Light and his sister be making

a claim for the return of the gift land because of the hurt they felt at Young Friend’s move? Or since I was a ready listener and we were discussing tradition involving land tenure, perhaps The Light was putting the matter in a form that would justify his claim for the return of the land? If so, it suggested the possibility that interpretations of land rights might be based on something more than an abstract knowledge of the rules of land tenure. But there were many other things to study in Niutao besides land tenure and I was anxious to get on to other matters. I would return to a consideration of land tenure, I felt, when I knew more about Niutao culture in general.

Village House Sites J conducted residence surveys during the third and thirteenth months of fieldwork. In the first of these surveys, in addition to census data on sex, age, and

Ethnographer as Detective 47 household totals, I also collected lists of owners of houses and house sites. My preliminary data indicated that houses and house sites were separately owned, and that while sometimes the owner of the house and the owner of the land were the same, the house site might also be owned by various patrilateral or matrilateral kinsmen, or, less often, by a nonrelative. In the eighth month I visited selected households in order to complete the lists and to answer certain questions about why people lived where they did; otherwise postmarital residence patterns would be difficult to determine. I was also interested in whatever light might be thrown on social organization by the arrangements that permitted individuals to build their houses on others’ land.

The new round of interviews revealed that when the renewal of the village be- e gan in the 1950s, the rules for settlement were this. A person had first choice to build upon his own land within the village. He could also reserve a particular house site for a relative who asked permission to build there. However, if a person did not build upon his village land, and did not reserve it for a relative, then a | nonrelative could build there provided that he exchanged a portion of his own land (of the same size and quality) for the village house site. The second inconsistency in the apparent rules of land tenure (the first being The Light’s adoption exception) appeared in relation to the type of case where land was exchanged between non-

relatives. Even after the exchange had taken place, the present owner and occupant of the house site continued to refer to the land as the property of the previous owner. A typical interview on house site ownership went as follows:

A: It is the land of B. . Q: Whose land is this?

Q: Why have you built here? A: [exchanged my land for this land.

The inconsistency, the puzzle, was that if the exchange of land was a simple trade of one piece of land for another, and Two Warriors’s logic led me to believe this, then there should be no reason to continue indefinitely to refer to the village house site as B’s land. It was not until I had conducted a number of such interviews that J began asking what eventually became the obvious question: Why did A refer to

his house site as the land of B? In some cases the reply was disappointing: ‘‘It was called B’s land because it is B’s land.’’ However, a few responses were ilJuminating: the exchanged land would revert to the original owners (or their descendants) ““when the village is no more.’’ Since any such reversion of lands would not occur anytime in the foreseeable future, if ever, this response suggested that the transfer or inheritance of land might be entailed in ways for which Two Warriors’s information could not account.

During this period of rechecking the ownership lists from the first survey, I called again on The Light. His own house was situated upon a plot for which he had exchanged some of his own land. In our discussion, he, too, reported that the land would revert to the original owners if the village should ever cease to exist. To my question as to whether he had the right to trade his house site to a third party, he replied that he did not know. At this point, Two Warriors, who had entered the house a few minutes previously, interrupted to say that The Light did in fact have this right. Further, he said, the exchange by which The Light had acquired his house site was permanent; the land would never revert even if the village were shifted or no longer existed. In this position Two Warriors was fully consistent with his earlier reporting. I shortly discovered, however, that he was

48 Jay Noricks no longer consistent with the Lands Code. In rechecking the Lands Code, I found that I had previously overlooked the fact that Niutao was included in a group of four islands where provision had explicitly been made for the exchange of bush land for village house sites (on the other five islands village land was treated as communal land with no exchange of land required). Further, on all Ellice (Tuvalu) Islands village land was to revert to the original owners if the village were shifted to another location in the future. Thus, for the first time in the investigation Two Warriors reported something different from the Lands Code. J had previously speculated that, as a former government officer, Two Warriors would be familiar with the official lands code and that his reporting of land tenure rules might rep- -

resent his acceptance of the reality of Colony law (as opposed to local custom if } they were in conflict). With this inconsistency with the Lands Code, I now needed to consider that. [wo Warriors might have his own model of the system of land tenure independent of that of the Lands Code. I also began to consider (but did not then act on the possibility) that Two Warriors might somehow believe that my work could lead to a revision of the Lands Code and that this might pose a threat to some undisclosed vested interest of his. Summarizing the investigation to this point, there were reports of two respected and knowledgeable elders that individual landowners had complete rights of disposal and alienation to their land. There was one possible exception to this principle in the case of an adopted child who leaves his adoptive home in a conflict situation. There was now a second inconsistency to the right of alienation in the matter of reversion of exchanged village house sites. There was also Two Warriors’s disagreement with both the Lands Code and with some other islanders con-

holdings. ,

cerning this matter of reversion. Finally there was my growing suspicion that interpretations of land rules were linked to strategic concerns about one’s own

Wedding Contributions

The next inconsistency appeared in data relating to marriage and wedding festivities. Although I attended many wedding feasts during the 15 months of fieldwork, it was not until the tenth month that I began intensive interviews on the

subject of marriage. Two Warriors was again one of my reporters as was The | Light. A woman, Flowering Tree, also proved to be a valuable reporter. For the question of land tenure, the most important point to emerge from these interviews was the fact that while all relatives are obligated to contribute food or labor to a bride’s or groom’s wedding feast, certain of them, those called ‘‘relatives through land’’ (tino i te niu, lit.: ‘‘relatives at/in the coconut tree’’), are more strongly required to make food contributions. A person’s ‘‘relatives through land’’ are people who have inherited land from one’s own ancestor (most often through an adoptive line) but who are not themselves consanguineal descendants of that ancestor; these descendants, however, do not make reciprocal contributions to the marriage feasts of the “‘relatives through land.’’ —

The nonreciprocal obligation for the recipients of gift lands is clear evidence that “‘relatives through land’’ do not have full rights of ownership. The food contributions they are required to make are not voluntary; they are levied by the donor line. Although food contributions by full kinsmen are also levied, they always have the option of failing their obligation, the consequence of which is the loss of

Ethnographer as Detective 49 kinsman status and the loss of future contributions by their former kinsmen to their own life cycle events. Because they receive no food contributions they might lose

in the future, this option must not be open to “‘relatives through land.’’ Some other consequence besides loss of kinsman status must follow if they fail to meet their wedding food levies.

Reversion of Gift Lands After a full year in the field it was obvious that something was wrong with my early land tenure data. With only three months of fieldwork remaining it was time to give full attention to the question of gift lands. For a new perspective I turned . again to Flowering Tree, a woman with whom I was at that time working on the subject of nonkinship social identities. We worked through the entire schedule of questions I had previously used with The Light. The result was the first clear con-

tradiction of the information on gift lands provided: by Two Warriors and The | Light. Asked why she differed from these respected elders, Flowering Tree stated flatly that they were lying. She was emphatic in holding that, while she did not know what the government Lands Code provided in Niutao, she did know Niutao culture. She pointed out that the underlying principle governing the disposition of all gift lands is that the land must eventually be reunited with the donor line. Her illustration of the impact of this principle on her family also made it clear that the Same principle continues to have a strong influence on the way many other Niutao people conduct their lives. The bulk of the estate of Flowering Tree’s own family is gift land. The source of the land is an ancestor from the Tuvalu island of Nui who was adopted by a Niutao man. The ancestor inherited a large estate of land from his adoptive father and, having married a Niutao woman, eventually passed it on to his own descendants (if the ancestor had been a Niutao native likely to return eventually to his natal kindred he might have received only a small share of land). The adoptive father also had biological children who produced separate (donor) lines of descent. Some years ago the donor descent lines began to put pressure on Flowering Tree’s mother to return the gift land. One of the ways in which pressure was exerted was by making heavy food levies for the support of donor line wedding feasts. In local theory the failure to meet these demands for support permits the donor lines to demand the reversion of the land for redistribution among themselves, with the lines strongest in male links receiving the greater shares. Flowering Tree’s mother, a widow, worked out a stratagem for insuring her family’s continued control of their gift land. She arranged a marriage between Flowering Tree’s brother and a girl from one of the donor lines of descent, a line heavy with female links and one that would receive only a small share in reverted lands in _ any case. Although it is present Niutao custom for Niutao young people to choose their own marriage partners, and the brother had a favorite of his own he wished to marry, for the welfare of his family he agreed to his mother’s arrangement. As Flowering Tree explains it, through her brother’s new wife the gift land is now reunited with the donor line. The consanguineal descendants of the original donor can no longer expect eventual reversion. The future of Flowering Tree’s family as landholders is assured. There will also be some relief from excessive food levies because the new wife can speak to the donor line’s representatives on an equal

basis. :

50 Jay Noricks By stating the underlying principle that all gift lands are expected eventually to revert to the donor line, Flowering Tree made sense of many inconsistencies in my previous data. There was also another strong reason for accepting her information. If my research were to lead to the reopening of land claims before the Lands Court (as I now understood that some suspected) she could be putting her family’s holdings in jeopardy by enunciating the reversion rule. However, by pointing out her brother’s personal sacrifice in bringing about the reunion of gift land and donor blood, she was also saying that in spite of the reversion rule her family’s land was no longer in danger (i.e., if one traditional rule still applied so did the other). Flowering Tree was not aware that the present Lands Code insured __ her family’s continued ownership of the gift land, and that according to the Code there is no difference between the family’s gift land and land inherited from consanguineal sources. Consequently her account not only justifies her family’s land claims in an apparently unnecessary way, but also gives a considerable boost to the credibility of her version of the underlying land tenure principle. Her infor-

mation also seemed to reveal a more dynamic system than I suspected, one in which strategic social interactions (here, an arranged marriage) are intrinsic to the coherence of the system. In evaluating Flowering Tree’s reports, I was almost completely convinced by

her version of Niutao land tenure. I did, however, have a few lingering doubts. One of these had to do with the heavy Nui influence on her family. On Nui, according to the Lands Code, it is also expected that gift land to an adopted child will eventually revert to the donor line. I thought it possible that she may have learned some Nui lore within her family and may have been reporting it as Niutao culture. Her mother’s father’s brother, for example, the head of the full descent group descended from the adoptive ancestor, had spent a number of years on Nui and was bilingual in the Gilbertese language spoken there. Another doubt had to

do with the relative social status of Flowering Tree as opposed to Two Warriors ~~ and The Light. Both of the men were knowledgeable elders and heads of their own descent groups. Flowering Tree was in her late twenties, the youngest child of her parents. From previous work I knew that men more than woman, and heads

of descent groups more than their younger siblings, are believed to be more knowledgeable about kinship and land. Could I take the reports of a younger woman, a junior member in her family, over the elder men who were heads of descent groups? During the remainder of fieldwork my final lingering doubts were dispelled.

Village Gossip The next corroborating piece of evidence also came from a woman. During a visit to our field quarters by Timber Tree there was a period of discussion of recent events in the village. Timber Tree told of a man’s refusal to give his son permis-

sion to adopt a particular child. Refusal of permission was based upon the fact that the child was directly descended, as was the son, from the man’s own major source of land. If the adoption were permitted, then the land received by the adoptive child would not be subject to eventual reversion since his line and that of the adopter would both be donor lines; the land would not be classified as gift land.

This case appeared to involve the same principle of potential reversion as that described by Flowering Tree, but from the perspective of a potential donor rather than a “‘relative through land.’’

Ethnographer as Detective SI Reversion andthe Law — Finally, in the thirteenth month of fieldwork, Two Warriors contradicted himself in my presence. I was living at the time in the government compound in the house used by touring officials of the central government in Funafuti. Approximately ten yards away was the telegraph shack, and on this day The Sand, a man in his early forties, had business there. While there, he noticed that Two Warriors was visiting me and walked over to talk to him about an unrelated matter. The conversation eventually became more general and I asked The Sand, a former local government official, whether he thought the Lands Code represented the

way things really worked in Niutao. In his explanation he pointed out that in the ‘ ‘‘old days’’ gift land had to return to the donor line, but now, according to the law, it could not be returned. He acknowledged that he controlled gift land that had originated with Two Warriors’s line. He also indicated that Two Warriors had gift land that had come from his own line. In the past, the land would have even| tually been returned to the donor lines but now the law said otherwise. ‘*What is one to do?’’ he asked. This was a rhetorical question, one that I took to mean in ‘part that they were all victims of fate. Two Warriors did not contradict The Sand, and he acknowledged that what was said about changes in land tenure rules was true (he seemed to have forgotten that I was in the conversation). He also gave an involved explanation to The Sand indicating that the land he (Two Warriors) now possesses was not actually gift land, but land from his own ancestor who, out of kindness, had provided it for the lifetime use of The Sand’s ancestor, a high chief whose own landholdings were insufficient to dignify his office. Through this strategic use of family lore he denied that any claimed reversion rule for gift lands was relevant to his situation. Since the land in question is now in his possession, it is where it should be; only if it were again in the possession of The Sand’s line

would it be gift land. | _

The Adoption Cycle After The Sand left I asked Two Warriors if it were true that in the past all gift land had to be returned eventually to the donor line. He did not answer me directly. Instead, following a long pause with a pained expression, he explained the traditional adoption cycle. ‘‘In the old days,’’ he said, ‘‘people did not make gifts of land in a haphazard manner.’’ When someone made a gift of land to an adoptive child he gave him land that had originated in the adoptive child’s line in the first place. In this system land moves alternately between descending lines every one or two generations as the respective lines adopt each other’s children. Two Warriors also stated that this system had broken down and people were no longer careful about who they adopted. This explanation of the adoption cycle is a clear contradiction of his earlier statements about the permanence of gifts of land. It seems also to be a rationalization for his own behavior: when a system breaks down one

consolidates and fortifies one’s own position. ,

_ As a final addition to my notes on the matter of gift lands, I had short interviews with three other men on the subject of land given to adoptive children. I asked the

following question: *‘What happens if you are my adopted child and I give you land that you in turn give to your own child? Your own child has no children of his own, but does have an adoptive child who is unrelated to me. Can your child

52 Jay Noricks now give the gift land that came from me to his adopted child, or does it have to return to me?’’ The first man I asked, Digger, said the land must be returned to me. The second man, Metaphor, said that the land never returns. (I later learned that all of Metaphor’s land is gift land.) He explained that a man has complete rights over the land he receives and it never returns to the original line. I phrased the question to

the third man, Traveler, as if he were the original donor of the land to the first adoptive child. His position was the same as Digger’s. He said that the land must be returned to the original donor’s line. “‘We’ll claim the land back if that person | tries to give it to an adopted child who is not from our family lest it jump too far . away from us.’’ Clearly, Traveler was thinking in terms of the adoption cycle. As long as gift land remains in the adopted child’s own consanguineal line of descent, it is still accessible to the donor line through reversion or through the reciprocated adoption of a child of the donor line. Should it be successfully transferred from the adoptive child’s line to another, unrelated line, it would ‘‘jump’’ too far away from the donor line. The new recipients of the land would have no obligations to the original donor line and it would no longer be revertible to them. To forestall this, the representatives of the donor line would make an immediate claim on the gift land.

Niutao Culture as a System After more than a year of fieldwork, the final pieces of the land tenure puzzle had finally fallen into place. The problem began with false information (Two Warriors’s) collected at a time when I was not yet fluent in the language. It was com-

plicated by a second set of false information (The Light’s) shortly afterward (in- , formation, however, which also contained the first inconsistency). As time passed.

and my fluency increased and as other subsystems of Niutao culture were encountered, the number of inconsistencies mounted; so too did my anxiety. Eventually, there were flat contradictions. It is clear now that land tenure is too central an area with too many interrelationships with other Niutao subsystems for there to be sustained, contradiction-free misinformation about its underlying principles. Niutao culture is truly an interrelated system. In the course of the investigation, principles of land tenure were seen to be directly connected to a number of other important aspects of social organization, including rules of inheritance (for direct descendants as opposed to adoptive and collateral relatives), adoption, marriage patterns (who and why one marries), kin group organization (descent group members versus ‘‘relatives through land’’), and postmarital residence rules. The investigation also revealed that land statements involved power relationships, strategic interactions, and, indirectly, the belief system. That power relationships were important became evident when the problem of bringing about the return: of gift lands was discussed. One technique already mentioned is that of increasing to unbearable levels the food levy on holders of gift lands. Another technique is shaming. When ‘‘relatives through land’’ have held land longer than the donor lines feel they should, and have made no arrangements (e.g., through adoption) for its eventual return, representatives of the donor line might set out to shame them to return the land. They would do this with words. At first they would merely mention the gift lands frequently enough so that the recipients would know

Ethnographer as Detective 53 of their concern. Eventually the shaming might escalate, with donor line representatives appearing outside the households of the present holders of land and taunting them publicly, calling out such questions as ‘‘Whose land do you eat upon?’’, and ““Are you poor people that you keep others’ lands?’’ This kind of activity never occurred while I was on Niutao, and I doubt that it has occurred at allsince the Lands Commission met in Niutao in 1948. My reporters simply stated it occurred ‘‘in the past.’’ Nevertheless, such folk history-does indicate the moral right that descendants of donor lines feel they have to their ancestral lands and their willingness to use power and stratagems to advance their claims. Of the far, distant past (pre-European) it is said that when ‘‘relatives through land”’ failed to meet their obligations, descendants of donor lines would gather their strength and ;

take the land back by force. ,

The indirect connection with the belief system became evident when | asked questions intended to discover what the present Niutao residents remembered of the Lands Commission of 1948. It was this commission that produced the present Lands Code. Few remained with any direct recollection of the events of 1948.

: One person, however, pointed out that only one man was still alive from among the original members of the local committee charged with reporting local custom to the Commission; he suggested that this survivor was the only one who had told the truth. All the others were supernaturally punished with death because of their betrayal of the Niutao traditional culture. This story incidentally reveals not just a belief about supernatural retribution but also an implicit cultural assumption that even local experts in a formal inquiry are capable of ‘‘lying’’ about land tenure

rules. ,

Summary and Conclusions The underlying principle of the system of land tenure is that there is an intimate bond between the descendants of the founder of the estate and the estate itself. _ The proper relationship between people and land exists when the land upon which people subsist came to them from their direct consanguineal ancestors. An improper or unbalanced condition exists when the ‘blood’ (toto) is separated from the land that nurtured it. Consequently, people expect that all gift lands will ultimately return to the blood line from which it came. -.. .In a limited sense this statement of the underlying principle solves the puzzle of land tenure posed by the ethnographer in his role of detective. But a broader solution acknowledges the dynamic system discovered in the course of the investigation and the implicit cultural assumptions that energize it. These assumptions include at least the following: J. Land has such great practical, social, and affective value that a person should Strive to maximize the amount of land under his control. 2. Land tenure rules are subject to conflicting interpretations and variations in emphasis, depending upon one’s own social and landholding situation. 3. Landholdings are potentially subject to loss through the aggressive behavior of others who in these days of a Lands Court might even “‘lie’’ about the facts of

a given case. |

4. There are certain strategic social interactions available either in the pursuit of land (e.g., public shaming, excessive food levies) or in the protection of land (e.g., a reciprocal adoption, an arranged marriage, the use of family lore to deny

the basis of a claim). . ,

54 Jay Noricks My final concern is one that developed slowly over the period of field research, , but as it gained momentum it became a question of great importance to me personally, for I had come to feel wronged by men upon whom I looked as personal friends: Why did they lie to me? The answer must be understood as a partial function of the implicit assumptions listed above. The most important reason seems to have been their concern to protect their own and their families’ present landholdings from possible threat. I did not at the time understand how I could have posed such a threat, but I had clearly overestimated how much | had been accepted

into Niutao society and how much my self-presentation as a harmless ethnographer had been taken at face value. I now know that one of the greatest fears my _.

questions raised was that land claims previously settled might once again be opened up for adjudication, bringing about the threat of loss to some who felt they had secure titles. When in a mutually painful last discussion of the matter, I asked Two Warriors why he told me the things he did, he defended himself by pointing

out, “‘The last time a white man came and asked questions about land [i.e., in 1948], the laws changed. Perhaps they will change now also.’’ Finally, with tears in his eyes, he said, “‘Jay, if you don’t believe my words to you, then you write

your story the way you think is right.’’? | Notes

'There is no single Niutao expression that refers in general to all types of gift lands. In specialized usage, however, when someone examines the inventory of lands making up his estate, ‘‘gift lands”’ is a good gloss for those of his lands referred to as mea o tino (lit.: ‘‘things of [other] people’’). All personal names are translations of actual Tuvalu names, but they are not the true names of my Niutao reporters. 3Niutao is no longer a part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. Instead, it is an important part of the independent Polynesian nation of Tuvalu. It is now 17 years since Two Warriors and I had our final conversation. I no longer believe that my writing this narrative is potentially harmful to the people

of Niutao.

.. TRIBAL WORDS, TRIBAL WORLDS: THE TRANSLATABILITY OF TAPU AND MANA

Anne Salmond | Suppose an archaeologist belonging to a later culture finds a textbook of Euclidean geometry without diagrams. He will discover how the words ‘‘point,’’ “‘straight-line,’’ ‘“‘plane’’ are used in the propositions. He will also recognize how the latter are deduced from each ‘other. He will even be able to frame new propositions according to the rules he recognized. But the framing of these propositions will remain an empty play with words for him as long as ‘‘point,’’ “‘straight-line,’’ “‘plane’’ etc., convey nothing to him. Only when they do convey something will geometry possess any real

content for him. . . . With our (own) pre-scientific concepts we are very much in the position of our archaeologist in regard to the ontological problem. We have, so to speak, forgotten what features in the world of experience caused us to frame those concepts. —Albert Einstein (1954:277)

In writing about the possibility of knowledge of the physical world, Einstein repeatedly claimed that the concepts and fundamental principles of any theory are free creations of the human mind,! derived imaginatively (rather than inductively) from experience, but testable with respect to their logical simplicity, and the certainty of the coordination of their conclusions with the totality of sensory experience. When he touched on the problem of understanding, rather than testing an unfamiliar theory, he came close to the fundamental problematic of anthropology.

In the passage quoted above, Einstein addressed the difficulty of grasping the meaning of key concepts in an unfamiliar description of the world, and offered an interesting remedy: What does it mean that “straight-line,” ‘‘point,’’ “‘intersection,’’ etc., convey something? It means that one can point to the sensible experiences to which those words refer. This extra-logical problem is the problem of the nature of geometry, which the archaeologist will only be able to solve intuitively by examining his experience for anything he can discover which corresponds to those primary terms of the theory and the axioms laid down for them. Only in this sense can the question of the nature of a conceptually presented entity be reasonably raised. [1954:277]

In this chapter I address the problem of how anthropologists may begin to understand the meaning of key words in an unfamiliar tribal world, whose ontology we have not like Einstein’s prescientific concepts ““forgotten,’’ but which we never knew. I am interested in the use of such words in propositions, their relations to each other, and the role of intuition and experience in grasping their ‘‘meaning.’’ In homage to Goodenough’s contributions in ethnosemantics (e.g., 1956c, 1965c, 1968) I consider the New Zealand Maori words tapu, mana, and atua, which raise ontological questions, and seek to discover what they convey. This requires a preliminary consideration of reference, and of the problems of translatability that arise when particular referential relations are construed differently in different communities of speakers, or when different aspects of human experience are being named.

_ 55

56 Anne Salmond Reference and Translatability One could say that the archaeologist in Einstein’s example, by trying to discover the “‘emic’’ definitions of “‘straight-line,’’ ‘‘point,’’ and ‘‘intersection”’ within a past theoretical account, had set himself an ethnoscientific problem. Since the Euclidean geometers were long dead, he would have to inspect their text (without diagrams) and determine to what aspects of sensible experience these terms refer. This would be difficult, since the usual way to learn about a term like ‘“straight-line’’ would be to draw one, although a lesson could also be conducted by reference to the properties of suitable natural phenomena.’ The strategies of _

ostension (pointing and naming) and the use of alternative description languages : (drawing, in this case) are crucial for those areas of the lexicon where ethnosemantics has been most successful (e.g., color terms, words for plants and animals,

and kinship), but neither strategy seems likely to be helpful for ‘“‘ontological

words’’ such as tapu, mana, and atua. | shall approach the issues involved by considering how questions of reference and translatability arise for each of these types of talk in turn. To begin with, consider how we grasp the reference of a color term in learning a new language. If my teacher shares another language with me, she might offer its best linguistic equivalent (an Maori whero ‘‘red’’). If we don’t have a language in common, she might point to various objects and say whero to me until I comprehend that it is their color that they have in common.? Or I might have a color chart and ask her to name its segments. I will probably be puzzled if some of the whero segments seem “‘orange’’ to me and others “‘red,’’ until I realize that whero and ‘‘red’’ are not exactly co-referential in Maori and English. If I am not particularly interested in color terminology, I might try to work all of this out in some more approximate and casual way, although this will be difficult if, as sometimes

happens, the ‘‘color’’ terms in this particular language also refer to other attributes—texture perhaps, or freshness. The point is that in learning words like whero, the process is close to sensory experience, and the terminology can be worked out by trial and error ostension and by reference to individual examples. Animals are a slightly different matter. Dogs were common in early Maori communities, so I would learn kurii ‘‘dog,’’ and probably by ostension to partic-

ular examples. Since there were no other animals in New Zealand like dogs it would not be difficult to learn to apply kurii consistently to dogs, even though kurii differed slightly from European ‘‘dogs.’’ The names of other creatures with habitats more remote from human communities might be learned on hunting and fishing expeditions, or by actively seeking them out and testing names collected in lists or texts against individual examples. Ostension plays a role here, as does the possibility of verbal description of rare and inaccessible creatures as a substitute for direct sensory experience. The story is complicated further by the common use of hierarchical taxonomies in talking about creatures. In Maori, for instance, I will have to learn that kereruu and kuaka are both kinds of manu, along with many other bird species. This requires a more sophisticated analysis of ostension, so that when I point to a pigeon and am told kereruu, to a godwit and am told kuaka, yet to both I am told manu, I do not conclude that these answers are contradictory but rather that there are different levels of naming involved. Ultimately, the classification of animals refers to physical entities that can be pointed

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 57

and direct.* |

at, even if the processes of learning and naming are not always straightforward With kinship, however, we are not naming sets of individual entities, but rather sets of relationships among them. If someone points to an individual woman and Says whaea, it is not she who is being named, but rather her relationship to junior kinsfolk, as ‘‘mother’’ or ‘‘aunt’’ in our terminology. In learning to talk about kinship in Maori one must find out about biological relationships between particular individuals, how these are mapped under particular kin descriptions, and where biology is transcended either metaphorically or by reference to other social categories. This requires a lot of extra talk; nevertheless, in kinship as in the clas-

sification of creatures and colors, the terms finally refer to entities, even though ° in kinship there is always more than one set of entities involved within the referential scope of any term. These entities can be pointed to, or represented diagrammatically on genealogical charts as named individuals in particular locations. For tapu, mana, and atua, though, ostension is of limited use, and there is no

_ systematic alternative description language at hand. For instance, I may be told that some activities, people, and places are tapu, but nothing in their observable features will tell me what tapu means. In fact tapu can be applied to almost anything at one time or another. Even if I speak Maori quite fluently, I might not grasp the meaning of tapu, although probably I will have learned something about its behavioral implications. Some first-language equivalent—‘‘sacred’’ or ‘‘forbidden’’—may have been adopted as a rough guide for behavior, but that is not a good account of tapu. The difficulty is not only that there are no simple real world referents for tapu close to hand, but there are also no close equivalents for this word within my world of thought. Yet I can hardly understand Maori without

grasping what fapu means. an

With tapu and related words we have moved to a level in Maori discourse where the relation to sensory experience is quite indirect. Quine (1960:42) talks about a ‘‘gradient of observationality’’ in English language accounts from color and animal terms, to kinship and words like ‘‘bachelor,’’ and finally to theoretical sen-

tences such as ‘‘ ‘Neutrinos lack mass’, or the law of entropy, or the constancy of the speed of light’’ (1960:76). On a related theme, Einstein (1954:294) speaks of theoretical layers, where the theorist begins with concepts close to sensory experience, but works to unite these logically in theories whose successive accounts move further and further away from direct sensory contact with the world. Western science, he argues, begins with a project of measuring and enumerating the physical world in a mathematical description language, and ends with talk of atoms, relativity, and mass, etc. that is founded on this primary base. In this sense, tapu, mana, atua, and related words in Maori are like theoretical terms. They arise from an explanatory project which in this case takes the physical experience of mating, reproduction, and growth, and from that base develops a genealogical description language to account for the relations among entities of all kind (people; their ancestors and ancestor-gods; plants and animal species; and phenomena such as the stars, sky, earth, the sea, land, the mountains and the wind) and the emergence of the cosmos itself. Within this description of reality these words have a rich range of reference; outside of it, however, it is difficult to discover to what exactly they refer. Like ‘‘entropy,’’ ‘‘neutrinos’’ or ‘‘mass’’ they are highly the-

ory-dependent, and correspondingly difficult to interpret and translate. ,

58 Anne Salmond For reasons such as these, Quine concluded that the farther we get away from , sentences grounded in direct sensory experience, the less sense it makes to talk of good and bad translations, for above all, theoretical sentences fall in with Wittgenstein’s dictum that ‘‘understanding a sentence means understanding a language’’ (Quine 1960:76). While I agree with Quine’s general points about the difficulties of radical translation, I think that good and bad translations of theoretical sentences can be discussed, precisely by trying to understand the language of which they are a part. Historians and philosophers of science do this for scientific terms within the tradition of discourse of which science is a part. Anthropologists may do this for terms such as tapu and mana by investigating their import in Maori, through Maori language; or by examining theirmeaning fromtrans- — lated texts, and from a vantage-point essentially outside that epistemological tra-

dition. Most anthropological discussions of tapu and mana have followed the second strategy; I think that better translations of tapu, mana, and atua can.be

achieved by an increased sophistication in the first.

Tapu and Mana , A difficulty in arriving at better translations of tapu and mana is their long history of use in a range of European texts. Tapu and mana were borrowed into the international literature of comparative ethnology from other Oceanic languages, and they are also important vocabulary items in a New Zealand-focused literature

of European descriptions of Maori life. In these non-Maori linguistic contexts : they have acquired meanings that may obscure their original significance, and that may act as a barrier to accurate interpretation. Before seeking better translations

exchange.

of tapu and mana, it is important to understand this history of cross-linguistic

Tapu and Mana in Anthropology

‘*Taboo’’ entered English from cross-language learning during Cook’s voyages to the Pacific, and was first used in print in the 1785 account of Cook’s third voy-. age, when he described a visit by a high chief of Tongatapu and his entourage on board the Resolution: When dinner came upon table, not one of them would sit down, or eat a bit of anything that was served up. On expressing my surprise at this, they were all taboo, as they said; which word has a very comprehensive meaning; but in general, signifies that a thing is forbidden. Why they were laid under such restraints, at present, was not explained. [Beaglehole 1969:286]

Whether the term came into the sailors’ vocabularies from Tongan, or on earlier voyages from Tahitian or Maori tapu (since ‘‘p’’ and **b’’ are phonemically indistinct in these languages) is not known.° Later in the third voyage ‘‘taboo’’ was also applied to Hawaiian restrictive practices, although the Hawaiian term is kapu; taboo had already become a pan-Polynesian approximation. During the Ha. walian stay the sailors’ first working translation—roughly *‘forbidden’’—was refined, with alternatives added where necessary to account for other usages, and before long they were using taboo to protect themselves against unwanted local interference. Their linguistic learning was approximate and tailored to their own requirements, and there is no evidence that they had any clear idea of how taboo might fit into Tahitian or Hawaiian ideas of the world.

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds | 59 When taboo was borrowed into commonplace English, the semantic transference was just as loose. By the 1820s ‘‘taboo’’ was being used in England as a rough equivalent for ‘‘forbidden,’’ for instance by Miss Mitford in 1826: ‘‘The mention of her neighbors is evidently taboo, since . . . she is in a state of affront with nine-tenths of them’’ (Murray 1919:12), or by Charlotte Bronte in 1849: “The gentlemen . . . regarded me as a ‘tabooed woman’ ’’ (Murray 1919:13). Steiner (1956:51) has suggested that “‘taboo’’ became an invaluable exotic import into the Victorian lexicon, providing a handy short label for the pruderies and prohibitions with which that society was riddled. Given this. background it is not surprising that when taboo began to be fashioned into a technical term in cross-

cultural comparison, the notion of prohibition was central. The word’s range of reference was readily expanded from usages in particular Polynesian societies, to all of Polynesia, and then to the rest of the world.° In the process the term was drawn into debates that had little to do with Polynesia, and that shaped its meaning in ways driven by Western preoccupations and theories.

| In The Golden Bough, for example, Frazer offered a rationalist interpretation of taboo as “‘negative magic’’ based on prohibitions, an opposite to the ‘‘positive magic’’ of sorcery and a pivotal term in his evolutionary scheme of the development of human thought from magic to religion to science. In his writings on Semite religion, on the other hand, Robertson Smith used taboo for those ‘‘primitive’’

restrictions marked by ideas of contagion and supernatural dread, which he wished to set apart from “‘later developments of the idea of holiness in advanced religions’’ (1889:152). Despite their differences Frazer and Robertson Smith each used Polynesian examples (including Maori ones) to illustrate their particular notions of taboo. Both also extended the term freely to prohibitions in other societies, for instance Robertson Smith: ‘“Among the Semites the dove was most holy, and he who touched it became taboo for a day’’ (1889:450) or Frazer, “In Uganda the father of twins is taboo for some time after birth; among other rules he is forbidden to kill anything or see blood’’ (1922:265). Levy-Bruhl’s account of taboo as ‘‘a kind of barrier, a sort of mystic sanitary cordon which arrests an infection that is of an equally mystic nature’’ (1973:292) is close to that of Robertson Smith, but shaped to fit his notion of primitives as moving around in a fear-ridden metaphysical haze. Radcliffe-Brown’s definition, in his 1939 Frazer lecture on Taboo, is characteristically lucid and clinical: “*A ritual prohibition . . . a rule of behaviour which is associated with a belief that an infraction will result in an undesirable change in the ritual status of the person who fails to keep the rule’ (1939:9). Radcliffe-Brown also protested the difficulties that had arisen in discussions of taboo from its combination of Polynesian and technical meanings: The use of the word taboo in anthropology for customs all over the world which resemble in essentials the example given from Polynesia seems to me undesirable and inconvenient. There is the fact already mentioned that in the Polynesian language the word tabu has a much wider meaning, equivalent to our word ‘‘forbidden.’’ This has produced a great deal of confusion in the literature relating to Polynesia owing to the ambiguity resulting from two different uses of the same word. [1939:7— 8]

Mead (1934:502—505) made a similar point, and she recommended that tabu be restricted to prohibitions which, if broken, led to automatic punishment without external mediation, and that idiosyncratic Polynesian usages should be stripped from the term if it were to be used for comparative purposes.

60 | Anne Salmond These examples may suffice to illustrate the struggles over the semantics of taboo that occurred in the earlier anthropological literature. Attempts to use taboo as an ideal type for cross-cultural comparison foundered for want of a secure referential basis. Tapu is a theory-dependent term in Polynesian languages that was first borrowed into English in a very approximate way, and efforts to employ it as a technical term in anthropology, where the theories were fluctuating, were bound

to end in confusion.®

Unlike taboo, mana never became a common word in English.” Perhaps because of this the theoretical flirtations with this term were somewhat less intense. It is first noted in English texts in a short Mangaian vocabulary collected during.

Cook’s third voyage, with the entry ‘‘manna Great or powerful as adjunct to Er- : eekee [high chief]’’ (1785:178), but Codrington introduced it into the ethnological vocabulary: The religion of the Melanesians consists, as far as belief goes, in the persuasion that there is a supernatural power about belonging to the region of the unseen; and as far as practice goes, in the , use of means of getting this power turned to their own benefit. . . . There is a belief.in a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for good and evil, and which is of the greatest advantage to possess or control. This is Mana. [1957:118—119]

It appears that Codrington took the word mana from Mota, one of the Banks Islands languages, and generalized it into a term for ‘*supernatural power’’ in all of Melanesia, although relatively few Melanesian languages have mana in their vocabularies.!° Mauss (1950:108—121) adopted mana in this generalized form as a mnemonic for a concept which he argued could be discovered in Madagascar, North America, Australia, India, and ancient Greece. Mauss interpreted mana as an activity, an ether, a force or a milieu, once universal in the world, which is the original basis of magical thought. Durkheim took this interpretation and much of Mauss’s comparative material on mana, and refashioned mana into an anony-.

mous, immanent, enduring and impersonal force, the exemplar of ‘‘The Totemic Principle’’ which is the collective force of the clan itself and the ultimate foundation of religion (1915:188—237, 265-267). There were other universalist accounts of mana, including Marett’s ingenious definition of ‘‘Taboo as Negative Mana’’ (1914), but these heady heights of theorizing could not last. When the reaction came it took the form of a descent into

ethnographic sobriety, with increasingly specific and detailed accounts of mana in particular Oceanic societies and languages by Hocart (1914, 1922), Capell (1938), Hogbin (1936), and Firth (1940). In his exemplary description of mana

(or manu) in Tikopia, Firth spelled out the new position: | The theoretical structures of Marett, Durkheim, Herbert and Mauss . . . have added much more to our understanding of primitive religion in general than to the clarification of the concept of mana itself. . . . By giving a contextualized description of the native usage of the mana-concept I hope to clarify its precise meaning at least for this particular community. [1940:487-488]

I share Firth’s caution, not because the prospects of comparative anthropology are unalluring, but because theory-dependent terms like tapu and mana seem most difficult to compare. There is no alternative description language to act as arbiter, nor any close connection with sensory experience to serve as common ground. If I am correct in calling such words as tapu, mana, and atua ontological words, then it is entire world-theories that have to be compared, and in such an enterprise it is hard to know how to proceed. Accordingly, I shall return to the less ambitious

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 61 project of understanding such words within their own language and its practical

life, a task that seems difficult enough. |

Tapu, Mana, and Related Words in Maori The puzzlement faced by Einstein’s archaeologist is pertinent to this project because words like tapu, mana, and atua now have a range of reference in Maori which has been influenced by Christianity and Western science as well as by traditional ideas. The world has shifted—not an unfamiliar thought in Maori—and

the implication of these words has moved as well. Fortunately, numerous early 4 Maori texts and a wealth of reports have survived which describe that world as it used to be. There are also continuities between the old world (Te Ao Tawhito) and the new (Te Ao Hou), and the old schools of learning have their modern inheritors. All the same we must not underestimate the world shifts that have occurred, and their impact on words such as tapu, mana, and atua, which refer to accounts of

: how reality works. J shall begin by examining how early European visitors to New Zealand tried to learn Maori meanings, because these examples set the work of earlier translators of tapu, mana, and atua, and the words themselves within the practical context of a changing tribal world. After this I shall turn to texts in Maori, all written quite late in this process of cross-cultural exchange, to see how far semantic reconstruction can proceed.

Early European Approaches to Tapu, Mana, and Atua In considering translatability, Quine took as his ideal case the situation of ‘‘radical translation,’ the translation of the language of a hitherto untouched people (1960:28). One might suppose the first visits of Europeans to New Zealand, a land mass so remote that it was the last place of any size on earth to be peopled, to be a perfect case in point. When Tasman came to the strait between the two main islands in 1642, he tried out a Tongan vocabulary on local people without success, and then resorted to other signals. Trade items were held up, gestures were made, ~ and when instruments which sounded ‘‘like moorish trumpets’’ (McNab 1914:21) were played from canoes, two trumpeters were ordered onto the decks of the Dutch ships to sound a reply. Unfortunately, the instrument that they had heard was a war-trumpet, and their musical exchange ended in disaster. Four of Tasman’s men were killed, and he sailed away, leaving the place-name ‘‘Murderers’ Bay’’ as a monument to miscommunication. Cook’s Royal Society expedition arrived next on the east coast of the North Island in 1769, accompanied by Tupaia,

a high priest of Raitatea, who quickly discovered that he could talk freely with Maoris—*‘notwithstanding they make frequent use of the G and K, which the people of Otaheite do not’’ (Parkinson 1773:88). Tupaia had traveled to other Polynesian islands and was able to shift from Tahitian to Maori with relative ease. At their first landfall at Turanga (Poverty Bay) he learned the names of the local gods, some place-names, personal names, and words for staple foods (Beaglehole 1968:569). Several weeks later at Uawa, Tupaia had a long conversation with a local priest,'’ and according to Banks, ‘‘they seemed to agree very well in their notions of religion, only Tupia was much more learned than the other and all his

62 Anne Salmond discourse was heard with much attention’’ (Beaglehole 1962 I:420). From these and other descriptions of Tupaia’s conversations with Maoris it is clear that he learned a good deal about local ideas relevant to tapu, mana, atua, etc., but of this the Europeans could grasp only fragments. Monkhouse records “"Eatua’’ as ‘‘god,’’ probably from the identical word in Tahitian, and in Tolaga Bay Cook jotted in his notes: **1. The Religion of the Natives bear some relation to the George Islands (Tahitians)—2. They have god of war, of husbandry &c but there

_ is one supreme god whom they call Tawney!* he made the world and all that therein is—by Copolation’’ (Beaglehole 1968:538). Otherwise, the journals record some place-names, a few personal names, and .

words for items with no precise English equivalents (e.g., haahow = kaakahu, , ‘‘cloak’’; patoo patoo = patupatu, ‘‘club’’; heppa/hippa = he paa, ‘‘a fortification’’; koomarra = kuumara, ‘‘sweet potato’’) which had become part of the shipboard vernacular. The vocabularies collected in New Zealand were short compared with those from Tahiti,!’ and focused on items close to sensory expe- . rience—body parts, common foods, counting to ten, common categories of person and a few odd verbs and nouns. The records of this voyage were rich in detailed descriptions, maps and sketches of physical phenomena, but there is no mention of tapu or mana, and major errors and misunderstandings still occurred in the gaps between the Europeans’ grasp of Tahitian, Tupaia’s grasp of Maori and English, and what Maori people actually said. The value of linguistic bridgeheads is confirmed, however, by the contrast between Cook’s records and those of de Surville’s expedition, which visited Doubtless Bay in 1769. Like Tasman, de Surville had no useful vocabularies on board, and during their two-week stay he and his crew used sign language and apparently learned no Maori at all.'* In his efforts to be friendly, de Surville placed a white ostrich feather on a chief’s head and tied a red ribbon round an old orator’s spear—_

unwitting flirtations with tapu which must have puzzled and disturbed local people,'> while reciprocal efforts at communication by Maoris left him unimpressed: ‘‘Anoldman. . . went on haranguing me continuously in a loud voice, and with-

out making a single gesture that would help me understand what he meant... . He annoyed me intensely because he never stopped, and was always looking me in the eye and speaking to me’”’ (Ollivier 1982:23). De Surville’s records are tentative and distant, reflect no grasp of Maori ideas, and only sketch the physical

aspects of life in Doubtless Bay.

Overall, then, Quine’s “‘gradient of observationality’’ seems to hold true for these and other early voyages. Short stays in particular harbors provided accounts of physical phenomena such as houses, gardens, canoes, weapons, and sometimes drawings of these and Maori names for them. Things that could be pointed at, especially body parts and foodstuffs, featured in the vocabularies, but aspects of life less accessible to the senses (e.g., notions of mana) remained elusive. Even the best of these cases of radical translation, Cook’s six-month expedition with its Tahitian high priest-interpreter and trained scientists on board, did not produce accounts of tapu or mana, although various members of the voyage noted places and objects of possible “‘religious’’ significance—a carved stone image in Poverty Bay, a hank of hair tied to a tree in Queen Charlotte’s Sound, an offering of kuumara in a stone enclosure described by Banks (Beaglehole 1962 II:34). Nor did Cook’s later visits, or the French expedition headed by du Fresne, which spent six weeks living in close contact with Maoris at the Bay of Islands in 1772, give any description of these words.

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 63 What the accounts do provide, however, are descriptions of the material conditions of existence in various Maori communities in the 1760s and 1770s, offering an invaluable baseline for the evaluation of later accounts. At first contact, kin-based communities of various sizes living in very different environments are

described, from seminomadic families in the fjords of the far south to larger _. hunter-gatherer communities in Queen Charlotte Sound, to wealthy and apparently peaceful agricultural-fishing communities on the East Coast, and densely settled agricultural-fishing communities in the Bay of Plenty and the Bay of Islands. Elders and aristocratic “‘chiefs’’ were everywhere respected, although their powers did not appear to be autocratic, and priestly experts were recognized, although their roles were not well understood. In some areas hostilities between “ small groups were endemic, and fortifications and weapons were very much in evidence, while other areas seemed peaceful. Local mobility in both peace and

war, especially by canoe, was everywhere rapid and efficient. In succeeding years, however, especially after European sealers and whalers began to work New

| Zealand waters, life began to change rapidly. Local economies were transformed by access to iron tools, European foods (including pigs and potatoes), and the requirements of European trade. Local people joined the crews of European vessels and traveled around the world. Local communities were devastated by introduced diseases and muskets in the hands of their traditional enemies. Visitors to New Zealand ports now had access to bilingual interpreters, longer vocabularies

were recorded,'® and more extensive conversations with Maori people became | possible. Even so, in 1805 John Savage was unable to confirm his suspicion that local prohibitions against having food anywhere near the head, or feeding oneself after having a haircut were somehow religious in nature, because local people refused to discuss those matters with him (1807:22—23). Ideas about the world inevitably shifted as tribal horizons became increasingly cosmopolitan, and it was not until these processes were well under way that Europeans and Maori could converse together with enough subtlety to discuss such matters as tapu and the way the universe works. The great irony of the cross-cultural history of these concepts is that the preconditions for European insight also proved to be the preconditions for their transformation, for no sooner did Europeans begin to grasp their significance than these ideas began to shift and change. - Thus it is both fitting and ironic that when the Maori word tapu'’ was first recorded it occurred in the records of the first major missionary expedition to New Zealand headed by Samuel Marsden. Marsden had begun to study Maori in Sydney with the help of Ruatara, a chief from the Bay of Islands who had learned English while crewing on whalers. In preparation for this expedition Marsden also had recruited Thomas Kendall, who was to become the schoolmaster and Maori linguist for the missionary settlement. When the Active left for New Zealand in

1814, the party included Marsden, Ruatara, Kendall, Tuhi (another bilingual Maori) and John Liddiard Nicholas. Nicholas spent much of his time during the voyage talking to Ruatara and other Maoris about Maori beliefs and mythology, and he wrote a vivid and detailed account of their nine-week visit to Northland. Nicholas had learned some Maori, and his ‘‘Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand’’ (1817) is full of anecdotes about tapu, for, as he wrote in his ‘“‘Supplementary Observations,’’ “‘it not only regulates their institutions, but likewise their daily labors, and there is scarcely a single act that they perform, with which this monotonous dissyllable does not interfere’ (1817 I[:309). Nicholas had been told

64 Anne Salmond on the Active about the omnipresent powers of the gods and something of the role of priests. Almost as soon as they landed at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands he began to describe instances of the powers of tapu at work, as in this passage where he recorded the Maori word for the first time: I observed a piece of wood stuck in the ground at the foot of a large tree, rudely carved and painted with red ochre. Wishing to ascertain for what purpose it was placed there, I was advancing towards it, when my companion, stopping short and crying out ‘‘taboo, taboo,’’ gave me to understand that a man was buried there, and desired me not to approach it. . . . I thought it right to comply, though on learning what the piece of wood was designed for, my curiosity was still more excited than at first. The word taboo, in the language of these people, means sacred, and the coincidence between _ rude and civilized nations in venerating the places where the dead repose, cannot fail to be inter- — esting to a man who takes a philosophical and comprehensive view of the human character. [1817 I:188-189]

Later at Kororareka, Nicholas described difficulties that the local people were having with a cock which kept roosting on the roof of a small ‘‘tabooed”’ building . (1817 I:211—212). In later anecdotes he mentions at least a dozen instances of taboo, including prohibitions against eating inside houses (1817 [:272—273); the way in which chiefs ate and drank without touching European vessels because of their tapu (1817:286—287); the tapu that prohibited a man from sleeping with another man’s wife (1817:369); some tapu land that was offered for sale, with the concomitant offer that the tapu would be taken off (1817 II:82); the tapu being raised from a priest’s comb that was traded to Nicholas (1817:119-122); and the stringent tapu surrounding the sick that was most vividly described in his account of the illness and death of Ruatara. Nicholas, and presumably others of the missionary party, had already begun to argue with Maori people over tapu. For example, in an early debate between Nicholas and Tuh1: Itoldhim . . . that taboo taboo was all gammon. But I soon found that opinions imbibed in infancy, and cherished to the period of manhood, were as difficult to be eradicated from the minds of the New Zealanders, as from those of Europeans; for turning sharply round to me, he replied, that ‘‘it was no gammon at all; New Zealand man’’ said he, ‘‘say that Mr. Marsden’s crackee crackee (preaching) of a Sunday is all gammon.’’ ‘‘No, no’’ I rejoined, “‘that is not gammon, that is miti,”’ (good). ‘‘Well then,’’ retorted the tenacious reasoner, ‘‘if your crackee crackee is no gammon, our taboo taboo is no gammon’’; and thus he brought the matter to a conclusion; allowing us to prize our own system, and himself and his countrymen to venerate theirs. [1817 1:24]

When Ruatara lay dying at Rangihoua, however, the arguments began in earnest. Kendall and Nicholas visited Ruatara despite his tapu, and when his condition worsened his people ‘‘asserted that the Etua would not yet have fixed himself in the stomach of the chief, had they not in their unhallowed temerity suffered us to see him when he was tabooed against such visitors’ (1817 I1:166). They then attempted to debar the missionaries from further visits, but Marsden threatened to shell Rangihoua from the Active if they persisted, and he was supported by a young chief who argued that tapu was all lies, and should no longer be feared or regarded (1817:180). After this the missionaries visited Ruatara several times,

, - and gave him some wine and rice, and he returned to them some of their goods he had been keeping, including a pistol which subsequently blew up in Nicholas’s hands and hit him a severe blow on the forehead, to the great satisfaction of all of the Maoris who saw it (1817:191—192). The world in which tapu had been unquestioned had begun to change, and as

the missionaries became established, notions of tapu inexorably continued to

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 65 shift. The virtue of Nicholas’s account is that he described the elocutionary force of the word tapu in its pre-Christian context, and its use in everyday practice. Nicholas and Marsden left the Bay of Islands while Ruatara lay dying, but Kendall and others stayed on to establish a permanent settlement. Soon thereafter, when Ruatara died and his head wife committed suicide, Kendall was told that when Ruatara fell ill, a shooting star was seen in the sky and he suffered a mo_ mentary delirium. From this his priest had concluded that the Atua had entered him and declared him ‘*Taboo.’’ The Natives believe that something enters into the sick in the form of a Voracious Reptile and though unseen preys upon the Vitals until the Breath is gone. They believe also that as the Atua descends like a falling star so the pure part of the Soul becomes a Star in the firmament. This takes . place when the Eyes are wasted away. . . . As soon as Duaterra was dead the Natives called his Corpse Atua as they do all other dead people. Whenever we come near a piece of Taboo’d ground and ask the reason why it is taboo’d: if a person has been buried in it, we always receive for an Answer ‘‘Atua lies there.’’ [Kendall 1815:iv, n. 24]!8

Kendall went on to study Maori both in New Zealand and in England with the | help of a professional linguist, and he also attempted to grasp Maori metaphysical ideas through the Maori language, under the guidance of a local priest and by extensive reference to writings on early Middle Eastern religions. In 1824, after ten years in New Zealand, he wrote to the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society at some length about his findings, explaining that Maoris appeared to conceive of reality in three states of Existence: a First State of Union; a Second State of the Equal and Dual; and a Third State, the Triune. In the First State, the deity existed in a State of Union and was named first and last (first and last being symbolized in carvings or on the body by the thumb and little finger, and the great and little toe), where the properties of the Supreme Being exist but are not active. Thus The First State, the Eternal Word, or First and Last, may be said to remain shut up, covered, secret

or unrevealed. This state is . . . called by the New Zealanders a Tapu (pronounced Tabboo) . . . the combined, wisdom presence, power, sovereignty, greatness and equity of the eternal Supreme. [Binney 1968:172]

When the thumb and little finger of the Spirit in the First State are shut, this is a Tapu, and the waters of the universe are undivided. In this state _ The whole universe is represented as being one pure, white, virgin womb, or chaos, in which were included as in one undivided and undistinguished mass, all the seed from which in the beginning sprang creation. It may be compared to creation in pure Embryo. [1968:173]

This state is furthermore symbolized by a coiled serpent with his tail in his mouth, and in this position the serpent is also a Tapu. There is a heavy overlay of the Apocalypse and Pythagorean theory in Kendall’s interpretations (Binney 1968:125—157), and I do not know what to make of his speculations about the coiled snake and the closure of thumb and little finger, but his realization that the pragmatics of tapu were based on metaphysical thought, at least as far as the priestly experts were concerned, is well founded. No European writer ever again took tapu quite as seriously as Kendall had done, and the descriptions that follow are much more pragmatic and skeptical. Old New

Zealand, by Frederick Maning, for instance, which was much used as a source by Frazer and other comparative writers on taboo, is an action-based, anecdotal account of tapu and mana at work. Maning arrived at Hokianga in 1833, and his descriptions were based on his life among the local people as a trader and son-in-

66 Anne Salmond law to a Hikutu fighting chief. His book was drafted in the late 1850s when he had begun to regret his earlier intimacy with Maoris, and his generalizations about tapu and mana are illustrated with vivid, half-mocking memories of past events. Maning describes the tapu of the well born, which extended to all of their possessions and everything they touched; the virulent tapu of death, the tapu_of war, _ the priests’ tapu and their power to act as mediums for the dead, the tapu by which a chief claimed desirable goods by naming them after parts of his body, and local

, tapu on the sea-bed where a taniwha ‘‘guardian monster’’ lived, or on fields of growing crops. He explained fapu as an early form of law and linked it with muru, the practice of seeking restitution for offenses against one’s own mana or that of . -

one’s family by institutionalized plundering. The tone of his account can best be ; captured by quoting from one of his stories, when he described how he once came under a death tapu after unthinkingly picking up a skull that had washed out of a

sandbank. His horrified companions refused to come near him, and when they saw him sit down to eat shortly afterwards, they abandoned him completely. After some days of isolation, a famous tohunga approached him and carried out a tapuraising ceremony. Maning describes its aftermath: I felt a curious sensation . . . like what J fancied a man must feel who had just sold himself, body and bones, to the devil. . . . He stood back and said ‘‘Have you been in the house?’’ Fortunately I had presence of mind enough to forget that I had, and said, ‘‘No!’’ “Throw out all those pots and kettles.’’ I saw it was no use to resist, so out they went. “‘Fling out those dishes’’ was the next command. ‘‘The dishes?—They will break!’’ ‘‘I am going to break them all.’’ Capital fun this out-

go the dishes: ‘‘and may the’’—I fear I was about to say something bad... . *‘Strip off your clothes.’’ ‘*What! Strip naked, you desperate old thief? Mind your eye!’” Human patience could bear no more. . . . I did ‘‘strip.’’ Off came my jacket. ‘‘How would you prefer being killed, old

ruffian? Can you do anything in this way?’’ [Here a pugilistic demonstration] ...‘‘Come on! — What are you waiting for?’’ said] . . . “‘Boy,’’ said he, gravely and quietly, and without seeming to notice my very noticeable declaration of war and independence, ‘‘don’t act foolishly; don’t go mad. No one will ever come near you while you have those clothes. You will be miserable here by yourself. And what is the use of being angry? What will anger do for you?’’ The perfect coolness of my old friend, the complete disregard he paid to my explosion of wrath, as well as his reasoning, began to make me feel a little disconcerted. He evidently had come with the . . . intention of getting me out of an awkward scrape. I began to feel that, looking at the affair from his point of view, I was just possibly not making a very respectable figure. . . . Let me not dwell on the humiliating concession to the powers of tapu. Suffice it to say, I disrobed, and received permission to enter my own house in search of other garments. When I came out again, my old friend was sitting down with a stone battering the last pot to pieces, and looking as if he was performing a very meritorious action. He carried away all the smashed kitchen utensils and my clothes in baskets, and deposited them in a thicket at a considerable distance from the house. (I stole the knives, forks, and spoons back again some time after, as he had not broken them). He then bade me goodbye, and the same evening all my household came flocking back; but years passed before anyone but myself would go into the kitchen, and I had to build another. [1863:125—128]

Despite his ambivalence, Maning captures the practical force of tapu better than any other European writer, and his account of mana is one of the earliest and still one of the best European expositions of that term. Mana, he says, has no close

equivalent in English and is extremely difficult to translate: Virtus, prestige, authority, good fortune, influence, sanctity, luck are all words which, under certain conditions, give something near the meaning of mana, though not one of them gives it exactly; but before I am done the reader shall have a reasonable notion (for a pakeha) of what it is. [1863:206]

True to his promise, he goes on to explain that the mana of a priest is proved by the success of his predictions; the mana of a doctor by the recovery of his patients; the mana of a warrior or of a fortified paa or a weapon by its success in

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds | 67 warfare; and the mana of a chief by his success in leading his people. Mana ‘‘sometimes means a more than natural virtue attaching to some person or thing . . . and capable of either increase or diminution, but from known and unknown causes’’ (1863:206). When Maning had a pet pig that would squeal and jump about before wet weather, it was regarded as a pig with mana that could _ foretell rain. Maning achieved these explanations without metaphysics but by ref-

erence to the pragmatic implications of tapu and mana, and in this he may have had much in common with many early Maoris as they lived their daily lives, with one crucial difference—they believed in atua and the powers of tapu, and he did not.

Te Ika a Maui, by the missionary Richard Taylor, was also extensively quoted . by the early ethnologists, but whereas Maning focused on the pragmatics of Maori words, Taylor was chiefly interested in Maori philosophy. Well educated, with an M.A. from Cambridge, Taylor worked closely with Maori chiefs and priests for many years, debating these matters with them and making an extensive col-

| lection of chants, proverbs, traditions, and explanatory accounts. Unlike Kendall and Maning, it is impossible to imagine Taylor as ever regarding tapu with anything more than benevolent disbelief, although his accounts are more lucid and systematic than theirs. Te [ka a Maui begins with a magnificent cosmological chant, which captures the essence of the philosophy fundamental to a proper understanding of tapu and mana:

Na te kune te pupuke From the conception the increase, Na te pupuke te hihiri | From the increase the thought, Na te hihiri te mahara From the thought the remembrance

Na te mahara te hinengaro ) From the remembrance the consciousness Na te hinengaro te manako. | From the consciousness the desire.

Ka hua te wananga | Knowledge became fruitful

Ka noho ia rikoriko | _ _ It dwelt with the feeble glimmering; Ka puta ki waho ko te po - It brought forth night: Ko te po nui, te po roa, The great night, the long night, Te po tuturi, te po i pepeke, The lowest night, the loftiest night. To po uriuri, te po tangotango, _ The thick night, to be felt,

Te po wawa, te po te kitea, The night to be touched

Te potewaia ~ . The night not to be seen Te po i oti atu ki te mate. _ _ The night of death.

~ Na te kore iai : From the nothing the begetting, Te kore te wiwia From the nothing the increase Te kore te rawea From the nothing the abundance,

Ko hotupu The power of increasing,

Ko hauora The living breath; Ka noho i te atea It dwelt with the empty space,

Ka puta ki waho, te rangi e tu nei. and produced the atmosphere which is

. above us.

Ko te rangi e teretere ana i runga o te whenua, The atmosphere which floats above the earth; Ka noho te rangi nui e tu nei, ka noho ia ata The great firmament above us, dwelt with the

owero . rangi of Heaven: tuhi early dawn,

Ka puta ki waho te marama And the moon sprung forth; Ka noho te rangi e tu nei, ka noho i a te wer- The atmosphere above us, dwelt with the heat,

| Ka puta ki waho ko te ra ] And hence proceeded the sun; Kokiritia ana ki runga, hei pukanohi mo te They were thrown up above, as the chief eyes

Ka tau te Rangi Then the heavens became light, Te ata tuhi, te ata rapa : The early dawn, the early day,

68 , Anne Salmond Ka mahina, ka mahina te ata i hikurangi. The mid-day. The blaze of day from the sky. .

Ka noho i Hawaiki The sky above dwelt with Hawaiki, and pro-

Ka puta ki waho duced land,

Ko Taporapora, Ko Tauwarenikau, Ko Kuku- Taporapora, Tauwarenikau, Kuku-paru, aru

Ko Wawaucatea, Ko Wiwhi-te-Rangiora. Wawau-atea, Wiwhi-te-Rangiora. _

[1855:14-16]

Taylor goes on to describe the emergence of the gods, of men, and of Maori notions of a cosmos built of physical layers. He tells of the separation of the Sky Father and the Earth Mother by their sons, the gods; of Maui, Taawhak1, and other great heroes; and he concludes his section on ““Cosmology’’: “‘But now these and | other heathen fancies are rapidly disappearing. The ancient abodes and haunts of

Taniwhas, Patupaearehe, are still pointed out, but their inhabitants have long since disappeared’’ (Taylor 1855:54). In the account of tapu that immediately follows, Taylor describes its practical effects almost without reference to the gods. His interpretation of tapu, which he defines as ‘‘A religious observance, established for political purposes’’ (1855:55), is socialized and functional, and, despite the quality of the material he gathered, his description ended with an epitaph: During by-gone ages [fapu] has had a wide spread sway, and exercised a fearful power over benighted races of men, until the stone cut without hands, smote this mighty image of cruelty on its feet, caused it to fall, and like the chaff of the summer’s thrashing floor, the wind of God’s word

has swept it away! [1855:64]

A close examination of these early descriptions of tapu, mana, and atua makes clear that translatability depends not only on the ease with which the phenomena referred to can be observed, but also on the practical and interpretive interests of the translator. Tapu, for instance, had everyday effects that an observer with some linguistic knowledge could interpret and describe, but the description of such | practical effects did not constitute or guarantee an adequate translation. There was also the question of how such words might fit into a broader structure of ideas. In - . the absence of any serious inquiry into Maori explanations of the world, the early translators of such words stayed either with an approximate gloss of their practical effects (e.g., for tapu, ““forbidden’’) or their nearest simple European equivalent (e.g., for tapu, “‘sacred’’). These translations had the virtue of being unpretentious, but they were also in some ways quite misleading—for instance tapu places and people were not always ‘‘forbidden,’’ nor to everybody. The translation ‘*forbidden’’ obscures the relational character of tapu, while the translation ‘‘sacred’’ _ has generated its own persistent puzzle of how ‘‘sacred’’ places or objects could | also be repellent or unclean. Even when serious studies of Maori language and cosmologies were made, this did not guarantee more accurate translations. Both Kendall and Taylor studied these matters devotedly. Even so, Kendall’s account of Maori ideas is confusing, and his struggle to reconcile Maori cosmology with biblical notions almost cost him his soul (in the opinion of his colleagues) and perhaps his sanity. At the same time, Taylor’s description of tapu is an attempt at its rhetorical defeat. While such accounts provide invaluable descriptions of tapu, mana, and atua in practical action, and offer linguistic bridgeheads to their interpretation, they also show that translation may prove treacherous. The concepts of tapu and mana were based on presuppositions (e.g., that atua exist; that they can enter objects and individuals; that they act in the world) that clashed with European notions of reality, and this conflict produced European descriptions of these words that were often contra-

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 69 dictory, partial, or confusing. The incoherence of many European translations of tapu and mana arises, it seems, from an interference between theories of being in the world.

Tapu, Mana, and Atua in Early Maori Texts An ethnosemantic approach suggests that a translator should try to enter the thought world in which tapu, mana, and atua are terms, and arrive at a translation from that location. This may lead to quite different views of reality, and the reference of such words might then be possible to grasp. Unfortunately, the experi-

ence of Maning and Kendall suggests that this attractive notion is by no means r easy to achieve. World theories are not just thought but lived, and where their presuppositions are contradictory, the passage from one such theory to another may prove profoundly confusing. Or if one holds fast to one’s own presuppositions, as Taylor did, clarity is preserved but translations (of tapu, for example) _ become polemical and incomplete. Even an original inhabitant of that thought world might have had difficulty in arriving at a perfect translation of tapu and mana. Early Maori translators who were fluent in English and were willing to discuss such matters with Europeans found that, in the process, their own notions of reality shifted. This was also true of the mission-taught Maori scribes who wrote the first accounts of Maori explanations of the world, as Te Rangikaheke made clear in a manuscript written in 1853: I te wa i whakapononga ai te ngakau o nga tangata pupuri i enei tikanga, i te wa hoki e mahara ake ana te ngakau no nga atua Maori ano to ratou mananga ake, me a ratou karakia Maori hoki, he uaua i roto i aua wa. A—ka whai kaha, ka whai toa, ka whaimananga. ’ I tenei wa ka tae mai te maramatanga o te whano-ke i patua nei ki tenei ao. . . . Anana, ka mana

kore inaianei. ; oe

Ahakoa,.ko nga tuahu tapu i mua, kua wehikore inaianei. Ko nga atua Maori whai mana i mua, kua

wehikore inaianei.

In the time when the people who practised these customs believed them; when they thought their mana and their incantations came from the Maori atua—it was difficult in those times. And—they had strength, and bravery, and mana. But now a different enlightenment has struck this world. . . . There is no mana now. Although the sacred shrines were once tapu, they are now no longer awesome. The Maori atua who once had mana, are now no longer feared.

. [Curnow 1983a:8-9]

The early Maori writers repetitively refer to these changes in their world, and reflect upon their practical consequences: I mua e mana tonu ana nga karakia, me nga tangata. No te taenga mai o te Rongopai, ka timata te mate. Na te noanga 0 nga tangata ka timata te mate.

In former times the karakia had mana, and so did the people. From the time of the arrival of the Gospel, sickness began. It was because the people had become noa that sickness started.

| [Shirres 1986:121]

Some semantic patterns emerge from these early texts—tapu, mana, and atua cooccur with talk of sacred shrines (tuuaahu), incantations (karakia), and a quality of fearsome awe (wehi). A logic of association between words starts to become

clear—mana and karakia alike come from the atua or gods to people, who, in consequence, had strength and bravery. When the gods, and derivatively the ka-

70 Anne Salmond rakia and the people, lost their mana after arrival of the Gospel, however, people | became noa (‘‘out of contact with the gods’’) and therefore vulnerable to sickness and disease. Faced with such an unfamiliar description of reality, Einstein’s suggestion that one should look for its primary terms and arguments and their relationship to experience seems helpful. In fact, the clearest statements about tapu, mana, atua, and related words come when Maoris are lamenting what they have lost. This is not surprising because at other times the meaning of these primary terms is simply assumed, for instance, in explaining the emergence of the cosmos, rituals, or karakia. The most elaborate statement of this kind comes from Te Matorohanga, a famous priest, whose teach- _

ings were written down by a young Maori scribe in 1865: Ahakoa kua pitopito te maunga mai o nga korero o nga Wharewaananga nei, i te tataki o te kete o nga taonga nei, ka mau etahi, ka horo etahi, ka rere ke etahi, ka tapiri mai etahi. I te mea kua heke haere te mana o nga whakahaere o nga karakia, o nga tapu, o nga atua, tae mai ki naia nei kua kore rawa atu he mana, kua rere ke nga mea katoa. Kua mutu nga tapu, kua ngaro nga korero tuturu, kua ngaro nga karakia kua kore e mohiotia i naia nei. No te mea ko te tapu te mea tuatahi, ki te kore te tapu kaore e mana nga mahi atua katoa: a ki te kore he atua kua waimeha nga mea katoa, kei te awhiowhio te rite o te tangata, o nga mahi, nga whakaaro, e pokaikaha noa iho ana i te whenua i naid nel. The teachings (koorero) of these Schools of Learning (Whare Wananga) are in shreds, because the basket of these treasures (taonga) has been pulled apart, so that some are kept and some are lost; some have changed and others have been elaborated. Because the mana of the conduct of the karakia (incantations), the tapu (pl.), and the atua (pl.) has declined, now there is no mana and everything has changed. The tapu (pl.) have ended, the ancient teachings (koorero tuturu) are gone, the karakia are lost and they are no longer known. Because tapu is the first thing, if there is no tapu all

the works of the gods have no mana, and if the gods are lost everything is useless—people, their actions and their thoughts are in a whirl, and the land itself becomes confused. [Smith 1913:12]

In this sad and passionate protest, Te Matorohanga says clearly that one can never understand tapu, mana, and atua in isolation. Tapu is the first thing, and - . without it the works of the gods have no mana. When the gods are lost, the world itself becomes chaotic, and people do not know how to think or behave. Mana emerges as a quality of action (mahi)—tts effective force—that comes from the gods, but without tapu even the works of the gods are robbed of mana. These

words are mutually defining, and between them they establish the essential patterns of the old Maori tribal worlds. From this account we begin to glimpse a possible translation of mana, but tapu and the gods remain elusive and obscure. To begin to understand these matters one must turn to the great cosmological chants, which tell of the creation of the gods, the place of tapu in the universe, and the relationship between gods and people. In the Maori manuscripts and published sources at least fifteen major cosmological chants are recorded, and others are still known to tribal experts. Tribal scholars in the ancient Whaare Waananga (‘‘Schools of Learning’’) held their

: own distinctive accounts of how the cosmos was formed and differentiated, and although these have common themes they also differed markedly in their order and detail. One such chant, collected by Taylor from Te Kohuwai of Rongoroa in 1854 and quoted above (Taylor notebook 10:179),!? tells how the universe began with a primal energy (fecundity, growth) that produced thought, consciousness, and then knowledge. This became fruitful and joined with glimmering to produce the various Poo (night), from which emerged the Kore, the void from

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 71 which all form and life is derived, and the wind of life that joined with space to form the atmosphere and the sky. The sky joined with the dawn to form the moon, with the heat to form the sun, and then the light which slowly blazed into the day. Finally, the sky joined with Hawaiki to make land, and the gods were born, and people. In Maori, the language of growth refers at once to people, plants, and cosmological process. Thus the genealogical expressions of such chants evoke _ everything from the creation of the cosmos to the growth of.a baby. Other chants, for instance one from Hamiora Pio of Ngati Awa, focus more explicitly on plant

growth as the language of cosmogenesis:

Te More (cause, tap-root) Te Weu | (hair, rootlet) TePu (origin, source, main stock of tribe, root)

Te Aka (Long thin roots, stem of climbing plant) Te Rea (growth) Te Wao-Nui (primeval Bush)

Kune (conception, pregnancy, growth) | TeTe Whe sound) Te Kore(noise, (creative void) Te Po (Night, the Unknown) Rangi (Sky Father) Papa (Earth Mother)

[Best 1976:62]

A few lexical examples help to illustrate the repetitive semantic parallels between genealogy and the growth of plants:

. tupu * generative force within individual

oS * growth * bud, shoot

tupuna * ancestor ~ : tho . ¢ that wherein lies the strength of a thing . ¢ umbilical cord ° lock of hair

¢ heart, kernel, pith

hika °¢copulate plant -

- © jine of descent

kawai ¢ shoot, branch of gourd or other creeper * pedigree, lineage

Still other chants begin with the atua singing (White 1887:17) or speaking the cosmos into life. In the first stage of these chants the cosmos itself is formed, and then the gods

are born. The creation of the gods is almost always linked with Rangi the Sky Father, but in one South Island chant he had six wives and in Kohuwai’s chant he mated with land in the form of Hawaiki. The most usual version, however, tells of Rangi the Sky Father and Papa the Earth Mother mating. Here is a summary

of this version from Nepia Pohuhu, a priest who taught at the same school of

learning as Te Matorohanga in 1865:

Ranginui (great sky) which stands above, felt a desire towards Papa-tua-nuku (the earth), whose belly was turned up; he desired her as a wife. So Rangi came down to Papa. In that period the amount of light was nil; absolute and complete darkness prevailed; there was no sun, no moon, no

stars, no clouds, no light, no mist—no ripples stirred the surface of the ocean; no breath of air, a complete and absolute stillness.

72 Anne Salmond And so Rangi-nui dwelt with Papa-tua-nuku as his wife; and then he set plants to cover the naked- | ness of Papa; for her armpits, her head and her body . . . for the body of the earth was naked. Subsequently he placed the upstanding trees of the forest, and now Papa felt a greath warmth, which was all-embracing. [Smith 1913:117]

Rangi placed insects, reptiles, crabs and shellfish on Papa, and then together they created their children the gods. These gods lived in crowded darkness between their parents until Taane forced Rangi and Papa apart, and in the quarrels that followed the brothers went their separate ways, and Taane climbed the layered heavens to fetch the design of the whare kura, the first tapu house of learning on earth; and ascended to the twelfth heaven on a whirlwind to bring back the three ‘‘baskets’’ of knowledge and two god-stones to earth as a source of karakia and effective power in war, gardening, wood-work, stone-work, and earth-work. His elder brother Whiro was so miserable ~~ about the great mana that Taane had won in these adventures (e pouri tonu ana mo te nui rawa o te mana e riro ana i a Tane-matua [Smith 1913:29]) that he attacked Taane in a series of battles in which he was defeated, and so Whiro descended to the underworld Rarohenga where he became the god of all disease. The remaining family of gods now began to search for a woman, and after much frustration they formed a body from earth on the mons veneris of their mother, and Taane breathed life into her nostrils. The woman was ritually named Hine-hau-one and Taane mated-with her, and they had a daughter Hine-titama, and Taane slept with his daughter. When Hine-titama discovered that her lover was also her father, she left him in horror and fled to Rarohenga. Taane followed her, crying, and as she left this world she called out to him ‘‘Tane e! E hoki ki ta taua whanau, ka motuhia e au te aho o te ao kia koe, ko te aho o te Po ki au’’ (1913:38)—‘*‘Taane! Go back to our children, for I have cut off the Cord of the world for you, and the Cord of the Underworld for me.’’ She entered Rarohenga and became Hine-nui-te-poo, the goddess of death, and Whiro’s wife. Hine-hau-one, Hine-titama and her sisters and her daughters with Taane were the source of the ira tangata (the human principle), for until that time only atua (gods) had existed in the world. Now the gods took control of earth and sky, then Tawhiri-matea went to the seventh layer of the sky to command the winds, Tama-te-uira became the guardian of all different forms of lightning, Para-whenua-mea married Kura and they made the sea, Tu-te-ahunga married Hine-peke and they produced all kinds of insects, and Takoto-wai married Tua-matua and they were the origin of all the rocks and stones. By the mating and reproduction of these and other gods the world was progressively differentiated, and within each family the children quarreled and went to their own place to live. Mangoo (shark) and Tuatara (the great lizard) for instance, debated whether to live on land.

or sea. Tuatara suggested that they should live on the land, Mangoo preferred the sea, and they argued bitterly until finally Mangoo said “‘Enough! You stay on shore as an object of disgust for people!’’ and Tuatara replied ‘‘AllI right! That will be my mana, I will live. As for you, you will be

hauled up with a hook in your mouth and thrown into the bottom of a canoe; your head will be broken with a fern-root beater, and you will be hung up to dry in the sun like a menstrual-cloth!”’ [Smith 1913:48]

In this account the priest, Pohuhu, described how Rangi and Papa’s children lived between them in darkness until the god Taane separated his parents and pushed sky and earth apart. From this time the cosmos was established as a world with twelve layered heavens above the earth, and twelve layered regions below it (or ten, fourteen, etc. in other versions). Pohuhu talked of the cosmos in a language of generation and growth, and it was by mating and reproduction that the phenomenal distinctions of reality were established. People were set within this

world as the children of Taane (‘‘man’’) when he mated with Hine, a woman formed by the family of gods from the body of their mother. All other phenomena including birds, plants, rocks, winds, insects, reptiles, and fish were also the children of the gods and the kinsfolk of people, and the genealogical relationships

among them were known. Taane provoked the structuring of the world by his temerity in separating Rangi and Papa, and he brought fapu in the form of karakia

and sacred knowledge from the heavens to the earth. From this he won great mana, which was passed on with the waananga (“‘knowledge’’) and the godstones to his descendants, to give them strength and courage within this world of

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 73 light. When tapu was lost with the coming of the Gospel, therefore, it was no minor conversion; as Te Matorohanga said, a world had toppled with its logic of kinship and relationship with the gods, karakia no longer worked and mana no

longer seemed the same. ;

‘““Tapu’’ and *“*mana,”’ then, first emerge in these accounts in connection with

_Taane’s exploits, and in two Ngai Tahu cosmological stories tapu is further ex-

plicitly associated with Taane: ;

ki mo te tapu. ~~ ,

Ano ka mutu te mahi a Tane i mahi ai kia pai te ahua o tana hakoro o Rangi, a mahia ana e ia nga

sayings) for the tapu. .

When Taane had finished making his father Rangi beautiful, then he made the laws (lit.: words,

[White 1887:37]

Naa Tane anoo te tapu, i kimihia e ia. Tapu belongs to Taane, he searched for it. [1887:137]

From these and Pohuhu’s statements it seems that tapu is essentially associated with both ancestral knowledge and human descent from the gods, and mana from | Taane’s cosmological achievements. In the context of the cosmological accounts, then, tapu seems to refer to active relationships between gods and people and the practices which govern these, while mana can perhaps best be translated as *‘effective’’ or “‘godly power to act.’’ I therefore will end this section by looking briefly at how tapu, mana, and atua were seen to work in human life.

Tapu and mana in human practice are extensively discussed in three manuscripts in the Grey collection (Auckland Public Library), one (Grey collection no. GNZMMSS 51) written in 1853 by Te Rangikaheke (Curnow 1983a, 1983b), and two (GNZMMSS 28 and 31) from the same collection (Shirres 1979). I shall com-

ment upon these-texts-in light of (1) material collected in a semantic search of William’s dictionary (1957) for words with meanings associated with tapu, mana, and atua, and (2) a computer concordance of tapu, mana, atua, and related words from the Pohuhu and Matorohanga teachings and from the three volumes of collected Maori chants (Vgaa Moteatea) (Ngata 1959, 1961, 1980; Smith 1913).7° Te Rangikaheke was a Te Arawa scribe who wrote extensive accounts of Maori life for Sir George Grey, a Governor of New Zealand, from 1849. He described how ancient knowledge (moohiotanga) and spoken narratives (kupu koorero) began when the world was covered in darkness. This knowledge continued to exist through successive aeons of the separation of earth and sky and the creation of the phenomenal world, and according to Te Rangikaheke as long as these narratives of the ancestors and gods continue to be passed on, the mana of the tapu and of the gods will be retained (Curnow 1983b:2). Te Rangikaheke described the var-

ious karakia or ‘‘ancestral things’’ (ngaa mea o ngaa tuupuna), which brought success in every conceivable activity: ““Nothing was left to chance by the ancestors of your writing friend. There were karakia for growing, for making peace,

1983b:3). -

for making things come your way, for making things abundant’’ (Curnow As a student learned these incantations in the Whare Tuunga karakia or **karakia-Establishing House,’’ his ‘‘backbone and his neck became strong’’ (Curnow 1983b:4), for these were the parts of the body where a man’s mana was kept (Williams 1957:177). He was filled with knowledge and ka whai ingoa nui ki nga waahi katoa, ‘“‘he had a great name everywhere’’ (Curnow 1983b:8). The question of mana is explored more explicitly in ‘‘Mana Maori for Maori Wars,’’ which describes the major tapu-raising rituals for birth, war-parties, har-

74 . Anne Salmond vesting kuumara, and haircutting (GNZMMSS 28). The unknown writer dis- } cusses how mana from the ancestors began when a child was conceived, and how

it was established for a chiefly child by a series of rituals that began one week after birth. In these rituals the priest called up the aristocratic chiefs, the gods, the mountains, and the forests of the child by karakia, and focused them in a koromiko branch which he then placed on the child’s head. This koromiko was described as a ‘‘mauri for the child’ (Shirres 1979:135), reserved for chiefly children only, and it was by this ritual that the chiefs’ children were dedicated to the gods and their mana was made permanent. The writer states that commoners had no mauri

(ko ngaa tuutuuaa .. . kaahore he mauri [Shirres 1979:135]), no gods at rest . within them and therefore no mana. This distinction between commoners and | chiefs was elaborated further in a discussion of a range of rituals, in particular the tapu of combing and cutting hair (GNZMMSS 31). Hair was conceived as a pathway for the gods to pass into the body, and haircutting was fapu to a degree that varied with the intensity of an individual’s communications with the gods: He tapu nui te kotikoti. He tangata anoo e rua wiki . . . he tangata nui te tapu e waru wiki ka noa. He rangatira nui ake ka neke ake inga marama e whaa. He tuutuuaa, toona tapu kiihai i heke akui ngaa raa e toru. E kore hoki e rite ake te tapu o te tuutuuaa ki too te rangatira tapu.

Haircutting was very tapu. With one man it lasts a fortnight . . . with a very tapu man it is eight weeks before he is moa. For a great chief it will last four months. But for a commoner, his tapu will not last longer than three days.

The tapu of the commoner is not like that of a chief. .

[Shirres 1979:147-148]

At important times such as birth, when the kuumara were harvested, after battle or when hair was cut, the gods were-summoned by karakia and everything became intensely tapu. The art of calling on the gods was studied in the Schools of Learn-

ing, and a person equipped with karakia and other such knowledge had great efficacy in practical affairs and therefore great renown. Mana, in this sense, was both efficacy from the gods and its human recognition in reputation and fame. Tapu was both the active commitment to particular gods and its recognition in restrictive practices and attitudes of awe. Maakutu or “‘sorcery’’ and the defeat and death of a great sorcerer Kuikii (“*a man of mana, a man who could maakutu’’ [Shirres 1979:158]) is discussed in GNZMMSS 31, which makes the further point that since in mana it was efficacy rather than morality that counted, the powers of the gods could be used for good or ill. Since not all gods were seen as good, their powers were evident equally in moments of horror as well as glory. Whether for good or ill, a man’s tapu, his relations with his gods and his source of mana, was greatly cherished and protected: ‘‘He does not forget, he thinks of it all the time, his tapu..He does not forget the good things he has; he thinks his most important possession is his tapu’’ (Shirres 1979:158).

On the basis of these texts a summary interpretation of tapu, mana, and atua can now be attempted, within the setting of other words that occur in their semantic field. Atua were the gods born from the union of Rangi and Papa and their

descendants, including any living beings who exhibited extraordinary powers. Thus chiefs of great mana could be termed atua, as could extraordinary phenomena or creatures that behaved in inexplicable ways. Tapu. was the state of active relation between gods and the human world, regulated by knowledge brought to

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 75 earth by Taane when the world was still being formed, and taught to his descendants in karakia (incantations) and knowledgeable accounts within the sacred schools of learning. Called by karakia into the world of light, the gods traveled

along pathways (ara) of lineage, hair or ritual lines or rods, coming to rest in abstract images, stones, receptacles or people, there to help or heal their descendants or to attack their descendants’ enemies and afflict them with death and dis-

ease. The semantic parallels between lineage, hair, ritual rods and lines are made Clear in the patterns of the Maori lexicon: |

aho ¢ string, line i * woof, cross threads of a mat

°¢ medium genealogy, line of descent x for an atua

ahorangi _ ¢ teacher in the school of learning

Kaupapa ¢ trail,* groundwork track of acloak ..

* medium of intercourse with atua * sticks used in rites of divination ¢ navel string

rope ; ©* strength

kaha * boundary line of land ° line of ancestry

¢ line of which niu rods set in divination |

kanoi ¢ strand of a cord, rope

¢ authority, position ° weave the aho taahuhu of a garment

| * trace one’s descent

urUu . I * head ¢ chief : . ¢ hair of head.

| II * enter, possess as a familiar spirit

urutoko * pole erected on a shrine

Whakapapa or genealogy was conceived of as a direct line of communication with the gods, channeled through the hair and the head. Those in senior descent lines from the gods or those dedicated to their service were always more or less imbued with their presence, while the places which the gods frequented (tuuaahu ‘‘shrines,’’ for example, and burial grounds: ‘‘Atua lies here’’) or the times when they were called upon to help their human kin were also intensely tapu. Those who were dedicated to the gods could move into tapu situations freely, although this made them still more tapu or imbued with godly power and dangerous to other people. Tapu people were much freer than others in their communication with the gods (which makes ‘‘forbidden’’ a poor translation for tapu), and because of their

access to the gods they had great mana or mana atua, ‘‘effective or godly power.’’! These communications between people and the gods were possible because in Maori definitions of reality two dimensions of existence were distinguished, one readily accessible to the senses where people operated most of the time, and the other a suprasensible ‘‘world’’ inhabited by ancestors and gods. Humans had both sensible and suprasensible existence, as body (tinana) and spirit (wairua). The wairua could move about in the suprasensible world in dreams and return there at death, while gods—who were primarily suprasensible—could enter and inhabit entities in the sensible world. Thus when chiefly children were born,

76 Anne Salmond the gods were summoned and transferred through a karamu branch into their bodies via the head, and then passed into the mauri to rest as a permanent source of mana or effective power to act. It was within this description of reality that tapu was understood as the presence of the gods, the mauri as their immaterial abiding place, and the wairua as the suprasensible self. Whenever gods were present, contradictory powers (for instance women in the case of male gods, or cooked food in all cases) had to be kept away until exchanges with the god were over, lest a

hara (offense against the gods) be committed. In all such situations the spoken word tapu, like a carved stick daubed with red ochre, a fence around a sacred _ place or restrictive eating practices, announced that here the gods were in active

contact with the world. Those situations, people, or places not under the constraint of godly presence were termed noa (*‘free,’’ “‘unrestrained,’’ ‘“‘common’’), but like tapu, noa was always relative, because the gods were always around. People and gods continuously exchanged messages, by tohu (‘‘signs’’ interpreted by priests), visions and

dreams from the gods, or by karakia and rituals from people. While men had particular access to Taane, Tuu-matauenga (the god of war), the sky father and knowledge associated with their realms, women had particular access to Hinehau-one, Hine-nui-te-poo, Papa-tua-nuku the earth mother and the knowledge of birth, death and arts such as weaving (closely associated semantically with the continuity of genealogical lines). Thus the tapu of women’s genitals could be used to cancel the tapu of men’s activities (after war parties for instance), but in most tapu-raising rituals a senior male and a senior woman together ate ritual food cooked in separate ovens, to loosen, lighten, and lift the presence of the gods. This interpretation of tapu, mana, and atua differs from Shirres’s (1979) in holding that tapu is a Maori word with a unitary set of meanings. It also differs from the Hansons’ (1983) reconstruction of Maori logic by insisting that genealogy or whakapapa must be pivotal to any such account, and from Keesing’s __. (1984, 1985) work on Kwaio mana by saying that while Maori mana focuses on practical success it still must come from the gods.?? Finally, my interpretation differs from Valeri’s (1985) account of Hawaiian kapu and akua by arguing that in Maori thought people are only one part of reality,*? and that any European interpretation which projects the gods from people has collapsed explanation into translation, and simply turned the Maori universe on its head.

Conclusion J have shown above that ontological words such as tapu, mana, and atua cannot be described by listing their external referents, nor by reference to superficially similar words. Rather, they are terms pivotal to a particular account of being in

the world: Tapu and mana, however, have also been adopted as terms in nonMaori vocabularies, and consequently in this analysis their use has been examined

in three main fields of discourse: Firstly, the European ethnological literature where attempts were made to fashion tapu and mana into technical terms for cross-cultural comparison; secondly, their emergence as vocabulary items in a literature focused on New Zealand and arising from Maori-European exchanges; | and finally, their use in early Maori manuscripts and their place within the semantic patterns of the Maori lexicon. Each of these literatures has its own intended audiences and interpretive imperatives, but there has also been trade

Tribal Words, Tribal Worlds 77 among them—for instance the comparative ethnologists borrowed extensively from New Zealand European writings about Maori life, while some of the New Zealand writers read the ethnological literature and/or drew extensively on collections of Maori manuscripts. Most of these manuscripts, in turn, were produced specifically for interested Europeans. Any contemporary scholar writing on tapu, mana, and atua will be influenced by past translations, not all of which will be

_ helpful, and in the interests of interpretive clarity, therefore, I have examined

them with some care. |

In the end, however, as Goodenough (e.g., 1970:113) has insisted, the touchstone of any translation must be the words themselves within their original world of reference. Tribal words and especially words such as tapu, mana, and atua,

like the worlds that give them meaning, have patterns of significance that words ° in other languages can never quite convey. Therefore: 7

Mauria ko oku painga Take what is-good in this and

Waiho ko oku wheru leave the rest behind Notes —

'From an anthropological perspective, it seems more likely that both characteristics of the physical world and underlying patterns of human knowledge, language, and social relations (some of which may be universal) place particular constraints on theory building. Some of these constraints may be irreducible, others may yield to inquiry and identification. Thus, both materialist and interpretive critiques of human accounts point to the interest of reference as a creative relation between language and

the world. ;

7A sea-sky horizon for instance. 3Although see Bulmer (1968) on the possibility that color terms may be differently used in varied

phenomenal domains. - ce

“My warm thanks to Ralph Bulmer for his help in thinking through this section, and for access to his unpublished paper, ‘Field Methods in Ethnozoology.”’ >I suspect that ‘‘taboo’’ came from Tahitian tapu, since on several of Cook’s voyages including the first there were Tahitians on board, and much of the cross-language learning was mediated through _ their interpretations. °Cf. Frazer (1888:15) ‘“Taboo is the name given to a system of religious prohibitions which attained its fullest development in Polynesia, but of which under different names traces may be discovered in most parts of the world.”’ 7See also Durkheim (1915:300): ‘‘We have already had occasion to show how hard it is to translate a strictly local and dialectical expression like this into a generic term. There is no religion where there are not interdictions . . . so it is regrettable that the consecrated terminology should seem to make so universal an institution into a peculiarity of Polynesia.’’ SWhich they did, I think, in Steiner’s (1956) fascinating but inconclusive survey account. °Although in New Zealand English it serves as an equivalent for ‘‘prestige.”’ 0A fact of which Codrington was aware; see also his comments on the linguistic difficulties of discussing “‘religious’’ topics with local peoples (1957:118). ''Probably from the Te Raawheoro school of learning at Uawa (Tolaga Bay). '? Added in his clerk’s hands in one manuscript version. '3The Endeavour expedition had spent an ecstatic four months in Tahiti just before their arrival in New Zealand, and some of the people—notably Banks, his servant, Solander and Parkinson—had learned to speak Tahitian after a fashion. 7 '?No Maori words are recorded anywhere in the journals, and sign language was still being used

on'SAtheir last day in Doubtless Bay. . chief’s head was intensely tapu, and white feathers symbolized his mana; red was the tapu

color, and the act of tying a thread to something signaled a transfer of one’s own mana. '6For instance by King (1795) and Savage (1807). '7The word occurs in the phonetic transcription of one of the six chants recorded by Samwell in

Queen Charlotte’s Sound during Cook’s voyage (Beaglehole 1967 II:996-997)—but Samwell apparently had no notion of what he was hearing. 'SMy grateful thanks to Judith Binney for access to her typescript of Kendall’s 1815 journal.

78 Anne Salmond '°T am very grateful to Father Michael Shirres for generously sharing this and other manuscript material.

201 warmly thank my colleague Cleve Barlow for access to his computer concordances of these works, and for his wise assistance in Maori knowledgeable matters. 1 Mana was often spoken of in Maori as possessed by particular individuals or objects—the idiom used was whai-mana (have mana). 2 Among other things Keesing (1984) criticizes ethnographers of the Maori for ‘‘portraying a mystical world view that seems as much a product of European as Maori imagination, by emphasizing the noun usage of mana and thus reifying the concept, while Maori texts and illustrations reveal many Stative and verbal usages’’; but his charge appears to be inaccurate. Computer concordances of Maori texts in all three volumes of Ngaa Moteatea, Te Kauae Runga, and Selected Readings in Maori yield 54 examples of mana, 44 used as a noun, 7 as verbs, and 3 as adjectives. Interestingly, for tapu, on the other hand, the adjectival and verbal usages dominate—of 56 occurrences of tapu in the same corpus, 45 are adjectival, 12 verbal, and only on 19 occasions is it used as a noun. Thus tapu in Maori most commonly seems to refer to a state of dedication or active relationship with a god or gods. To argue, as Keesing (1984, 1985) has done about whether mana (or tapu) in Maori is a stative, substantive, or abstract verbal noun simply confuses the issue of translatability by introducing specifically European notions of state, substance, and abstraction into the discussion of Maori semantics under the guise of grammar. 3Incidentally, while Valeri (1985:97) is much influenced by Johansen’s notion (1958) of mana in Maori as ‘‘grounded in a philosophy of life based on the idea of growth’’ or ‘‘tupu,’’ the word tupu rarely co-occurs with mana in these early Maori texts, and I believe that Johansen exaggerated its importance in early Maori thought. Growth is chiefly significant in Maori as a metaphor associated with the truly central concept of whakapapa or genealogy.

LAND, SEA, GENDER, AND GHOSTS

~ ~ON WOLEAI-LAMOTREK William H. Alkire In generalizing about Micronesia, Lessa (1987:498) has noted that its traditional religions were ‘‘a melange of many elements: celestial and terrestrial deities, nature spirits, demons, and ancestral ghosts. . .’” My Micronesian research on the central Caroline coral islands of Lamotrek, Woleai, Elato, Satawal, and

' Faraulep left me with a similar impression: that is, of a belief system marked by , a multitude of somewhat vaguely classified ghosts, gods, and spirits (yalus). During my first visit to Lamotrek in 1962, I thought much of my difficulty in sorting out these entities derived from the recent conversion of the islanders by a Jesuit missionary (in 1953) and the consequent unease residents had in talking at length about former beliefs (Alkire 1965:114). However, Lessa’s work:on Ulithi and Burrows and Spiro’s on IJfaluk in the late 1940s, before many residents on either of those atolls had become Christian, did not seem to provide any more “‘orderly”’

inventory of yalus for those closely related islands. ! | Subsequent work has convinced me that my early confusion derived not so much from a lack of data as from an incomplete understanding or application of several fundamental structural principles prevalent within central Carolinian culture. These are principles that have emerged during analysis of a variety of other central Carolinian cultural domains.” It now seems appropriate to examine central Carolinian beliefs concerning yalus with the following points in mind: (1) central Carolinians believe that an elemental bond or identity exists between land and people and between brother and sister; and (2) a complementary distribution of power obtains within the basic dyads of the culture, specifically between land and sea, internal and external domains, and males and females. Let me begin by establishing the general importance of each of these principles within Woleai-Lamotrek culture before examining the more specific domain of spirits, ghosts, and gods.

People, Land, and Sea on Woleai-Lamotrek Rank and status in the central Caroline atolls is based primarily on control of land. Land is held and worked by members of matrilineages or their descent lines. On any particular island control of land is related to a putative order of settlement. Priority of settlement and primogeniture within descent groups determine whether one clan is ‘‘chiefly,’’ because it was a founding clan on the island, or ‘‘nonchiefly,’’ as a later arrival or junior descent line. To appreciate fully this distinction one must understand that all land in the central Caroline atolls is owr:4. There is—and apparently from the first day of set-

80 William H. Alkire tlement has been—no unowned land. This is not difficult to accept given the small

size of these atolls. Oral narratives of discovery and settlement state that the dis- | coverers claimed the whole of the island they found and subdivided it among the member lineages or descent lines represented on the canoe.? According to these charters the individuals on these founding canoes were brothers, sisters, husbands and wives. Thus islands almost invariably were divided either between two sib-

lings (establishing senior and junior descent lines), or between two clans (since

husband and wife were necessarily of different clans). a

Central Carolinians are matrilineal and matrilocal peoples, and membership in a landholding lineage depends on uterine links.* This promotes a lasting brother/ __ sister unity, for while a man’s rights to land depend on descent from his mother, __ for much of his adult life (after his mother’s death), his access to land depends on , his sister (who continues to live on the land). The cross-sibling set is a fundamental building block of the society and one that reflects a basic male/female com-

plementarity and opposition within the culture (cf. Marshall 1981). : Every lineage has a seat or senior-dwelling, and the seat of a founding lineage has superior rank over others. The lineage and its land are called a bwogot. Only by the linguistic context of this word can the listener determine whether a speaker is referring to lands or relatives—and usually reference will be to both as an inseparable unit. Land is a female domain, not only because it is of the lineage, which itself is female based, but because the epitome of land is the bwol ‘‘taro swamp’’ located at the heart of the interior of an islet and worked by women. Every founding lineage has some sacred taro lands (bwonnap) that have a history

going back to the time of settlement. -

Most dwellings lie toward the interior of an island. Given the size of atoll islets this means that the houses are not very far from the lagoon shore. Nevertheless, conceptually they are of the interior because they most frequently are found on the interior side of the islet’s main path, which is a public thoroughfare. The dwelling and its associated structures—a cookhouse, drying rack, and possibly a - | utility house—are centers of female activity.° Food is prepared by the women of the lineage in and around the cookhouse as a daily chore. Women set up their back-strap looms within the dwelling or in a nearby utility structure where they also have a rack for their spare tur ‘‘skirts.’’ From the dwelling, a path leads farther inland to the taro swamp. Near the dwelling, or on a high-ranking associated piece of land, are found the graves of deceased lineage members.

Married men sleep in their wife’s dwelling. Unmarried men spend the night either at their mother’s house (where they grew up) or at a canoe house (the recognized bachelor’s domain now that these islands have abandoned the practice of building separate men’s houses). Whether married or single, most men are reluctant to spend large blocks of the daylight hours at a dwelling unless they are engaged in some necessary work in support of their mother, sister, or wife. Men who do otherwise are subject either to ribald joking or light-hearted accusations of laziness by age mates, since the dwelling is viewed as a female area. A man’s working day is spent in and around canoe houses, tending coconut trees, and fishing on the reef, lagoon, or sea. The sea is the men’s domain, and when not on it or in it, men prefer to overlook it from their canoe houses bordering the shore. Canoe houses are on the lagoon side of the islet’s main path. Men only enter a taro swamp reluctantly, and women only approach a canoe house with caution. Females are not allowed in this male domain when catches of fish, the

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 81 epitome of the male world, are distributed. Similarly, females are never allowed

on canoes bound for fishing.® a ;

Coconuts are an exception to this two-domain ideology. Although they grow on land, they are tended and harvested by men. In fact, women use the appearance of these trees as a gauge to measure how hard the men are working. Men use the appearance of the taro swamp for the similar purpose of measuring female labor. _Coconut palms are found throughout an island, but conceptually those along the shores and in the vicinity of canoe houses are the most important. Every canoe house has sacred palms nearby that are used in divination and navigation rituals (just as every island has a sacred taro swamp). Coconut palms symbolize male power. Their name sometimes is a euphemism for a phallus and their uppermost

vertical frond (ubwut) can symbolize a chief, spirit, or god.’ ‘

Thus a number of complementary divisions play important roles in organizing people-land relationships in the central Carolines as demonstrated by: (1) islands that were divided initially between two founding groups (either two clans or senior and junior descent lines); (2) local populations that subsequently were differen| tiated into chiefly and non-chiefly groups (according to whether they were founder clans or more recent immigrants); and (3) subsistence tasks and areas that were separated symbolically according to gender. Women horticulturists are responsible for daily food preparation, and land and the domestic setting is conceptualized as female. Men are fishermen, and the sea and distant areas reached via the sea are thought of as male. Coconut palms bridge the two domains—although they grow on the land they are tended by men. The cross-sibling set is a fundamental unit of these societies and it provides a key element for understanding land-people relationships, and the distribution of power and authority.

Power on Land and at Sea: Chiefs, “Old Women,” and Navigators The spokesperson for a landholding group is its tamol **chief,’’ who is usually the oldest competent male of a lineage or subclan and he serves as steward of the bwogot land. Matrilineality means that for every chief there is a corresponding senior woman who stands as the progenetrix of the group. She is called the shabwut-tugofaie *‘old woman.’’ In ideal demographic circumstances these two individuals—the chief and the old woman—are real or classificatory brother and

sister.® This ideal cross-sibling set—brother as ‘‘chief,’’ sister as ‘‘old woman’ ’—is the model of a basic and indivisible kin unit. The cross-sibling pair is both a model of unity and of complementarity. The brother advises and protects his sister and her interests. He contributes fish and coconuts to her upkeep. The sister provides taro and land to his. Of course, most men-contribute as much or more to their wife’s upkeep; thus a ‘‘sister’’ depends on her husband rather than her brother, as a man depends on his wife for taro more than on his sister. Nevertheless, it is understood that ultimate or final responsibility is between brother and sister rather than husband and wife.? The size of the kin group or territory over which a chief has authority is indicated linguistically by a suffix. At the lowest or most immediate level is the tam-

olnibwogot ‘‘chief of the lineage,’’ also called mwalibwogot *‘man of the lineage.’’ The latter title parallels more directly that of his sister, who is called shabwut tugofaielibwogot ‘‘old woman of the lineage.”’ When there are several lineages of the same clan on an island, the eldest man of the senior line is also the tamolnigailang “‘chief of the clan.’’ In the case of

82 William H. Alkire ‘‘founding’’ clans, clan chiefs are also tamolnitap ‘‘chief of a district.’’ This chief’s authority extends over the section of the island that his clan claimed or received at the time of original settlement. As noted in the previous section, most islands were divided initially into two districts. Only rarely does a clan actually own all the land today since, over the years, portions have been given to other later-arriving clans and lineages. Subsequent population growth also has led to the creation of new districts. Many islands now have three districts, where the third emerged from the boundary areas that lay between the original two. Its local name frequently alludes to its middle position (lug) and mediating functions. The district chief’s authority and power derive from his clan’s priority in the district. | He has no right to expropriate land now held by other lineages, unless they default . in first-fruits offerings, which they are periodically required to submit to the chief in recognition of his clan’s superior standing. The chief does have a right to call

on the manpower of all who live within the district for communal tasks. . On the islets of Woleai tamolnitap are the highest ranking chiefs who meet in council to decide communal matters. In these meetings they are advised by the other “‘clan chiefs’’ of the island, but they cannot be overruled by them. On Lamotrek (and some other islands of the region, e.g., Ifaluk, Ulithi, Fais) a tamolalifalu *‘chief of the island’’ exists. He meets in council with the district and clan chiefs, but his decision is final. Demographic patterns in small island populations sometimes make it difficult to fill these offices. A ranking lineage or clan may have no acceptable males available. In such cases the ‘‘old woman’’ becomes chief and thereby occupies two offices. Generally, such a woman appoints a man from outside her lineage to act for her in public contexts where it is impossible or unseemly for a woman to ap-

pear. For example, any occasion requiring a chief in a canoe house, in fishing | activities, or in butchering a turtle is taboo for a woman. The female chief, however, retains her political authority and relays her decisions through her designate. - . This cross-sibling set is so basic to the society that its absence may delay or alter the process of decision-making. I observed one such instance on Lamotrek

in 1962 where a land boundary dispute existed between the lineage of a district chief and another non-chiefly G.e., non-founding) lineage of the district. Initial expectations of local observers favored the powerful chief’s lineage since the opposing woman’s one was nearly extinct. The chief, however, backed down in his claim, saying he ‘‘felt sorry’’ for the surviving ‘‘old woman’’ of the other lineage ‘“because she had no brother to defend her.’’ Thus the power of the land and lineage is divided between the two actors of the cross-sibling set. An “‘old woman’s’’ control over land is dependent on her brother’s public actions; and the male chief’s public power is tempered by the behindthe-scenes opinions of his sister. A chief’s power is also complementary to that of navigators (pelu). Chiefs ex-. ercise a land-based authority, but navigators wield authority and power at sea. Because of their specialized training, pelu have access to important overseas patron spirits that are viewed as vital to survival on a low island. Chiefs approach navigators for help on land when the power navigators mediate potentially can save an island from ocean storms, high waves, or water spouts. Male authority, then, is divided between chiefs and navigators. The navigator is most important in his role as leader of overseas voyages. Traditionally, these low islanders participated in one or more interisland exchange

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 83 system (see, e.g., Lessa 1950a; Alkire 1965). Voyages played a major role in redistributing goods and personnel on the low islands. The most extensive of these systems was the sawei, which at its height tied all of the coral islands from Ulithi to Namonuito to the high island of Yap. Once a year representatives from the coral

islands—including chiefs (representing the land) and navigators (of the sea)— _. voyaged in convoy to Gagil, Yap carrying three kinds of ‘‘tribute,’’ kopataliwa ‘‘talk of the canoe’ for the chiefs of Gagil; maipil ‘‘offerings’’ for that district’s religious leaders; and yautenibwun *‘things of the interior land’’ from particular outer island districts or islands to individual estate partners.of Gagil. __ The Yapese of Gagil claimed ownership of outer islanders’ lands and the tribute

voyages and gifts symbolically recognized that claim, perhaps in the same way ‘ that first-fruits gifts symbolized prior claims on the outer islands themselves. Elsewhere I have dealt at length with the practical benefits outer islanders derived from this tribute system (Alkire 1965, 1977:49-52, 1978:112—124, 1980). Here I only want to discuss the supernatural sanctions associated with the system. Outer 1s-

| landers acknowledged the Yapese to be superior magicians with greater access to a variety of powerful ghosts, gods, and spirits. Yapese used this power to threaten outer islanders with sickness and destruction if they failed to submit the required tribute. Outer islanders had ample experience with typhoons and resultant injuries on their vulnerable low islands, and while they feared and resented this presumed Yapese power they thought it prudent to cooperate. At the same time they recognized their occasional dependence on Yap for emergency relief during posttyphoon shortages. Contact with other neighboring high islands by the people of Woleai and Lamotrek was less frequent and less structured. Occasionally voyages were made to Truk, Belau, and the Marianas, in which cases the low island voyagers also were

cautious and respectful in dealing with their more numerous high island hosts, some of whom (like the Trukese). were believed prone to belligerence.

The central Caroline coral islanders held ambivalent attitudes toward their overseas high island neighbors. On the one hand, they respected and envied their power and resource wealth. On the other hand, they distrusted and feared their

Capricious natures, demands, and presumed supernatural powers. As will be pointed out, these feelings paralleled those that were voiced toward “‘overseas’’ -yalus.

In this analysis of the distribution of political power in the central Carolines I have shown a complementary division of authority and power between the crosssibling dyad at several levels; a further division of power between land and its chiefs and the sea and its navigators; and finally a division between domestic and overseas spheres in a hierarchically ranked regional system.

Classes of Yalus and Their Power The above understandings—concerning the complementary distribution of power between land/sea, domestic/overseas, brother/sister, and male/female dyads—provide a structural framework for viewing the classes and power of yalus in Woleai-Lamotrek culture. Such classes are distinguished by linguistic suffixes.

Those mentioned most frequently are:!° | 1. Yalusatat, ‘‘of the sea.”’ |

2. Yalusafalu, **‘of the island.’”’

84 William H. Alkire house’’). ,

3. Yalusalibwogot (yalusalimetalim), ‘‘of the lineage’’ (‘‘of the front of the

4. Yalusalang, ‘‘of the sky.”’

Within each of these categories is a large number of individually named yalus. For example, on Woleai two well-known ‘‘spirits of the sea’’ are Soalal and Mar who are important because they frequently ‘‘take’’ people’s souls (ngel) when they die, change their names, and keep them to live beneath the sea. Those taken by Mar become good ghosts and eventually communicate with the living through

a spirit medium (waeyalus). Those taken by Soalal become malevolent ghosts .

who cause illness ashore or bring misfortune upon someone while at sea. oe Bodies can be buried on land or at sea. On Woleai a body was prepared for burial at sea by wrapping it in weighted mats. The mats (tugatug) were offerings meant to placate Soalal. When the body was dropped over the canoe’s side, chants of the burial party asked which of these two sea yalus was taking the victim. Members of the crew watched for omens that might answer the question. On Lamotrek people who experienced ‘‘bad’’ deaths (i.e., by accident, during pregnancy, or in childbirth) had to be buried at sea. Sea burials, in part, may have been attempts.to minimize the chances of suspect souls remaining on land as bad ghosts. While ‘‘sea ghosts’’ can come ashore and cause mischief, there are numerous precautions taken to keep them away. This is not accomplished so easily for ghosts that live on the land. ‘‘Ghosts of the island’’ also can be either good or bad. On Wottagai Islet, Woleai, there are two malevolent ones; both were formerly humans captured by other bad ghosts at the time of death. The first soul was renamed Yalulefelu. He now

frequents an area around a specific breadfruit tree near the main path midway along the lagoon shore and appears either as a man, a pig, or a dog. Anyone who. sees him takes care to pass on the left side, for to pass him on the right invites ~

| death, capture, or insanity. The second malevolent ghost is Lieluel, a female yalusafalu, who once was a woman who lived on Satawal. Her ghost came to Wottagai with a Satawal woman visitor and thereafter remained. As is appropriate for a female, Lieluel is seen occasionally in the interior of the island. Sometimes She is beautiful, sometimes emaciated, but she is always dangerous. A death that occurred on Fachailap in 1976 provides an ethnographic context illustrating several beliefs concerning these points. In mid-December of that year

a middle-aged man took ill with a high temperature and abdominal pains. The next day he fell unconscious and residents of the island became deeply concerned. Some twenty to thirty of his relatives began a vigil within and around his lineage

house where he lay.!' Inside he was tended by his sisters and his eldest sister’s husband. It is on occasions such as this that the unity of the cross-sibling set is most visible, as well as its correlate behavior, in this case the important respect and service obligations a woman’s husband has toward his wife’s brother. During the evening of the third day the ill man’s breathing became irregular and broken by death rattles. He stopped breathing at 8:30 p.m. A young male attendant held a mirror to the body’s face to detect any faint breathing but none was noted. This is the important moment when it is believed the soul departs the body; the soul itself is conceived of as “‘like a breath’’ or wisp of air. The man’s sister’s husband

made the formal announcement of death, but those assembled waited another

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 85 twenty minutes in anxious silence hoping for some last sign of life. When none

was forthcoming the wailing and the singing of dirges began. These continued throughout the night and did not stop until the body was placed in its coffin the next morning. The coffin was constructed by men of the deceased’s canoe house from the planking of an old paddling canoe. 7 Traditionally (i.e., before conversion to Christianity), it was thought that this interval between death and burial was a crucial one because the soul of the deceased tended to linger in the vicinity of the body. If malevolent ghosts were on the island they might capture this soul and transform it into.an evil ghost as well. Consequently, the men assembled at one end of the island and proceeded to the other calling out, striking trees and structures with sticks and generally raising a clatter of noise hoping to drive these evil ghosts away so they could not capture the soul.

A soul, however, might also become a good ““ghost of the island’’ and communicate with the living through mediums. Mediums or relatives of good yalusafalu build ghost houses (imaliyalus) for them near locations they are known to

, frequent where offerings of coconut oil, flower garlands, and cloth are left. '? The third class of ghosts, yalusalibwogot are specific to lineage lands. The primary dwelling of each lineage has an ‘“‘altar’’ dedicated to the lineage spirit or ghost who is a deceased ancestor whose name was changed after death. The altar is relatively simple, consisting of a guragur *‘orange-wood stick’’ tied to the kingpost at the front of the house (metalim), and decorated with offerings of coconut oil and flower garlands. Orange trees are rare on the atolls, and the wood often was imported, primarily from Yap.!°

| The ‘‘ghost of the lineage’’ has a dual nature: helpful or vengeful. Its main duty is to protect lineage interests and members. When in a helpful mood it informs lineage members of imminent events and protects them from sickness and accident. When in a vengeful mood it is referred to by its alternative name, yalusalimetalim ‘‘ghost of the front of the house.’’ In this form it punishes lineage members with sickness or death if they have broken taboos or shown insolence toward

senior lineage members. The lineage chief and his sister, the ‘‘man’’ and ‘‘old woman’’ of the lineage are the prime interpreters of the demands of the lineage

ghost. oo

Ghosts of chiefly lineages can have influence beyond lineage lands to those of a district or an island. On Lamotrek, where a paramount chief exists, one of that lineage’s ancestral ghosts (Mattoisam) was thought to be exceptionally powerful. Before conversion to Christianity in recognition of this, I was told that at any public feast when food was redistributed, an offering for Mattoisam and his sisters was Set aside and at the conclusion of the feast removed to the appropriate lineage lands. The yalusafalu and yalusalibwogot—whether good or evil—share one thing in

common: all were once human beings. Most lived on the island where they now abide as ghosts. Some yalusatat also were once humans—individuals who died or were buried at sea, but other ““sea ghosts’’ (e.g., Soalal and Mar) have a dif-

ferent character, similar to that of yalusalang ‘‘ghosts of the sky.” The yalusalang are the final and most famous class of spirits and, as such, yalus probably should be glossed as **gods’’ in this case. These yalus have been important since mythological times and are the main actors in a variety of myths and legends. '* Some of the ‘‘gods’’ are good, others evil, and yet others merely mischievous. These yalus are ‘‘of the sky,’’ but their power can also be immediate.

86 William H. Alkire Tales of these yalus are told by older men of the community and their exploits are entertaining, explanatory, and sometimes instructional. These ‘‘gods,’’ however, are of greatest importance to mwaletabw ‘‘taboo men.’’ The gods are patron spirits who oversee and influence the outcome of important and sacred events. Mwaletabw are qualified specialists in technical fields, the most important being sennap ‘‘canoe builders,’’ and pelu ‘‘navigators.’’!° Selang is the patron spirit of canoe builders, while Yalulewei is the preeminent patron god of navigators. An integral part of the knowledge of these specialists is the set of chants (maipil) used

to solicit the help and cooperation of the yalusalang in the endeavor. In addition . ‘‘taboo men’’ use their influence with the good gods to placate such malevolent

gods as Yalulamas and Yalusalap, who can cause death, typhoons, and water- , spouts.

There are two important points about mwaletabw and yalusalang. First, the ‘‘taboo man’’ is the epitome of ‘‘maleness.’’ All ritual and ceremonial behaviors that distinguish or separate males from females in these societies are rigorously observed by mwaletabw, for example, they observe a large number of food restrictions, they avoid all contact with menstruating or postparturient women (including avoiding any paths they have walked on), and they avoid cohabitation with any woman for specified periods before and after engaging in their specialization. Second, the yalusalang are not of the island; they are from afar and they take a direct interest in the islands only through their patronage of ‘‘taboo men.”’ In summary, the four types of yalus discussed in this section (“‘sea,’’ ““island,”’ ‘lineage,’ and “‘sky’’) share a common feature. They are manifested as or subdivided into both good and bad categories. The power of yalus is thus complementarily distributed between these two manifestations. Those that are gods or powerful spirits have a mythological origin, while the ghosts were once human. Such ghosts share two additional traits. First, the transformation from human soul to ghost is marked byaname change .- |

at the time of death, while two different names are applied to a lineage ghost depending on its immediate manifestation. Second, ghosts of human origin have ties to the land. In the case of those ‘‘of the island’’ it is to the island as a whole, while for others it is to particular bwogot. The direct links the latter have to lineage lands make them integral members of the kin groups that control such land. Here, as throughout Micronesia (and much of Oceania) the kin group and its lands are an indivisible unit (cf. Goodenough 1955). The complete bwogot includes people, land, and ghosts.

Yalus, Rituals, Land, and Gender The influence and power of various types of yalus can be clarified by examining a number of rituals that regulate human-yalus interaction. Most rituals appear to fall into one of three classes: one female-based set fosters land and lineage unity and continuity, a second male-based set guarantees separation and protection, and the third mediates or resolves several basic cultural dichotomies. The first two are discussed in this section and the third in the section to follow. Unity is strongly promoted between people and ‘‘ghosts of the lineage’’ and funerals provide one example of this. Women are the leaders in these ritual activities. During the funerals I observed on Lamotrek and Woleai, as the body was placed in its coffin or wrapped in its shroud, closely related women cut some of

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 87 their hair and placed it with the deceased. On the fourth day after death a larger number of relatives cut their hair (some shaving their heads completely), and the women of this group buried the cuttings on top of the same grave or in the graves of any other lineage member whose grave was located on lineage lands. Informants stated that during the Japanese administration (1914—45) a variation on this _. practice arose. At that time large numbers of men went to work in the phosphate mine on Angaur, Belau, and some died there. Head and pubic hair clippings of these victims were returned by other miners to their home islands, and mourning ceremonies were held at which the clippings were mixed with coconut water in a large container. Some of this mixture was consumed by the lineage women, and

the rest was poured over lineage graves and lands. These practices emphasize a . continuing tie between living and dead lineage members, between siblings (especially real and classificatory cross-siblings) and between the people of the lineage and its lands. '° Lineage solidarity also is promoted on occasions when members collectively

: consume medicine. Most illnesses are thought caused by malevolent ghosts. If illness should spread on an island, lineage members often assemble in front of the main lineage dwelling to drink a prophylactic medicine concocted from a recipe known to the ‘‘man’’ or ‘‘old woman’”’ of the lineage. Various leaves, flowers, roots, and other ingredients are collected, pounded, mixed with coconut water and consumed by the group twice a day for two or four days (Alkire 1982). These are occasions when living lineage members, led by the lineage’s core cross-sibling set, seek protection or help from yalus members. The location of the ritual at the front of the house (metalim) near the lineage altar supports such an interpretation.

Rituals of separation take two forms. One is directed toward the malevolent ghosts that cause illness (when the illness is attributed to external evil ghosts rather than retribution meted out by lineage ancestors). These malevolent ghosts have no ties to the lands of the island, and most are not of the island but from ‘‘away.’’ When an illness of this type strikes (diagnosed through divination), pumas “guardian screens,’’ plaited in a fan-shape from ubwut coconut fronds, are stuck in the ground at the boundary of bwogot lands and the main path. The screen blocks entry of any evil yalus to the bwogot. When requested by a chief, similar - screens are placed at all landing places on the island in an effort to keep illnesscausing ghosts entirely away from the island. Noise and threats also are thought effective in this regard. On Woleai in 1964, for example, some travelers on the copra ship were infected with whooping cough and these passengers were quarantined on one of the atoll’s uninhabited islets. When the ship’s boat later called at Falalus, that islet’s residents raised a clatter of noise and threats meant to prevent any accompanying illness-causing yalus from landing. I have already mentioned similar noise drives, held as part of the funeral activities associated with ‘‘bad deaths,’’ which were meant to drive away any evil ghosts that might be present. !’ The most common male rituals are those associated with such specialized activities as house and canoe building, voyaging and fishing, divination, and the control of weather. The unifying themes are purification and isolation. A ‘*taboo man’’ carries out the ritual alone or isolated from others. He eats separate food, walks on separate paths, and sleeps in isolation (or only in the company of other

mwaletabw). oe

88 William H. Alkire Once again the important central Carolinian perspective on yalus that emerges } is one emphasizing abode or domain as a defining characteristic. That is, the contrast is between yalus ‘‘of the people and their land’’ (ghosts who were once living members of the community, most of whom live on the island); and yalus ‘‘from away’’ (gods from and of the mythological world and ghosts that have severed

ties to the land). ; .

Members of the first class have “‘legitimate’’ rights on the island because they are members of bwogot. For those who make their presence known, house altars and spirit houses are built. Men or women interact with these yalus because they share lineage membership in common. Owing to their gender and senior status, _ ‘‘old women’’ are believed to be more effective in communicating and interpret- Ss —ing the wishes of these lineage members. Thus rituals centered on lineage ghosts emphasize complementarity and continuity, and a relational sequence as follows: lineage ghosts —+ ‘“‘old women’’ (the female anchors of the lineage) —+ other

women (sisters and daughters) —> male lineage members (via cross-sibling

sets) —» land (the source of lineage wealth and survival). . Ghosts of former island residents that have been co-opted by more powerful evil spirits are themselves bad and consequently have cut. their ties with their lineage. The fact that the whole island is owned and controlled by lineages is important here. Because of this, only yalus who continue as lineage members have rights on the island. The strategy employed by people, then, is to entice or placate bwogot ‘‘lineage’’ ghosts with offerings, while attempting to drive away

lands. all others.

The importance of the cross-sibling relationship is ritually expressed in this context. Interaction with bad ghosts requires male protection. Consequently, a senior ““brother’’ replaces his sister as the second link in the ritual chain: malevolent ghosts —> ‘‘manof the lineage’? -—+ otherlineage members —> lineage

Gods ‘“‘from away’’ are a different matter. Their interests and their domain do ~ not bring them to the island, but their power permits them to affect it. Through training and the symbolic affinities of their sex, ‘‘taboo men’’ are able to communicate with them and tap their power. Navigators, in fact, regularly travel through and toward their domain. Pelu can use their line of communication to yalusalang to solicit aid when trying to divert the anger of other “‘overseas’’ yalus who threaten the island with typhoons or similar disaster. Women, whose domain is the land, are in no position to help in these matters. The ritual sequence here parallels that seen in bwogot affairs where the ‘‘man of the lineage’’ interceded as guardian of his sister and her lineage. Here the power of the yalus is tapped and mediated in the sequence: patron spirits/gods —> ‘‘taboo man’’ (a trained and

ritually “‘pure’’ male) -~ other lineage members —> lineage lands —> the whole island.

Rituals and Coconuts Goodenough (1974a:165—166) reminds us that useful insights about a religious system can be gained by examining the way symbols are manipulated, especially those symbols associated with fundamental problems of human existence. In the central Carolines the coconut is a symbol tied to a third set of rituals; rituals that mediate and ease tensions that arise in such a sharply dichotimized society. For example, the basic female/male, land/sea, domestic/overseas cultural oppositions meet in the altar dedicated to the “‘ghost of the lineage.’’ This shrine is found in

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 89 the lineage dwelling on lineage lands (female domains), but it is made up of an orange-wood stick imported from ‘‘overseas’’ and modeled after a war club (a male domain and activity). The essential offering at the altar is a container of

coconut oil. |

The haligi is one of the more elaborate rituals of Woleai that confronts and

_resOlves the same cultural oppositions (Alkire 1968). In this ritual a catch of por-

poises triggers activities meant to increase taro production. A ‘‘taboo man’’ (mimicking a woman) enters the heart of the female domain, the taro swamp, reciting chants meant to benefit the crop. He then retraces his steps, returning to the shore and the male-centered canoe house. Here he stops to chant at the base

of that structure’s nearby sacred coconut tree. For the duration of the ceremony .

texts. ..

women are free to ‘‘act as men’’ and enter canoe houses, and men are free to consume of certain ‘‘female’’ foods. Few other Woleai ceremonies are as rich in symbolism as this, but parallel practices and beliefs are manifested in other conA celebratory ritual is held whenever a sennap ‘‘canoe builder’’ completes a sailing craft. One of the final acts of construction involves binding a frond of swamp fern to the outrigger brace of the craft, symbolically linking sea and Jand.!8 One such ritual I observed on Lamotrek in 1962 continued as follows. The canoe was moved to an area in front of its canoe house, and all of the men who had worked on the craft seated themselves inside the canoe house to celebrate with

coconut palm wine. The women of the canoe-owning lineage arrived bringing pots of cooked taro for the men; the men reciprocated with coconuts, fish, and turtle meat. The celebrant men were decorated with ubwut ‘*coconut fronds’’ and yangoshig ‘‘yellow swamp-ginger [turmeric].’’ The women seated themselves around the canoe in front of the canoe house, an area they usually avoided. The

sennap, who was from another lineage, was paid for his work with several tur ‘“loincloths and skirts’? woven by the women of the lineage. The celebration reached its climax when the men began to chant and sing. As enthusiasm built, one or two of the older men rose and began to dance to the front of the canoe house and out toward the women. The women responded with cries of encouragement and their own chants and songs. They then began to pound and slap the hull of the canoe with their hands. An old chief in attendance became so enthused that he sent two bottles of coconut palm wine to the women. Under normal circumstances this would have been an unheard of gesture since women are

prohibited from drinking intoxicating beverages. Only the older women of the lineage drank it.!° Food exchanges occur at the completion of any major communal task. Women _ present taro to the men when they finish making or repairing fishing nets, canoe houses, or dwellings. Men reciprocate with coconuts. Perhaps most importantly, men acknowledge the reproductive role of women with coconut and fish presentations—at first menstruation, first pregnancy, and after giving birth. On Faraulep in 1976 the funeral ceremony discussed above provided another context for resolution of sea/land, male/female oppositions. After the man’s burial the floor mats, wall mats, and roof of the house of the deceased were dismantled piece by piece and burned. The women of the lineage were the prime actors in this ritual. They carried the pieces and sections from the ‘‘female’’ interior to the ‘‘male’’ beach where they were burned. Ripe and sprouting coconuts (previously gathered by the men) were placed on the fire and roasted. When the fire

90 William H. Alkire burned down, these were consumed by the women. This was the only occasion I , observed coconuts prepared and eaten in this way. Coconut trees and coconuts are symbolic links between people and yalus. Both ubwut *‘immature [yellow] coconut fronds’’ and green [mature] fronds have many uses indicative of this: as taboo markers, in pumas screens, as ties for containers of medicine, as markers on ‘‘taboo men’s’’ food, as streamers attached to navigators’ effigies (hos), and as divining instruments (bwe).?° Elaborate ubwut belts

and streamers decorate a navigator when he engages in weather magic on the

strand at the border of land and sea (cf. Alkire 1965:122). , I draw a final example emphasizing the ritual importance of coconuts from an- _

other event on Faraulep. I have emphasized that there are no virgin or unowned lands on the central Caroline atolls. However, in 1976 a typhoon brushed Faraulep and washed away portions of one of that atoll’s islets. The sand and detritus were carried by the waves across the lagoon and redeposited adjacent to Pigue (another islet) forming a new one several hundred feet long. Women immediately ‘‘staked

claims’’ on this latter islet by planting coconuts along its length. Coconuts are hardy trees, but there are others (e.g., pandanus, mangrove, Pisonia, Morinda, Cordia) that also could have been used to anchor the sands and mark boundaries. Regional charter myths tell us, however, that coconuts were the first crop planted when claiming newly discovered lands. Here women made a claim and established lineage ties by planting a male crop. The unity of the lineage and the society were symbolically affirmed and at the same time the yalus were probably espe-

cially pleased. Conclusions

Examining the data in this chapter one clearly notes the importance of complementary sets and oppositions in several spheres of Woleai-Lamotrek organization,

from basic cross-sibling kinship dyads, through patterns of subsistence labor, - . gender and territorial identification, to the distribution of political and religious power. The myriad or ‘‘melange’’ of spirits, ghosts, and gods that characterize Woleai and Lamotrek culture are, thereby, more easily classified and understood when viewed from the perspective of such key structural principles as land/people

and brother/sister unity and the complementary distribution of power between land and sea, internal and external domains, and males and females. Yalus are consistently integrated through the extension of these structural tenets. With this perspective in mind, it may also be possible to resolve a number of contradictions and differences of opinion that have appeared in the anthropological literature on this part of Micronesia. Referring once again to Lessa’s article on Micronesian religions, which opened this chapter, one finds that he went on to say ‘‘although concepts of the soul vary [in Micronesia], there is a universal belief in a single soul for each person’’ (1987:498). Burrows and Spiro’s work on Ifaluk and that completed on Lamotrek and Woleai, cited above, support Lessa in this

regard. Both Goodenough (1963a:132, 1974a:178) and Gladwin and Sarason (1953:166), however, have written that on Truk there is the belief that everyone has two souls—a good one and a bad one. One cannot summarily dismiss Goodenough’s and Gladwin and Sarason’s contentions, since the idea of dual souls (or soul components) has been reported in neighboring areas of Oceania. Roger Keesing, for example, mentions it among the Kwaio and other northern and central Malaita peoples:

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 9] One [soul] goes, after death, to the Land of the Dead . . . the other remains, as ancestral spirit, to watch over living relatives and participate in the social life of the community. [1987a:163]

These are fates similar to those reported for Truk by Goodenough: On the fourth day after burial [the] good soul rises . . . [to] abide with the great spirits that inhabit the sky world. . . . As for the bad soul, after death it becomes a malevolent ghost. [1963a:132, ~~ 134]

report re Those ethnographers who have spoken of only a ‘‘single-soul’’ agree that at death the soul can become either a good or bad ghost. But the factors controlling which it will become constitute another area of disagreement. Burrows and Spiro If a person is evil during his life on earth he becomes an evil or malevolent alus at death. . . . Ifa person is good or benevolent on earth he becomes a good or benevolent alus at death. [1953:213]

At Ulithi, Lessa reports that souls are judged, _ | Those who have led unsatisfactory lives are consigned to a place known alternatively as Gum Well or Garbage Well . . . [while the god] Ialulep rewards the worthy by sending them to either of two paradises. [1966:111]

On Truk, however, “‘one’s character and conduct while alive have nothing whatever to do with what happens to these souls [after death]’’ (Goodenough 1963a:132). Lamotrek and Woleai beliefs are closer to those of Truk on this matter. On these atolls, we have learned, the fate of a soul depends on whether it is captured or taken by evil ghosts at the time of death and this frequently depends on mode of death rather than the character of life. Clearly, if we accept all of these reports as reasonably accurate (as I believe we should) we can conclude that there exists in the competitive and ranked societies of Oceania differing views among both ordinary and specialist informants.*! Nevertheless, all of these reports and interpretations still share a common theme in that they reflect a basic dualistic and complementary structure. Especially relevant in this regard was the practice of renaming mentioned in several contexts in Woleai-Lamotrek culture. That practice involved giving different names to the ghost when it was transformed from a soul and of differentially naming complementary manifestations of a single ghost. I suggest this practice may be directly linked to the differences reported by Lessa, Burrows and Spiro, on the one hand, and Goodenough and Gladwin and Sarason, on the other. In the minds of members of these societies, as well as in any formal

cosmologies, complementary and differentially named manifestations could evolve into distinct and independent entities. Both conceptualizations are possible variations on the same underlying model.

Goodenough raises an additional point of interest concerning rituals and the

roles of good and bad ghosts on Truk. He states that ‘‘ritual [develops] around : situations and involving objects that are associated directly and symbolically with matters about which people are in emotional conflict’ (1974a:171). He found a high degree of food anxiety on Truk that he believed derived, in large part, from

irregular and erratic patterns in the preparation of daily food—depending, as it did on Truk, on groups of cooperating males, who frequently were absorbed by other tasks. For children, erratic feeding resulted in dependency and hostility conflicts toward parents, but throughout life this hostility was displaced toward spirits. He saw the dual souls of the Trukese as the object (or result) of this ambivalence: the good soul representing parental support, reliability, and constancy,

92 William H. Alkire while the bad soul was repository for ill feelings toward parental authority, seniority, and unreliability (Goodenough 1963a:139). : Goodenough’s identification of dual souls as repositories for ambivalent parental feelings does not transfer easily to the neighboring atoll societies of the Woleai-Lamotrek region. This is not only because the belief in dual souls is not present on those islands, but also because food preparation in these societies is distinctly different. On the atolls small groups of related women are responsible for harvesting and preparing daily food, and they do this on a more regular schedule

than that reported for Truk. Food anxieties do exist on the atolls, but they are _ decidedly different in origin. They derive primarily from fluctuations in produc- . | tion caused by droughts, high waves, and storms, that is, environmental variables external to the society itself. Thus the possibility arises that the external malevolent ghosts of Woleai and Lamotrek play a displacement role in these atoll societies similar to that suggested by Goodenough for bad souls on Truk. The WoleaiLamotrek anxieties are transferred to these evil spirits from ‘‘away’’ who, in fact, are responsible for such events and shortages. It is also possible that these beliefs are displaced further to the neighboring high islanders who sometimes are credited with control of or access to the malevolent yalus (1.e., Yapese sorcerers). The yalus of the central Caroline atolls are numerous. They may be from the north or south, or of the island, sea, or sky. Some are good and others bad. Of

greatest importance, however, is whether they are ‘‘of the island’’ or from “‘away.’’ Ancestral ghosts are of the land and, more importantly, of particular lands. They anchor lineages to their lands and validate genealogical ranking on an island. These yalus did not predate the arrival of people, they came with them. They are a part of the lineage and a part of the land and their numbers have grown

over the years. They are visible proof of the unity of lineage and land and they

affirm the rights of chiefs and ‘‘old women.’’

The gods are ‘‘from away.’’ They originated in the mythological world and live in the distant sky, but their power can be immediate. They are patrons and guardians of specialized knowledge. They can be appealed to and their power invoked by “‘taboo men.’’ They validate and affirm rank derived from expertise and technical knowledge. If there is some displacement of the natural order, residents assume yalus are involved. If the turmoil is on land, it is either because the lineage ghosts have been offended (and must be placated by the group’s core cross-sibling set) or because “‘foreign’’ yalus are encroaching on the domain of the ancestral ghosts, in which case they must be driven away. Any serious threat from the sea or ‘‘away’’ falls within the domain and control of the gods. Their power can only be mediated and redirected through the intervention of “‘taboo men.’’

The rituals appropriate in these cases are, respectively, either female and lineage centered ones, male and ‘‘overseas’’ oriented ones, or a set that bridges and balances the separate domains. In this last case the coconut tree is a pivotal

symbol because it is a product both of the land (where it grows) and the sea (whence it came). Finally, a recent comparative study of Truk and Pohnpei by Goodenough (1986) gives emphasis to the conclusions reached in this chapter. He found that both Trukese and Pohnpeians conceived of their origins as dualistic— one part of the population descended from ancestors said to be autochthonous and

the second part descended from “‘overseas’’ immigrants. The overseas or ‘‘away’’ area from which these ancestors came was further subdivided into *‘up/

Land, Sea, Gender, and Ghosts 93 east’’ and ‘‘down/west’’ halves. The halves were bridged by Kachaw, the abode of the gods. These ‘‘outer’’ regions were ranked superior to the domestic.?” Woleai-Lamotrek beliefs not only parallel those of Truk and Pohnpei, but reflect a theme widespread in the Pacific, where seaward directions and ‘‘away regions”’ are identified with higher status when compared to landward or domestic areas —_ (e.g., Hocart 1952:21—41; Sahlins 1976:24—47; Shore 1982:49—50). Extension of this principle, along with those of land/people unity, cross-sibling solidarity, and complementary distribution of power within basic dyads (precepts that are also widespread in Micronesia) permits a more complete understanding of the position and role of yalus in Woleai-Lamotrek culture.

Notes Acknowledgments. | acknowledge with gratitude the facilities provided by the Community College of Micronesia during the initial writing of this chapter, and the study leave support received from the University of Victoria, Canada. J use the present tense in this chapter even though many of the rituals may no longer be practiced (but knowledge of them is still a vital part of central Carolinian atoll Ttulture).

'This is suggested not only by Lessa’s use of the term melange, but also by the disagreements cited by Burrows and Spiro in their publication on the topic (1953:207-211). *] have discussed these issues with respect to a number of domains and contexts (Alkire 1968, 1970, 1972, 1982). 3Later colonizers received their land from the discoverers or their descendants; this placed these individuals in a subservient or ‘‘indebted’’ position to those with priority of settlement. See Alkire

(1984) for a discussion of several examples of folklore dealing with priority of settlement. . “There are also adoptive options and linkages derived from long-term residerice. But both of these often have deeper kinship justifications based on distant bwisbwis ‘‘siblingship’’ ties.

>On Lamotrek, Woleai, and Faraulep, unlike some of the other islands of the region, menstrual houses were not a part of these estates, but rather communal structures located at some distance from

the main village area. | 7

Women can fish the near-shore reefs, which are extensions of the island, with nets and traps. They can also help men pull large surround nets to the shore. But they cannot enter fishing canoes or participate in the distribution of fish taken in communal enterprises. ’Tapping coconut trees (hosh) for sap is the male activity par excellence. No man omits this from his daily chores save, perhaps, on his death bed. 8These individuals could also be separated by a generation and therefore stand as S/M or MB/ZD

toeach other.

This is partially reflected in the haoshuma ‘‘brother-in-law’’ kinship dyad, where the brother has authority over his sister’s husband to insure that the latter provides adequately for his sibling. In addition, I have recorded several marriage histories where conflicting demands were placed on a man’s time by his wife and his sister. In such cases divorce frequently resulted because, when forced to make a choice between the two women, a man usually opted for his sister. '0This list is a composite of types mentioned by several informants. There are a number of other common suffixes appended to the yalus root; for example, -musho or -engao ‘‘bad’’; -eiur ‘‘of the south’’; -ifang ‘‘of the north.’’ As far as I am able to determine these would also be members of one of the categories listed. 'lThis man had been visiting Fachailap island proper and his lineage lands and sisters. His residence was on Pigue, the other inhabited islet of the atoll, with his wife on her lineage lands. '2On Lamotrek, Rongala and Ilef are two such good ghosts of former residents. Two others, Rolemei and Marespa, were originally Ulithians, but their ghosts also visit the island. On Wottagai, Tiwulimel and Ilumangumel were good yalusafalu who were former residents. They communicated through a female medium to whom they were related. '3Orange-wood for this purpose was probably one of the items obtained in sawei exchange (Alkire

1965; Lessa 1950a).

4They include Yalualap, Yalusalap, Yalulewei, Pelualap, Yalulamas, Selang and many others,

including the 16 spirits of divination. '5Other classes of mwaletabw include wag ‘‘magicians,’’ sarawale and taubwe ‘‘diviners,’’ soyilee ‘‘fish magicians,’’ and tabutobo ‘‘agricultural magicians.”’

94 William H. Alkire '©An incident on Lamotrek further affirms this. During the course of exploratory archaeological . excavations, a human skeleton was unearthed (Fujimura and Alkire 1984). Several local excavators and other island residents expressed concern that the yalus might be offended, but since the particular land parcel was uninhabited it was also thought (or hoped) that only the anthropologists would be affected. Within two hours of this discovery, two ‘‘old women,”’ arrived at the site, each bringing tugatug ‘‘burial shrouds’’ for the bones. These women represented different lineages, both claiming ownership of this land parcel. The shrouds apparently were used in an attempt to establish kinship links with the remains. If the shrouds were accepted, both by the yalus and the observing community, the kinship ties would be affirmed and the land claim validated. Both tugatug were included with the bones when they were reburied and it is therefore unlikely that the land ownership dispute was settled. '7Pumas and noise drives are uncommon on these Christianized islands today. It is interesting to note, however, that on New Year’s Eve in 1975, on Faraulep the island was noise swept. New Year’s

Eve was not thought particularly significant on Lamotrek or Woleai in the 1960s. . '8Frequently, similar leaves, called tafei ‘‘medicine’’ are tied to the ridgepole inside canoe houses.

'It is rumored that some old women (postmenopausal and therefore reproductively neuter) do drink more regularly, but only in the privacy of their houses and only when their husbands provide

them with the necessary hashi ‘‘palm wine.’’

20The hos is a carved effigy, frequently Janus-faced (representing Yalulawei and Pelualap) with four or six stingray spines bound and projecting from the bottom. Ubwut are tied to its arms, neck, and waist. Bwe is a divining system based on the interpretation of knots tied in strips of coconut frond pinnae (Lessa 1959; Alkire 1970:13-—16). The omens are given by the 16 yalus of bwe who spend their

time paddling a canoe out to sea and back again daily. .

217 do not think we are dealing with cases of ‘‘good and bad’’ ethnographies. I believe each of these

ethnographers recorded informants’ responses and opinions with reasonable accuracy. Paul Radin (1924:14-27) long ago cautioned that descriptions of religions could vary significantly among individuals (and informants) within the same culture. This is certainly a reality since noted in Micronesia. Burrows and Spiro (1953:207) disagreed not only between themselves about the details of Ifaluk religion, but they also found that various informants provided ‘‘entirely different versions’’ (1953:208) and frequently deferred to experts and higher authorities (1953:207, 211). Goodenough (1963a:135) found that many aspects of traditional religion were not clearly or completely worked out by the Trukese. I not only noted a general reluctance to talk about religious matters on Lamotrek, as stated, but I also found on Woleai that no single informant seemed knowledgeable about the full range of ghosts, spirits, and gods. In fact, some claimed never to have heard of ones that other persons mentioned. Keesing states that his initial ‘‘dual soul’’ conclusions concerning the Kwaio may have been

incomplete since other informants more recently ‘‘have talked about a single soul or shade’ - | (1987a:163).

?2Tn this regard Goodenough says ‘‘Truk’s clans... are. . . of two kinds . . . ‘Children of Nikowupwuupw, is autochthonous “The Many-Bearing was part woman and part coconut tree [the second]. . . ‘Children of Achaw.’ They are said to have come from Achaw or to be the descendants of Sowukachaw’’ (1986:551). And with respect to Pohnpei, ‘‘Ponapean tradition . . . bring[s] Olsapa from Katau Peidi and Isohkelekel from Katau Peidak, thus representing the opposition of the Saudeleur and later Nahnmwarki lines as an opposition of origin at the western and eastern sides of the sky”’ (1986:557). Goodenough goes on to say: ‘‘People of Kosrae had no knowledge of how to build or sail voyaging canoes nor any knowledge of navigation.’’ And, ‘‘Such knowledge was also limited on Ponape [Pohnpei]. In Truk it was known only to a very few of chiefly rank, and they were dependent for it on specialists from the surrounding atolls, from which they also imported their sailing canoes’’

(1986:555, citing Finsch 1893:478; Girschner 1912:181; and Kubary 1889:62). |

RASHOMON IN REVERSE: ~ ETHNOGRAPHIC AGREEMENT IN TRUK Mac Marshall The task was to be objective about subjectivity, to bring the insight of art to the science of anthroology.

eee —Ilsa M. Glazer Schuster (1979:9)

| A recurrent issue in ethnographic method is how to explain or resolve disagreements among ethnographers who work in the same locale. Addressing this issue, Heider (1988) suggests that we use the famous Japanese film, Rashomon, as a ‘‘charter image’’ for labeling and discussing ethnographic disagreements over contradictory information or different interpretations of anthropological data. The film highlights four different personal understandings of the same event, convincing us in turn that each succeeding account is the correct one. In so doing it raises perplexing fundamental questions about the validity of human reports of observed and experienced events. Disagreements that can be attributed to “‘the Rashomon effect’’ form an important part of anthropological lore. Perhaps the best known example is the Redfield-Lewis debate. Approximately sixteen years after Redfield completed field research in the Mexican village of Tepotzlan in 1926—27, Lewis embarked on a restudy of the community. Following several visits to Tepotzlan, Lewis published a book (1951) and an article (1953) in which he disagreed with the portrait presented earlier by Redfield (1930). Lewis found that his disagreement with Redfield ranged ‘‘from discrepancies in factual details to differences in the overall view of Tepotzlan society and its people’’ (1951:428). In trying to account for these differences Lewis considered everything from changes in the community itself over nearly twenty years, to shifts in anthropological theories, to personal

discipline. |

differences between the two ethnographers. Perhaps unfortunately, Redfield never responded to Lewis’s challenge in any detail, and while this case is well known to anthropology graduate students it was never aired widely outside the Situations in which two different anthropologists study the same society, or in which the same anthropologist restudies a community some years after the initial research, provide important opportunities for exploring and assessing the epistemological underpinnings of ethnographic knowledge. Ward Goodenough’s research in Truk illustrates both of these situations. His doctoral research on land tenure, kinship, and social organization on Roménum Island (1949b) was conducted at the same time that other anthropologists investigated different aspects of Trukese life as part of the Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology (CIMA).! LeBar (1951) focused on material culture while Gladwin (1952) delved into psychological.questions of personality and development. The three 95

96 Mac Marshall researchers shared insights and data with one another, and their published works : (e.g., Gladwin and Sarason 1953; Goodenough 1951; LeBar 1964) provided a baseline description of Truk against which subsequent investigators have compared their material. In several instances such comparisons have led to ethnographic disagreements.

In the best-known example, Fischer (1958) took issue with Goodenough’s (1956b) classification of residence rules on Rom6num in what has become a clas-

sic and widely known illustration of “‘the Rashomon effect’’ (cf. also Fischer 1984).* Using one set of criteria, Goodenough found that 71% of Rom6num persons resided matrilocally, 15% avunculocally, 6% neolocally, and 1.5% patrilocally, with the remainder in two other categories. Three years later Fischer com- —_. pleted a household census on Romodnum and obtained quite different results. Using other criteria than Goodenough’s for classifying residence, Fischer concluded that 58% of Romonum persons resided matrilocally, 32% patrilocally, 10% neolocally, and none avunculocally. Goodenough (1956b:22) noted that Trukese society would be classified as essentially matrilocal on the basis of his own figures, whereas Fischer’s figures would support a classification of Trukese society as bilocal. This conundrum was productive in highlighting problems of definitions,

typologies, and ambiguous cases in the gathering and organization of ethnographic field data, and in pointing out the difficulties of using these data for comparative studies.

Our understanding of the nature of ethnographic knowledge also is aided by restudies of the same society by the same ethnographer at different points in time. Goodenough returned to Roménum to carry out further research in 1964, 17 years

after he first worked there, and this led him to reinterpret some of his findings from the late 1940s (W. Goodenough 1974c). The primary explanation he offered for the differences discovered in 1964 had to do with changes in the social system under study. Restudies that reveal differences in social and cultural systems over _

time require us to search for explanations that may have to do with the nature of the system itself—either that it has changed or that it contains a previously unrecognized internal variation and diversity. Goodenough has contributed importantly to anthropological understanding of issues of this sort by introducing such concepts as “‘culture pool,’’ ‘‘multiculturalism,’’ and ‘‘propriospect’’ (198 1a). Other widely discussed instances of ethnographic disagreement exist in the literature, such as Bennett (1946) on differing interpretations of Pueblo culture and,

more recently, Freeman’s (1983) attack on the veracity of Mead’s Samoan research. In some of these cases the differences discovered in the restudy may result

from alterations in the system under investigation; in other cases the disagreements may stem from the idiosyncrasies and varied biographies of the ethnographers themselves. What all of these examples of the Rashomon effect demonStrate, however, is that anthropologists have concentrated on ethnographic disagreements, and that cases of agreement among ethnographers have been taken for granted, ignored, or given much less attention than they deserve. I believe that this is a mistake, and that ethnographic agreement also requires explanation. Indeed, to the extent that agreements predominate over disagreements in anthropological studies we can be encouraged that we are not engaged in creating a false, delusionary or fabricated set of ‘*facts’’ foisted off on others as descriptive of objective reality. Instead, ethnographic agreements show us to be involved in a discovery process recently described as scientific in the broadest

Rashomon in Reverse , 97 sense: ‘‘the enterprise of explaining and predicting—gaining knowledge of—nat-

ural phenomena, by continually testing one’s theories against empirical evidence’’ (Diamond 1987:35). That ethnographic disagreements occur, and that these often are important, must not be allowed to obscure the fact that separate researchers in the same “‘field of ethnological study’’ (Josselyn de Jong 1980) come up with similar results more often than not, sometimes when many years - ~~ separate their field investigations. Reflecting on the experience of working nearly half a century later in the same community as another anthropologist, Larcom (1983:182) observes that, While the behavior that each of us had recorded in fieldnotes was superficially very different . . . I

began to see certain central concerns common to the Mewun, -whether his informants in 1926 or mine in 1974.

Because anthropologists must interact with those we study, we become variables that influence the research. Who we talk with, who we like or dislike, what we are told (and what is kept from us), how well we speak the local language— : all this and more colors the information we gather and shapes our own personal view of the people and place we study.’ Given all of this, it is remarkable that there are not more disagreements. Why should independent researchers working in the same society, or with persons who share the same language and culture (even if they are not part of the same community), typically come up with mutually supportive and jointly agreed upon findings? Rashomon questions of agreement and disagreement lie at the very heart of the

anthropological enterprise. The process of grappling with these questions amounts to a kind of ‘‘collective psychoanalysis’’ in which we endeavor to lay bare our underlying motives, assumptions and biases, examine the influences of where and from whom we received our training, consider how we ‘‘do’’ anthropological fieldwork, and assess the implications of all of this for how we present our findings to others. Ultimately, the ‘‘Rashomon effect’’ forces us to address _ the kind of subject anthropology is, thus continuing an epistemological debate that has been with the discipline from its inception: is anthropology a science or is it

a humanistic undertaking? |

Much division surrounds this debate among anthropologists, even though the basic problem seems straightforward enough. Insofar as we believe that there is a “‘pure’’ reality out there waiting to be discovered, measured and argued over, we are engaged in a scientific process of unraveling the secrets of the social and cultural universe. If, on the other hand, we believe that there is no reality apart from that perceived through our culturally patterned ‘‘information processing equipment’’ (our central nervous system, mind, or whatever), then we are involved in a humanistic process of interpreting our perceptions of others’ perceptions of their own culturally constituted world. In practice, the lines are not always drawn so clearly as this might imply, and when pressed we often assert that anthropology is both a scientific and a humanistic enterprise. Nonetheless, this debate bears directly on Rashomon questions, since disagreements among ethnographers working in the same society may derive as much from their different orientations and modes of inquiry as from their idiosyncratic or ideological differences (e.g., Freeman’s 1983 attack on Mead’s Samoan research). When we talk about the interpretation of culture (Geertz 1973), or emphasize the importance of historical considerations (Sahlins 1981), or when we recognize

98 Mac Marshall the influence of the researcher as a significant variable affecting the collection of ethnographic data, we must grant a central place to humanistic procedures in anthropology.* Yet when we call for our colleagues to produce the hard evidence on which their arguments are based, when we count, measure, and quantify our data, and when we urge our graduate students to formulate research hypotheses to structure their forays into the fieldwork setting, we wear our hat as social scientists. Perhaps the real issue is the question of how the canons of scientific work ought to apply to the discipline. For instance, replication of research results is integral to the validity of experimental science, yet it is never possible to completely replicate ethnographic fieldwork. A novelist has the freedom to create and describe an imaginary world, while the ethnographer is supposed to report “the world as it is’’; where and how do we draw the line between these two endeavors? How we answer this question affects our theories, our methods, how we judge one another’s research and publications, and how we are viewed by the wider public.°

The Trukese Case In what follows I shall use Greater Trukese Society (GTS) as the “‘field of ethnological study’’® to illustrate general agreement among ethnographers who have conducted research in the same society or in communities sharing a common cultural tradition. The substantial anthropological research completed over the past

century among the approximately 45,000 inhabitants of GTS has made them

among the best-documented peoples on earth.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German scholars completed surveys (e.g., Hambruch and Sarfert 1935; Kramer 1932, 1935) and ethnographic studies (e.g., Bollig 1927; Girschner 1912; Kubary 1880) in GTS. This was followed by investigations by Japanese ethnographers over the period between the two World Wars, most of whose works were published in Japanese and remain untranslated. During the past forty years extensive studies have been carried out in GTS by American anthropologists, and since the early 1970s a new generation of Japanese scholars, whose published works often appear in English, has begun research in GTS (see, e.g., Ushijima and Sudo 1987). After World War Two, eleven American anthropologists have completed doctoral dissertations based on fieldwork in Truk Lagoon (J. Caughey 1970; A. Fischer 1957; J. Fischer 1955; Gladwin 1952; W. Goodenough 1949b; LeBar 1951; Mahony 1970; Mitchell 1967; Parker 1984;

Reafsnyder 1984; Swartz 1958a),’ another dissertation is currently in progress,°® . and one additional detailed study has been published (Marshall 1979). Three Master’s theses based upon brief field research with Trukese persons also form a part of the literature (Carter 1972; F. Caughey 1971; Larson 1979), not to mention a plethora of journal articles, book chapters, and shorter communications.

A somewhat similar picture holds for the outer islands of GTS where eight American anthropologists have completed Ph.D. studies over the past fifteen years (Borthwick 1977; Flinn 1982; Marshall 1972; J. Nason 1970; Severance 1976; Steager 1972; J. Thomas 1978; M. Thomas 1978). Another dissertation, already mentioned above, treats an outer island community and its migrants to Truk Lagoon (Reafsnyder 1984), two additional ethnographically important contributions have appeared in print (Gladwin 1970; Tolerton and Rauch n.d.), and one Master’s thesis has been finished based upon firsthand field research (A. Na-

Rashomon in Reverse 99 son 1970). Again, numerous publications dealing with the outer islands of GTS— most of them by the scholars mentioned above—form a part of the anthropological record. This wealth of ethnographic material reveals a certain amount of variation in cultural emphasis from community to community in GTS, but upon reading this

voluminous literature one is struck primarily by the general consensus that emerges over a period of more than seventy years from work by German, Japanese, and American investigators (cf. Larcom 1983). The shape of the garment and the material from which it is made are not in dispute. This impression of general agreement is simply reinforced as one moves westward beyond GTS through the related atolls of the Central and Western Carolines where Trukic languages are spoken in a dialect chain (E. Quackenbush 1968; H. Quackenbush 1970). Anthropological research completed on those islands since World War Two by Alkire (1965), P. Black (1977), Burrows (1963), Burrows and Spiro (1953), Lessa (1950b, 1966), Levin (1976), Lutz (1980, 1988), Rubinstein (1979), and Spiro (1950) all conforms in broad outline to the portrait that emerges from reading the literature on GTS. This finding providesencouragement that the data we gather in anthropological fieldwork are neither purely impressionistic, nor our own fabrications, and that these data are not radically shaped or distorted by our individual personal characteristics. In what follows three ethnographic issues are presented that have received sustained attention from several different scholars in GTS, all of whom agree on the basic data. An attempt is made to account for this agreement before reaching some

general conclusions about ‘‘the Rashomon effect.”’ Case 1: Trukese Drunken Comportment When I first went to Namoluk? in 1969, the consumption of alcoholic beverages contributed to considerable social disruption and interpersonal tension on the atoll (Marshall 1975). Upon my departure in August 1971, I had become sufficiently intrigued by alcohol’s role in GTS that I resolved to return one day to study al-

cohol use and drunken comportment on Moen Island in Truk Lagoon, where drinking was more frequent, drunken brawls were more common, and alcoholrelated problems were apparently greater. In 1976 I went back to Truk to carry out this study of drinking and drunken behavior in Peniyesene, a ‘‘suburb’’ of the port town on Moen. At that time many Trukese viewed alcohol abuse as a major social problem. Public drunkenness and related violence were almost daily occurrences, much drunken aggression occurred in the bars among men from different communities—especially on pay weekends—and young men were under considerable social pressure both to drink and to prove their physical competence as ‘‘weekend warriors’’ through acts of drunken bravado. The state of drunkenness seemed to provide Trukese young men with a culturally acceptable outlet for expressing aggression, and an explanation was offered for this that was both historically and ethnographically situated (see Marshall 1979 for details). !° Soon after I left the field in 1976, a prohibition law was passed on Moen which took effect in January 1978. This law remains in force, though like efforts to institute prohibition elsewhere in the world, it has failed to completely stem the consumption of alcohol. A sociologist who investigated the alcohol issue during

100 Mac Marshall the summers of 1981 and 1982 reported that the black market in alcoholic beverages was an integral and important part of Moen’s commercial economy, and

that it was thriving openly despite the prohibition ordinance (Millay 1987a, 1987b). According to Millay, the context and location in which most drinking occurred, and the use of marijuana as a newly available drug alternative to ethanol, were the main things that had changed in the years since 1976. I returned to Truk and spent the summer of 1985 investigating with Leslie Marshall the impact of Moen’s prohibition law on the social, economic and political life of the port town (see Marshall and Marshall 1990). From that work I can confirm that

many aspects of alcohol use in Truk have altered significantly from what they were in 1976, although core values concerning intoxication seem to have changed a little if at all. The difference detected by Millay, which I was able to corroborate, is one of change within the Trukese sociopolitical system and the restudies agree.

both on the changes and their probable causes. 7 Drinking is much less open and public now than it was ten years ago. Statistics presented by Millay (1987b:Table 2) indicate that fights and injuries continue to occur at a comparable rate, but these altercations now take place almost exclusively “‘off the beaten path’’ rather than in the middle of the village or inside public bars as used to be the case. From Millay’s account it seems possible that today one might reside for months in Pentyesene without ever directly observing a drunken brawl, instead only hearing about alleged fights that occurred in the bush or viewing the combatants’ cuts and bruises afterwards. Were I never to have done the 1976 alcohol study, and were someone else to undertake such a study today, it is conceivable that their account of Trukese alcohol use would differ from mine in important ways. But based on what I saw in 1985, I suspect that there would still be many common elements, particularly with regard to the underlying ethos, values, and beliefs that surround alcohol use in Truk. This is, in

fact, confirmed by other investigations of Trukese drinking (e.g., Hezel 1981; _

Millay 1987a, 1987b; J. Nason 1975; Rubinstein 1980; Severance 1974). | In ten years or less the context of drinking in Truk has shifted from a very public, highly demonstrative activity, to a more private, hidden indulgence. This, in turn, has affected the meaning of drunken behavior, particularly in its dramaturgical aspects (Marshall 1979:67-81, 97). In this same ten year period, marijuana use has increased dramatically (Larson 1987; Rubinstein 1980:42—-43). Even

though marijuana, like alcohol, is illegal in Truk, it is easier to obtain, less expensive to purchase (and many users grow their own), and it offers an alternative, quite different form of intoxication. There is no evidence that marijuana use has replaced alcohol consumption in GTS, but the relaxed, nonaggressive comport-

ment many Trukese youths learned as they experimented with marijuana on American college campuses during the late 1970s has produced a change in values regarding drunkenness from alcohol use as well. A study of alcohol use in Truk today would have to include marijuana use in order to obtain a complete understanding of drinking behavior and its cultural linkages. Regarding *‘the Rasho-

mon effect,’’ a great deal has changed in a very few years on a highly focused topic, so that quite different research results might be anticipated today from those obtained just a decade ago. In the case at hand it seems that some of the facts have changed very quickly and that this might account for potential ethnographic disagreement (cf. Freeman [1983] who largely ignores this possibility for Samoa). Yet what is most striking about this example is the basic agreement on cultural

Rashomon in Reverse 101

quite common. -

continuity surrounding alcohol use in Truk. Instances of this sort are probably

Case 2: Trukese Adoption Six different anthropologists have devoted attention to adoption practices and patterns in GTS during the past twenty years. In 1970, Ruth Goodenough published the first detailed anthropological account of adoption in GTS, in this case for the community on Romonum Island, Truk. She found.a crude adoption rate of 10.9% over the last three generations and noted that a survey ‘‘disclosed that

two out of three households with children have at least one adopted person in r them’’ (1970:314). Following a clue from older people on Roménum that adoption was not always so common there, Goodenough’s data suggested to her that a skewed fertility rate might account for the recent increase in this practice. Specifically, she argued that a high rate of childlessness-in the “‘three senior genera| tions’’ resulted from a high incidence of venereal disease and that these childless women were strongly motivated to adopt, thus explaining the reported increase in adoption on Roménum. Goodenough’s presentation contains rich ethnographic detail about adoption practices, clear quantitative data concerning the known cases of adoption, and a demographic explanation linking the rate of adoption to

the rate of infertility among women. ,

The next study of adoption in GTS was, on the surface at least, a clear instance of disagreement. It appeared a few years later in a chapter on adoption and fos, terage (Marshall 1976) in which I considered the Romonum data along with comparable material I had gathered on Namoluk Atoll, GTS.'! In contrast to Ruth Goodenough’s Romonum example, I found no reduced fertility anong Namoluk women in comparable generations, yet this was coupled with a slightly higher crude adoption rate. If one applied her demographic explanation of adoption to _ Namoluk, one would have predicted a lower crude adoption rate, because the rate of infertility was lower on Namoluk than on Romonum. This was not the case, thus throwing her hypothesis into question. Therefore, I argued that “‘infertility and childlessness alone do not explain the high rate of adoption on Namoluk’’ (1976:45). While granting that sterility was one factor influencing rates of adop_tion and fosterage in GTS, I concluded that a simpler and more inclusive explanation of these practices was that they represented part of a larger cultural pattern of sharing among relatives. Thus the issue at stake here was how much explanatory weight to give to the relationship between infertility and adoption on Romonum in light of the Namoluk data. The ‘‘solidarity versus sterility’’ debate was taken up subsequently by ethnographers working elsewhere in Micronesia. Ritter (1981) said that his Kosraen data generally supported my “‘solidarity’’ interpretation, although like me, he also considered demographic factors to be important. .Damas (1983), on the other hand, presented material on Pingelap adoptions that strengthened Goodenough’s ‘‘sterility’’ interpretation. Like many similar debates in anthropology, this one

might be resolved once and for all if only we had sufficiently rich data from enough different communities to thoroughly assess the two alternatives. Instead, we appear to have a fundamental disagreement. When we look at adoption studies in GTS in general, however, we again find a high degree of agreement among those who have given more than passing at-

102 Mac Marshall tention to the subject. The details of my ethnographic description of Namoluk | adoption accorded well with Ruth Goodenough’s account. The quantitative data I presented also closely matched hers. For example, Namoluk’s crude adoption rate over the last three generations was 13%, two-thirds of the households in 1971 had at least one foster child, and 41% of the households had at least one adopted child. Not long after my adoption chapter appeared, John Thomas defended a Ph.D. dissertation based upon fieldwork on Ulul Islet, Namonuito Atoll, GTS, in which the subject of adoption was treated in detail (1978:109-153). Even though Thomas found some variation in the degree of secrecy surrounding these transactions (1978:153, n. 4), his adoption data corroborated and reinforced the two _ earlier accounts. At approximately the same time that Thomas’s study appeared, Oo Borthwick (1977) finished a doctoral investigation of Lukunor Islet, Lukunor Atoll, GTS. Although he devoted less attention to adoption and fosterage than Thomas did, Borthwick’s discussion of these practices fit closely with the other three accounts (1977:115—120), as did a short disquisition on the topic by James Nason (1970:115-119). More recently, in a detailed description of adoption practices on Pulap Atoll, Flinn came down firmly on the side of the solidarity argument. For example, she wrote that **a person adopts only someone who is the ‘child’ of a ‘sibling,’ which reinforces sibling solidarity’’ (1985:95). Neither Thomas nor Borthwick chose to pursue the disagreement between Ruth Goodenough and Marshall over how to interpret adoption rates in GTS, but for this discussion of Rashomon questions it is significant that these six ethnographers are all in fundamental agreement about adoption practices in this “‘field of ethnological study.’’ There is no dispute over the ethnographic facts. The disagreement is over how to interpret these facts to explain adoption and fosterage in GTS.

Case 3: Trukese Values John Caughey (1970, 1977) was the first anthropologist in GTS to clearly delineate a widespread set of core values that he called ‘‘dimensions of character.”’ Caughey showed that the people of Wuumaan Island in Truk Lagoon positively valued pwara ‘‘bravery,’’ mdsdéndson ‘‘respectfulness,’’ and ekiyek péchékkun ‘strong thought,’’ while they simultaneously disvalued the opposite traits of nissimwa ‘‘cowardice,’’ namanam tektya “arrogance,’’ and ekiyek pwoteete ‘‘weak thought.’’ By pulling these core values together into a system, Caughey helped other anthropologists working in GTS to better understand aspects of their own

data in which personal character was important. In his presentation of the Wuumaan material, Caughey noted that the prominent emphasis on ‘‘bravery’”’ there, with a consequent focus on aggression, differed strikingly from what Gladwin and Sarason (1953) and Swartz (1958b) had reported for modern Roménum. Romonum persons were characterized as meek and unaggressive and as disvaluing aggressive behavior. Here, then, was a clear instance of ethnographic disagreement with quite opposite findings from two different Trukese communities. Subsequent to Caughey’s research other investigators have found the system of values he identified to be present and important elsewhere in GTS. For example, in papers dealing with alcohol consumption and with the accommodation of PisLosap homesteaders to Pohnpeian culture, Severance (1974, 1975) made good use of Caughey’s scheme. Particularly in his paper on the homesteaders, Severance (1975) showed that the Trukese set of core values held by Pis-Losapese have

Rashomon in Reverse 103. helped them adjust to the new social and cultural circumstances encountered on Pohnpei. Like Severance, I found that the core values Caughey spelled out aided me to make sense of Trukese drunken comportment (Marshall 1979:55—60). The ‘“bravery’’/‘‘cowardice’’ dimension, in particular, furthered an understanding of the behavior of young men who had been drinking. I pointed out the numerous _ parallels between pwara and machismo, and showed that the Trukese core values ride especially heavily on the shoulders of young males out to prove themselves competent adults. These findings, in turn, assisted me in explaining the striking differences between males and females in regard to alcoholic beverages in GTS. Finally, as Caughey (1977) pointed out, Roménum may not differ as much from

Wuumaan as it first appeared. The same basic set of values seems to be present ° on Rom6énum, with perhaps a slightly different pattern of emphasis (see Goodenough 1977 and Fischer 1979). Romdénum does not stand out as a case quite apart—something radically different—when it is viewed within the broader context of GTS. Thus even the Roménum data support the widespread presence of

| the set of core values Caughey identified. Here, then, is an example where one ethnographer’s findings helped others make sense of their data on quite different subjects (cf. Larcom 1983). Crosschecking by these other ethnographers underscored the essential correctness of Caughey’s formulation for GTS, producing ethnographic agreement as well as confirmation. Such cross-checking of research findings is probably as close as field ethnographers can ever get to replication in experimental science.

What Accounts for Ethnographic Agreement? While the three cases from GTS just reviewed document the presence of a certain amount of disagreement, here and elsewhere in the literature for Truk the level of agreement is much the more striking. This finding suggests that the possible distortions in data collection consequent on our personal characteristics as ethnographers may not be as serious as some have thought. It also suggests that there is a fundamental similarity in the social and cultural systems of these islands that cannot be obscured by the Rashomon effect in any of its manifestations. If this is so, in the face of the great many things that can lead to different accounts by anthropologists working in the same “‘field of ethnological study’’ (see Heider 1988 for details), what explains the agreement that is so often found among such researchers? A partial answer to this question is that we are all to some extent ““prisoners’”’ of previous work completed in the societies in which we work. Ideally, we read everything we can obtain that has been written about our chosen “‘field of ethnological study’’ long before we set foot in the field.!* Indeed, a demonstration of a reasonable mastery of the literature of an area is routinely tested for in Ph.D. comprehensive examinations, and many of us work with a mentor in graduate school who has firsthand field experience in the geographical area where we plan to carry out doctoral research. Such reading and related preparation influences our expectations and preconceptions in myriad subtle and significant ways. Are the people friendly and open or hostile and suspicious? Do they have unilineal descent groups or are they organized cognatically? Are they emotionally labile or constrained? Frequently, the very nature of the research problem we decide to investigate in the field is strongly shaped in advance by our reading and incorporation of the previous research accomplished in that place.

104 Mac Marshall For purposes of this discussion of the Rashomon effect an important issue is } whether or not the relative consensus found so often in the reports by different ethnographers for the same society or cultural tradition is an artifact of common understandings which these researchers share by virtue of having read and been exposed to the same body of previously published literature. We often describe

this as ‘‘building on one another’s work.’’ ,

The influence we exercise on one another extends far beyond the published record to include professional meetings and correspondence. We exchange letters

and telephone calls with those who conduct research in the same geographical area, and it is to such friends that we gravitate for conversation and fellowship __

when we attend national meetings. We even organize ourselves into ‘‘profes- = sional tribes’’ such as the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania based on our ‘‘fields of ethnological study.”’ Conversations, letters, story-telling, gossip, shared unpublished papers, jointly attended meetings and symposia, all end up directing our attention to common problems, similar approaches, and mutually agreed upon conclusions. Yes, of course, disagreements occur (e.g., Rodman and Lovell 1984), but notice how much more often agreement obtains. We tend to develop a conventional wisdom about the people we study in which we reinforce one another’s personal understandings despite the kudos we receive as academics for staking a claim to how ‘‘my people’’ are different from anyone else on earth. Perhaps, though, this is because a people’s life experience comes through in the texts in spite of the many different anthropological minds through which it is filtered. _

Conclusion Certainly, there are many connections among the American ethnographers who have conducted research in GTS in the post-World War Two period. Ward Good- _ | enough served as dissertation adviser for Caughey and Parker, for example; Marshall served in a comparable role for Borthwick, chaired Larson’s M.A. thesis committee, and was an outside member of Reafsnyder’s doctoral committee. Nason and Marshall were fellow graduate students; John and Mary Thomas are married to each other; nearly all of us have met at one time or another, and many of us regularly see one another at national meetings. Given all of this, one might make a case that we have simply ‘‘brainwashed’’ each other into accepting a common understanding of Trukese society and culture. What gives this the lie is that none of us ever met the German anthropologists who worked in Truk in the late 19th and early 20th century. Similarly, none of us knew personally the Japanese scholars who studied GTS before World War Two, and few of us have any significant professional contact with the current generation of Japanese ethnographers who have worked in the islands. Yet the portrait of Trukese society and culture is essentially the same, whether rendered by a German, a Japanese, or an American hand. The ethnographic agreement about GTS transcends the years and the different cultural and national identities of the eth-

nographers who have worked there. | A second reason for rejecting the notion that scholars working in GTS have come to accept, unconsciously, a ‘‘party line’’ about the society they study is that many of us have been willing to modify or revise our own work in light of new evidence, and to challenge others’ findings where this seems appropriate. While

Rashomon in Reverse 105 it is true that American anthropology encourages this kind of continuous mutual critique, the very process of repeated scrutiny—of ‘‘continually testing one’s theories against empirical evidence’’—would seem to select for differences and disagreements over agreements. That agreement emerges for GTS in spite of it all suggests that the similarities and continuities described for GTS are not artificial. _.. Meunier recently defined ethnology as ‘‘a discursive science, a mixture of scientific and personal experience, theory and praxis’’ (1983:656). This is an interesting definition in light of the discussion with which this chapter began. Meunier views ethnology as a science by virtue of its emphasis on reason, its movement from premises to conclusions in a series of logical steps, but he then qualifies this

by noting the importance of personal experience. Here the Rashomon effect rears . its head. Anthropology’s claim to scientific validity rests ultimately on the matter of objectivity. But there are numerous problems in determining what sort of objectivity

we must achieve—on what grounds are we to judge one account more objective _ than another? A journalist is supposed to do background research, observe, interview, and then present “‘the facts’’ of a news story in an objective manner. A nonfiction writer is constrained by ‘‘the facts’’ and events in composing a particular story. Likewise, a scientist is charged with observing and explaining a phenomenon according to agreed upon standards of description and measurement; science seeks understanding of “‘the facts’’ through theories that are potentially falsifiable. As ethnographers, we are supposed to report “‘the facts’’ as objectively as possible. In seeking support for our facts, we cross-check what we learn with a num-

ber of different informants, we ask the same informant the same question at different times to see if we get the same answer, and we try to reduce ambiguities in our data while recognizing that a complete consensus among members of any human population is highly unlikely. We also seek support for our facts by looking to previous research that has been accomplished in our chosen ‘‘field of ethnological study,’’ hoping for corroboration that what we have seen and heard 1s at least

similar to what other trained observers saw and heard. We call this exercise ‘*doing a comparative analysis.’’ In short, at the level of *“‘the facts’’ we proceed under the banner of science. -But much of what we call ‘‘anthropological understanding’’ and most of what we claim as anthropological explanation is a good deal more impressionistic than this. Often it consists in a hunch or a ‘‘gut feeling,’’ to be followed up and interpreted once we have left the field. Here our interpretive work shares much in common with that of a good investigative reporter or a skilled nonfiction writer: In the anthropology of the 1980s, which comes fast upon the reflexionist and interpretivist work of the 1970s, the argument that we are simply describing the facts alone is a naive realism (or a ‘‘vulgar materialism’’) that will no longer wash, anymore than will the argument that there is only one pos-

sible reading to what we write. [Fernandez 1983:171] |

The “‘Rashomon effect’’ concerns different interpretations as much as different observations. The conventions of the discipline and the fashions of the day form part of this. The theories we hold, the kinds of data we choose to gather and present, the style of writing we employ, the audience we address, and the topics we collectively hold to be ‘‘important’’ all work for alternative interpretations. I believe that anthropology is all the richer for this and that *“‘the Rashomon effect’’

is a blessing in disguise.

106 Mac Marshall

Notes ,

Acknowledgments. Earlier versions of this chapter were read at the 12th and 13th Annual Meetings of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania held in New Harmony, Indiana (1983) and Molokai, Hawaii (1984). Special thanks go to Karl Heider, Bruce Larson, Peter Lovell, and Margaret C. Rodman for helpful comments on these earlier drafts. Subsequently, John Caughey and Margery Wolf provided especially detailed critiques that improved the chapter significantly. Research on Namoluk from 1969-71 was supported by a grant and fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health. The 1976 Peniyesene study was underwritten by a Faculty Developmental Assignment from the University of Iowa and a grant from the American Philosophical Society, Johnson Fund. Research in Truk during 1985 was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Iam most grateful

for these various sources of financial support. 'Goodenough’s mentor, George Peter Murdock, also carried out some limited research in Truk at -

this time (e.g., Murdock and Goodenough 1947). 7A less well-known ethnographic disagreement in Truk occurred with Swartz’s (1958a) study of Romonum social organization less than ten years after Goodenough’s earlier work. Among other things, Swartz argued that Romdénum kinship terminology was basically of the Hawaiian type while Goodenough classified it as Crow. Unlike the Goodenough-Fischer debate over residence rules, though, the different classifications of Roménum kinship terminology have attracted little attention from others in the discipline (but see W. Goodenough 1974c:85—92; Marshall 1978). >These personal differences are endemic to the human condition and are by no means limited to anthropologists. Writing of early missionary efforts in the Carolines in 1721, Hezel (1983:57) notes: The letters written by Cantova and Walter in early May (the earliest surviving letters written from the Carolines) reflect a cautious optimism on the part of both Jesuit missionaries, but they also reveal a striking difference in personal attitudes toward the native people. Cantova, ever the buoyant enthusiast, portrayed the Ulithians as “‘peaceful, tame, docile, and very affectionate, speaking to the Fathers without reserve’’; they were a cheerful people with a consuming passion for song that they constantly indulged ‘‘like a choir of Capuchins singing Matins.’’ . . . In Walter’s eyes, the Ulithians were lazy and frivolous people who ‘“‘waste many hours in sleeping, dancing, jumping and spreading on oil which the silly people think makes

them all the more handsome.’’ He had little good to say about the leisurely meetings with which they would ‘‘squander the whole morning’’ and the daily afternoon baths that he saw as making them ‘‘weak, sluggish, and disinclined to everything that brings the least amount of inconvenience with it.”’

“Littlewood (1982) argues strongly that anthropology is a humanistic discipline whose appropriate method is hermeneutical. "This even extends to where we seek research funds—from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, or both.

Greater Trukese Society includes all the communities in Truk State, Federated States of Micronesia, and encompasses both Truk Lagoon and the surrounding atolls to the north, south, and west. “Versions of four of these dissertations have been published (Caughey 1977; Galdwin and Sarason 1953; W. Goodenough 1951; LeBar 1964). SBruce Larson’s dissertation, in preparation for the University of Hawaii, deals with Trukese college students who have sojourned in the United States and returned home. °Namoluk Atoll is located in the Mortlock Islands 208 kilometers south of Truk Lagoon. !OTwo other anthropologists have presented accounts of alcohol use in GTS which closely corroborate my data from Namoluk and Peniyesene (J. Nason 1975; Severance 1974). ‘Tt is pertinent to the Rashomon issue that I read a copy of Ruth Goodenough’s adoption chapter

while still gathering information in the field.

John Caughey has commented to me that nowadays with widespread literacy the people being studied also may be influenced by reading previously published anthropological writings about their society, with a result that they may offer spuriously similar information to later ethnographers.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AS PROCESS: LONGITUDINAL PERSPECTIVES ON KWAIO SOCIETY

Roger M. Keesing | ; Meyer Fortes and Ward Goodenough, wise and innovative students of kinship, have done much to help us see the structure of social groups as the outcome of process. Fortes, in his paper ‘“Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case ~ Study’’ (1970) and his work on the developmental cycle of domestic groups (1959), showed how the varying composition of groups could represent the same _ process at different stages of a cycle: hence classifying “‘structures’’ typologically obscured the dynamics underlying them. Goodenough, in his Truk monograph (1951), his pioneering analysis of residence rules (1956b), and other papers, has argued that such processes and cycles may themselves be the outcome of cultural

principles for making decisions. The same set of cultural principles (which he likened to the rules of a grammar) could produce different outcomes under varying ecological, demographic, or economic circumstances. These complementary and mutually reinforcing insights about social structures as the outcome of processes, social and cognitive, were important in shaping my

own analyses of Kwaio (Malaita, Solomon Islands) social structure (Keesing 1965, 1967, 1968a, 1970a, 1970c, 1971). In my initial fieldwork in 1963-64, and in subsequent studies in 1966 and 1969-70, I was led to seek cultural ‘‘rules’’ underlying and generating the social alignments I observed. In several papers (including Keesing 1967, 1970a), I sought to describe cultural principles or ‘‘rules’’ for making decisions about bridewealth contribution, descent group affiliation,

residence, and custody over children. I argued, as Goodenough had, that these ~ “rules’’ could have different outcomes— including a statistical swing either in the direction of flexible and variable cognatic action groups and local groups or in the direction of more stable and agnatically based groups approximating to an idealized model of agnatic descent, a model invoked in some contexts by the Kwaio themselves. Examining the social identities Kwaio assumed in social interaction and the roles and rights and duties appropriate to each—again following conceptual and methodological guidelines first laid out by Goodenough (1951, 1965b)— I sought to analyze processually the dynamics of Kwaio kinship and the salience of descent in generating social alignments in different contexts (Keesing 1970a, 1970b, 1971). These writings, in the period 1970—72, had by 1970 begun to reflect the rich longitudinal record maintained from 1964 through 1970 by my Kwaio collabo-

rator, Jonathan Fifi’i, as well as my two opportunities to revisit the Kwaio and repeat earlier sociological censuses of the scattered mountain population, still clinging to ancestral ways. But because I have written little about Kwaio kinship and social structure in subsequent years, there has so far been little published doc_ 107

108 Roger M. Keesing umentation or interpretation of the longitudinal data deriving from further fieldwork in 1974, 1977, 1978 and 1979, or a detailed reconstruction of Kwaio residential alignments in October 1927 (when a District Officer and his retinue were massacred; see Keesing and Corris 1980), which provides a very accurate early baseline. Here, briefly, I shall draw on a few pieces of the longitudinal data to reinforce the theses of Goodenough and Fortes that social systems are best viewed as processes in time. The Kwaio data will serve to illustrate how important it is to analyze social structures as dynamic and processual, rather than characterizing them synchronically, whether statistically or in terms of ideal types. I will draw on the longitudinal data to make a series of points that Ward Goodenough’s pioneering — work renders theoretically intelligible.

. To recognize and demonstrate the power of a theoretical framework first clearly articulated thirty years ago (Goodenough 1957) is not necessarily to argue for its adequacy in the light of subsequent theoretical developments and wider issues of contemporary social theory. In recent writings (Keesing 1982a, 1987b, 1987c) I have noted some major limitations in the paradigm that represented cultures as cognitive systems, and viewed them as generating social systems. Such a conceptualization inadequately represented the dynamics inherent in social systems: ‘‘cultural rules’’ are artifacts of social process, as well as the reverse, and it is only in the limiting case that all participants in a social system share the same culture. In its cognitive reductionism, this paradigm inadequately represented complexities of cultures as symbolic systems, at once collective and socially distributed and negotiated: and it inadequately represented the ideological force of cultural ‘‘rules.’’ Finally, in idealizing cultures as cognitive systems, we spuriously bounded them, isolating them from contexts of history and from wider

political-economic systerns. Despite these limitations, visible now as they were not thirty years ago, Iremain convinced that the relationships between code and processual outcomes explored by Goodenough will be important elements in more sophisticated, composite social theories. The Kwaio longitudinal evidence illustrates the power of his vision.

Processes Underlying Structures | In a recent paper (Keesing 1987c) I examine the partial fit between Kwaio descent groups and a model of localized lineages, fundamentally agnatic but with some nonagnatic affiliants, as a result of circumstances of childhood residence. I focus there on a descent group called Fouafoafo’a, which approximated closely to such a model in 1927, and through the period of my study. But there may be more than meets the eye to what looks on the surface like a localized lineage. The composition of local groups is generated by processes in which descent group affiliation is important, but not determinate. I shall illustrate by examining a settlement called Fouoge, where two Fouafoafo’a agnates, shown on Figure 1 as F5 and F15, were living when I first surveyed the Kwaio interior

in 1963—64.' Fouoge lies just beyond the margins of Fouafoafo’a, where the nearby territories of Darilari and Bole intersect. This in itself does not force modification of a lineage model in the Kwaio case: one may live in a clearing outside

one’s own main territory, as long as one has some descent relationship there. What really matters is where one makes one’s gardens.

, ae BOLE P. YX OO) Va

Social Structure as Process . 109

DARILARI | |

, FOUAFOAFO’A

KV) Kx

fVALEE JV OO Oo ANA BATAAFUNA

DARILARI

FOUAFOAFO’A x

|reerSKETCH MAP neen eer eee nr

FIGURE 1. The kinship composition of Fouoge 1963-64 (household groups circled).

But let us examine the composition of Fouoge. The three households were headed by F5, F15, and a man from Darilari named Bataafuna (see Figure 1). This last household included an old man named, ’Aile’e, an invalid for whom Bataafuna and his wife were caring. ’Aile’e had no relationship to F5 or F15 (or to Darilari or Bole), but was Bataafuna’s FBDS.* Bataafuna and F15 were unrelated. Nor were Bataafuna and F5 related to one another as kin by any significant link. However, they were married to two sisters;> and that was the underlying basis of their coresidence. These two sisters themselves had a divided descent group affiliation, but had strong attachments to their mother’s place, Bole. Given

110 Roger M. Keesing the interstitial position of Fouoge, their residence could not in fact be characterized as ‘“‘uxori-’’ or “‘viri-’’: simply as a strategic positioning .* Models that take a localized corporate lineage as the starting point of description must regard complexities of this sort as anomalies, to be dealt with on an ad hoc basis. But a model that focuses on decisions about attachment and affiliation takes the manifest structure of local groups as the variable outcome of underlying

cultural principles. I worked in 1969-70 on an analysis of local group structure modeled on a linguistic grammar as suggested by Goodenough’s analyses of Truk. One set of (‘‘morphological’’) rules (partly explicated in my decision model of Kwaio fosterage) generated the structure of household groups. The prototypical household is a nuclear family, and most households have a nuclear family as their core; but this core is often augmented by unmarried siblings or remnants of other households. A model such as J have proposed accounts for such augmentation of the nuclear family core, as with the case of Bataafuna’s invalid relative, ’Aile’e. Another set of ‘‘rules,’’ akin to the syntactic rules of a linguist’s grammar, governs the linkage of households to one another. An agnatic connection—between father and son, or brothers or first cousins—represents the prototypical or idealized pattern of linkage. But cognatic or affinal links are possible; at Fouoge we see a linkage between two households based on the connection between sisters, whose husbands may be otherwise unrelated. Although each household must be linked to at least one other, some coresident households may have no linkage to one another (as here with Bataafuna’s household and F15’s: each is linked to F5’s household). In this model, structure is viewed as the outcome of process, and variations in social alignments can be seen as epiphenomenal outcomes of underlying cultural principles. Where classical lineage theory based on an idealized model of a descent-based local group would have to take Fouoge as an anomaly, a ‘‘grammar’’ of local group formation based on decision models allows us to see the underlying patterns—structure of a different order. Such an approach equips us, then, todeal with greater deviations from the ideal or typical.

Processual Models and Atypical Outcomes The composition of a local group may deviate wildly from any model based on ideal types (even one cast in terms of development cycles), yet may represent the cumulative outcome of culturally standard decisions about affiliation, attachment and custody made in the face of adversity. Let us examine the settlement of Lotoanitalo, as it was observed in 1969: a settlement that departs drastically from the culturally expressed norm (and statistically expectable pattern) whereby the core of a Kwaio household group is a nuclear family. Genealogically, Lotoanitalo did not look at all like a Kwaio settlement is supposed to (see Figure 2). It consisted of four households, three of them closely

interlinked. The inhabitants comprised two clusters of kin, the senior linking members related to one another as second cousins. But although the households as economic units contained adults and children, women and: men, none of the residents had ever been married; and hence there were no nuclear families, or even units of parent-plus-child. But if we see Lotoanitalo as the precipitate of processes in time, we see orderly process (of the sort I have explicated using decision models and flow charts) in

Social Structure as Process } 11]

[OT | rN

rN rN A

O O KITA A rN uN . TANIAIA TOTAALEA ‘OTOMIAMAE TmaAANAMaE | |

A A O OftO O NN. O O O FIGURE 2. Lotoanitalo. the face of adversity. ’O*~miamae and his sisters, Taniai’a and ’Otaalea, did not marry; but their brother, ‘aenalounga, did, and they lived with him and his wife and children in their agnatic territory. The unmarried brothers and sisters comprised a second household together, but were helping to raise the brother’s six children. When Maenalounga’s wife died, the spinster sisters largely took over the raising of the children. But when Maenalounga himself then died, ’Otomiamae and his sisters wanted to flee ancestral wrath, taking the children to safety. They took Maenalounga’s children to Takwaefou, their father’s mother’s territory, at the invitation of their bachelor cousin, Ma’aanamae. Here again, there is

more than meets the eye: their father had lived for a time at Takwaefou with Ma’aanamae’s father, so the refugees were going to live with someone with whom they had spent several childhood years.

_ If we now shift attention to Ma’aanamae’s agnates, we find as of 1962 two married sons of Ma’aanamae’s ancient father’s brother, each raising a substantial family. But within the space of four years, both brothers died. Again, the survivors followed cultural guidelines for managing custody and care. In the end, both families were broken up, and three of the eight children—two grown daughters

ages 22 and 20 and one aged 11——came to live with their agnatic uncle, Ma’aanamae, who not only offered a protective niche but had strong interests over these children on the basis of his contributions to their father’s bridewealth. They, in turn, with a modest input of Ma’aanamae’s labor, constituted a viable household economic unit. It is this cluster who were joined by ’Otomiamae, his sisters, and their brothers’ children. Here we find, then, economic analogues to nuclear family households, and adaptive, culturally guided strategies for coping with adversity, that yield statistically improbable and typologically strange outcomes: social structure as artifact of process—a precipitate of history. This case further illustrates another aspect of Kwaio social structure, hidden to

synchronic analysis but revealed by analysis of residential histories, using the

112 Roger M. Keesing 1927 data as a benchmark. Where Kwaio households share a single clearing (hence place one another mutually in danger of pollution violations and ancestral punishment), the linkage between households usually connects kin who grew up together as members of the same household (siblings, or parents and children). In my data, two-thirds of households sharing a single clearing are linked in this way. In every one of the twelve cases (representing one-third of the total) where the linking kin did not grow up as members of the same household, analysis of residential histories showed that—as in the case of ’Otomiamae and his sisters and Ma’aanamae—they had spent a substantial period of their childhood together because of the circumstances of parental residence (even though in some cases the

individuals so linked had no kinship ties to one another; cf. Keesing 1980). |

Social Alignments as Precipitates of History Another point well illustrated by the longitudinal data is that social alignments observed at a particular point in time—as, synchronically, we usually observe them—may be processually intelligible only in the light of events and residential alignments a generation or more earlier, events and alignments usually hidden from our ethnographic view. A striking case confronted me when, in 1963-64, I came to know and document the settlements in a territory called Ga’enaafou, the base of the feastgiver, "Elota, whose autobiography I later published (Keesing 1978). In the settlement of Ba’eni’abu lived a mild and pleasant man named Niuni, with his two sons and wife, along with the ancient Ga’enaafou priest, Gooboo 1, and his two grown sons

Geleniu 1 and Bono (see Figure 3). Niuni had spent his life at Ga’enaafou, but his only apparent connection there was a classificatory half-sibling link through a maternal grandmother who had remarried a man from Ga’enaafou. Niuni’s two sons had acquired no further credentials there (since their mother, Niuni’s wife, was an outsider): but their everyday social attachments, like Niuni’s, were to the © Ga’enaafou people with whom they lived. Continuing my census, I learned that Niuni had a white-haired sister, Maamalea, widowed and remarried. I found that she, too, played an active part in Ga’enaafou affairs (Maamalea appears in a photograph in my book on Kwaio religion [Keesing 1982b:172], undergoing a sacrament with Ga’enaafou kin—except that they are not her kin). How had these two, without descent credentials, come to play such parts in Ga’enaafou daily life and ritual? When, in 1969, I reconstructed the settlement pattern as of 1927, that provided some illumination. At that time Niuni and his sisters were living with their mother’s brother, a man named Ofuka; and he was living with the same set of Ga’enaafou people with whom Niuni was living 37 years later. But Ofuka had no connection to Ga’enaafou either. Eventually, I sorted this history out, partly in the course of recording and interpreting ’Elota’s autobiographical account (Keesing 1978). But the events that gave rise to this peculiar residential alignment lay back 1n the 19th century. In the

1870s, when Ofuka was an infant, his father died. His mother then remarried Gooboo 1 of Ga’enaafou—bringing her young daughter and son with her. Ofuka and his sister grew up with their younger half-siblings, Gooboo 1’s sons, Geleniu 1 and Gooboo 2, in a Ga’enaafou settlement: they had no viable ties to their father’s kin. Ofuka’s sister later married, in the 1890s, and had four children, in-

cluding Niuni. When her husband died, Ofuka’s sister brought her children

Social Structure as Process | | 113 GA’ENAAFOU >

Z (1) { (2) | q A [ro00800' (DIED 1963) ,BONO O L\NIUNI OAGELENIU1}; YY [AO

= o o/\AooAd FIGURE 3. Ba’eni’abu 1963-64. ‘‘home’’ to live with her stepfather, Gooboo 1. Twenty years later, both Ofuka’s sister and Gooboo | were dead; the children, with their maternal uncle, Ofuka, comprised a household. They lived with Ofuka’s half-brothers, the Ga’enaafou agnates, Geleniu 1 and Gooboo 2 (see Figure 4). When Geleniu 1, who had become the Ga’enaafou strongman, died in the prime of middle-age in the early 1920s, his passing left a considerable social void, so that even an ethnographer working in 1927 would have faced some puzzles of explaining not only the presence of Ofuka and his sister’s children, but the presence of some non-agnatic Ga’enaafou descendants attracted by Geleniu 1’s largesse and protection. Without a processual view of Kwaio social structure, and a rare opportunity to reconstruct social history, Niuni’s presence would have remained a puzzle to me. Even more puzzling, if an ethnographer had chanced to arrive fifteen years after

I did, would have been Niuni’s son, Koone, whom I had known as a gangling, squeaky voiced adolescent. By the time of Niunt’s death in the mid-1970s the son

was a muscular, urban sophisticate (who had assumed his adult name, Kwa’ aruga); by the beginning of the 1980s he had become a prominent leader in the context of separatist politics, ostensibly a Ga’enaafou leader. As this sequence illustrates, the events and alignments that gave rise to those we observe ethnographically may only incidentally involve the cast of characters whose patterns of residence and affiliation we seek to understand. The Kwaio data

114 | Roger M. Keesing eee ee eee ee reer et eee eee cere cree cc : GA’ENAAFOU

a | GOOBOO 1

QD /AOFUKA / ‘\ 800890 2 ,

A OO O A }

wnt! | | | MAAMALEA I GELENIU 2

FIGURE 4. Ga’enaafou ca. 1920. (including the case of ?Otomiamae and Ma’aanamae and the case of Niuni) show how crucial in shaping adult social relations are bonds formed between children who grow up together in the tiny, intimate play groups of Kwaio settlements. Growing up together is an artifact of parental residence; and by the circumstances of such residence, the children who share these close childhood bonds that affect adult lives may not be closely related to one another.

Multiple Affiliation, Contextualization, and Process _ A fourth illustration of the power of Goodenough’s vision, and his models, concerns the contextual subtleties whereby dual and more complex descent affillations may be maintained without conflict or confusion. Here Goodenough’s work on social identities, seen as elements of a culture as a cognitive system, is crucial. Goodenough’s revision of role theory (1965a) views the capacities in which actors interact as social identities, which are paired in identity relationships (physician:patient, physician:nurse). A society is not composed of groups as if they were the blocks out of which the social whole is constituted. Rather, affiliation with a group constitutes a social identity relationship that an individual assumes (member of X) in particular contexts (just as the physician may also act as customer, homeowner, mother); such an identity need be neither total nor continuously operative. Multiple ‘‘membership’’ in Kwaio descent groups again rep-

resents the outcome of particular histories of residence (usually parental residence) and attachment; but the potential ambiguities they pose on paper are resolved in practice by invoking and assuming different social identities in different contexts. One may act as a member of X one day, as a member of Y another; and in between, may assume dozens of social identities not directly connected to descent status (see Keesing 1971). In a recent paper (Keesing 1987c) I examine this phenomenon with reference

to the descent group called Fouafoafo’a as it was in 1927 and in the 1960s. A

Social Structure as Process 115 further look at these data, building on those we have just examined, will show

idential history. |

how multiple and diffuse descent group affiliations can emerge as artifacts of res-

Early in this century Fouafoafo’a had an agnatic structure with two sets of siblings, related as ‘‘second cousins’’ (see Figure 5). This represents a stage of collateral separation where a process of segmentation often begins. In this case, when

the two brothers who were the center of one incipient segment died (ca. 1915), the wife of each took her children to live with her natal kin. Although such maternal custody violates ideal norms about rights deriving from bridewealth (Keesing 1970a), it is fairly common, especially where the maternal kin are strong and agnatic rights are not forcefully asserted. In the case on which I shall focus, mem-

bers of the other segment of Fouafoafo’a were not in a position to press these 7 rights strongly; and the mother who concerns us, seeking to keep her children, was the sister of a major Ga’enaafou feastgiver, Fofouo (father of ’Elota, who was to become the leading feastgiver of his generation; Keesing 1978). So her

sons, ’Alakwaifai and ’Ufariageni, grew up with their maternal kin at ] Ga’enaafou. Although their primary ritual attachment continued to be to their agnatic ancestors at Fouafoafo’a, their everyday social ties (and allegiances in feasting) were to their Ga’enaafou maternal kin. ’Ufariageni then had an affair with Niuni’s sister, Maamalea, living in a nearby clearing. He married her, with ’Elota financing the marriage (vis-a-vis his agnates

in the other segment of Ga’enaafou, who were Maamalea’s tenuous ‘“‘guardians’’). They had five children, including two sons, Akwalee’au and Tooa. These children grew up in ’Elota’s settlement (see Figure 6). Then ’Ufariageni died, and his widow, Maamalea, married ’Elota’s feastgiving ally, Go’ubisu. Go’ ubisu was related to Maamalea (as ’Ufariageni had been: both marriages were publicly dis-

FOUAFOAFO’A

rN AN A AN

| | leorouo A\ AN A\ O A KO A | GIRU’! | GA’ENAAFOU

| | | -ALAKWAIFAI! l UFARIAGENI

A A A\ A\ A A

(CHILD) (SMALL CHILDREN)

| FIGURE 5. Fouafoafo’a ca. 1915.

116 Roger M. Keesing

|:K|Ss AN | 008001 | ©AA : GA’ENAAFOU :

| FOUAFOAFO’A | _ Oo GELENIU 1 GOOBOO 2 I | FOFOUO

dD A A A © A

A © A\ A A

on MAAMALEA LUFARIAGENI , | ALAKWAIFA\ _

AA

vcuntee ul rooal

FIGURE 6. Ga’enaafou ca. 1950.

approved): Go’ubisu was a half-brother of Ofuka and his sister, the mother of ~ Niuni and Maamalea. Maamalea wanted to take her children with her. So ’Elota was faced with a situation where children over whom he had legal rights were potentially welcomed as stepchildren by a feasting ally, also their distant relative. He let Maamalea take the children. The latter have grown up with multiply divided affiliations. In 1964, Akwalee’au and Tooa were living with their mother and Go’ubisu. By 1969, Akwalee’au had married and had gone to Ga’enaafou to live with ’Elota’s brother; but his sister, her husband, and their children were living with Go’ubisu. Tooa had gone off to a plantation. In subsequent years, these children have had divided allegiances, although in adulthood Akwalee’au and Tooa have had primary ties to Ga’enaafou, as nonagnates. (They also have very

close kinship ties with their mother’s brother’s [Niuni’s] sons, domiciled at Ga’enaafou). They continue to take part (Keesing 1982b) in the ritual affairs of their paternal grandfather’s territory, Fouafoafo’a, as nonresident agnates. Such a complex pattern of affiliation may confound analysts of social structure who would like to view descent corporations as the unambiguous building blocks out of which a social structure is formed—who would, as I have elsewhere put it, like to see “African models in the Malaita highlands’’ (Keesing 1987c). But if we see memberships in groups and categories as social identities assumed contextually, as Goodenough’s formulations allow, and if we see multiple attachments as the outcome of cultural principles and social strategies, we can under-

Social Structure as Process 117

social life. oS

stand how they are formed and how they are expressed and activated in ongoing

‘Descent Groups” in Time and Space A final point is that when we are dealing with tiny, fragmented groups like those of the Kwaio, the dwindling of localized descent groups may not be final and irreversible: this, too, may represent a cycling in time. The Kwaio longitudinal data illustrate how, as a limiting case, a localized descent. group may even vanish for decades and then reappear. The fifty year time span covered by my data further enables us to see dynamics in the structure of descent groups that any synchronic .. view of the kind afforded by conventional fieldwork would hide. Let me illustrate

the processual dynamics, and the possibilities opened up by the tiny scale of Kwaio descent groups, with the case of a localized agnatic descent group that disappeared for about sixty years and then was reconstituted: Kwaini.

| In 1927, the last surviving male agnate from Kwaini, Agu’i, was living with nonagnatic kin (his mother’s father’s mother’s people) at Arulauni (see Figure 7). Like other socially marginal survivors of groups that had dwindled and dispersed, he had attached himself to a strong relative, in a then dangerous world. As a young

man, he had succeeded his father as Kwaini priest. . Agu’i then married the daughter of the sister of the Arulauni strongman, in adjacent Darilari. His children grew up at Arulauni and Darilari, their mother’s agnatic estate. Agu’i died in the 1950s and was succeeded as priest by his son, "Aufana. ’Aufana lived through the 1960s and to the mid-1970s with his Darilari

K WAINI ARULAUNI _DARILARI

, | ew | "AUFANA | ; FIGURE 7. Kwaini.

118 Roger M. Keesing and Arulauni maternal kin. His younger brother worked on plantations for about

fifteen years. Kwaini, despite these two remaining agnates, was essentially ‘“‘empty’’ for fifty years. But in 1974, ’Aufana’s younger brother came back, had a love affair with the daughter of the senior Arulauni leader, and married her. In 1977, ’Aufana, with his six sons, and his brother, with his two sons, moved back to Kwaini. The localized agnatic lineage is reconstituted and flourishing; in another generation it could well be as large as most of the larger descent groups of

1927. | Conclusion

This brief examination of the Kwaio data on social structure in time shows the value of both Fortes’s and Goodenough’s perspectives. In particular, it shows how Goodenough’s view of social structure as generated by culturally guided decisions gives us a powerful way of thinking about, and analyzing, atypical and fuzzy social alignments as well as ideal or typical local or descent groupings. I have further sought to show, here as in earlier papers, how Goodenough’s conceptualization of social identities, contextually assumed, allows us to analyze multiple descent group affiliations and to resolve the contradictions ‘‘nonunilineal descent systems’’ have seemed, on paper, to pose. Goodenough’s models of the 1950s and 1960s, and mine and those of other ethnographers of the 1960s and 1970s that built on them, were more partial and problematic than we realized. However, the data I have examined illustrate why they have a continuing value and power. I expect that such models and insights will be important elements in more comprehensive social theories that are now coming into view.

Notes .

Acknowledgments. | am grateful to the National Science Foundation for support of the 1969~—70 research so directly represented in this chapter and to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,

Paris, and in particular to Maurice Godelier and Daniel deCoppet, for making it possible for me to spend the productive period there in 1986-87 during which this chapter was written. My deep debts to Ward Goodenough, friend and teacher for more than 25 years—though | never had an opportunity to study with him directly—will be clear from what follows. 'T use these numbers to correspond with those used in Keesing (1987c). 2? Aile’s was a nonagnatic affiliant to Ga’enaafou, a descent group discussed below. 3Co-affines of this kind are not classed as ‘‘in-laws’’ (ruma’a),; see Keesing (1968b). “Strategic positionings of a less extreme form may provide an implicit basis for the siting of settlements and gardens, so that although not coresident, married sisters or other natal kin ostensibly separated by marriage may visit regularly or make gardens together or in close proximity.

- CONTRIBUTORS William H. Alkire was born in 1935 in Bremerton, Washington, and completed

his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington. He took an M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Hawaii, followed by a Ph.D. in the same discipline at the University of Illinois based upon fieldwork on Lamotrek Atoll, Caroline Islands. Subsequently, he conducted field research elsewhere in Micronesia on several other islands. Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria,

| Canada, Alkire is the author of Lamotrek Atoll and Inter-island Socioeconomic Ties (1965), An Introduction to the Peoples and Cultures of Micronesia (1977), and Coral Islanders (1978). John L. Caughey was born in New York in 1941. He received his B.A. in English

Literature from Harvard (1963) and his M.A. (1967) and Ph.D. (1970) in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1968 he carried out fieldwork in Truk, resulting in several publications including Fddnakkar: Cultural Values in a Micronesian Society (1977). In recent years he has turned his attention to the study of the United States where he has published a variety of works, including Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach (1984), applying anthropological methods to the analysis of American culture. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland.

Ann Chowning was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and educated at Bryn Mawr College (B.A.) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Ph.D.). She has extensive research experience in Papua New Guinea, especially on New Britain where she has worked with the Lakalai, the Sengseng, and the Kove peoples. Having taught at Barnard College, and the University of Papua New Guinea, -Chowning is now Professor of Anthropology at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. Among her numerous publications is An Introduction to the Peoples and Cultures of Melanesia (1977).

Born in the United States in 1935, Roger M. Keesing is Professor and Head of Anthropology at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. He received his undergraduate education at Stanford University (B.A., 1956) and took his graduate degrees at Harvard University (M.A., 1963; Ph.D., 1965). He has carried out field research in the Solomon Islands since 1962, and also has worked in India. Professor Keesing is the author of eleven books, among them Kin Groups and Social Structure (1975), Kwaio Religion: The Living and the Dead in a Solomon Islands Society (1982), ‘Elota’s Story: The Life and Times of a Solomon Islands Big Man (1983), and Kwaio Grammar (1985).

Mac Marshall was born in San Francisco in 1943 and studied at Grinnell College (B.A., 1965) and the University of Washington (M.A., 1967; Ph.D. 1972). He has taught at the University of Jowa, where he is Professor of Anthropology, since

1972. Having conducted fieldwork in Truk, Micronesia (Namoluk Atoll and

= 119

120 Contributors Moen Island), he has also carried out research in Papua New Guinea and the United States. Marshall is author or editor of seven books including Weekend Warriors: Alcohol in a Micronesian Culture (1979), Through a Glass Darkly: Beer and Modernization in Papua New Guinea (1982), and the forthcoming Silent Voices Speak: Women and Prohibition in Truk (with Leslie B. Marshall; Wads-

worth Press, 1990). =

Anna Meigs is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. She studied En-

(1984). ;

glish Literature at Wellesley College (B.A., 1965), and received her Ph.D. in ~ Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. Following detailed fieldwork on food and gender among the Hua in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, Meigs authored Food, Sex, and Pollution: A New Guinea Religion Jay Smith Noricks received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. He has taught at California State University, Chico, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His fieldwork has been in Tuvalu, Polynesia, and among his anthropological works is the two-volume book, A Tuvalu Dictionary (1981). Anne Salmond was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and completed her under-

graduate education at the University of Auckland (B.A., 1966). Following an M.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics at the same institution (1968), she attended the University of Pennsylvania, from which she received the Ph.D. in 1972. Since then she has taught at the University of Auckland where she is presently Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology. Salmond has authored many works on the New Zealand Maori, notably Hui: A Study of Maori Ceremonial Gatherings (1975), Amiria: The Life Story of a Maori Woman (1976), and Eruera: The Teachings of

a Maori Elder (with Eruera Stirling) (1980). a

_. REFERENCES CITED ,

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