In the Midst of Life: Affect and Ideation in the World of the Tolai 9780520911642

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Exploring Affect: Some Preliminary Issues
2. The Tolai: Habitat, History, Society
3. The Language of the Emotions
4. Work, Ambition, and Envy
5. Of Kin, Love, and Anger
6. Tambu, Grief, and the Meaning of Death
7. Affect and the Self
8. Epilogue: The Anthropologist as Onion-Peeler
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

STUDIES IN MELANESIAN ANTHROPOLOGY General Editors Donald F. Tuzin Gilbert H. Herdt Rena Lederman

1. Michael Young, Magicians ofManumanua: Living Myth in Kalauna 2. Gilbert H. Herdt, ed., Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia 3. Bruce M. Knauft, Good Company and Violence: Sorcery and Social Action in a Lowland New Guinea Society 4. Kenneth E. Read, Return to the High Valley: Coming Full Circle 5. James F. Weiner, The Heart ofthe Pearl Shell: TheMythological Dimension ofFoi Society 6. Marilyn Strathem, The Gender ofthe Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia 7. James G. Carrier and Achsah H. Carrier, Wage, Trade, and Exchange in Melanesia: A Manus Society in the Modern State 8. Christopher Healey, Maring Hunters and Traders: Production and Exchange in the Papua New Guinea Highlands 9. A. L. Epstein, In the Midst ofLife: Affect and Ideation in the World of the Tolai

In The Midst of Life Affect and Ideation in the Wodd of the Tolai

A. L. Epstein

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley I Los Angeles I Oxford

This book is a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions.

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press Oxford, England Copyright © 1992 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Epstein, A. L. (Arnold Leonard) In the midst of life : affect and ideation in the world of the Tolai I A. L. Epstein. p. cm.-(Studies in Melanesian anthropology; 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-07562-5 (alk. paper) 1. Tolai (Melanesian people)-Psychology. 2. Tolai (Melanesian people)-Sociallife and customs. 3. Philosophy, Tolai. 4. Ethnopsychology-Papua New Guinea-Gazelle Peninsula (New Britain Island) 5. Emotions. 6. Affect (Psychology) 7. Gazelle Peninsula (New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea)-Sociallife and customs. 1. Title. II. Series. DU740.42.E67 1992 155.8'4995-dc20 91-31561 CIP Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39. 48-1984 §

Taratarai Matupit upi a varpanuknuk ure kaugu kini livuan pirediat andfor

Michelle and Debbie who will have their own recollections ofRabaul

The human being is the most complex system in nature; his superiority over other animals is as much a consequence ofhis more complex affect system as it is ofhis more complex analytical capacities. Out ofthe marriage of reason with affect there issues darity with passion. Reason without affect would be important, affect without reason would be blind. The combination ofaffect and reason guarantees man's high degree offreedom. Suvan Tomkins 1963:1, 112

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1 Exploring Affect: Some Preliminary Issues

1X

1

2 The Tolai: Habitat, History, Society

29

3 The Language of the Emotions

53

4 Work, Ambition, and Envy

80

5 Of Kin, Love, and Anger

116

6 Tambu, Grief, and the Meaning of Death

150

7 Affect and the Self

198

8 Epilogue: The Anthropologist as Onion-Peeler

248 vii

viii

CONTENTS NOTES

281

BIBLIOGRAPHY

299

INDEX

311

Acknowledgments

Much of the material presented in this book was collected on visits to the Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain, in 1960-61 and 1968 when I held research posts at the Australian National University, Canberra. The rest was gathered on my return there in 1986. This further spell of fieldwork was made possible by the award of an Emeritus Fellowship of the Leverhulme Trust and grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (grant 4660) and the ESRC, London. I also received from the Nuffield Foundation one of their Small Grants to assist in the processing of my quantitative data. I am deeply indebted to all of these bodies, to whom I tender my thanks. My intellectual debt to Silvan Tomkins will be readily apparently. I want to thank him in particular for a brief but enormously stimulating stay as his guest at his home in New Jersey. I am also grateful to Professor Plutchik and to Professor Izard for giving generously of their time to discuss my research plans before my return visit to Papua New Guinea in 1986. An invitation to spend a quarter in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, gave me a welcome opportunity to exchange ideas and hopefully to clarify some of my own in discussion with a delightful group of colleagues before setting off for the field. I have to thank too Professor Gustav Jahoda, University of Strathclyde, for much encouragement over the years and more recently for a most pleasant few days spent at his place discussing my draft manuscript. Finally, on the academic side, I have to thank my colleague at Sussex, Dr. Gun Semin, for technical advice on the proIX

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

cessing of my numerical data, and to Helga Dittmar who actually performed the necessary operations. My thanks too for all her help to Liz Davis in the Computing Centre. Within Papua New Guinea I had the full backing and cooperation of the East New Britain Provincial Government under its then Premier Sir Ronald ToVue. To him and the members of his staff I am extremely grateful. But my greatest debt of course is to the people of Matupit. Nearly all of the older folk with whom I was on such dose terms in 1960 had died by the time of my return in 1986. I hope that this book will be seen by some of the younger Matupi as my own way of paying tribute to their patuana. Among those at Matupit from whom I gained most during my 1986 visit I want to thank in particular my friends Kolias ToKonia, Oscar Taule, and ToGorogoro, and among Matupi in Port Moresby, Jacob Simet and William Kaputin. Boina tuna piremavat parika. Finally, for their cooperation in helping me to carry out a variety of tests, I wish to thank Wesley Moramoro, vice-chancellor of the University of Technology, Lae, and the principals and students at Rabaul Technical School, the Keravat National High School, and Boisen High School, Nodup. I cannot end without a word of thanks to Don Tuzin and his fellow editors for a variety of critical, but always helpful, comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Nor can I pass over here my wife Scarlett who, as always, has given unfailing support and encouragement.

A.L.E.

1 Exploring Affect: Some Preliminary Issues jenkin's election had taken Mr. Beavis long strides towards death. From being a man much younger than his years, he had suddenly come to look his age. An old man; and tired into the bar;gain, eroded from within. "Pm worried," Pauline had confided toAnthony. "He's making himselfill. Andfor something so childish really. I can't make him see that it doesn't matter. Or rather I can't make him feel it. Because he sees it all right, butgoes on wonying all the same."

I cite this passage from Aldous Huxley's novel Eyeless in Gaza (1969:468) not for any startling insight it offers, but rather because it embodies a number of assumptions that many would consider unexceptionable, if not trite: what we think and what we feel, we are being told, are far from being the same thing; thought is often overborne by feelings which can profoundly affect our physical well-being as well as our conduct. And indeed most of us are able to recognize without difficulty the importance that emotion plays not only in the lives of those characters we encounter in a novel or observe on stage and screen but in our own, too. So much of everyday social intercourse involves the expression of affect: we must be alert to the feelings of others just as we are careful what we disclose of our own. In negotiating these encounters we also come to recognize, if only subliminally, that how and what we feel is transmitted not just verbally but by nonverbal

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cues as well, cues that may indeed carry the more vital information: in a given "message" tone of voice, a raising of the eyebrows or some other involuntary movement of the body may count as much as, or even more than, verbal content. Nor of course is it only in the context of such personal interaction that the important role of affect is to be seen: it is indeed difficult to think of any human activity or social event that is not ordinarily accompanied by some degree of emotional expression. In such circumstances the layman might be led to suppose that anthropologists, whose preoccupation after all has been to explore the human experience in all its diversity, would have been quick to see this and give affect a prominent place in their inquiries. The facts, however, are quite otherwise. For despite the references to emotional states in many ethnographic accounts, or even the occasional instance of British and American anthropologists chiding their French colleagues for their neglect of the emotions in their structuralist analyses (e.g., Firth 1966; Geertz 1973; Spiro 1979), it remains the case that affect has never been a focus of anthropological research,l even, surprisingly, within that branch of the discipline usually referred to today as psychological anthropology. 2 The present study was conceived as an attempt to redress this situation; its central concern is to explore the role of the emotions in the social life of the Tolai people of the Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain. But before turning to this task it will be helpful to consider some of the reasons for the neglect. This will lead us directly to a number of methodological issues that need to be discussed at this stage. A variety of reasons have been offered for the marked failure on the part of students of human society to attend to the part played by the emotions in social life. For some, the reason/emotion opposition already noted-a dichotomy that has deep historical roots in the cultural tradition of those Western societies from which hitherto most social and behavioral scientists have come-is itself seen as generating a powerful bias against research into affect. But the matter is undoubtedly more complex than this and, leaving to one side questions that properly belong to the sociology of knowledge, it also has to be acknowledged that the phenomena themselves present formidable obstacles to systematic inquiry. The point has neatly been made by Knapp (1958:55) when he remarks that "like a mountain peak, emotional experience has an apparent immediacy and concreteness, yet a way of receding into a conceptual haze." The apparent immediacy and concreteness of many affective states, Knapp observes, arises in part from the participation in them of ob-

EXPLORING AFFECf

3

vious bodily processes. These processes have been the subject of much study by neurophysiologists who have given us some of our most detailed knowledge about the inner workings of the emotions. We can learn much from this work, for example, about what neural processes make possible or about the physiological mechanisms that underlie the expression of particular emotions. However, any assumption that one can adequately describe, still less explain, emotional experience in terms of experimentally generated physiological data soon runs into difficulty simply because even when a display of affect has a clear physiological basis, it is still not possible to infer from knowledge of the neural processes alone just what emotion has been experienced, if any. As Pribran (1963:228) has expressed it, the blush of a young woman or the flushing of her face may indicate embarrassment, or love, or that she has been in the sun all day and the burn is beginning to show, aided by the preprandial ingestion of alcohol. Where the nature of what is to be studied is so uncertain, obvious difficulties stand in the way of applying methods of research that satisfy the usual standards of scientific rigour. Small wonder, then, that in such circumstances psychologists of a behaviorist persuasion, anxious to be rid of the "hocus pocus of mentalism," should sometimes have expressed the desire to see terms such as emotion disappear from the vocabulary of their discipline (see, e.g., Boring 1946). But even those psychologists who reject this stance, and have seriously attempted to come to grips with emotions, have been obliged to point out how the task of experimental investigation is enormously complicated by certain attributes of the affect system itself as well as by other factors (see, e.g., Tomkins 1963:1, 193,324; Plutchik 1980:xvii; 1982:531). For many anthropologists, however, it is the subjective element which is seen as a major stumbling block to inquiry. Fairly representative of anthropological doubts in the matter are the comments of Abner Cohen. "Our subjective life," he observes, "is notoriously chaotic, whimsical, vague, shifty and very largely unconscious" (Cohen 1974a:x). The message is clear: the emotions represent an area of shifting sands from which the anthropologist is well-advised to steer clear; instead he should stick to observable and verifiable criteria; what matters sociologically is what people actually do, not what they subjectively think or feel. I do not need to dwell at this stage on the broader assumptions about what constitutes terra firma in anthropological research which underlie the kind of approach that Cohen advocates. More pertinent to present concerns is that for all its seeming straightforwardness and its curt dismissal

4

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of the "airy fairy," Cohen's position itself does not manage to avoid ambiguity. Elsewhere in the same discussion, for example, there are references to symbols that agitate strong feelings and emotions, but if his own criteria are applied one is left to wonder how these feelings and emotions are to be identified. The inconsistency serves to strengthen the conviction that the point of view represented by Cohen is rooted in a misconception not merely as to the nature of the emotions but also as to the way knowledge of them is to be gained. The point may be seen more clearly if brief reference is made first to the position as it concerns animals. Those who study the expression of the emotions in animals do not rely either on introspection or physiological changes alone. Rather they integrate a number of sources of information relating to what is known of the organism's behavior, its present behavior, and the effects this behavior has had on other animals or persons. And we proceed in a broadly similar way where human beings are concerned. As Plutchik (1980:139) observes, we do not take a person's pulse to determine whether that person is sad or angry. In a word, in the context of human social interaction, emotions have to be inferred in much the same way as, say, interests, to cite a concept to which Cohen (1974b) attaches particular explanatory significance, or so many of the other bread-andbutter categories of anthropological discourse. But the reluctance of many anthropologists to meddle with affect has also to be related to methodological difficulties of a rather different kind. The matter has its roots in Durkheim's (1982/1894) concern to assert the suigeneris status of social phenomena, a position later scholars were repeatedly to reaffirm, if sometimes from different perspectives and in very different terms (e.g., Nadel 1951:298; Devereux 1961, 1978; Levi-Strauss 1962:68-72; Gluckman 1964). It is important to stress that it was not the reality of emotional experience as such that they wished to deny; what they were concerned to repudiate rather has been the tendency in some quarters to invoke the emotions by way of handling phenomena that in their view properly called for sociological analysis. 3 Nevertheless it is an intellectual stance with direct implications for research, most plainly to be seen in Gluckman's doctrine of the "limits of naivety" and his caution to the anthropologist to "avoid attempting to deal with aspects of reality which can only be handled by some discipline other than his own" (Gluckman 1964:166). At the level of "tactics" there is of course much in Gluckman's detailed discussion with which one is bound to agree; what he has to say, for example, about the pitfalls for the unwary who move outside the

EXPLORING AFFECI'

5

range of their professional competence by crossing well-recognized disciplinary boundaries abounds in common sense, as Freeman (1966) has observed. It is at the level of "strategy" that one begins to feel less comfortable. In my own case, for example, fieldwork first in Central Mrica and later in New Guinea had thrust under my very nose, so to speak, a number of problems that appeared to be centrally concerned with the various and complex ways in which emotions entered into human social behavior. Such problems, I felt, were not to be ignored; nor was it a solution to shuffle them off onto the psychologist, for, in the terms of Gluckman's doctrine, the psychologist himself was constrained by the principle of "naivety" in the face of data that pertained to the social or cultural field. By a curious irony, the "open" approach that Gluckman adumbrated seemed to require that one close one's mind to a range of phenomena that not only fell within one's range of observation but that also appeared to constitute an important dimension of the human experience. Pursuing this line of thought led me gradually to try a number of exploratory papers in what I had come to speak of as the anthropology of affect (Epstein 1978, 1979a, 1979b, 1984), and eventually to embark on the present study.

The Question of Method But to recognize an interesting field of inquiry is one thing, to devise a method for its systematic study quite another. What are the emotions and how are they to be conceptualized? Rephrased in slightly different terms, what kinds of data are we looking for and by what means is the material to be collected? It should be readily apparent that an anthropologist who is interested in affect at once shares certain common ground with specialists in other fields who also have a professional concern with the emotions. But there are also likely to be important differences in their approach to the subject. Such differences arise because the various specialists are addressing different questions to the data in line with their own theoretical interests and preoccupations; they may also reflect the different methods and contexts by and in which the observed data are generated. So, for example, the primary data of the psychoanalyst comes in the form of material presented by the patient or analysand in the course of an analytic session; for a psychologist they may derive from a clinical interview or from experi-

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ments that are carried out under laboratory conditions. All of these are, in a sense, bounded situations in which the procedures adopted reflect an underlying concern with emotion as it is, or has been, experienced by an individual. What then of the anthropologist in this regard? It is clear of course that an anthropologist in the field also gains much of his information from individuals. Much of this comes from casual conversation or discussions in informal situations, but even where a topic requires the systematic questioning of informants rarely does this occur within an artificially bounded context. No less to the point is that since an anthropologist's interests are apt to lie more in the domain of the social and the cultural, much of his data is also likely to be drawn from the observation of live sequences of events or of similar kinds of happening recounted or reported by his informants. Material gathered in this way will undoubtedly reveal a spontaneity in the expression of the emotions the lack of which in the experimental situation has now come to bother some psychologists (see Leventhal 1984:27), but by the same token it rules out the kinds of control that the experimental method demands. The fact is that the task that confronts the anthropological observer is vastly more complicated than that which his colleague in psychology has to face: in any given situation he is not only likely to encounter a multiplicity of affects, he also has to take account of the complex system of social relations in which the modes of response he is seeking to understand are embedded as well as the specific situation itself in which they have been manifested. As it happens, around the time that I myself began to give serious attention to the question of the emotions other anthropologists too were beginning to turn their minds in the same direction, and some of the issues just raised were beginning to receive an airing. This was not an isolated development, some kind of intellectual "sport," but has to be related to changes in the way in which many anthropologists had for some time been coming to think of their subject, changes that, despite the many differences of emphasis in the work of different scholars, and indeed the many different "labels" they adopted, can be appropriately represented as a paradigmatic switch. As we have learned from Kuhn (1962), paradigms change not so much because they no longer provide answers to the questions being posed, but rather because workers in the disciplines concerned have become interested in quite different sets of questions. Within the social sciences, however, we have to take account of a further point. This is the tendency of dominant paradigms to single out and focus on a particular human attribute in such a way that each

EXPLORING AFFECf

7

model comes to embrace its own distinctive image of man. Likewise, when a paradigmatic change occurs we find that there is also a movement away from the image of man that the earlier prevailing model embodied or projected. So, in the present instance, one may note how, from a central concern with society and its workings, there has been a swing toward a more anthropocentric focus, from an image of man as role-player to one of meaning-maker. In adopting these terms I do not wish to imply a homogeneity of outlook among all of those who have been influenced by these changing perceptions of the anthropological task. All do, however, appear to share certain underlying assumptions. Most salient of these for this discussion is the stress on interiority, the attempt to grasp things, as it were, from the inside, that finds its ex. pression in a number of ways. In the first place, at the societal level, there is an immediate concern with indigenous categories and classifications, the attention paid to folk models. Secondly, interiority finds expression in the recognition of the individual as an actor and an accompanying concern with issues of identity and the self. These latter have usually been regarded by anthropologists as falling within the field of psychology, but, in line with what has just been said about interiority, the categories of understanding developed by psychologists have themselves come to be regarded as culture-bound and inappropriate to the study of other societies outside the Western tradition. In this way, within the past few years, claims have been made, on one side of the Atlantic, for the study of folk or indigenous psychologies (Heelas and Lock 1981) and on the other for ethnopsychologies (White and Kirkpatrick 1985). It is within this context that much of the recent anthropological interest in the emotions has emerged. In the Western intellectual tradition, in which mind and matter stood opposed, emotional phenomena were apt to be lumped with the latter as part of man's animal inheritance, alien to his true "self" (see e.g., Knapp 1963:4). And Levi-Strauss, for example, appears very much to place himself within this tradition when, in summarily dismissing those who would dabble in the emotions, he charges them with adopting a perspective that is more biological and psychological than anthropological. The ethnopsychologists do not merely reject this point of view, they stand it on its head. The emotions are brought within the ambit of cultural analysis by dealing with them as products of culture or cultural constructs. In this way, for example, Clifford Geertz, one of the most influential in developing the interpretative or hermeneutic approach within American anthropology, has written that Balinese

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"passions" are as much culturally shaped as the symbolic forms used to manipulate those passions for political purposes. While some who would otherwise appear to be quite close to the position Geertz represents have found his remarks on this occasion a shade too strong (e.g., Levy 1984a:217), others have written in essentially similar terms making it plain that viewing the emotions as cultural constructs has now become central to ethnopsychological discourse. 4 From the latter perspective, one of the aims in incorporating the emotions into ethnography is to make it possible to present a fuller view of what is at stake for people in their everyday lives. As Lutz and White (1986:431) have put it, "In reintroducing pain and pleasure in all their complex forms into our picture of people's daily life in other societies we ... further humanize these others for the Western audience." At a more abstract level, attending to the emotions has become important as a means of focusing on the "self," which is itself culturally constituted, positioned at the nexus of personal and social worlds. To cite Lutz and White once again (1986:417), concepts of emotion emerge as a kind of language of the self-a code for statements about intentions, actions, and social relations, a theme taken up in many of the contributions to the White and Kirkpatrick (1985) symposium exploring Pacific ethnopsychologies. In my own earlier discussion of the experience of shame in Melanesia I noted at the outset that the problem had a linguistic or semantic dimension and went on to show, for example, how within Melanesia itself there were sometimes important differences in the meaning of terms that were drawn from different local vernaculars and that were ordinarily glossed by the English word shame. Similarly there would be little point to the present undertaking if I did not accept that emotions are socially shaped and in turn socially shaping in significant ways; however, the view that the emotions can be handled simply in cultural terms seems to me to be seriously flawed. Despite the evident gains that such an approach has made possible, we are forced to ignore, or simply cannot come to grips with, many of the questions a study of the emotions is likely to confront an anthropologist. What is at once so curious is that an approach that in some regards represents such a novel departure should be so reminiscent of the functionalist sociology of an earlier day: key terms in the ethnopsychologists' lexicon like culture and the self carry more than a faint echo of the Parsonian categories of society and personality, and lay themselves open to precisely the same objections. Parsons's own thinking about

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personality leaned heavily on notions drawn from psychoanalysis, as for example in his emphasis on the internalization of social norms; but the outcome was, as Murphy ( 1971: 73) has aptly phrased it, to delibidinize Freud, leaving his system shorn of precisely that which gave it its dynamic character. Freud himself was fully aware of the power of society in moulding the human personality, but he also insisted that deep within man there was an unbreakable nucleus, a core of the self ineluctably in opposition to society (cf. Roazen 1970:159). Dennis Wrong, in a brilliant critique of Parsons, offers a phrase that elegantly captures the difference between the two approaches. "To Freud," he observes, "man is a social animal without being an entirely socialised animal" (cited in Murphy 1971:76). It is a distinction that ethnopsychological discourse appears to pass over in silence. Consequently it misses the point that above all has served so consistently to give the emotions a bad pressthe fact that they can so easily get out of control and find involuntary expression. 5 Among ourselves the cultural rule is quite clear: Grown men don't cry. But the expression "fighting back one's tears" is a plain acknowledgment of the way a man may, despite himself, find himself overwhelmed by the welling up of his feelings. There is an evident tension between culture and affect. But where the emotions are viewed as culturally constituted, it becomes difficult to see how this tension can be handled or even envisaged. Because ethnopsychology deals with the emotions as cultural constructs, the analysis proceeds primarily at the level of ideation; the focus of study becomes "emotion terms" and "categories" and the meaning they have for those who use them rather than the way emotions are experienced. To study emotion terms as a set of communicative symbols with shared meanings, as Gerber (1975) has put it, is an important part of the anthropological task, but to leave it simply at that is, I believe, to opt for a static approach where a dynamic one would be the more illuminating. What I mean by this is that cultural analysis, by virtue of its very own assumptions, is precluded from even formulating some of the problems that might seem central to a coherent theory of the emotions. Can the emotions, for example, be regarded as linked within a system? If so, how are they interrelated, and what factors govern their relationships? It is true that Michelle Rosaldo, for example, has drawn our attention to the question of relationships among affective states and between affective states and social process. Thus from her discussion of Ilongot "shame" we learn how for Ilongots and Javanese "shame" and "anger" are related, and yet for Hageners (unlike Ilon-

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gots) shame is "on the skin" and anger festers deep within the heart, whereas for Ilongots shame and anger contrast more as stasis/motion (in a context of ill-ease) than as outer/inner forms of conflict (Rosaldo 1983:136). This is indeed to open up lines of inquiry important to pursue. But what also needs to be stressed here is that the relationships to which Rosaldo draws our attention are cultural associations rather than logical or in some other sense necessary relationships. In his bookAffict, ImRtJcry, Consciousness, to which fuller reference will be made later, Tomkins (1963) has a chapter on what he calls affect dynamics in which he discusses systematically and at length the nature of these relationships. I believe that the anthropologist has much to contribute here, both at the empirical and the theoretical level, for in the field situation he is often in a position to observe, say in the context of a dispute, how one emotional display triggers another, building up to what one might think of as a dialogue of the emotions. Rosaldo's reference to shame and anger also serves to bring into focus another aspect of such necessary relationships. Because anger and shame are not simply cultural constructs, but also have a distinctive behavioral dimension, any display of these emotions necessarily depends on certain complex neurophysiological processes including muscular responses. Beyond a certain level of intensity, therefore, a tension is generated within the individual; a painful and discomfiting experience may follow which is only relieved when the emotions are discharged. Now the mode of discharge may itself be influenced by cultural factors, a circumstance that in itself raises a variety of questions of anthropological interest. But once again it is difficult to see how such questions could be raised at all within the interpretative frame of reference that has been adopted by many of today's anthropologists. Some of the broader implications that flow from viewing the emotions as social constructions have been noted by Gerber (1985: 142) in her interesting contribution to the White and Kirkpatrick volume. Noting that the definitions of feelings may be considered as socially constructed understandings, she goes on: If social processes are the only factors taken into account emotions will be regarded as much more culturally arbitrary. In this view, there are no biological factors constraining cultural creativity. We might therefore be led to expect an extremely wide range of variation in emotional response among cultures. Emotions could be regarded as culturally specific experiences whose conceptual content and hedonic qualities are unique to a particular group. Precise counterparts to such culturally specific emotions might occasionally occur in other cultures,

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but we would not expect to see a pattern of similarities replicated almost universally, across many kinds of social system.

Difficulties in translating emotion terms from one language into another, commonly reflecting the lack of a precise equivalent for a particular term in the other tongue, are regularly encountered as we move across cultures; it is a phenomenon indeed that provides one of the major supports for the relativistic stance of cultural analysis. Gerber's own paper offers some nice examples of the kind as, for instance, in her analysis of the Samoan term alafa. When Samoans see someone unfortunate, a cripple or someone particularly vulnerable like an orphan or a very small child, they may remark on it with the expression talafa'i, a contraction meaning "I love him." And, indeed, the term is commonly glossed in English as "love." But as one pursues its meaning for Samoans through a variety of social contexts and relationships, the feeling of"alofa" is seen to approach rather the sense of compassion, empathy, or pity. Plainly then, "love" is not a perfect English rendering of the Samoan "alofa." It could be argued of course that terms such as "alofa" should not be so rendered, and discussion rest entirely on vernacular usage. Gerber rejects this view for pragmatic reasons, but the no less relevant point surely is the measure of overlap that the English and the Samoan terms share (Gerber 1985: 145-146). I shall come back laterto the question of a lack of fit in the meaning of emotion terms in different languages, and the fact of cultural specificity that some terms plainly disclose. For the moment I merely want to pose the question, Why, if emotions are to be thought of as socially constituted only, and each culture represents a separate conceptual world that has to be understood in its own terms, should such overlap as has just been mentioned occur with the regularity that it does? If, as the linguists would tell us, "alofa" and "love" are arbitrary signs, with no conceivable etymological link between them, how are we to account for the degree of commonality in the feelings for which the words serve as labels? There is another aspect of the matter which allows us to push further the analysis of some of these issues. Insofar as cultural analysis ignores biological factors, ethnographies presented within the hermeneutic framework tend to pass over in silence the .whole issue of the ways in which the emotions are given expression, an aspect of the subject on which, ever since Darwin's (1872) remarkable study, a number of psychologists have focused attention. When anthropologists have addressed the question at all, they have tended to be dismissive of the research findings of the psychologists and to stress cross-cultural

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variability in this area too (see, e.g., Mead 1975; cf. Leach 1972).6 This response can hardly be surprising. For, whether or not they are committed to the methods and assumptions of cultural analysis, most anthropologists, their perceptions profoundly shaped by the experience of fieldwork, cannot help but be struck by the idiosyncratic features in the lives of the people they have lived with and studied; they develop, as it were, a vested interest in cultural diversity which they are prone to stress at the expense of underlying commonalities. For all that, the response is also a curious one in certain respects. If it is the case that where emotional expression is concerned cultural variability again rules, then we have to deal with yet another set of arbitrary signs. In that event we would expect to find people communicating their feelings in all manner of ways, that the choice of expression for a particular emotion within a given culture would be as random as the choice of term that served as label for it. It is undoubtedly the case that different cultures do define the meaning of particular gestures in different ways, but it is no less plain that certain expressions do occur with regularity across cultures. One might have expected that anthropologists, of all people, would have been quick to appreciate the point. In the early days of fieldwork, when the ethnographer is taking the first steps toward learning the vernacular, one must still engage in communicative exchanges with one's hosts, if only to project a favorable image of self which opens the way to acceptance within the community. It is difficult to resist the view that the registering of emotion and other nonverbal signals play a key part in these exchanges and that they are only able to do so because the parties attach similar meaning to them. If the point has escaped the attention of anthropologists, it should not be lightly assumed that it is simply theoretical indifference that is to blame; such displays ordinarily pass in a flash and are usually read only subliminally so that unless one has been theoretically alerted to their importance they are likely to pass unnoticed. The fact that certain emotions find or are given expression in different societies in much the same distinctive way means of course that we are not dealing with random phenomena; by the same token it follows that such underlying commonalities cannot be explained in purely cultural terms. How then are they to be explained? In posing such a question, one is led to an even more fundamental one: Why is it that emotions and emotional expression are needed at all? What are they for? Such questions fall outside the purview of ethnopsychology. In-

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deed, if taken to its logical conclusion, the mode of cultural analysis that it pursues would lead to the theoretical expectation that we might encounter human groups from whose life knowledge and experience of the emotions are wholly lacking. It is obvious of course that no single anthropological study of the kind being attempted here can hope to shed light on questions of the generality just posed. This is not the point. The point is rather that unless some account is taken of such wider issues one is without an adequate theoretical framework to guide one's empirical inquiries and to interpret one's findings. It was considerations of this kind that led me, as I pondered how best to come to grips with the problem of affect, to tum in other directions to see what I could learn from the psychologists and psychoanalysts.

Learning from Psychology The bias against studying affect remarked on in anthropology operated in psychology, too, where research on the emotions had for long lagged behind mainstream topics such as cognition or perception. It is true of course that over the past couple of decades or so, psychologists have carried out a good deal of detailed work, but it is only more recently that the subject seems to have come into its own, as some of them have themselves acknowledged (see, e.g., Scherer and Ekman 1984:xi). Meanwhile, a number of psychoanalysts have brought their own clinical perspectives to bear on the problem so that it has gradually become possible to speak of the outlines of a new synthesis beginning to emerge (see Plutchik 1980). Among those who have contributed to this development has been the American psychologist Silvan Tomkins who first elaborated his theoretical approach in a work, massive in scope and originality, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. 7 I make no attempt to offer a summary of his theory here for this would take us far beyond our present requirements, but there are a number of key ideas that seem to me to hold important lessons for any anthropologist who seeks to come to grips with the problem of affect, and these at least need to be sketched in. A helpful point of entry to the discussion, which Tomkins has explored at great length, is the distinction he draws between the affect system and the motivational or drive system. Many psychologists take for granted the idea that motives, such as hunger or sex, strongly impel

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a person to action, and of course such a view of the "drives" is deeply rooted in psychoanalytic theory. What this amounts to is that the drives are thought of as constituting the primary motivational system while the affects play, by comparison, a lesser role in this regard. Tomkins takes an exactly contrary position. He holds that drives are primarily signals of bodily need, and that these signals acquire their urgency because they are amplified by affect. A particularly telling illustration of the point is provided by our need for air. In the ordinary way the need for air is attended to without drive signals and without awareness. But when the need for air becomes critical enough to require drive activation, it also activates affect. There is then likely to be a massive fear reaction that quickly reaches panic proportions if the obstruction to drive satisfaction is not immediately removed. The apparent urgency of the drive signal is in fact an illusion created by its misidentification with its affective amplifier. As Tomkins points out, the panic in gasping for breath is the same panic, the same affective response, one might experience at a possible nuclear accident. That it is affect rather than drive that is primary in such situations is seen in the fact that if the rate of anoxic deprivation is slower, as happened to air-force pilots in World War II who refused to wear their oxygen masks at 30,000 feet, then the recruited affect is enjoyment and so some of these men died with smiles on their lips (Tomkins 1981:322). In the example just cited, where the supply of oxygen was cut, the need for air was so vital that the massive affect in addition to the awareness of suffocation provided an important safety factor in guaranteeing immediate attention to drive satisfaction. In such circumstances, in Tomkins's phrase, affect represents information gain. Both drives and affect mechanisms are concerned with providing information that enables the organism to adapt to its environment, but they address different aspects of the problem and are themselves therefore constructed rather differently. So whereas, for example, specificity is the mark of the drives, the affects are characterized by their generality. That is to say, when the drive response is activated it has a very specific message to give-that the "problem" is located in the mouth in the case of hunger, in the finger or wherever we have hurt ourselves in the case of pain, and so on. But the organism also has to deal with highly variable situations, success in which depends on access to accurate information about the external world and one's own changing relationship to it. In subserving

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these particular functions, the structure of affect is seen to be inherently much more complex than that of the drives. This difference in structure is reflected too in other attributes of the drive and affect systems. There is, for example, a good deal of uncertainty surrounding our experience of affect. The drives enjoy much more "visibility" in the sense that we rarely have difficulty in distinguishing the qualities of one from those of another. We are "told" in unmistakeable terms that we are hungry or need to defecate. As Tomkins (1963:1, 171) puts it, though everyone knows that he is hungry in his mouth or his stomach, he is less clear where he is afraid, or angry, or sad, or excited. Or again, because drives are primarily concerned with very specific aims, with getting certain objects into or out of the body, they tend to have a rhythmic pattern, though of course this varies as between different drives. By contrast, the affects are not so specifically tied and do not exhibit the same periodicity: emotions can come and go with remarkable rapidity, but they can also persist for considerable periods of time. The flexibility and greater scope for variability of the affect system are also to be seen in other regards that at once bring us closer to the heart of the anthropological problem. To begin with, it is apparent that emotion can be experienced with varying degrees of intensity. We know this from introspection, but it is also plainly reflected in the range of terms available to us in ordinary everyday language to express similar sets of feelings. In recognition of this point, Tomkins does not use single terms for what he calls the basic affects because this might suggest that we are dealing with isolable or bounded psychic entities; instead he refers to continua such as, for example, interest-excitement or distress-anguish, the continuum in each case being calibrated in terms of what he calls the density of neural firing or stimulation. The concept of the emotions as continua has immediate implications for their study in cross-cultural perspective because, as noted earlier, it has by now become an anthropological commonplace that the lexical categories employed for the emotions in one culture frequently do not translate easily into those of another. Tomkins (1963: 1, 180-181) has a passage that bears so much on the point that it is worth quoting verbatim: Consider the analogy with vision. In the absence of the highly refined concepts and measures of ophthalmology and visual theory you and I might complain of eye trouble when you had aneisokonia and I had heterotropia. Similarly it is not likely that the independent variability of each of the component sub-

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assemblies of each affect have found their way into the common language so that we may accurately identify the thousands of possible unique affect-prints which may be inherited. What is represented in common language depends in part on the society which uses the language. There is likely to be representation of the inherited differences between affects insofar as these are of interest and have been noted. Just as our common language has attained some of the degree of differentation of ophthalmology in the concepts of colour blindness, nearsightedness and so on without attaining concepts or words for such phenomena as aneisokonia (the difference in size or shape between the retinal images on the two eyes) so the common language of affect includes many important distinctions but will be found to be silent concerning many components of affective responses still to be conceptualised and empirically measured.

What has just been said about variation in the intensity of emotions and the need to think of them not so much as discrete psychic entities but rather as being ranged along a continuum draws attention to an important source of cross-cultural variability. However, the point can only be fully appreciated when read in conjunction with Tomkins's discussion of the nature of the affects themselves. But before turning to this issue mention should be made of some other attributes of the affect system which again underline its flexibility and become in tum further sources of cross-cultural variability. A point likely to appear as self-evident once it has been drawn to one's attention is the capacity of emotions to mix or to be experienced in complex blends or combinations. Indeed for Tomkins, most of the emotions as they are commonly experienced are to be thought of as mixed or derivative states, that is to say, they occur as combinations or compounds of the basic or primary affects. Similar notions have been developed and given a firm theoretical basis by Plutchik (1980:161164) who, drawing on the analogy with the way in which different hues can be produced from mixtures of primary colors, is able to present an impressive list of terms that are a blend of particular dyads and triads, as well as to present a model that seeks to explain what particular combinations of affects are likely, what most unlikely. The relevance of this to the anthropological enterprise should also be readily apparent. As mentioned earlier, we find throughout Melanesia a variety of expressions in local vernaculars which are commonly glossed in English as "shame," or sem in Melanesian pidgin; though the terms do cover a certain commonality in regard to underlying experience, closer analysis suggests that they refer to different combinations of affect, differences that can be shown to be accompanied by other concomitant variations. Although, as I will discuss again in greater detail shortly, the affect

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program is seen as an innate endowment, this is not to claim that it is purely a biological phenomenon. Another aspect of the flexibility of the affect system that Tomkins repeatedly emphasizes is the tremendous importance of learning in all matters affecting the emotions, and especially in what activates them. As he himself (1963:1,324) observes in this regard, although there is much transformation of the innately patterned affective responses themselves, it is in the transformation of the activators that the most critical learning occurs. Theoretically, the variety of learned activators and objects of affect are almost without limit: "We may learn to be afraid of anything under the sun, or to be excited by anything we encounter." In his own discussion of this issue, Tomkins was primarily concerned with the individual and, understandably, the implications of his position were traced out chiefly in regard to personality development, psychopathology, and other matters of perennial interest to psychologists and clinicians. That it also touches the interests of anthropologists is so self-evident that it scarcely requires mention. The final point to be noted here concerning the complexity of the affect system relates to a concept that is quite central to Tomkins's conception of how the system works. It is a consequence of its structurally based generality that affect can readily coassemble with, and therefore lend part of its own urgency to, memory, perception, and thought, and to action no less than to the drives. This basic power of the affect system is a function of its freedom to combine with a variety of other components in what is called a central assembly. This has to be conceived of in very fluid and dynamic terms. What is envisaged is an executive mechanism on which messages converge from all sources, competing from moment to moment for inclusion in the governing central assembly. The relevance of all this to the present task turns on the relationship of affect to cognition. In traditional Western thought, as has been noted, as well as in what has been for many years the dominant strand within psychological discourse, primacy was accorded to cognition. 8 Tomkins rejects this view. But neither does he argue for the primacy of affect over cognition. He holds rather, wholly in line with his concept of a fluid central assembly, that affect can determine cognition at one time, be determined by cognition at another, and be interdependent at yet another. An immediate consequence of this view for the anthropologist concerns the way we think about emotion terms: it would now appear that many terms that are commonly regarded as relating to feel-

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ings alone in fact provide labels for a much more complex structure that may include both affective and cognitive elements. In short, we have to deal not only with variations in intensity and with blends, we also have to deal with affect complexes. The way in which languages label the affects serves not only to illustrate the point but also to indicate its anthropological relevance; it is stated most clearly in Tomkins's (1981:325-326) own words: ... in English anger labels a primary affect, hostile refers to affect too, but with the additional connotation of a more extended and more complex feeling and cognitive state. Irritable refers to hostility that waxes and wanes in response to provocation, but which has a permanently low threshold. Rage refers to anger of very high intensity compared to annoyance. Vicious adds a qualitative moral judgment to a presumed intense anger by adding the complication of intention to hurt another. ...

But what of the affects themselves? They function, it has been said, to provide information that enables the organism to react speedily to changes in its environment, internal and external. But how is communication achieved? Along with a number of other psychologists, Tomkins assumes a limited number of primary or basic affects. These are conceived of as sets of muscular and glandular responses primarily localized in the face, but also widely distributed throughout the body. Deep-rooted in the evolutionary process, these organized responses are triggered at subcortical levels where specific "programs" for each of the basic affects are stored. The programs themselves are innately endowed and have been genetically inherited; hence when activated each is given or finds expression in a distinctive and characteristic way. So, for example, the characteristic facial posture in surprise is a raising of the eyebrows which produces transverse wrinkles of the forehead, and an opening of the mouth; it also includes eye-blinking. Without exploring the several features of this response in detail, we may simply note how by this means the organism is alerted to gain maximum information in regard to some unexpected development; it clears the central assembly of messages already in the system so that channels are made available for the receipt of the new messages. In the same way, disgust is expressed in a characteristic turning up of the lip and wrinkling of the nose in what is plainly a gesture of rejection (see, e.g., Ekman and Friesen 1975:76). What disgusts us of course is heavily colored by cultural conditioning, but its expression still appears to carry a clear clue to its evolutionary origins-into the mechanism of disgust and nausea there came to be built the information that warned of what was too noxious to be in-

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gested with safety (Tomkins 1963:1, 129). The point is a simple one: people differing in culture may be disgusted by very different things, but disgust is an affect with which they will all be thoroughly familiar and will express in a facial movement that is universally recognizable. 9 I have remarked on the variation in intensity with which the affects can be experienced, noting how this suggests a need to think of the emotions as falling at various points along a continuum. Such an approach invites us to think further of the continuum as being calibrated, at least in theoretical terms, in an infinite number of emotional discriminations, each of which has its own label in much the same way as a color chart. We would be led to expect in these circumstances that languages differ in the number of terms at their disposal and furthermore that they will attach their affect labels at different points on the scale of calibration. lO What one would also expect to find, given the notion of a limited number of basic affects, is that if we were to examine the lexical set of emotion terms in unrelated languages considerable areas of overlap would be revealed. The primary affects provide a generic core of meaning, but the terms themselves are almost certain to vary in their semantic range. As was seen earlier, for those who work within the hermeneutic framework, cultural variability provides the basic argument for treating each culture as constituting a unique conceptual world (cf. Keesing 1971:122). By contrast, psychologists' stress on the various attributes that give the affect system its flexibility and generality generates a theoretical expectation of cross-cultural variability; at the same time the concept of basic or primary affects introduces the element of commonality, and hence of comparability, across cultures where cultural analysis assumes incommensurability. The tension between universalism and relativism to which Lutz and White (1986:406) refer in their review of approaches to the study of the emotions poses a false dichotomy and is unwarranted: we face a situation in which similarity and difference are simply two faces of the same coin, the examination of each necessary to the total analysis. On the view of the affects I have been presenting here there can be no theoretical basis for the doctrine of cultural incommensurability.il But this is to state the position in terms that are too negative. Levy, for example, has observed how in different societies certain emotions are emphasized, culturally elaborated as it were, while others are relatively invisible-phenomena he refers to as hypercognition and hypocognition (Levy 1984b:400-401). I would state the basic assumption underlying the present study in somewhat broader terms: as members

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of the human species, we are all endowed with the capacity to experience the same primary emotions. At the neurophysiological level we are dealing with universals or constants of human experience. But this assumption is also subject to the principle of cultural calibration: if the phenomena can be envisaged as falling along a continuum, there is also scope for variation in marking the points of differentation along it. Thus the terms employed in different languages to designate the emotions may offer somewhat different versions of the calibrating process; viewed cross-culturally they rarely coincide but they do reveal areas of overlap. Moreover, as just remarked, each society "encourages" to its own adaptive ends, or in line with its own ethos, a different pattern of emotional responses. In other words, as Bateson (1936), in his seminal analysis of the Naven ceremonies was the first to recognize, human populations are distinguished not simply by their social arrangements, or by their cultural styles, but no less by their emotional profiles. Pursuing this insight, one of the chief aims of the present study is to work toward producing an account of the ethos of another Papua New Guinean people, the Tolai, by exploring the ways in which the emotions are experienced in their social life and enter into and inform their conduct. The futther theoretical task lies in seeking the interrelations of these variables: social structure, cultural style, and the pattern of affective response.

Studying Affect in the Field To this point the discussion has concentrated on the theoretical underpinnings of the study, leaving entirely to one side the whole issue of how one can actually proceed to study affect in the field. I have stated some of the aims of the study, but given no indication as to how they might be achieved. Here therefore it seems important to set out some of the questions, empirical and methodological, that are generated by the theoretical perspective I have adopted, and the kinds of data they lead one to seek. A good deal of the empirical research carried out by psychologists that is immediately pertinent to the interests of anthropologists draws on a theoretical tradition that was initiated by Darwin and focuses on the way particular emotions are given expression or are identified. The careful investigations of Paul Ekman, carried out ovet many years,

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stand out in this connection. The techniques developed by Ekman and his associates are highly technical, involving very high-speed photography, but even in the research he conducted in a remote part of Papua New Guinea (Ekman 1980) they have been employed in ways and contexts quite different from those in which the anthropological fieldworker is ordinarily likely to encounter the expression of affect. As it happens, I did not have available to me the necessary kind of equipment when I was with the Tolai, though it soon became plain to me that the use of a video camera could have been very helpful in the research, in particular by enabling me to record expressions that informants could then have been asked to identify and discuss. 12 In the event, I was compelled to rely on more conventional anthropological techniques, though I did try to alert myself to noting the facial responses, tone of voice, and other gestures that accompanied speech or other behavior. In general terms, however, the fieldworker becomes aware of the play of affect within the society he is studying through the use of standard verbal categories either by way of report, as in the course of a conversation, or in the attribution of meaning by an informant to some display of behavior one has observed: "he is ashamed" or "she is grieving for a departed husband." In a word, one quickly discovers, if one had been previously innocent of the fact, that affect has a linguistic dimension-what one may call the lexical issue. Are there, for example, generic terms in the vernacular for notions that are expressed in English by words such as "feelings," "emotions," and the like? More generally, what sets of terms are available in the local language to label particular affects and affect complexes? Pursuing this line of inquiry quickly leads into questions of classification, of the way terms are grouped, for example, to give expression to relations of similarity/difference, to "clustering" (see, e.g., Davitz 1969; Gerber 1985), or to varying degrees of intensity. Employing such varied sources of information we are in a position to put together the local "theory" of the emotions-ideas as to their nature, where they are held to be located, and how they operate. Focusing on the linguistic dimension also leads directly to what some would see as the central task facing the anthropologist in this area of inquiry-what Shweder (1985: 185) calls the "semantic question." What meaning attaches to the set of terms making up the locallexicon of the emotions and what is their semantic range (see, e.g., A. J. Strathern 1977)? A rather different kind of issue, which is likely to be ignored if one treats the emotions simply as cultural constructs, concerns the subjective element in emotional experience: what it feels

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like to be angry, disgusted, or envious and the like. This of course is to state the matter from the point of view of a given ego or self. The further question that also needs to be asked is how one recognizes the expression of the emotions in others. Most of these questions require that we take an emic perspective, seeking to elucidate the indigenous categories and to trace their interconnections. Other questions are more sociological in their thrust and place greater emphasis on the anthropologist in his role as an outside observer. Of central importance here is the question of context. Affect is not simply a matter of physiological response, nor can it be regarded purely as a cultural phenomenon; it has no less a social aspect that makes it essential to explore not only the kinds of situation that elicit or provoke a given emotional response, but also the set of social relationships of the parties involved in a particular situation. An emotional response that might be appropriate or tolerable in one context might be quite inappropriate, even intolerable, in another where the parties were related in quite a different way. The emotions, it has been noted, are not always under voluntary control; at times so powerful, an individual can find himself overwhelmed by his feelings quite against his will. On the other hand, what has just been said implies some degree of social control and management of the emotions. Different societies (and even segments within the same society) elaborate what Ekman (e.g., 1977) calls "display rules," rules that lay down to what extent, and in what circumstances, particular emotions or the emotions in general may be given expression. Such rules have to be established by the ethnographer not only in general terms but also as they affect particular social categories-for example, women as against men or leaders as against followers. Attending to affect in its sociological, as distinct from its cultural, aspects is to place the question about the ways in which the emotions enter into and influence conduct right in the forefront of the analysis. However, if such an analysis is to be successful it must also strive to take account of a couple of attributes of the affect system that have already been mentioned: the spontaneity of emotional expression on the one hand and the dynamics of affective response on the other. Adopting such an approach at once raises questions about appropriate field methods. Traditional means-"things I was told-in the form of stories, tales and meetings captured on tapes, bits of gossip shared, responses to my questions" (M. Z. Rosaldo, 1980:20) or the more deliberate pursuit with selected informants of the meaning of emotion

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terms-lose none of their old importance. Yet it should also be apparent that in themselves these are unlikely to yield the kind of data that is needed. My own emphasis therefore, where this has been possible, has been on contexts of action, seen for example in the later discussion of the emotions that accompany particular kinds of work, or in what Harre and Secord (1972:10) refer to as episodes, sequences of happenings in which human beings engage which have some principle of unity. The waging of a dispute or some ritual performance provide obvious examples of the kind, but it is not necessary that the sequence have a formal structure. A methodological difficulty of a very different kind that also confronts the field anthropologist stems from the ubiquity of affect: there is no area of human thought or action to which affect may not attach. To the ethnographer the expression of emotion is perhaps most visible in the kinds of interaction that characterize particular fields of social relationships, but affect has no less an important part to play in the assessment of the self, in memory, as well as in dreams or the projective fantasies of folklore and cosmography. Given such a range of possibilities, the obvious problem the anthropologist has to face is adequacy of coverage: it is plain that he is severely handicapped in gaining access to a great deal of material that he might consider highly desirable, if not necessary. But the problem of access has another side to it because, given again the range of material involved, in many contexts affect finds expression in ways that are quite familiar to, and can readily be identified by, one's informants. In other contexts, however, particularly where we have entered the realm of symbolism, inferring the presence of affect, and identifying what particular affect it is, is much more problematic. The matter is one to which Freud himself drew attention when, in an oft-cited passage, he observed that it was surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it, that is that it should have become known to consciousness. Thus, he continued, the possibility of the attribute of unconsciousness would be completely excluded as far as emotions, feelings, and affects are concerned (Freud 1915: 177). The problem with which Freud was here struggling to come to grips was that, on the basis of their clinical experience, psychoanalysts had become accustomed to speak of unconscious love, hate, anger, and so on, and found it "impossible to avoid even the strange conjunction 'unconscious consciousness of guilt' or a paradoxical 'unconscious anxiety.'" Freud's solution was to suggest that it was possible for the ideational representation of an emotion to be repressed and thus "unconscious."

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He also observed that an affect or emotion could be perceived and present in consciousness but misconstrued. Tomkins's theory, with its emphasis on facial musculature, helps, I believe, to shed further light on the matter. For Tomkins, as for Freud, affect is essentially a phenomenon of consciousness, but he is able to make use of ideas that were not available to Freud. Thus he postulates that the representation formed by the receptors (e.g., proprioceptors and cutaneous receptors of the face) is transmitted by the sensory nerves which by way of a feedback mechanism is then transmuted into a report or representation of which we are aware. Such a model, I suggest, allows the possibility of inhibition and repression operating to interfere with the flow of information, diverting or even blocking the expression of emotion. By way of illustration, consider the following scenario. A prominent public figure is being interviewed on TV about the affairs of his corporation currently involved in a major industrial dispute. To an attentive observer he has plainly been angered by the interviewer's line of questioning. It is important, however, that he present to the viewers an impression of calm reasonableness. A conflict has thus been set up in his mind which is immediately reflected in the throbbing of his neck muscles (of which presumably he is unaware). In his effort to control his feelings he has managed to inhibit the facial display characteristic of anger, but displacement to the muscles of the neck shows that he has not been wholly successful. In this case the conflict is at a fairly superficial level; in many instances it touches much deeper reaches of the unconscious, producing a variety of outcomes. Confronting one's analyst, for example, one's face may wear a fairly neutral expression, but one's inner tension is given away by the drumming of one's fingers on the arm of the chairanother instance of inhibition and displacement. In yet other cases repression may be so strong that the affect finds no overt expression, and only yields to probing analysis of the unconscious as revealed, for example, in dreams; alternatively, there is overt expression of emotion, but its source is unknown, as in much ritual or ceremonial where the "unconscious affects" are brought to light only by analysis of their symbolism. The issue of "unconscious affect" will crop up at various points throughout this study, but certain problems I encountered in earlier fieldwork in Central Africa had already brought me to the recognition that I would not get very far with them if I were not prepared to take account of unconscious factors. Since one of the chief aims at this point is to identify some of the questions to which a study of the kind I have

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undertaken needs to address itself, I want to refer here to a paper in which I first took up some of these issues (Epstein 1979a) partly to illustrate the importance of taking account of the unconscious dimension in the experience of the emotions but also to draw attention to some of the theoretical and methodological issues that taking this step raises. Response to Social Crisis set out to try to explain certain bizarre events that had occurred in the context of efforts being made in the early 'fifties to link Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the British Protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) within a Central Mrican Federation. To this development Mricans in the two latter countries had expressed strong opposition on the grounds that Federation would mean the entrenchment of white-settler domination and a major setback for rising hopes of a gradual move toward political independence; through their various political organizations they waged a lengthy, if in the end unavailing, campaign of resistance. But Mrican public reactions also took on occasion a more spontaneous form as in "the poisoned sugar scare" or in the spate of rumors that began to circulate about the activities of "vampire men." In seeking to understand these various events I found that conventional sociological analysis could take me a good deal of the way but, as was evident from many of the studies dealing with this period of Central Mrican history that had appeared in the meantime, it not only left many questions unanswered but even unasked. In probing these issues I found it necessary to proceed to another level of analysis in which I drew liberally on ideas drawn from psychoanalytic theory. In this way, briefly, I was able to point to the element of oral aggression in certain of the behavior I had observed or recorded and to suggest how it was rooted in hostility, toward the mother in particular, generated in earliest childhood and long since repressed. Adopting this approach, I believe, enabled me to make certain of the phenomena I had previously found so puzzling more readily understandable. More importandy, by focusing attention on the affective dimension of the Mrican response I was able to point to threads of connection between domains of African social life and facets of their behavior that on the face of things appeared as otherwise quite unrelated. My treatment of this response to a social crisis in Central Mrica leads us direcdy back to an issue of method that was raised earlier in the chapter. Attempts to apply psychoanalytic concepts in sociological contexts encounter a variety of hurdles and, as LeVine (1977) brings out clearly in his authoritative critique of the field of culture-and-

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personality studies, relatively few succeed in overcoming them completely. The major problem of course is how to avoid the reductionist trap. As already noted, the basic issue was stated long ago by Durkheim who insisted that the facts of custom and social organization constitute a relatively autonomous field of inquiry that must be understood on its own terms and not explained by reference to psychology or biology, disciplines presumed to concern themselves with processes at work, in the one case, within the individual psyche, in the other, within the organism. The error consists in making a leap from one level of analysis to another without any recognition of the presence of complex intervening variables; a nice example of the kind, which illustrates how even the most sophisticated can sometimes stumble, is provided by Tomkins (1963:422) who at one point refers to sunbathing as an adult derivative of early modes of social communion combining warmth, skin stimulation, and body support. This of course is to ignore the whole social aspect of the phenomenon, in particular its association with social class; in an earlier day, for example, women in Western society used to think it was unattractive to have suntanned skin and sheltered under parasols to protect their complexion from the sun (a brown skin came from laboring in the sun). In this instance, the error is readily spotted. But there are also circumstances that an anthropologist may encounter in the field where the matter may not be quite so straightforward. Uvi-Strauss restates and reaffirms the orthodox position when he remarks that men do not act, as members of a group, in accordance with what each feels as an individual; each man feels as a function of the way he is permitted or obliged to act. "Customs," he continues, "are given as external norms before giving rise to internal sentiments, and these non-sentient norms determine the sentiments of individuals as well as the circumstances in which they may, or must, be displayed." (Uvi-Strauss 1962:70). How then from this perspective would we deal with the bizarre events reported in Response to Social Crisis? From one point of view these might appear as random events that, since they concerned behavior of a noninstitutionalized kind, lie beyond the scope of anthropological analysis. And even if we can claim to see at work in these episodes certain ideas that are rooted in traditional culture, such as the resurgence, though in a modern variant, of the belief in banyama, or "vampire men," this does not entitle us to point to these traditional notions as prescribing what sentiments Mricans should experience, or how they should react, in the situation created by the efforts to foist Federation upon them. What the

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data do suggest is that many individual Mricans interpreted and responded to this situation not by reference to some collective norm but rather in terms of some past emotional experience they shared; more specifically, the argument I sought to develop in Reponse to Social Crisis was that certain facets of the total situation created by the proposals for a Central Mrican Federation "recalled" intrapsychic conflicts that were a recurring feature of the infantile experience in many of the traditional societies in these parts of Central Mrica. Such a view leads to suggestions about the way the processes of socialization provide a link between psychology and culture or society; "facts" that Durkheim and many others since have claimed as defining the realm of sociological analysis frequently turn out to be as much psychological as they are social. A situation is thus created in which one has to recognize that a problem has different dimensions and has to be approached from different perspectives. In an interesting discussion of the issue, Fortes, usually linked with Evans-Pritchard as being a doyen of British structuralism, has suggested that this need arises when we wish to move from a "horiwntal" kind of analysis concerned with what he calls "how" questions to a "vertical" analysis that deals with "why" questions (Fortes 1980:197). Fortes's fondness for metaphors drawn from geometry will suggest to some that his use of the term "levels" carries the implication of hierarchy. There is another difficulty with his formulation in that in the context of scientific discourse "why" questions frequently, if not invariably, resolve themselves into "how" questions so that in fact one also deals with "why" questions even when the explicit concern is to pursue the analysis only on the "horiwntallevel." In other regards, however, the procedures I have sought to follow, and the assumptions that underlie them, are much in line with those that Fortes adumbrates. In a word, I see the technique involved as in some way akin to the peeling of an onion, analysis proceeding from one layer to the next, with this difference that the layers do not stand in any fixed relationship to one another, the outer layer being determined by the perspective adopted in approaching the problem. The assumption is that because we are confronted with a complex reality, analysis from anyone angle will not ordinarily exhaust the topic; having taken, say, the sociological analysis as far as it will go, we may find that interesting questions posed by the data are left unanswered or that the analysis itself has generated new questions to deal with which will require a change in perspective to take account of another dimension, say the cultural or the psychological. Employing such an approach, I believe,

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avoids the confusion of different frames of reference against which Devereux (e.g., 1967, 1978) frequently cautioned, but its chief justification for the anthropologist, as it seems to me, lies in the way it enables one, by taking for example full account of the psychological dimension, to show connections with data from the social and cultural domains hitherto unsuspected or unexplained. Because one rejects the Uvi-Straussian position that affect, like anxiety, explains nothing, one does not have to go to the other extreme and claim that affect explains everything; but as an integral part of a complex feedback system, which is determining in some regards and determined in others, affect cannot be excluded from the explanatory process.

2 The Tolai: Habitat, History, Society

Like so many parts of Papua New Guinea, the island of New Britain, lying to the east of the mainland, is a rugged and mountainous region, thinly populated by a variety of small, scattered groups. Its northeastern comer, however, sealed off from the rest of the island by the virtually impassable Baining mountains, is a highly distinctive area: the Gazelle Peninsula. Tiny in size, it covers no more than about three hundred square miles. This is the home of a people known nowadays as the Tolai. Living for the most part in small local communities, none of which lies much more than twenty miles from the modem port town of Rabaul, the Tolai are a populous group by Melanesian standards-by most recent estimates about 120,000; by those same standards they are also an unusually affluent and sophisticated group who, despite the seeming marginality imposed by the remoteness of their location, had already in the colonial period made their mark far beyond the confines of the Gazelle Peninsula, and today continue to enjoy a prominent role on the new national stage. To understand how this has come about we have to take account of their complex history over the past hundred years and more; that history in tum must acknowledge the play of geographical as well as local environmental factors. Similarly, habitat, history, and the nature of their social arrangements and institutions must provide the background to any attempt to explore the modem world of the Tolai and the part that affect and ideation have in shaping it. 29

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Habitat Many visitors to the Gazelle Peninsula have been struck by its spectacular beauty. Of Blanche Bay itself, within whose inner harbor lies the town of Rabaul, a distinguished Australian film-maker, Maslyn Williams (1964: 184), has remarked: "I know of no seascape in the whole of the Pacific that is so majestic." But the Tolai themselves, with a keenly developed aesthetic sense and love of color, are no less aware of the splendor of the natural setting; to judge by their spontaneous comments, their appreciation has been heightened by familiarity with other parts of the country which often appear as featureless and uninviting compared to their own. To all of this, however, there is a darker side. Ringing-Blanche Bay, and dominating Rabaul's skyline, is the evidence of past and quite recent volcanic activity from the peaks of the Mother, the North Daughter, the South Daughter (so named by the English explorer and navigator Phillip Carteret in 1767), Matupi crater (Tavurvur), and, across the bay, Kalamana Gunan. The geological evidence suggests that Blanche Bay itself represents the sunken remnant or caldera of what was once a huge volcano on the same site with the Mother (Kabiu) and at least the South Daughter (Turangunan) merely as parasitic cones on the sides (Fisher 1939:5-6). These first violent explosive outbursts occurred in the remote past. Reports of early navigators, Carteret in 1767 and Hunter in 1791, and accounts of later missionaries, Father George Bogershauser and the Rev. George Brown, all point to the continuing tectonic instability of the area. Brown's testimony is of particular interest: the first missionary to establish himself in the area at Port Hunter in 1875, Brown was able to provide a graphic description of the events in Blanche Bay in 1878 when the sudden emergence of a new island there was followed shortly afterward by the eruption of Tavurvur. Brown makes no mention of loss of life on this occasion, but he does state that the inhabitants of the bay and of the island of Matupit all fled to the high lands until the first fury of the eruption had abated (Brown 1908:240-245). The next eruption was in 1937. A Tolai has described its awesome onset: "We saw the signs of it first as a bubbling on the surface of the sea, at the part where it is deep, not in the shallows" (cited in Johnson and Threlfall 1985). On this occasion the loss oflife was heavy. A recent volume devoted to the eruption of'37 observes that the hundreds

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of deaths in the villages closest to Vulcan were probably caused mainly by suffocation when falls of pumice rarefied and heated the air and fell on the roofs of occupants of lightly built shelters, or, in other cases, by the burning of lungs as hot avalanches from the base of the eruption column overran helpless victims (ibid. :45). In Rabaul itself, at that time the capital of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, the heavy fallout of ash brought devastation to the town and quickly rendered the place uninhabitable. The experience provided a sharp jolt for the tiny community of expatriates; a serious questionmark was placed against Rabaul's future as a commercial and administrative center. A little later a committee appointed to investigate the question of a new site for the capital recommended transfer of the Administration to Lae, but the move had not been completed when the Japanese invaded early in 1942. The war wreaked havoc in and around Rabaul, and it was not until the early 'fifties that the task of rebuilding the town could begin and prosperity return. However, the town's vulnerability remains, as recent events have again underlined. In 1983 reports from the Vulcanological Observatory of high levels of seismic activity were accompanied by warnings of the possibility of a volcanic outbreak within weeks to months. Shortly the whole area had been placed on alert. The emergency lasted for more than a year before the threat of eruption was held to have passed. In the meantime the economic and social life of the entire community had been considerably disrupted: businesses and stores closed as many European and Chinese residents packed their bags and left for good. Once again the town's commercial future was put in doubt; on this occasion plans were being laid for the development of Kokopo, on the other side of Blanche Bay, as the new provincial capital, though at the time of my visit in 1986 there was little evidence that the matter was being pursued with any degree of urgency. Eruptions offer the most dramatic manifestation of the physical instability of the area, but they are not its only expression. Earthquakes and tremors (a guria) occur with some frequency, while abnormal alterations of sea level are reported as an important phenomenon associated with the shoreline of Blanche Bay (Stehn and Woolnough 1937). Between the island of Matupit and the mainland there have been recurrent oscillations: the most recent was in 1971 when a tidal wave (a roro) of major proportions swept away the causeway that linked the island to the town and brought down coconut palms in the adjoining plantation areas.

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I never heard earth tremors or tidal waves referred to by the Tolai as other than purely natural phenomena. A volcano, by contrast, was always spoken of as a kaia. For the moment it is sufficient to say that "kaia" is the generic term for spirits that are held to dwell in certain natural features of the landscape. Kaia varied in importance, but the most powerful, unquestionably, were those associated with volcanoes; an eruption was described as a punuongo na kaia, an explosion or bursting forth of the spirit that represented for the Tolai the elemental forces of nature in their most destructive aspect. Their habitat is indeed marked at times by violence and uncertainty, raising interesting questions that will need to be examined more closely later-how far their experience of these forces is reflected in their cosmology, and to what extent such features of their environment have shaped their outlook and actions. Here, however, it is the more benevolent aspects of nature that need to be considered. For the conjunction of the harsh and the helpful can be no more striking than in the ecology of the Gazelle Peninsula. The volcanic ash that has for centuries been deposited across the land has given its soils an unusual fertility. Wherever one goes there is lush vegetation and a profusion of trees and plants that cater for a multiplicity of purposes, not least in providing the ingredients of a rich pharmacopeia. Above all, soil fertility has encouraged the cultivation of a wide range of crops, many of them known in multiple varieties. Early Western visitors were suitably impressed. The explorer Powell, who spent some three years in the region between 1877-1880, reported of a trip from Nodup to Blanche Bay that the land they passed through was nearly all cultivated, with large crops of bananas, yams, and taro all around (Powell 1883:31). But in terms of its many-sided serviceability, it is the coconut that traditionally holds pride of place in Tolai esteem: the coconut is food and drink; it provides fuel and shelter; not surprisingly it also carries symbolic weight in certain ritual and ceremonial contexts. Very quickly, too, following the first arrival of European traders in the area, rather more than a century ago, it became the prime source of a new cash income. Yet, despite its tiny size, the Gazelle Peninsula is not homogeneous in ecological terms. The major cleavage has always been between coastal and inland areas, but the matter is a good deal more complicated than this. There is indeed a high degree of ecological diversity, for which the volcanic conditions appear to be responsible, that not only affects at times the pattern of economic activity, but is also accompanied by in-

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stances of highly localized production. For example, a variety of pandanus, valued because its leaves are especially suited to the weaving of fine-quality mats, flourishes in some localities but not in others, or a highly prized item of food such as the egg of the bush turkey or megapode is found only at certain spots. Again, a variety of a certain crop may do well in one place, but not at another; alternatively, it may be out of season in some parts while in plentiful supply elsewhere. For even the seasonal factor is not entirely uniform. The Tolai speak of two seasons: the taubar, or time of the southeast trade winds (roughly from May to October), and the labur, or northwest monsoon. l But while certain activities are plainly seasonal, for example the preparation and setting of the large fish baskets known as a wup, their actual timing is determined by local factors; one may find, for example, that at one place men are preparing to launch their baskets when only a few miles farther round the coast the season is already at an end. Such a varied natural setting offered conditions that were highly favorable to the development of an indigenous local trade. Long before Europeans first arrived there, a network of markets (a bung) spread Gazelle-wide, goods passing through a series of intermediaries from the coast to the more remote inland parishes and vice versa. Facilitating this trade, although it was by no means restricted to a purely commercial function, was the indigenous shell currency known as tambu, of which more will be heard in later contexts. Thus in the latter part of the nineteenth century, as the arm of imperialism reached out across the Pacific, the advantages the Gazelle Peninsula enjoyed in terms of economic potential and geographic location ensured that it would come to occupy a position of central importance in Germany's New Guinea empire. Of the onset of colonization itself, its varied consequences, and the subsequent developments that followed on the Gazelle, the broad outlines are by now so well known that there is no need for me to retrace ground already covered by myself and other anthropologists and historians (Epstein, 1969; Firth 1982; Salisbury 1970); however, if we are to understand how the Tolai today perceive and feel about their world, we need to take account of the historical dimension of their experience. Implicit here is the view that just as memories provide the very stuff out of which the sense of self is moulded, so how a people view the past contributes enormously to shaping their sense of identity as a group. This is an important topic I will explore at length in a later chapter. Here, therefore, I merely seek to provide, in brief compass, some of the relevant historical background,

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but eschewing for the most part the kind of documentation that is the historian's stock-in-trade; instead, the account is built up, for the earlier periods especially, chiefly around what I learned listening to Matupi reminisce about their own earlier years, retell stories from the days of their parents and grandparents, or simply from what often cropped up in general conversation. In all of this the role of the emotions will be readily apparent.

The Past in the Present The year 1984 was the centenary of the planting of the German flag on the island of Matupit, and with it the formal declaration of German imperium over New Guinea. The occasion was marked by a ceremony, held appropriately at Matupit, at which the German ambassador to Papua New Guinea was the guest of honor. The principal address was given by Ronald ToVue, Premier of the East New Britain Provincial Government, a major theme of which was not simply to acknowledge but to stress how much of the present advanced status of the Gazelle Peninsula they owed to developments that had been initiated in the days of the German hegemony. The speech of course, like others of its kind, has to be read in the context within which it was delivered. Yet this is not to say that it can be dismissed simply as a piece de /Joccasion. Given the purpose of the day, it was not to be expected that ToVue would dwell on the negative features of the German period: the mounting of punitive expeditions or the acquisition of large tracts of land on which German settlers could establish plantations. But prominent though these events are in Tolai folk memory, these were not the only associations that many in the audience would have brought to the gathering and ToVue was appropriately, and I believe genuinely, able to tap into a more positive vein of Tolai thought and feeling about the days of German rule. Among the older men at Matupit at the time of my first stay on the island, memories of German times were still vivid. One of these was Turpui, then a man in his early sixties, born, as he once told me, when the headquarters of the administration were still at Kokopo, on the other side of Blanche Bay, before shifting to Rabaul. By chance one day I had brought out a German volume when Turpui dropped by for a chat, and curious to see if it would prompt any reaction, I opened the

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book at a photograph of Dr. Hahl, onetime governor of German New Guinea. His face at once lit up in a smile of recognition, and directly he began to recall the man: short in build, shorter than myself, and bald. He contemplated the photograph again and remarked in a tone of voice that carried a world of meaning, though one impossible to translate: "Sorry. Ngala na sorry."2 He sat down and without further ado launched into his recollections of days under German rule, returning to an event he had begun to tell me about on an earlier occasionthe celebration of the Kaiser's birthday: Offshore were anchored the warships of the German Fleet-the Gneisenau, the Scharnhorst, the Emden, and a munber of others he mentioned by name. They fired off salutes until one could hardly hear one's own voice; when it was dark, rockets and lights turned the night into day so that you could even recognize people at a distance. On shore the whole place was crowded. Soldiers and sailors were everywhere and the European residents were also there. Marquees had been put up and there were piles of food and drink. He himself, and all the other youngsters, were rounded up to carry the food. There was plenty to drink, and the Matupi themselves were given beer. The whole place was garlanded with flowers, and bands were playing. A day of great joy! Luluai came from all over the country to Matupit and were presented with food-bags of rice and tins of meat. 3

The point of Turpui's story was not just to recall a festive occasion from his youth-though the telling of it gave him evident pleasure. It was also to impress on me that Matupit had been a " town "-he used the English word-long before the Germans created Rabaul out of a mangrove swamp to be their new capital. Matupit had indeed been for a time a bustling, cosmopolitan spot. Vessels visiting the area in the early days quickly discovered that the waters of Blanche Bay were very deep and that anchorage was only to be found close in to the shore at Matupit (Wawn 1893:283); the harbor itself, lying between the island and the volcanic cones of the Mother and South Daughter, was completely protected from all winds and of a size to accommodate "a whole fleet of large ships"-considerations that helped persuade Eduard Hernsheim to make Matupit his main establishment in what was to become a thriving and far-flung trading network (Hernsheim 1983: 80-81). Later Hernsheim built his home in the locality known as Raulei, where his nephew, Consul Max Thiel, also had his own bungalow. The two men appeared to entertain lavishly, maintaining open house for a regular flow of guests: visiting dignitaries, officers of naval and other vessels, and many others who were stationed on the Gazelle

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Peninsula or had made their homes there (Kramer 1939:354).4 Elsewhere on the island there was a small hotel much patronized by visitors from less hospitable parts of the country who could enjoy the hot sulfur springs close by and a spell of convalescence. The hotel was owned by Ah Tam, a Chinese shipwright and trader who had settled at Matupit sometime in the 1880s, according to some perhaps even earlier (Wu 1982:57). Ah Tam apparendy played an important part in bringing in other Chinese in return for which he was granted a lease of land that was quickly to develop into Rabaul's Chinatown. Many of the Chinese attracted to the Gazelle quickly turned to trading. By 1914, Chinatown had six stores, several restaurants, tailors, laundries, and bootmakers, as well as butchers, bakers, carpenters, and mechanics (Lyng 1919:126129). The Chinese, it seemed, had already begun to assume the characteristics that were to become the hallmark of similar immigrant groups in other parts of the colonial world: a community sandwiched between dominant whites and subordinate indigenes, avoiding involvement in the political arena and concentrating single-mindedly on trade and business. Before the establishment of the German administration, relations between the Tolai and the incoming whites had already been marked by much hostility: at a number of places traders had been killed, and in one notorious episode in 1878 four Polynesian teachers belonging to the Methodist Mission were murdered. As the Germans sought land for their new plantations, unrest grew, leading to further incidents. Perhaps the most dramatic of these was the murder of the wife and child of the planter Rudolph Wolff in the Toma area. The German response was sharp and brutal. According to one report, having captured one man, the Germans made him lead them to where the others were and exterminated all of them (Mackellar 1912:149-150).5 At Matupit itself the Hernsheim store was burned down in 1876, but amicable relations appear to have been established shordy afterward. Hemsheim himself has recorded that "he felt completely safe in the company of these kindly and cheerful if somewhat noisy neighbours" (Hernsheim 1983:81). It is worth observing that when older Matupi spoke of the days of German rule they did so without any trace of resentment of the Europeans living in their midst. Of course these were old men recalling their youth-doubdess yet another instance of distance lending enchantment to the view. But the matter is plainly more complex than this, for the presence of whites among them was not recalled as disruptive to

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their way of life, but rather as something of which to be proud. Hence in seeking to understand the Matupi response to their new situation, a number of factors have to be taken into account. In the first place, there was the issue of land. Elsewhere, encroachments on Tolai land had led to violent clashes and bloody reprisals (Firth 1982:60-61); by contrast, the Matupi had experienced no immediate threat of loss of land through the founding of plantations in their vicinity nor any violent encounter with their new rulers.6 Secondly, and more positively, there was the Matupi attitude toward change. Although they were in a sense sealed off from the Europeans living in their midst-their houses were surrounded by a fence-Matupi were still in a good position to observe their way of life at close quarters, and they were influenced by it in a variety of ways. Dress provides a particularly visible example. According to the German ethnologist Burger, who traveled in the region in 1911-1912: "Since the Matupi earned a good deal of money, they bought, according to the fashion of Rabaul 'boys,' white suits. They wore jackets and trousers and if they wanted to be especially well turned out they even wore collar and tie" (Burger 1923:154). Burger saw this as a mark of their arrogance and conceit. For the Matupi themselves the matter appeared rather differently. They liked to recall that at that time a number of them had indeed worn European-style clothes; for them, it was an expression of their willingness to innovate; it was a source of pride that they were in the van of those who were ready to accept the new ways and standards of the Europeans. BUrger did not say how the Matupi earned their money. Some were engaged in menial tasks on the island itself, some were employed by the Administration in the building of roads, and other jobs. Despite this, complaints were already to be heard from within the expatriate community that government did not teach the villagers near Rabaul to offer themselves for work on loading and working the coaling ships (Firth 1982:130). Nor were many Tolai prepared to work on Europeanowned plantations. 7 This was no refusal to participate in the colonial cash economy; Tolai sought rather to satisfy their new aspirations in other directions. They responded enthusiastically to government encouragement to plant more coconuts for the copra trade, 8 and also to expand production of vegetables and other foodstuffs to meet the increased demand created by the arrival of the white colonists, the Chinese, and the migrant laborers from elsewhere in New Guinea. Involvement in the cash economy in these ways reinforced the ties

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with the land and by the same token many aspects of the social system and culture built around or associated with it. There was, however, a second mode of participation that led outward from the village and to closer links with the wider society. From the beginning, rudimentary schooling had been provided by the two missionary societies operating on the Gazelle Peninsula at that time: the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Wesleyan Methodists. Then the first government school was set up on Namanula Hill in 1906; it was designed to prepare New Guinean pupils for a range of trades and occupations (Rowley 1958:252). My older Matupi friends were fond of recalling those of their fellows who had attended the school and the positions they had taken up when they graduated: as a bank teller, as agricultural assistant at the Botanical Gardens, as typesetter in the Government Printing Office, and so on. 9 In reciting their names, they were also reminding themselves of the opportunities that appeared to be opening up to them in the latter period of German rule. As with other societies in Papua New Guinea since then, the Matupi attitude in this early phase of the colonial experience can fairly be described as receptive rather than resistant to new ideas and to change, though it also appears to have been more selective as well as exhibiting a stronger attachment to tradition than has been the case elsewhere in the country.lO Operating on their own terms, and within a highly competitive ethos, the Matupi were happy to embrace change where it put them in a position of advantage against other Tolai groups or Tolai as a whole against other of the country's indigenous people. By 1914 they appeared to have achieved a platform for further significant advance; from this perspective the outbreak of World War I, with the dispatch of an Australian Expeditionary Force to Rabaul at its very outset, was to usher in a long period of retrenchment.

Pax Australiana During the war years, and for some time to come, the Gazelle Peninsula was under Australian military occupation and a caretaker administration. With the signing of the peace treaty, what had been German New Guinea came into Australian hands under Mandate of the League of Nations. It was a period of dislocation, and recovery was slow and uneven. While the Mandate spoke in clear terms of the mandatory power's re-

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sponsibility for the "well-being and development" of the country's indigenous inhabitants, Australian politicians were more concerned that the Territory should not become a burden upon the Australian taxpayer; if there was any single principle governing Australian policy at that time it was the common colonial assumption of the day that a colony must pay for its own administration (Rowley 1965:92; cf. Radi 1971: 75 ). In such a context of fiscal constraint, departments were run on a shoestring, and what could be achieved was dependent on external trade. The main item of export at this time remained copra, 11 but like so many other tropical products it was highly vulnerable to the vagaries of the world market. In the aftermath of the war prices remained depressed, so much so indeed that when the first plantations, now under the control of an Expropriations Board, came up in 1922 for sale to private purchasers no satisfactory offers were received. Nor were low prices the only problem. Under the new regime of the Expropriation Board, inexperienced management in the running of the plantations was soon reflected in deterioration of the product, leading to difficulties with overseas buyers. The all too plain consequence of this combination of policy and circumstance was, as one contemporary observer expressed it, a general atmosphere of regression: the main pier at Rabaul was in partial ruin, many government buildings required attention, and roads generally required substantial repair (Ainsworth 1924: 13). Despite the many signs of neglect, Rabaul remained in its general appearance much as the Germans had left it. The German residents themselves, now departed, had been replaced by a small community of Australians, most of them ex-servicemen who had served on the Gazelle Peninsula during the war. What remained, however, was the structure of racial stratification: the Chinese, dominating local trade from their quarters in Chinatown, were sandwiched uneasily between the handful of whites and the indigenous blacks, including both migrant laborers from New Guinea, and the local Tolai. In the relations of European and Chinese, envy of the latter was plainly a potent element; between white and black it was rather a European fear ofloss of control and the "need to keep the native in his place" that provided the dominant motif. 12 But it was in the assertion of social distance that the system found its most visible expression; in life, but no less in death, each group was to be restricted to its allotted space. When they spoke about this period, the Matupi did not attempt to conceal their resentment of the way they were treated by whites, though they would recall particular aspects of the system or particular

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episodes they had experienced with wry amusement. At the same time, as the economy gradually picked up, their links with the wider society were growing increasingly complex. There were many who were now working in Rabaul, though there was an evident preference for "free" casual employment as laundrymen, boat boys, and the like; numbers of other young Tolai were also beginning to seek work on the goldfields of mainland New Guinea, and some claimed to have accompanied early expeditions into the Highlands. Such forays beyond the village, however, did not imply any loosening of one's ties with it; as a leader in the Rabaul Times (25.8.36) once complained, not without justification, dismissal from employment held no terrors for the individual Tolai who still remained a landed proprietor. The village not only represented home and security; access to land within the village also remained as the major source of the new wealth, particularly as copra prices improved in the mid-'thirties. All of this was clearly reflected in changing patterns of consumption and style of life. To some knowledgeable observers of the day, Matupi and other Tolai villagers close to Rabaul stood out as being among the most Westernized in the country (see, e.g., Groves 1936:59), a view that was wholly in accord with the Matupis' own self-image. In particular, they liked to recall the modem-style housing they had started to build in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II. In other cases the love of display, or more precisely the attention and prestige that display attracted, went hand in hand with a shrewd sense of economic advantage as when, for example, ToPapat, a prominent Matupi of his day, became in 1935 the first New Guinean to buy a motorcar. It appears that the purchase was intended as an investment, ToPapat and the others who had contributed to the venture planning to reimburse themselves by hiring the vehicle out to other Tolai who had recently taken to chartering cars from Chinese firms for jaunts around the area, but when Matupi recalled the occasion for me it was all the attention and excitement the purchase generated that plainly stirred them still. 13 Increasing participation in the cash and wage economy had brought new wealth to the Tolai, and closer familiarity with the world beyond the village paved the way for further cultural change. To some contemporary observers with more than a passing knowledge of the local scene, the changes had gone so far that groups like the Matupi were regarded as having virtually abandoned their traditional way of life (e.g., Groves 1936:59; Cilento 1932).14 However, as my own later researches were to show, this was an exaggerated view that did scant

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justice to the complexity of the situation at Matupit. It was undeniable that cultural erosion had indeed proceeded far there, but it was also the case that much of social life on Matupi was still governed by traditional structural principles; what the accounts and recollections of one's informants of this period also reveal are the intimations of a changing mood abroad and of new aspirations gradually taking shape. Two developments may be cited in illustration of the point. The first was said to have had its beginning in a dispute over land which came before the kiap.IS It appears that at some point in the proceedings the kiap remarked, rather bluntly, that they, the Tolai, did not understand what the government was doing because they did not understand English. One man, ToBunbun of Nodup, immediately demanded to know whose fault that was; the government had not provided them with schools. He then proceeded to argue the case for a proper school, concluding with the offer that if the government would provide the teachers and the materials, the people would put up the buildings. Such were the origins, in local lore, of the first government school. 16 The second concerns the kivung na baramana, the councilor assembly of young men. Although the aims of the kivung had no clear focus, it brought into the public arena the discussion of such issues as how to improve the quality of life, a topic beginning to exercise the minds of some of the more thoughtful of the younger folk. In a society where they were still expected to defer to their elders, this was indeed a novel departure, the full fruits of which were only to be seen much later. I7 Meanwhile the years spanning the mid-'thirties emerge in retrospect as "the good days" (ta ra boina bung); as Turpui remarked on one occasion, there was no poverty then, and people were beginning to put up houses like his own (which I was presently occupying). And then, he added, the war destroyed it all.

Japanese Interlude The Japanese landed at Rabaul early in 1942. Soon the whole of the Gazelle Peninsula came under military occupation. Initially, the Japanese sought to establish friendly ties with the Tolai, but later as they found their lines of supply cut off by the American navy, they had to rely more and more on local resources, and their regime became increasingly strict and demanding. Many Tolai retain

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vivid memories of the period, and there are few nowadays among the older folk who do not have their own stories to tell. Some Matupi spoke of the occupation as if it had been bad right from the very beginning: houses were broken into and set afire without a question as to whose they were or whether they were in use; coils of shell money were collected and thrown in the sea; bibles were tom up and the pages used as toilet paper. Cruelty and lack of compassion were the theme of other recollections: if one had a coconut palm you were forbidden to climb it, even if your child was crying for a kulao. If you broke this order you were beaten over the head. Such beatings were common, one was told, often resulting in death. As the war wore on, the situation deteriorated and Tolai suffering was compounded by food shortages and the lack of medical supplies to treat the sick. Toward the end, American bombers made regular attacks on ships in Rabaul harbor; and there were many deaths when bombs fell on the island or when those at sea in their canoes were machine-gunned from the air. The Japanese appear to have stationed a kiap, distinguished by his ability to speak Melanesian pidgin, in the various local communities. The Matupi kiap was in fact remembered favorably: the youngsters used to follow him around and he would give them presents of food when it was otherwise in short supply; he was also prepared to chat with people and was also recalled as having intervened on occasion when police or soldiers were maltreating them. The Japanese made use of certain villagers as "spies" (a kilao): if they discovered any who were known to be in contact with, or friendly to, the Australians they were empowered to execute them. There were also kempe, Tolai underlings appointed by the Japanese to serve in their own communities. Some are remembered as having done their best to help the people, others were vilified. After the war there were many scores to be settled and a number of former kempe were handed over to the restored Australian administration and were sent to prison. The period of Japanese occupation was recalled primarily as one of great privation and hardship, but it is also evident that it provided the Tolai with opportunities to observe some aspects of yet another way of life at close quarters. Attitudes toward the Japanese were in fact complex and marked by much ambiguity. It is somewhat ironical, for example, that the Japanese, whose culture at this time was being designated by some anthropologists as a "shame" culture, shocked the Matupi when soldiers discussed sexual matters with youngsters without any trace of shame or embarrassment. Their food tastes too filled some

THE TaLA!

43

Matupi with repugnance. But perhaps it was the Japanese attitude to death-as the Matupi perceived it-that prompted the strongest reaction. Men who were wounded and unfit for further work, I was told, were thrust on vast funeral pyres and burnt alive together with other corpses. It was also claimed that a Japanese did not wish to experience pain; he wanted to be shot with a gun so that his pain was ended and he had a speedy death. In these regards the Japanese view of death, in such stark contrast to their own, appeared to the Matupi as something truly horrible. As against all this, however, there were other features of Japanese culture and behavior that the Matupi could respect and in some instances admire. Some were plainly impressed, for example, by Japanese discipline and the respect, reflected in the fact that everything was accompanied by a bow, that marked their relations among themselves. There were those too who spoke with admiration of Japanese skill as fishermen and the enormous catches they were able to make using small trawlers. But as the Matupi came to look back and reflect upon the experience, it becomes evident that the presence of the Japanese also had an impact at a more covert level. One day, for example, I was talking to a Matupi man who was often highly critical of the direction in which change seemed to be taking them. Warming to his theme, he turned back to the days of the Japanese occupation. The Japanese, he said, had developed the same technical skills and knowledge of the Europeans, but they had not slavishly followed them in other ways. "I saw when the Japanese were here," he remarked, "that they had their own religion, and it was strong because it was based on their own customs." The path would have been easier, he continued, and there would have been fewer mistakes if they, the Tolai, had paid more attention to their own traditions. How many others had come to think along these lines is uncertain; what is plain, however, is that the pangs of bitterness that the comment embodied were to be widely shared in the years that followed the defeat of the Japanese and the reimposition of Australian rule.

Developments in the Postwar Era In his book Stone Age Island, in which he has set forth his impressions of, and reflections on, Papua New Guinea after a stay there

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THE TOLA!

of some seven years, Maslyn Williams offers a thumbnail sketch of the Tolai with which few expatriates familiar with the Gazelle in the 'fifties would have wished to quarrel: The forty thousand Tolai people of New Britain are the most compact, literate and vocal group in the whole of the Territory. The administration seems to favour them with considerable attention because they are responsive to new ideas of "progress" and are usually prepared to co-operate in schemes of advancement put forward by Government planners. But they are not a tractable group: they do not consider themselves particularly obliged to the administration for its special attention to their advancement. They do not respond with unquestioning loyalty and affection. On the contrary, some Tolai clans tend to be stubborn and at times violent. (Williams 1964:51)

The Tolai were indeed among the first to benefit from the more positive policies pursued by successive Australian governments in the postwar period. Altogether there was a new emphasis on the need for social advancement of the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea which had been utterly lacking in earlier years and was now to lead to important changes in almost every area of social life. I8 Central to the new goal was the task of raising living standards; this was seen to depend, on the one hand, on working for the improvement of village agriculture and, on the other hand, on moving away from dependence on single crops toward a more diversified economy. Thus Tolai were now encouraged to turn to growing cocoa. One major outcome of this was the setting up of the Tolai Cocoa Project; under its aegis, fermentaries were quickly located at various points throughout the Gazelle; the Project also provided supervisory and marketing facilities and services (T. S. Epstein 1968:117-133; cf. Salisbury 1970:passim). After initial hesitation in some parts, Tolai growers took to the new crop with enthusiasm and before long cocoa had come to rival copra as a source of cash, particularly in inland villages. The Gazelle Peninsula also appeared to offer a favorable location for another venture in "directed" change. In the earlier years of Australian rule, indigenous participation in the processes of government had moved but little beyond the "luluai" system introduced by the Germans. As Paul Hasluck, who was to exercise an unusual degree of influence in shaping the country's affairs as Minister for Territories between 1951-1963, himself pointed out, while this was a helpful method by which a tutelary power could run a dependent country, it had little value for building the political structure of a nation (Hasluck 1976: 165). If Papua New Guineans were to be actively engaged in the

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political process, new institutions had to be developed in which they could be represented and play their part. Thus change was envisaged at ahnost every point of the system, but most immediately at the local level where the obvious need was for some means of moving beyond the village that traditionally in so many parts of the country was and even now remained the most inclusive political unit. The solution to the problem was seen to lie in the gradual introduction of Native Local Government Councils. By 1954 eight councils had been gazetted throughout the Territory, five of them on the Gazelle Peninsula. I do not need to consider the work of the councils here nor to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the system since both these matters have been treated in some detail elsewhere (Epstein 1969; 1970). Here I focus rather on more complex aspects of the process of change -a process set in motion partly by the various interventions of the administration, partly by the product of forces and tensions at work within Tolai society, and partly by the reflection of influences emanating from the outside world with which the Tolai were becoming everincreasingly involved. The growing affiuence of the area was apparent in so many different ways: within the village, in the style of modem housing that was becoming fashionable and in the quantity and range of household goods that people possessed; in town, in the way they now carried themselves with a confidence that their new wealth made possible as they jostled in the shops and stores that had once been the preserve of whites only. Schooling, still way ahead of what the rest of the country had to offer, opened up a variety of new jobs: numerous Tolai were now serving as teachers, clerks, carpenters, and the like in many parts of the country that were in material terms clearly less well developed than their own. Unquestionably, the experience did much to bolster their growing awareness of themselves as an occupational elite. For all that, to the outside observer in the early 'sixties the signs of mounting tension on the Gazelle were all too plain. Population, for example, had begun to grow at what appeared to be an explosive rate (A. L. and T. S. Epstein 1962). In an area so small as the Gazelle Peninsula, where so high a proportion of the cultivable land had been alienated and remained in the hands of expatriate Europeans or Chinese, continuing population increase was bound before long to raise the specter of land hunger, even if the demand for land were to be limited mainly to the requirements of subsistence. The whole situation, however, was now greatly exacerbated by the heightened clamor for more land for cash crops. Nor was the problem simply a matter of adequacy

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of resources. Among other contributory factors was the question of the customary system of land tenure: as it operated under contemporary conditions, in some communities at least, there began to emerge a category of "landless" in the sense that they had no claims as ofmatrilineal right to land in the communities in which they resided. But land, while undoubtedly the most central, was only one among a host of issues that served to feed what was at times an almost palpable sense of disgruntlement. Many of these issues-the land problem itself, economic development, education, race relations, and so on-were given an airing at council meetings, particularly of the Combined Councils, which at this stage had not yet amalgamated into a single Tolai body. But in the eyes of many younger Tolai, these bodies, lacking any effective autonomy, merely served as an instrument of administrative policy. In fact, all matters of any moment had to be referred for decision to Port Moresby, and with the recognition that Rabaul was no longer a major locus of power interest among these younger people shifted to the wider political arena. Henceforth hitherto highly regarded Tolai leaders were to find themselves increasingly reproached in the argot of the day as "aumana yesyes," "yes men" who still gave subservience to the whites; and words like self-government and independence began to find their way into the local vocabulary. As I have discussed elsewhere, a new conception of politics was gradually taking shape among the Tolai (Epstein 1969:292). But it was to take some years before the situation crystallized out, and only with the elections for the Second House of Assembly in 1968 did the clash of perspectives emerge with full clarity. The issue was change and the proper response to it: broadly speaking, there were, on the one hand, those who sought gradual advance under the continuing guidance of the Australian administration; on the other hand there were those who, speaking in more strident tones, demanded the immediate righting of just grievances in regard to land, and preparation for a future that would give local people a much fuller say in guiding their own destinies. In the outcome, in the three relevant electorates of the Gazelle, victory went to two candidates who were the acknowledged spokesmen of those in the second camp. 19 But the real watershed in the history of political development on the Gazelle Peninsula was to be provided by certain events that occurred in the following year. In 1963 the five Native Local Government Councils amalgamated to form a single Gazelle Local Government Council. Despite its many perceived shortcomings, the Council nonetheless enjoyed

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considerable support as an essentially Tolai body. The new catalyst in the situation, in line with administrative policy, was to be its reconstitution as the Gazelle Multi-Racial Council. The response was immediate: a large-scale demonstration-the first of its kind-was organized in Rabaul when an estimated throng of seven thousand Tolai marched through the town to express their dissent. When it became evident that the Administration did not intend to bow to such pressures, tension in the area mounted and, as the date for the formal opening of the new Council approached, heavy reinforcements of police, many of them from riot squad detachments, were flown into Rabaul, and helicopter patrols were instituted. Such were the beginnings of the Mataungan movement. At one level, the aims of Mataungan can be stated quite simply. Right from its inception the movement proclaimed its hostility to European and Chinese domination in the economic sphere, and to all forms of discrimination against Papua New Guineans. At a more fundamentallevel, there was explicit recognition that independence could only be gained through emancipation from dependency upon the existing structure (Stephen 1972: 105). Both aspects were evident in Mataungan's organized activities. On the first score, its immediate task-wholly novel in the Papua New Guinea context-was the deployment of modem techniques to mobilize mass support; apart from regular meetings in the villages, the quite explicit purpose of which was to raise political consciousness among the people, there were large-scale rallies and confrontations with the police which achieved much coverage in the Australian media. But it was its efforts on the second score that probably did most to aggravate intra-Tolai tensions. The ire of the Mataungans was directed chiefly at the new Council, which it sought to undermine by having Tolai pay the tax they were required to pay to the Council into the coffers of Mataungan instead. Mataungan also noted the threat to the autonomy of the Tolai Cocoa Project, claiming that control of its affairs would pass into the hands of the multiracial council, and this too soon became a focal point of conflict; before long many ugly scenes were being reported as Mataungan began systematic harassment of some of the Project's fermentaries (see Woolford 1976:6263). Plainly the emergence of Mataungan had exacerbated many of the divisions that over the years had been developing within Tolai society. At the same time it also succeeded in setting up links that cut across the cleavages without which the Association could not have enjoyed for so

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THE TaLA!

long the widespread support that it did (Grosart 1982:149). In its origins, as well as in its membership, Mataungan was manifestly an ethnic movement, a creation of and for Tolai, but this fact should not be allowed to obscure its wider importance. As Grosart has argued, it did have meaning for other Papua New Guineans, providing "the cutting edge of a nationalist movement which, largely owing to the poor state of physical communications in Papua New Guinea never attained an organisational existence" (Grosart 1982: 149, 164). It is worth recalling here that in April 1969, just before the issue of the Gazelle Multi-Racial Council erupted, the Minister for Territories expressed the view that independence for Papua New Guinea was still twenty to thirty years away (Woolford 1976:6). In fact, only four years later the country stood on the threshold of self-government, and independence itself was proclaimed in September 1975. It would be a serious error to claim that the heightened tempo of political change in the country revealed in these events was owing solely, or even largely, to recent developments on the Gazelle alone; however, it can scarcely be doubted that without the emergence of Mataungan the road to independence would have been very much longer.

Groups, Categories, and Leadership In presenting in preceding sections some account of developments on the Gazelle Peninsula over the past hundred years, I have also been setting out some of the parameters of modem Tolai society that are indispensable to the understanding of almost any aspect of their social life one might choose to focus on. But of the structure of that society itself little has been said save in the most general terms; in particular, nothing has been said of the nature of the social groups and categories that provide the framework for much of intra-Tolai relations and interactions. Territory and descent provide the principles that are chiefly of interest in this regard, but we shall also have to note how their operation too has been affected by changes of the kinds already described. The terms ofTolai discourse offer the most useful lead into the discussion. In characterizing the habitat the most immediate distinction that the Tolai draw is that between a pui and agunan. "A pui" refers to an area of bush: "a pui" is naturally wild save insofar as it has been

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tamed by the planting of gardens there, but cultivation has to be continuous otherwise the land quickly reverts to its natural state. "A gunan," by contrast, is a place of human habitation. The opposition sometimes finds symbolic expression in certain ritual contexts. In the namata, for example, a rite that should be performed before a young man is deemed entided to marry, the initiand is required to paraparau, that is, to spend a period of seclusion in the bush where he is attended by a group of male companions and one or two senior males; the climax of the rite consists in the elaborately staged reentry of the party into the village. In this context, gunan represents, among other things, domesticity; it is a bounded unit where people can dwell in relative security. Thus "gunan" refers to the smallest local unit, the hamlet, to the larger unit embracing many hamlets for which the English word village is usually employed, or today to whole areas such as the Gazelle Peninsula or even countries. The gunan assumes importance in a variety of contexts. In the first place, for the individual the hamlet is crucial both in jural and emotional terms. For a Tolai the link with the hamlet of birth is often prized as marking the spot where one's afterbirth was buried. Again, since each hamlet is associated in perpetuity with a particular descent group, or vunatarai (as I discuss further below), this was the place where in the past one was buried; with changing house styles it has become in recent times the only place in which, as a lineage member, one is entided to put up a permanent, modern-style house. When a large-scale affair of the clan was being celebrated, it was at this hamlet that all congregated. In precontact times the village was the largest political unit, and throughout most of the colonial period it remained as the basic unit of administration. Even after the introduction of local government councils, councillors continued to represent villages or sections within them. It is indeed primarily with the village that people continue to identify and to be identified, as can readily be seen not only in the formal political context but on all those occasions when Tolai belonging to different local communities come together. So in the marketplace at Rabaul, for example, stall-holders sit together in village blocs. Similarly, at any gathering for the performance of some ceremony or other function it will be noticed how visitors sit together as a village group, even though within the village itself they may not be very closely related. Besides "gunan," the other term that takes us to the heart of Tolai local organization is "vunatarai." This is a compound of two words: vuna, meaning root, cause, and beginning, and tarai, meaning people

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-hence people sharing a common root or origin. But for the Tolai it carries the more precise connotation of sharing matrilineal descent. It should be immediately noted, however, that this is not as dear as might seem at first sight, for while all those who belong to a vunatarai are assumed to share a common ancestry, the term itself does not refer unequivocally to one kind of social unit that is ordered in the same way throughout its entire structure. In actuality, a number of different referents have to be distinguished. To begin with, the word "vunatarai" may be used to refer to one or other of the moieties into which all Tolai are grouped, though other expressions such as papar (= part, side, half) or avet and diat, "us" and "them," are also heard. Although the moiety is thus dearly rooted in the notion of common descent, it does not possess a genealogical structure at all. Moiety members are to be found scattered throughout the area of Tolai settlement and never assemble as a group for any joint activity. Indeed this would not be possible, for the moiety has neither internal organization nor leadership. In a word, it constitutes a category, not a group in the strict sense. The overt function of the system is to regulate marriage through the taboo on sexual relations between parties of the same moiety; breach of this taboo was one of the most heinous offences known to the Tolai. On a more abstract level, it serves to provide Tolai with a model of the political process in which power is seen to oscillate between two parties or factions poised in permanent relations of hostility and rivalry. There is a second very different sense in which "vunatarai" can fairly be glossed as dan. Tolai dans are not named units, but are identified with reference to particular contemporary leaders, and sometimes ancestors, depending on the social context, and ultimately with reference to a particular parcel (or parcels) of land associated with the founding ancestor. Such an ancestor, conceived of as a historical rather than a mythical figure, is spoken of as madapai or vunapaina, a source from whom the group takes its rise. Over time, as the descendants of the vunapaina spread out and scattered across the land, some to join mattikin already established elsewhere, some to establish new local setdements, knowledge of precise genealogical links within the group as a whole was gradually lost. There remained the tradition of common origins which was kept alive not only in dan histories but more importantly by continuing social interaction and participation in a variety of organized activities. In its structure, then, the Tolai dan is perhaps best thought of as akin to a network, the nodes of which are small localities

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each associated in perpetuity with a particular descent group within the village, district, or parish. Functionally, the clan emerges when from time to time parts of the network will be activated for the performance oflarge-scale mortuary rites and other ceremonies, or nowadays to offer economic cooperation in some joint enterprise. As just described, "vunatarai" refers essentially to a dispersed group. However, the term is also used in a much more restricted sense. Thus at Matupit for most everyday purposes, and especially where land was concerned, the term was mostly intended to refer to a local matrilineal descent group whose acknowledged leader could usually trace a genealogical connection with the local founding ancestor, or patuana. The vunatarai in such contexts is thus more properly thought of as a local lineage, a group whose corporateness is expressed chiefly in its claims to rights of ownership in land, these rights being held jointly by the members of the group in a theoretically undivided estate; however, where two or more local lineages within the same moiety regularly cooperated in ceremonial or other activities-in local parlance a tur;guvai, literally, "a standing together"-they commonly came over time to be regarded as constituting a single vunatarai. The concept of "vunatarai," then, is one steeped in ambiguity. The importance of this is that, insofar as a given situation is open to different interpretations, considerable flexibility is introduced into the working of the social system. In the course of a dispute over land, for example, it was quite common to hear the parties vigorously deny what the rest of the community had hitherto assumed-that they were members of a single vunatarai. The simple fact is that far from being fixed within a rigid genealogical structure, individuals were free in certain contexts to stand apart from their close matrilineal kinsmen and, invoking alternative kinship links, attach themselves to another group. Thus the vunatarai cannot be thought of in any sense as a stable group, but rather as a unit that is apt to expand or contract over time depending on circumstances. In the long term, demographic factors have an important part to play in the rise and fall of local descent groups, but at any given moment the stock of a vunatarai is apt to be linked more closely to the fortunes of its "big man." Restless and given to selfaggrandizement, after the fashion of" big men" in many other parts of New Guinea, the Tolai ngala is at once a financial as well as a political figure. Success in this regard depended on having access to considerable resources in shell money (tambu) which was put to work in sponsoring and organizing a variety of ceremonies of different kinds. A successful

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ceremony (balaguan) was an enormous source of prestige, but even more it was a means of converting prestige into power. The man who achieved renown by his ability to command wealth in tambu attracted many followers from outside his own immediate local lineage who, through the mechanism known as a liliman na tambu, were integrated, as it were, into the vunatarai. But if he overreached himself in order to stay ahead-always a likelihood in this fiercely competitive society-the fall from grace was likely to be accompanied by a renewed emphasis on precise genealogical bonds as the proper basis for vunatarai membership. Even today the social processes associated with the cultural categories just described may still be observed in many parts of the Gazelle. But by 1960 it was already apparent that in some communities change had proceeded so far that contemporary experience could no longer be handled with reference to customary concepts alone. Thus at Matupit, while gunan and vunatarai remained very relevant to everyday concerns, there was no longer a place on the stage for "big men" cast in the traditional mould. In the years that have passed since then change has proceeded with ever-growing momentum. Whereas, for example, in 1960 few Tolai had completed secondary schooling, now there were many of both sexes who had attended a university or gained technical qualifications. The effect has been to transform the character of Tolai involvement with the wider society, as many young men and women nowadays are not merely seeking work in the growing urban centers of Port Moresby, Lae, or Kieta but are making careers and homes for themselves there (see Epstein 1988). The coming of Independence to Papua New Guinea has also powerfully intensified a process the beginnings of which were already evident much earlier: the emergence of Port Moresby as the nation's capital not only makes it the focus of political interest, it is also in a position to offer a range of opportunities for Tolai talent that Rabaul is no longer able to match. Increasingly, it would seem, those Tolai at home and those abroad (especially in Port Moresby) are coming to live in very different social worlds. Such developments begin to raise important questions about Tolai identity in the modem world which I take up again in a later chapter.

3 The Language of the Emotions

Among the first persons I sought out on my return to Matupit early in 1986 was John Vuia, one of the few surviving of that cohort of senior men from whom I had gained so much during my earlier stay on the island in 1960-61. I had brought back with me, and was keen to present to him, a cassette of the tape I had recorded on the occasion of the obsequies for his brother Tollot many years before, the most elaborate ceremonies that were staged at Matupit in that period (see Epstein 1969:232). When eventually we listened to the recording I observed his expression and mien as carefully as I could. Tears formed in his eyes, but he did not weep. Very soon he was listening with intense concentration: his head was bent forward, stretched taut as it were, and from time to time he gave a tiny nod. What were John's feelings as he listened to these ancient melodies? The answer must be that we cannot know for sure. Facial expression, vocalizations, and bodily movement all give very important clues in the matter, and it is likely that another observer, more experienced in these regards than I, would have picked up the finer-grained details that I missed. But insofar as we are dealing with emotions, we are also dealing with inner states, with what we assume was going on in John's mind. And here we have to acknowledge that the inner experience of another person is something that we cannot observe directly. But we can, and it is plain that in much of our daily interaction we do, make inferences about the feelings of others. I had been accompanied on my visit to 53

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ToVuia by my friend ToKonia, and after we left John I was able to discuss with him a number of points suggested by our meeting with the old man. First, I took up the expression of concentration on John's part. ToKonia recognized plainly what I was getting at and said he thought that there was a term for concentration in the vernacular, but he could not put his finger on it at that moment. Nor could he offer me a word to cover John's nodding of his head. I then asked what he thought John's feelings were on hearing the songs. It was at once interesting to observe that the question did not pose any obvious difficulty for him, and after a brief pause he answered that John was reminded of his brother's death and was sad-he grieved, i ligur. After another pause he added the spontaneous comment that John was also thinking of his own youth when he was a baramana and full of vigor. As we shall see in later contexts, "ligur" (niligur in its noun form) is a simple term that carries a weight of meanings. Besides sadness I detected signs of other emotions. In the way he listened to the music, making tiny, scarcely audible grunts, it seemed clear that he was expressing a deep aesthetic interest, almost as though he was giving the performance a professional assessment and finding that it passed the highest standards. Some of John's own remarks immediately afterward offered further clues to the range of feelings the songs had aroused in him. Thus, alongside the interest, pleasure, and sadness that the music had evoked, an element of pride in being a Matupi was also reflected in his comment that the recording included three "types" of song: a lalu, a balilai, and kabakavir. This comment simply reflected the announcement, picked up by the tape, that had been made by Kaputin, another of the most prominent men in Kikila who had been acting as master of ceremonies for the occasion: 1 its import was that whereas a community like Baai might have its own distinctive lalu, or Talwat its balilai, only Matupit had all three. 2 Listening to the music had also provided him with yet another evident source of satisfaction. This was the "real" thing, he told me, not the synthetic stuff of today played on guitars. For the men who composed these songs had sought their inspiration in the bush in dreams induced by taking the narcotic pepe: they were in touch with the spirits. Having made this connection with the past, John began to talk of the arrival of the lotu, or church. The early missionaries used to think of them as "people of darkness," a tarai na bobotoi; that was a view he strongly repudiated. The vignette just presented could well serve to raise and develop a variety of issues, some of which I will indeed take up in later contexts.

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55

For the moment, however, I use it to illustrate just one point: expression, particularly facial expression, it has been said, offers vital clues not only to the presence of emotion but also to its likely nature. But for the anthropologist in the field, one moreover whose special interest is in the experience of affect, it seems plain that he is not going to get very far if he cannot get people to talk about their feelings. As Davitz puts it, experience must be studied as it is reported through some language system. This opens up a number of possibilities. The lesson that Davitz himself drew was that one appropriate focus of research is the language that deals ostensibly with experiential referents of emotional labels. In the kind of research he conducted, the primary data were thus linguistic symbols reflecting, to some extent, experiential events, though they could not be assumed to be direct, unequivocal representations of those events (Davitz 1969:2). Those anthropologists who have expressed an interest in the emotions have also found it congenial to focus on language. But, working with a hermeneutic perspective that conceives a major part of the anthropological task to lie in the "translation" of cultures, much work in this genre has given particular attention to emotion words and their meanings. One of the earliest efforts of this kind was a paper by Hilda Geertz entitled "The Vocabulary of Emotion" (1959) in which she argued that a phenomenological approach to the learning of feeling-states, or emotions, would shed much light on the processes of socialization and the development of personality within different cultures. Pursuing this suggestion, she builds her analysis around a number 00avanese words that are treated as categories within Javanese thought about emotional states rather than emotional responses as such. Thus the terms wedi, isin, sung/zan denote three kinds of feeling-states held to be appropriate to situations demanding respectful behavior. By examining the way the meaning of these terms is communicated to a Javanese child in a variety of contexts, Geertz is able to show how an idiosyncratic notion of "respect" comes to be built, so to speak, into the Javanese psyche. More recently, Catherine Lutz has similarly sought to elucidate Ifaluk ethnopsychology by exploring the meaning of certain emotion words. One of her early reports (Lutz 1980) focuses onfago. "Fago" is felt in the presence of someone who is gafago, or needy; this includes those who are sick and dying, those who are leaving the island for some period, and those who are unable to care for themselves, such as children and the aged and infirm. It is clear that "fago" has no precise equivalent in English, but there is a measure of overlap with the-English

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terms love, pity, sadness, grief, and so on. Sadness is the English word that most closely approximates the "focal area" of fago, as death is the primary and strongest elicitor of both fago and sadness, but each category seems to be associated with different sets of feelings. Another paper adopts a similar strategy, this time using the concept of metagu for expository purposes, and a third shows how the Ifaluk sort out or "cluster" these words according to the situation in which the emotion usually occurs (Lutz 1982). But the most substantial of the ethnopsychological studies that takes account of the emotions is unquestionably Michelle Rosaldo's Knowledge and Passion. In a sense the whole book can be thought of as a sustained gloss on two nongot concepts that are quite central in the life of this group of Philippine headhunters: beya and liget. At the same time, it quickly becomes apparent that Rosaldo's concern is not so much with words in a narrow sense; it is rather with "a particular sort of relation between 'words' and the 'world'-not the conventional one of reference and demarcation, but rather the less formal sort of bond that connects habitual ways of talking about experience to the organization of that experience itself" (M. Rosaldo 1980:20). Words provide the starting point, but the burden of the account is taken up in pursuing far broader aims: "We can learn about nongot life by using words like liget as an initial text, not because nongots 'classify' a person wild with rage in terms that, unlike ours, refer as well to energetic farmers, but rather because a proper understanding of what liget means requires us to look beyond the word itself to sentences in which it is employed, images through which it is invoked, and social processes that nongots use to describe it" (ibid.). But while "beya," "liget," and other such terms refer to what speakers of English conventionally regard as emotional states and inner feelings, it should by now also be clear that Rosaldo's primary concern is not in fact with affect as such; as with White and Kirkpatrick (1985:17), emotion words are viewed as guideposts to cultural knowledge about social and affective experience. In my own case not only does affect lie much closer to the heart of the study, but the approach adopted also differs importantly in that I have emphasized the interplay of the physiological and the cultural within a total complex process. From this perspective to start with the lexical issue provides a useful point of entry to the subject not just for the pragmatic reasons mentioned a little earlier, but also because it directs attention to a variety of preliminary issues concerning affect in its cross-cultural

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dimension where words themselves are part of the problem to be investigated. The first matter to be raised has been touched on by Plutchik. Every language known, he claims, has a set of words to describe emotions. Moreover, he goes on, the appearance in all languages of words like angry, afraid, and happy suggests that these words represent universal experiences. What is not known, we are told, is the extent to which the total language of emotion-as recognized for example in American English-is duplicated in other languages (Plutchik 1980: 102). In view of what has already been said, we can be sure that many anthropologists would respond adversely to this passage if only because it does not appear to acknowledge the possibility that different lexical systems are likely to reflect different ways of conceptualizing emotions. But even where the universalist claim as such is not challenged, linguists might observe that we are still far from knowing whether there are any emotion concepts that have been recognized as lexically distinct and identifiable in all languages of the world (Wierzbicka 1986:587). The fact is that there have been as yet few detailed and systematic studies of lexicons of the emotions so that there are many questions for which we have still no answers. Yet this is not to say that the picture is completely blank; there are indications in the literature that important differences exist in the degree to which the emotions find verbal representation in different languages as well as differences in the way or extent to which they are used. LeVine (1984:82), for example, reports of the Gusii people of Kenya that although their language contains terms for emotional and cognitive processes as well as for character traits, there is only a small lexicon of distinctively mental phenomena and a limited framework for conceptualizing mental processes, particularly their subjective aspects. These findings he relates to the fact that ordinary Gusii conversation contains very little reference to personal intentions on the part of the speaker or others; in their social discourse, Gusii avoid "psychologizing," preferring to talk about the overt behavior of adults and children. 3 Again, in one of the few papers I know to deal specifically with the issue, Signe Howell (1981) describes the situation she found among the Chewong, a small aboriginal group of hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators in the tropical rain forest of Peninsular Malaysia. Initially puzzled by the seeming paucity of words referring to the emotions, Howell deliberately set out to investigate the matter further, drawing

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up a long list of English terms relating to inner states of all kinds and seeking their counterparts in the Chewong language. She met with little success, however, and was forced to conclude that their vocabulary was, in this regard, very limited and undifferentiated by comparison with Indo-European languages. She was in fact able to list only twenty indigenous terms, some of which referred to such physical manifestations as hunger, thirst, and pain-pace Plutchik, her list included words for angry, fearful, or frightened, but not happy. Howell's paper draws attention to another question that relates to lexicon: How are we to interpret the situation where the local vocabulary lacks a term or terms we might have expected to find? Some anthropologists, pursuing the logic of the emic position to its extremes, would argue that it is language that defines cultural reality. If the lexicon offers no terms by which to refer to or to describe a particular phenomenon, then for the people of the language group concerned that phenomenon can be held not to exist in any meaningful way; certainly it is not available for anthropological scrutiny (see, e.g., Needham 1973). However attractive this argument may appear in some contexts, it seems to me quite misleading where the emotions are concerned. The point is acknowledged by Howell herself when she observes that it would be wrong to conclude from the paucity of their vocabulary on the subject that Chewong do not experience inner states. On the contrary, they are in fact subject to numerous and complex rules whose nature, she remarks, "demonstrate that emotions, far from being foreign to them, are of such importance as to require close control. ... Common to all these rules is the fact that they relate to the suppression of inner states .... The rules discourage discussion and differentiation" (Howell 1981:135, 140-141). But the vocabulary "gap" may be rooted in less dramatic factors than suppression and more in the nature of affect itself. As already remarked, the feelings we experience on occasion are of such an unusual or confusing blend that the common language lacks a term adequate to express them-a situation acknowledged frequently both in literature as well as in everyday speech in some such remark as "I can't find words to describe what I felt .... " Or how, to take a rather different example, does one interpret the taking over of a term in another language that has no precise counterpart in one's own? Are we to infer that the emotional blend captured by the German term schadenfreude lies beyond the experience of speakers of English-at any rate until they become familiar with the German word? Of course the presence of such a term in one

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language and its absence in another serves as a pointer to cultural differences, but this is rather different from claiming that where there is no term there is no experience of the feeling in question. As a final point it may be said that in any event the absence of a term should not be taken too hastily to be conclusive in the matter; distinctive terms apart, the nature of one's feelings can also be expressed in language through the use of simile, metaphor, or other verbal devices (Wierzbicka 1986:587). A language may indeed offer its speakers standardized ways of talking about an identifiable emotion in addition to those means of expression provided by the lexicon or even where the vocabulary lacks an appropriate and distinct emotion word. Tinata tuna,4 the expression by which the Tolai refer to their own language, offers examples of both kinds, some of which will be noted later. As the example of "schadenfreude" just cited suggests, we have to assume that what, above all, shapes the emotional lexicon-what it includes as well as what from the observer's standpoint is missing-is cultural interest. Each language has its own set of terms, some of them showing considerable overlap with words found in other languages, others of more limited range if not indeed culturally specific, but all designating those emotions that are regarded within the society in question as particularly salient. From lexicon itself we are thus led to the classification of its content, and then in turn to what we can learn from the words about the way in which the emotions are conceptualized. Classification has been a central concern of much anthropological research in recent decades, but understandably perhaps this concern has as yet scarcely touched the affects. The few studies that have appeared, however, do point to a number of different aspects of the problem. Thus Hiatt (1978), for example, in an all too brief paper on Australian Aboriginal classification, touches on the question of verbal representation and the principles underlying it. Having inspected a small number of lexicons, he predicted that all Aboriginal languages would be found to have words for anger, fear, sorrow, jealousy, and shame-what he called the "dramatic" emotions. Though he considered that words referring to affection and contentment might also be widespread, he suspected that the "tranquil" emotions did not receive in Australia the same degree of verbal representation as their counterparts. Hiatt ( 1978: 185 -186) also takes up a rather different kind of issue. He notes, for example, that in the Gidjingali language the word -gurakadja signifies in some instances fear, in others, shame. While there were situations in which fear and shame might be felt simultaneously, other

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situations occurred in which only one or the other was present. Yet the same term was used in all three situations. Why was this? The problem Hiatt raises is part of a wider one: how the total set of terms is categorized or sorted, an issue that has been taken up by Gerber (1975, 1985). Working with forty-four terms, that separate inquiry showed to be a representative corpus of Samoan words for varieties of emotion, Gerber asked her sample of informants to make similarity judgments among the terms by indicating, for each, which other terms were most like it in meaning. The results of the inquiry are presented in the form of a cluster diagram that serves as a springboard to further, and more intensive, inquiry into the meaning of the words and of the way in which, in more general terms, Samoans think about the emotions. Such an approach clearly opens up possibilities for comparative studies along similar lines, 5 and I myself attempted a number of inquiries of the kind. However, before turning to a discussion of my own findings, it will be helpful to take a preliminary look at the Tolai lexicon and acquaint ourselves with some of its characteristics.

The Tolai Lexicon What language do the Tolai have available to them to talk about their feelings? And what are its distinctive features? In approaching these questions it may be instructive to say something first of the way in which I acquired my knowledge of their vocabulary of the emotions, and of some of the difficulties encountered in the process. I have remarked earlier that an anthropologist in the field is apt to pick up his knowledge of the terms and expressions relating to the emotions as part of the general process of learning the language itself. During my first fieldwork on Matupit I sought right from the outset to work entirely in the vernacular and thus gradually became familiar with at least the most common words that referred to affect; however, I did not at that time attend in any sustained or systematic way to the question of Tolai emotional life and therefore, when I later came to consider carrying out research on the topic, I realized that my knowledge of the relevant terms was likely to be very inadequate to the task in hand. Accordingly, as part of my preparations for a return to Matupit in 1986, I drew up a long list of words, later pared down to just over a hundred, which I had culled from a number of psychology texts dealing

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with the emotions. My plan at the time was, when passing through Port Moresby on my way to Rabaul, to present the list to Tolai students at the University of Papua New Guinea and other English-speaking Tolai working in the capital and ask them to record on the sheets provided the Tolai terms or expressions that corresponded to the English words. In this way I hoped that by the time I reached my final destination, I should at least have armed myself with a fairly full set of terms, the meaning of which I would then be able to explore further in the field. It turned out to be a vain hope, for nothing came of all these plans. In one regard, however, I was fortunate. While in Port Moresby I came by chance upon a novel by a Tolai author, Paulias Matane. Aimbe the Pastor (1979) was written in English and published in the United States, but what chiefly excited me was not simply that the novel was so deeply imbued with Tolai values and described most convincingly so much that I recognized as characteristically Tolai, but also that many passages read as though they were actually translations from tinata tuna. It thus occurred to me that Matane was ideally suited to help in providing me fairly easily with the Tolai terms for the ideas and feelings with which my research was to be centrally concerned, and I determined to seek him out as quickly as I could after finally getting to Rabaul. I had been introduced to Matane briefly many years before, and when I met him again now in Rabaul he quickly expressed his readiness to help, and when we parted he took away with him for translation the list of English emotion words I had prepared. If in my flush of enthusiasm I had imagined that the task with which I had presented him was a fairly straightforward one, I was quickly disabused. Matane too had evidently found it less easy than he had anticipated, demanding much of his time and thought. Though many of the words presented no difficulty, there were some for which he thought there was a Tolai equivalent but could not recall them, and there were yet others, it was plain to see, where he had been obliged to resort to circumlocution. I was particularly puzzled by his inability to offer Tolai words for feelings he himself had described in his book and I myself recognized as important in the Tolai experience. No doubt the nature of his career, which had taken him out of his home environment for long periods of time, had much to do with it, though in his case this did not strike me as a wholly adequate explanation. 6 In answer to my query, he himself remarked that when he wrote in English he thought in English, and when he spoke tinata tuna he thought in tuna; the two simply did not meet. His comment had the

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merit of reminding me not only how compartmentalization works in the human mind, but also that translation is less a matter of knowledge than of skill, if not indeed of art. But even more, perhaps, I was made to realize how far I had overlooked the importance of context-the words in my list simply stood by themselves. Some words, it would appear, translate without too much difficulty; with others, however, a meaningful translation is difficult partly because the term itself becomes meaningful only when set in some appropriate context, but partly too because context is sometimes also needed to focus thought. 7 The word for feeling or emotion itself would appear to provide the most logical point of entry to the discussion of the Tolai lexicon relating to affect. This is a kakairane. In its broadest sense "a kakairane" covers all manner of sensations whether experienced inwardly or outwardly. As with the English word feel itself, it can imply being conscious of in the sense, for example, that one feels the prick of the needle when receiving an injection. But it also refers to what is experienced inwardly as pain or emotion. When I once asked an informant to explain the meaning of the term he at once responded by giving me an example. "Suppose I am ill and I am suffering pain in my back and sides"-he was gesturing and pointing to the affected parts-"that is 'a kakairane. '" The sensation in question was physical pain, a kinadik, which is also the word used on occasion for the emotion of distress. Pain and distress are thus seen as being clearly linked, as indeed they often are among ourselves, but this is not to say they are thought of as identical. What chiefly distinguishes them is their source: pain is located where it hurts and it can affect any part of the body, on the inside or the outside; the emotions, by contrast, have their source in the balana (stomach), as I shall discuss presently. Some languages, so we are told, do not draw a sharp conceptual distinction between thought and action, cognition and affect. For example, Ifaluk, according to Lutz (1983:251; 1985:46-47), do not counterpose head and heart, but prefer to emphasize rather the essential inner unity of the person; hence, one way of translating the word nunuwan is simply as "thought/emotion." This seems very different from the case of the Tolai whose language offers the words "thought" (nuk, nununuk) and "feeling" (kakairane). In certain contexts the two terms appear as very similar: indeed, as with the English "I think" and "I feel," "ta ra nuknukigu" ("to my way of thinking") and "ta kaugu kakairane" ("as I feel about it") are sometimes almost synonymous. At the conceptual level, however, the distinction remains sharp. To

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appreciate it more fully, we need to set it in the context of certain Tolai notions about a number of organs of the body and how they are held to function: the heart, the brain, and the stomach/intestines. The heart (ubuaina), the brain (a imana), and the stomach (a balana) are thought of as "governors," each associated with a particular task that it "oversees" (kure). Of the three, the heart is supreme, for it is life itself. "You feel it is beating, the blood is working, the lungs, too-the heart governs the whole body (i kure ra kidolaina pal a paka)." However, the heart does not appear to have any bearing on the sort of person one is. Once, in the course of general discussion, I mentioned that there were parts of the world where in the past people had eaten the hearts of their fallen enemies as a way of acquiring the courage and other personal qualities of the slain foe. My companions evinced little interest. Tolai had been cannibals in the past and they were able to acknowledge the fact with equanimity; what was evident was that if the heart was eaten-a point on which I did not inquire-it was certainly not prized, as were certain other parts of the anatomy. As in so many other areas, Tolai interest in the heart was pragmatic rather than poetic. If the heart "governed" the body, it was the brain that "governed" thought. 8 Animalkind and mankind were alike in that they were both swayed by the emotions. A dog, I was told, has many of the feelings of a human: it knows anger, it even knows shame (a vavirvir). What distinguishes them is the capacity of humans to think, in particular to reflect on their behavior and thus to be able to discriminate between right and wrong; that this is beyond the powers of a dog is evident in the fact that a dog will mate with its own mother. In speaking thus, the Tolai make it at once apparent that they accord to the brain a superior status to the stomach; as we shall again see in later contexts, Tolai do not undervalue the emotions and indeed stress the importance of giving full expression to them in various circumstances. At the same time, it is "thought," through the exercise of the brain, that should exercise control: to act in the flush of passion before one has had a chance calmly to weigh the situation is to invite trouble. There is thus an evident tension between these two positions which may go some way toward explaining what lies behind those powerful outbursts of emotion, of the kind to be described later, that were sometimes encountered in a village moot. "A kakairane" apart, the one term that is most central to Tolai discourse about the emotions is "a balana." In many contexts the word bala- is appropriately translated as "inside," "the core," or even "the

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heart." So one may speak, for example, of bala-na-pal, the inside of the house, or one might hear complaints about village councillors who did not direct their full attention ta ra bala-na-gunan, to those matters concerning the village that were of central concern, that lay at the real heart of things. But in its literal and most direct sense bala- refers to the stomach or intestines. And this is the sense Tolai have in mind when they refer to "a balana" as the seat or source of the emotions: the balana is stirred up, roused, and seeks release (i van ra balana; i tur pi na irop, literally, it is agitated; it stands so that [the feeling] may get out), prompting one in this way to action. So it is with anger, for example; the feeling spreads from the balana to the whole body, you are aroused, and suddenly you become aggressive and are ready to fight (a rurutuka una varubu). But it is not simply that the emotions are located, or have their source, in the balana; it is the character of the sensation experienced in the "guts" that defines the emotion one feels. This notion finds clear expression in linguistic usage itself, for so many of the Tolai words relating to the emotions are in fact no more than attempts to express in language the feeling experienced in the balana. So, for example, a task is completed: one has planted a garden, the crops ripen, and one at last begins to see a return-i ballUJt or i balaki, one's mind is at rest (pata nuknukuna na vana vurvurbit), one is satisfied, content (ot = to suffice, to be just right; ki, ditto). Similarly, one may have spent much time and effort in making preparations for the staging of a ceremony. At last the big day comes. When it is all over and you have accomplished what you set out to do you will feel content-na ballUJt. By contrast, balatangtangi conveys quite a different kind of feeling. You become aware that people have been saying unpleasant things about you, you are unhappy, upset-a balana i tangtangi (tangi = cry, weep). Words like "balaot," "balatangtangi," and many others to be mentioned in due course, all refer to and indeed seek to describe inner states. But if the emotions are experienced in the "gut," while you may be thus aware of your own emotions, how can you know what another feels? The matter poses no problem for a Tolai whose answer is apt to be both prompt and brief: you observe the other's countenance (una gire ra matai ra tutana). You will see that his face does not wear a pleasant expression (pata bonaginigira), that there is no smile upon it, he looks as if he wants to cry. And indeed perhaps he lets fall a tear (a lur na matana na bura)-i balatangtangi. Or again, if you see someone coming toward you you can tell by looking at his face or by his voice that he is angry. But tears and voice apart, I gained the impression that in identifying the expression of emotion in others the individual Tolai

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Table 1 Standard Tolai Terms Relating to the Emotions

Balagugu: enthusiastic Balakadik: agitated, resentful, vengeful Balakankan: enraged, furious Balaki: content, satisfied Balamat: brave, confident Balaot: content, satisfied Balatangtangi: upset, vexed, angry, sad Barbar: proud Biavi: poor, miserable, wretched Burnt: afraid, fearful, scared Dadadar ra pakana: tremble with excitement

Madu: calm, humble, serene Malari: guilt, hopeless, despair Malila: calm Milikuan: despised, disgusted Muramura: lustful, passionate lVgangap: rage, fury, vengeful lVgarau: anxious, apprehensive lVinga: eager, enthusiastic, interested, joy lVilibur: enjoyment lViol: disobedient, defiant lVukpuku: contrite, penitent Pinpidian: angry, vexed Puku: suspicious

Gugu: cheerful, content, delighted, excited, glad, happy

Ruva: ashamed, guilty, shy

Kaian: amazed, astonished, shocked, startled Kalamiene: enjoyment Kalgugu: excited Kankan:anger,annoyance,rage Karagap: enraged, furious, excited Kinadik: distress Ki na ling: lonely Kukur: jealous, suspicious

Tabun: sad, heartbroken Tagura: helpless, listless Talakeke: lonely Talaguan: bored, dejected, depressed, listless Tamarigat: ambitious, eager, interested Tamuk: greed Tavurvurn: bewildered

Lalar: uncertain Langalanga: carefree, free, serene Langodo: avarice, greed Ligur: contrite, depressed; dismayed, distressed, grief, sad

Ururian: apprehensive, timid Vannari: compassion, love, sympathy Varngu: envy Varpiam: disobedient, rebellious Vavirvir: embarrassed, shame, shy Varvapir: jealousy Virna na langoron: excited

was responding to a gestalt; certainly in explaining how he achieves recognition he does not specifY particular facial or other movements; if he is aware of these, as with the dropping of the eyes and head that accompanies "vavirvir," the feeling of shame, it must be subliminally. While all emotions are held to arise (kumarikai) in the balana, and many terms directly reflect this notion, the lexicon also offers many other terms that relate to affect. Some of the more common words of this kind that are heard in everyday speech are set out in table 1. The set

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is drawn from a list of just over a hundred English words that, as mentioned earlier, were presented to a number of English-speaking Tolai who were asked to provide the equivalent word or expression in tinata tuna. For the purpose of the table, however, I have used only those words with which, having checked in a couple of Tolai-English dictionaries and consulted with other informants (mostly non-English speaking), I could feel confident I had grasped the meaning of the term as well as the kind of context in which it was likely to be used. 9 Before taking up some of the issues raised by the words listed in table 1, a couple of prefatory points should be noted. First, as already indicated, not too much should be made of the fact that the vernacular sometimes has no word that directly corresponds to an English emotion term: such a lexical gap does not mean that Tolai cannot recognize the feeling in question or are unable to describe it. For example, I had cut out of a local newspaper a photograph of a rugby player, the ball clutched firmly in his grasp, charging for the line. I showed the picture to a number of Tolai and asked what feeling they thought was being experienced by the man running with the ball. Tinata tuna has no word that is the precise equivalent of the English word determination, but none of my informants had any difficulty in identifying what they saw and finding a Tolai expression that indicated a combination of aggression and resolve. Moreover, I soon learned that in addition to, and sometimes instead of, specific emotion words Tolai made use of expressions that in some instances seem to have become standardized. Many of these constructions employ metaphor as a way of describing one's feelings. Thus, i pil ra balagu (literally, my stomach leaps) vividly conveys my feelings of delight or joy, just as i iap ra bal"IJu (my belly is on fire) no less vividly conveys rage. Another interesting example is iau kava ta ra balagu, an expression that evokes the image of a pregnant woman who finally gives birth, i kava, and used to refer to someone who stores something up in his mind, harboring a grievance. It may also be used to convey the sense of obsession-a man who conceives the idea of putting on a "balaguan," or ceremony, finds it nagging away at his bowels the whole time until at last he actually organizes and stages it. A rather different example of the kind is provided by an expression I have heard indicating disgust, something utterly repugnant. Questioning some of my Matupi informants I found some difficulty in discovering what word(s) they used to express the idea of disgust. Finally I was given the term milikuan (which was confirmed by the dictionary).

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Much later a close friend was recounting how a family quarrel had flared up over a piece of land. At one point in the row his younger brother had lost his temper and, using an English expletive, had told their father to get out and leave the land. His brother's behavior had deeply shocked him, my friend told me; it was really disgusting-the Tolai expression he used was i iang ra taka na ngiene, "he stinks of shit in his mouth." The expression, incidentally, offers a neat embodiment of certain attributes that some psychologists have seen as universally characteristic of disgust (e.g., Izard 1977:336-337; Tomkins 1963:1, 129). I have explained why various words offered by my respondents have been excluded from the set presented in table 1. The vast majority of those actually listed relate to the emotions in a fairly obvious way: as they appear in translation they plainly refer to feelings as English speakers understand the term. There are a few instances, however, where one might wonder about the basis for inclusion because what is described or referred to appears to be an external condition rather than some inner feeling. A case in point is the noun a biavi. The term is used when a Tolai wishes to refer, whether with contempt or compassion, to another's misery or wretchedness. Thus a man of mature years who has never acquired a wife, who lives by himself and has none to give him support will be spoken of as "a biavi." But for the Tolai the term does not merely point to a person's external circumstances, it also refers to the feelings that are assumed to accompany those circumstances. "A kakairane nam," "that is a feeling too," I was told in response to my expression of doubt. Support for this view is provided by the case of a woman lamenting the death of a grown son who sobs distractedly, "0 iau, 0 iau. Iau a biavi ... ," "Oh me, I am utterly wretched ... ," where the use of the word "biavi" speaks equally plainly to her outer as well as to her emotional state. A somewhat similar situation was revealed in regard to the words for greed. Asked to provide such a term, all respondents offered a langodo or tamuk. I was already familiar with these words from earlier fieldwork, but had assumed that they were descriptive of a particular kind of person rather than as labels for the attribute itself. It seems plain that in these instances, as so often in English itself (Plutchik 1980: 173ff.), the emotion is seen as having congealed into a character trait, both meanings being contained within a single term. lO Surveying the list ofTolai terms as a whole perhaps the most striking feature is the semantic range of many words. The wordgugu, for exam-

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pIe, was offered for cheerful, content, delighted, enjoyment, excited, glad, happy, and triumphant. In the same way, bored, dejected, depressed, disappointed, and miserable were all offered for talaguan, a word that is also commonly used to mean lazy. Does this mean that tinata tuna has not been elaborated in such a way as to allow its speakers to make discriminations of quality or intensity? Pursuing his supposition that such is indeed true for Australian Aboriginal languages, Hiatt (1978:182) comments that context presumably renders such lexical refinements unnecessary. In regard to the Tolai language, too, context has its part in conveying meaning. But tone of voice as well as such linguistic devices as reduplication or the use of qualifiers like manga or mat (both meaning "very") are all available to express variation in intensity. But such devices apart, the Tolai lexicon also provides more precise means of expressing variation in the intensity and quality of emotional experience. For example, the degree of anger can be indicated in the usual way by the use of qualifiers, but there are also distinct terms that convey the experience of anger in a variety of modes. Thus balakadik (literally, the bellyaches), conveys the image of anger gnawing away at one's innards: in this way it expresses admirably the feelings of inner rage, of resentment, or vengefulness. Then again there is karagap, which carries the sense of angry excitement that is apt to explode into violence. Once on a local bus driving down to Matupit we stopped to allow a woman and her young son to board. Her bunch of coconuts had been placed by the roadside while they waited for the bus, and now, as the lad struggled to lift them aboard, the driver, a Matupi, burst out in a loud, threatening voice, "A rurut" ("Hurry up, get a move on"). In this instance the display of anger, "karagap," had no depth to it; a companion explained that the driver's voice was raised in a show of fierceness that was commonly used in giving orders to a child. Similarly, among adults, "karagap," as an explosion of anger, was commonly encountered in those contexts where someone was seeking to impose his will upon another, but, as we shall explore further on another occasion, it was no less a common response to anything that was, or could be, perceived as a threat to the self or as an injustice. If one wanted to prepare a checklist of Matupi character traits, sensitivity to slight and the short fuse that frequently exposes it to the observer's view might well be among the first to spring to mind. Another feature of the lexicon is the array of terms it offers to refer to the varying states and moods of the self. On the positive side, for example, differences of feeling tone are conveyed in such terms as balaot,

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satisfied or content; balamat, to be at peace or even-tempered; madu, serene or meek; or malila, which, in its primary meaning, refers to the calmness of the sea but is also used to refer to a person's inner calm. On the negative side, too, as has just been seen, there is a range of terms that are all manifest variants of the affect of distress. The following do not constitute a complete set: they are offered rather as examples to show the span covered-from being agitated or being in a state of tension, pinpidian ra balana (literally, a smarting or stinging sensation in the stomach), through being upset or vexed, balatangtangi, depressed or despondent, talaguan, to be lonely, talakeke, sad, heartbroken, tabun, or stricken with grief, niligur. On this basis it would appear that the Tolai lexicon offers a wider choice in the expression of distress than the vocabularies of both the Ifaluk and the Samoan, though the latter to a lesser extent. But whether this is so or not, it would appear that, so far as the Tolai are concerned, we are in an area of cultural elaboration-a topic that will be examined further in a later chapter. I have been discussing some general characteristics of the Tolai emotional lexicon and have just noted how some terms seem to fall into readily identifiable sets. This then would seem to be an appropriate moment to take a closer look at the way the Tolai appear to group emotion terms, and whether and to what extent such groupings as emerge are considered to be related to one another. In line with what appears to be a widespread, perhaps even universal, phenomenon, the Tolai do not offer a formal classification of the affects. If some principle of grouping is at work, it must be implicit and has to be sought out by indirect means. Confronting this problem, some anthropologists have adopted a method that has also been used by psychologists with Western subjects: essentially this consists in getting one's respondents to offer judgments of similarity among a set of terms, the data produced in this way being analyzed through the use of multivariate techniques (in this case, hierarchical clustering) to yield in the end a single, overarching diagram (see Gerber 1985:139-142; Lutz 1982). As mentioned earlier, I myself attempted something similar, the exercise in question being carried out with the assistance of Tolai students at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology at Lae. This differed from the ones conducted by Gerber and Lutz in one important respect: following the method proposed by Plutchik (1980:168), the subjects here were presented with a list of Tolai emotion terms which they were asked to place on a five-point scale in terms of similarity/ difference; this task was carried out three times, using on each occasion

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THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS

Ururian (tim id, respectful) Balagugu (h appy, exited) Barbar (pro ud) Tamarigat (i nterested) Kalamiene (sweet, enjoyable) Langalanga (carefree) Nilibur (enjo yment) Varmari (Iov e, compassion)

-

Ngangap(angry, furious) Balatangtan gi (grieving, sad) Ligur (grievi ng, sad) Balakadik (resentful) Balakankan (angry) Kankan (an gry) Nukpuku(co ntrite) Niol (disobe dient) Tavurvuru (b ewildered) Pinpidian (v exed)

I-

I I

r-

~

Ngarau (anx ious, concerned) Vavirvir (sha me) Burut (fear) Milikuan (co ntempt, disgust)-==::J-----J

-

I

I

Biavi (wretc hed) Varngu (env y) Ruva (sham e) Dadadar (ex cited) Varpiam (de spising) Kaian (surp rise) Malari (mise rable) Talanguan (depressed, dejected) Kinadik (dis tress) Tagura (listl ess hel p less

r~

I-

I

~

Figure 1. Clustering of Tolai emotion terms using gugu as a point of reference.

a separate emotion term as a point of reference. Figure 1 sets out the groupings that emerged using "gugu," happy, as point of reference. There are one or two terms-for example, ururian, timid or fearful, or nioi, disobedient, disrespectful-whose placement is puzzling in that they do not appear to fit in with the pattern that otherwise appears to present itself. That is to say, if these few instances are excepted, the terms appear to group readily into four sets or clusters. In the descend-

THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS

71

ing order in which they are set out, balagugu to vannari all refer to positive emotions that are rewarding to the self. Then follows a series of negative ones that subdivide into two clusters. Ngangap to kankan are experienced as unpleasant; they relate to inner feelings but they tend to seek discharge outward toward some other. With nukpuku (repentant, contrite), tavurvuru (bewildered, confused), and pinpidian (vexed, guilty), we are once again dealing with negative affect, but in these instances the tension generated by one's feelings is not discharged outward toward another, but is directed inward, feeding on itself, so to speak. The remaining terms that make up cluster 4 are again mostly negative in character, but differ from those in clusters 2 and 3 in that they appear to be descriptive of states of the self: I am miserable, I am ashamed, and the like-all far removed from a state of happiness. What happens whengugu is replaced by kankan (anger) as the term of reference? The relevant material is set out in figure 2. We may note first how clustering appears to take place on much the same basis as when gugu served as the term of reference. Thus at one end of the spectrum there are those negative affects whose common link, I have suggested, lies in the fact that they tend to seek discharge outward. At the other end, a number of terms cluster that I linked earlier as relating to states of the self: these are the opposite of anger in that they are experienced passively, whereas anger demands more active expression. Between these two poles there are again two sets, one comprising a small number of positive, rewarding emotions, the other being negative, pointing to an inner agitation discharge which however is directed inward rather than outward. However, there are also a number of divergences between the two figures. First it will be seen how a term like varngu (envy), which in figure 1 appears in cluster 4, is grouped in figure 2 with anger and other similar affects that give expression to hostility. Differences of this kind also occur in regard to ligur (grieving, sad), barbar (proud), and langalanga (carefree). A more serious discrepancy is presented by a further set of terms which cluster midway between the poles-from varpiam to kalamiene: when gugu was the point of reference, each of these terms was assigned to one or other of the clusters identified in figure 1, but when kankan is used, this no longer occurs. More to the point, the range of emotions covered by these terms is so great that it is difficult to see what principle, if any, might underlie their being clustered together. One is forced to conclude, indeed, that if they appear close together it is simply that they constitute a residual category, because respondents were unable to say

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THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS

Varngu (envy) -:~::=======:--l------------. Balakadik (resentful) -------......, Ngangap (angry, furious) ----......, Balakankan (angry) - - - - - - - . Kankan (anger) ------..1 Balagugu (excited) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -.... Pinpidian (vexed, guilty) - - - - - - - - , Balatangtangi (upset, vexed) t------------1 Kinadik (distress) ------,._~ Tavurvuru (bewildered, confused) Tamarigat (interested) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , Nilibur (enjoyment) - - - - - - - - , Ururian (timid) t - - - - - - - - - -.... Varmari (love, compassion) Varpiam (disobedient, rebellious) - - - - - - - - - -.... Talanguan (apathetic, depressed) - - - - - - - - , Milikuan (contempt, disgust)----------, Dadadar (excited) - - - - - - - - - - , Niol (disobedient) _ _ _ _ _ _ ___. Kaian (surprise) ------......, Kalamiene (sweet, enjoyable) Ligur (sad, grieving) ~~===]Tagura (helpless, listless)

________-,

==:-:==:-:--"l---------,

Barbar (proud) Langalanga (carefree, guiltless)

Biavi (wretched) :======~.,. Vavirvir (shame) Burut ( f e a r ) - - - - - - -.......

------""'L __

___. . .,

Ngarau (anxious, concerned) - - - - -..... Malari (misery)---------. Ruva (ashamed) - - - - - - - - . Nukpuku (contrite)-----.....

Figure 2. Clustering of Tolai emotion terms using kankan as a point of reference.

whether the emotions in question were similar to, or different from, "kankan." The third term of reference I employed in the "experiment" was vavirvir (embarrassment or shame). The results of this part of the exercise are set out in figure 3. Plainly the judgments of similarity offered here diverge from the pattern revealed in figure 1 even more markedly than they did when kankan served as the point of reference. Embarrassment/shame can refer to an intensely painful inner experience,

THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS

73

Ruva (shame) ---------:--,._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _---, Vavirvir (embarrassment, shame) Ururian (timid, fearful) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , Dadadar (excited) - - - - - - -.... Ligur (sad, grieving) - - - -....... Malan (miserable) - - - - -....... Biavi (wretched) Balatangtangi (upset, vexed)

----::--1---....J

=--:=-.. . .

Tamarigat (interested) :-11-_______.., Barbar (proud) ------"'---~ Balagugu (excited, happy) - -.... Ngangap (angry, f u r i o u s ) - - - - - - - - - - - - - , Tagura (helpless, IIlis~t~le:s:S)~==:J.---.., Pinpidian (vexed)Kaian (surprise) ~=====::Jf-----1I----' Nukpuku (contrite) Langalanga (carefree) - - - - . . , Varngu (envy)-------..I Ngarau (anxious, concerned)---....... Tavurvuru (bewildered, confused) Kalamiene (sweet)-----.... Varmari (Iove)---------..J Varpiam (rebellious)---------..J Burut (fear) - - - - - - - - - - - - -....... Kankan (anger) - - - - - -.......__ Nilibur (enjoyment) - - - - -.... Balakankan (angry)-----"----~ Balakadik (distress)-----..I Talanguan (depressed)---....... Kinadik (distress)-----....... Niol (disobedient)-------. Milikuan (contempt, disgust)--..I

Figure 3. Clustering ofTolai emotion terms using vavirvir as a point of reference.

and it is clear that respondents found no difficulty in placing it with other similar negative feelings, although from this point of view it is also noticeable that terms like talaguan (depressed) or kinadik (distress) are not included in the set. Then there is a small grouping of positive affects. The other terms, producing such an unlikely mix as contrite, carefree, envy, concerned, and so on, must be taken to constitute another residual category. One suspects that had the test schedule included a "don't know" column-as perhaps it should have done-

74

THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS

most of the terms that fall into this category would have been ticked there. In the Samoan and Ifaluk cases, Gerber and Lutz were able to present their data in the form of hierarchical diagrams, the set of terms falling in the one case into four clusters, in the other, five. In my own study the respondents were asked to assess the terms using three different points of reference. The results show such wide discrepancies that one has to rule out at once the possibility of merging the data presented in the three figures in a single, overarching cluster. The interesting question that this situation poses is not so much why the Tolai terms do not cluster neatly within a single, unitary structure, but to account rather for the various discrepancies that have occurred. A number of factors at once suggest themselves for consideration. To begin with, I should note that even if only one term had been used as a point of reference in making the judgments of similarity and difference, a certain measure of discrepacy would still have to be expected. For, even where a high degree of consensus in regard to a particular pair of terms can be anticipated, and is in fact reflected in the responses, the assignment of the term in question to its "appropriate" category will rarely be wholly unequivocal. This must be related in the first instance to the fact, already noted, that Tolai emotion terms often have a broad semantic range, and its corollary that the broader a term's semantic range the greater the scope for variation in the way in which it can be interpreted, particularly where no context has been specified, and hence in the way different individuals might respond to it. A related difficulty that can similarly be expected to generate variability of response lies in the ambiguity of meaning that attaches to certain terms. An interesting illustration of the point is provided by the word ngarau (nginarau in its noun form). "Nginarau" is commonly glossed in English as worry or anxiety. For example, there used to be a program broadcast over Radio Rabaul that was devoted to answering listeners' problems. Its title was: U ngarau ta ra ava? (What are you worried about?) One might enquire similarly of someone who was nervously pacing up and down while waiting, say, for a car or bus to pick one up: Why are you so anxious? Yet, as on occasion with the English word "anxiety" itself, "nginarau" has quite another side to it. I first encountered the term in a context where a crowd of youngsters were hanging around waiting for a catch of fish to be distributed so that they could hurry off and sell it in Rabaul or other villages. There was much jostling going on, and at the time I understood the word to refer to the element

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75

of competition in the situation. Only much later did I come to appreciate that it really referred to their keenness to be on their way. I have also heard the word used with a similar meaning but in a very different kind of context as when, for example, discussing the elections for the House of Assembly in 1968 with one Matupi, he complained of some of his fellows: "Dia ngarau upi ra tibuna varkurai"-"they are impatient for political independence." It was also in this same more positive sense that another Matupi once sought to explain to me the meaning of the word. "This year," he said, "is a kUala na nginarau"-"a season of eagerness." "I see people planting cocoa," he continued, "and I too am keen (ngarau) to do so." In such a case, they might say of you that "you are a lup nginarau because they see you are interested in doing so many different things." Some terms reveal yet another kind of ambiguity. Grief on the occasion of a close kinsman, for example, represents a severe form of distress, but it may be experienced in different ways. Thus it may be accompanied by feelings of guilt of which the self is the target; but it can also be discharged in anger as when the attempt is made to cast blame for the death on a killer or sorcerer and the demand is heard for vengeance or "payback." In such circumstances, respondents are likely to make their judgments on the basis of different assumptions, so contributing to the discrepancies that appear in the results. I have been speaking thus far of the likely sources of variability in the making of similarity judgments among emotion terms when only one (or perhaps even no) term of reference is employed. When three points of reference are introduced into the exercise, the matter becomes even more complicated. There are two aspects to the problem. The first concerns the way assessing the terms, using different points of reference, alters the perspective and hence possibly the way terms are placed relative to one another: terms that are seen to lie close to one another from one vantage point may no longer be seen to do so from another. For example, when viewed against gugu (happy, content) ligur is placed alongside balatangtangi (literally, the belly weeps, i.e., vexed, upset, sad), balakadik (resentful), and kankan (anger)-all negative affects that, as noted, tend to seek discharge outward. As psychologists have frequendy observed, and as will be discussed further below, grief and anger are commonly found to go together. However, when kankan was itself used as a point of reference, ligur was placed closer to a group of negative as well as positive affects that appear to reflect the more passive aspects of the self or at least to impinge less on others. Finally, when

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THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS

measured against vavirvir, ligur becomes linked with a series of other terms that tell of the sorry state of the self, and sheds the close connections with such positive feelings as barbar (proud, though in some contexts also conceited or arrogant) and langalanga (carefree) that are recorded in figure 2. But undoubtedly the major factor in accounting for divergence in the results, and the one which casts most doubt on the possibility of arriving at a single, unequivocal hierarchical cluster is that the three points of reference appeared to present respondents with intrinsically different levels of difficulty. Gugu was the most straightforward in this regard, and the judgments slotted into a simple pattern in a fairly clearcut fashion. Where kankan was concerned, however, the resulting picture was more obscure, and one could begin in some instances to see why. So, for example, is dadadar ra pakana (trembling with excitement) similar to or different from anger? Or what of kaian (surprise)? Faced with questions of this kind, it is surely not difficult to imagine that many respondents would find themselves very uncertain as to how to answer and, in the absence of a "don't know" column, would plump for the "neither different nor similar" box. Vavirvir (shame), I suggest, is a more complex emotion and would present respondents with even greater difficulties of the kind just indicated than kankan. The experience of shame is well-known to the Tolai, and respondents had plainly no difficulty in identifYing those other emotions they perceived as akin to shame. Nor was there difficulty in pointing to those terms for which the meaning is the opposite of, or at least remote from, shame. But between these poles there is a large gray area where the answer to the question must have appeared to many respondents as far from clear and where offering a "similar" response would seem no more "inherently" correct than a "different" one. The result is plainly to be seen in figure 3 with its large number of terms clustered in no way obvious to the outside analyst and falling into what has to be regarded as an ill-assorted residual category. Looked at in close detail the data I have just presented raise a number of queries to which I have no answer. For this reason alone it would be unwise to seek to draw from the exercise any final conclusions; however, the results-such as they are-do seem to point in a direction that to my mind makes good sense. The present evidence suggests then that in certain contexts the Tolai do see the affects as falling into different sets or categories, but the composition of these categories is never fixed or absolute. Rather, how the relations between different emotions

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are perceived depends on such matters as semantic range, on the ambiguity that is built into various emotion terms, but above all on context and perspective, on how a given situation is defined. In a word, the approach is fluid and dynamic, militating against the ordering of all the emotion terms within a neat unitary structure. Support for this view comes from another source that also illustrates another facet of Tolai thinking about the emotions. In another exercise, on this occasion carried out by a class of pupils at the Keravat High School, the class was divided into two groups. Both groups were presented with the same list of emotion terms, but whereas one group was asked to say how important the emotions listed were considered to be in the lives of the Tolai people, in the other group the respondents were asked to say how frequently they themselves experienced the emotion in question; both groups were asked to tick their responses on a five-point scale which in turn provided the basis for the simple rating index I have adopted. The results are set out in figure 4. In general terms, both groups produce the same pattern of ordering, but closer examination also reveals some differences between them, and once more it is these that merit attention. At first glance it may seem that the two sets of respondents were presented with different tasks, and in one or two instances-for example, in regard to vavirvir (shame), niligur (grief), and perhaps some others-it might be agreed that the respondents had made an attempt to assess "objectively" how important the emotion in question was in the life of the Tolai. For the rest, however, I suggest that they are better regarded as statements about the self. Thus if we look at the "importance to the Tolai" column from this point of view it will be immediately apparent that the emotion terms listed at the top also refer to personal qualities that are valued very positively; in-a word, they reflect an image of how the Tolai most like to think of themselves-as caring and compassionate, happy and humble, and so on. Moving down the column we encounter what they recognize as some of their less admirable traits, their readiness to take umbrage or quickness to anger, until at the very bottom we have the even more distasteful qualities of arrogance and greed. If we turn to the "personal experience" column we observe that, broadly speaking, the same order has been maintained, but that in many instances, and particularly as we move down the list, the rating index is considerably lower than in the "importance to the Tolai" column. This reflects, I suggest, the difference between an acceptable view of the Tolai self and one's view of one's own self.

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Rating Index

Personal Frequency

Importance to Tolai

Varmari

Varmari

Gugu

Gugu

500

400

Madu Vavirvir Tamarigat Malila 300

Talaguan Nukpuku Ururian

200

Balakadik Kankan Nginarau Niruva Nili~ur

Maari

100

o~

Nukpuku Tamarigat Madu Malila Biavi Nginarau Vavirvir Niligur Burut Malari Balakadik Niruva Urururian Varngu Kankan Talaguan Varpm Barbar Langodo

Burut Biavi Barbar Varpin Langodo Varngu

_________________________________________________

Figure 4. Rating of emotions in terms of frequency of personal experience and importance to the Tolai.

Take, for example, a couple of instances where the difference in placement in the two columns is quite considerable: varngu (envy) and biavi (wretched). In the first, the message very evidently is: "Yes, other Tolai are often full of envy, but I personally have experienced envy only very rarely." Similarly, in the second case, the divergence between the two indices also reflects different perceptions of the self: in general

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terms one's fellow Tolai can be acknowledged as poor and wretched, but that is rarely the image of one's own self which one would want to recognize or project. This, it need hardly be said, is only one of the ways in which the concept of self is implicated in the study of the emotions. This issue will be explored much further in a later chapter. Now, however, having glanced at some aspects of the Tolai lexicon of the emotions, the need is to extend our analysis and understanding of the emotion terms, but even more to explore how the emotions are experienced in different contexts and fields of relationships. It is to these tasks that I now tum.

4 Work, Ambition, and Envy

To anyone who is familiar with English the words "anger," "envy," "greed," and the like present no difficulties: they are readily seen as labels for well-known emotions that can serve as powerful propellants to action; they are also seen as carrying a negative connotation in that they refer to attributes that may be felt to be antithetic to the image of self. In the English lexicon, as in other Western languages, terms for the negative affects predominate, a fact that, I believe, serves both to express and to color our view of the emotions as a whole. Nevertheless, we do also recognize certain positive affects and, again, there is in general no difficulty in seeing how one's conduct can at times be swayed by love or enjoyment. But what of interest in this context? Its connotation is positive, but the likelihood is that few would answer the question by affirming that interest was an affect. It is noteworthy that even Darwin himself, for all the keenness of his observations where the affects were concerned, did not include it in his catalog of the emotions. Tomkins (1963:1, 337), after pointing out that although Darwin dealt with surprise and meditation, he overlooked the more sustained affect of interest, goes on to suggest that Darwin's own primary affective investments in perceiving and in thinking may well have attenuated his awareness of his own sustained excitement in exploration, so illustrating a common confusion of affect with the function it accompanies. However, the tendency to think of the emotions in predominantly negative terms as well as the habit, encouraged by linguistic usage, of treating them as discrete 80

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psychic entities, may also be relevant considerations in understanding the more general failure to regard interest as an affect. One should add here the fact that the facial patterns in interest are not always as distinct as they are in certain other emotions. The matter appears quite differently, however, when account is taken of the extent to which the experience of interest can vary in intensity, at once indicating that we are dealing with phenomena that need to be seen as lying along a continuum-hence, in Tomkins's terminology, interest-excitement. The point emerges even more strongly when interest is counterposed to boredom, its polar opposite which few would have difficulty in recognizing as an emotion. If less dramatic than some, the facial and other movements revealed in the display of interest nonetheless provide at once a clue to its function and importance. The interested person takes on the countenance of a person who is tracking, looking, listening, and maintaining a high degree of attention and alertness (Izard 1977:215); one shows signs of curiosity or fascination. To appreciate its crucial function in what Tomkins calls its support for the necessary and the possible, he bids us consider the consequences of a gross reduction or extinction of interest. In line with his general theoretical position that the affects are primary and the drives secondary in their motivational power, Tomkins stresses how, deprived of the support of interest, the individual would care neither to eat nor to mate (Izard 1977:342). Nor, in this context, should we overlook the passions of the mind, "the passionate interest in things without which there would be no human science, no art or literature" (Morris 1983:178). But if, as Tomkins phrases it, there is no human competence that can be achieved in the absence of a sustaining interest (in other words, that an innate affect of interest is an essential element of the human biogram), it does not follow that it can be dealt with in physiological terms only. As with other human capacities and predispositions, we are confronted by complex processes involving the genetic, the somatic, and the cultural. In this instance, the cultural factor makes its influence felt in two ways: the first negatively as when, for example, curiosity is discouraged and schooling becomes an occasion of stress and shame and even fear rather than of excitement; the second positively in marking out those areas of social life in which rewards or personal satisfaction are to be sought. This very complexity indeed underlines a terminological difficulty that marks the use of the word interest and other emotion terms. The problem arises because, broadly speaking, the labels we

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WORK, AMBITION, AND ENVY

apply to the affects refer not only to spontaneous and relatively fleeting intrapsychic processes and their external expression, they are also used in common parlance to cover more regular or patterned forms of response for which the expression sentiment has sometimes been suggested. l Thus in the case of interest, as I have just argued, there are good grounds for treating interest as an affect in the strict sense. However, when it comes to everyday speech the affective aspect is almost entirely lost sight of and the term is commonly employed as if essentially a cognitive category. This view emerges with great clarity in an anthropological context in Herskovits's employment of the concept of cultural focus as a way of identifYing what was distinctive of particular cultures by reference to their central interests and preoccupations; and similar ideas appear to be implicit in other configurational approaches of the day (Herskovits 1948: 542-560; cf. Geertz 1988: UO). In these instances there is a marked shift in meaning from interest as an affect experienced by an individual to interest as relating to what are in effect culturally defined orientations. The simple fact is, given that so many of the terms we employ in technical discourse are drawn from the language of everyday speech, it is extremely difficult for writers to avoid slippage of this kind. The matter also has another aspect of which we need to be aware. In some instances, as with interest itself, it is very clear that the term in question so relates to culturally defined attitudes and sentiments that the emotional elements also present in the situation are all too readily overlooked. Nowhere in anthropological discourse perhaps does this emerge more clearly than in regard to work, which so often is viewed entirely in economic terms. As I seek to show in what follows, this sets serious limits to our understanding of the nature and role of work. There are in fact a number of reasons for choosing work as a point of entry to the wider discussion of the book's central themes and concerns. In part, as I have just said, it is a matter of offering a counter to a narrowly conventional "economic" approach to work, to show how affect impinges on even the most commonplace activities. This view in turn is grounded in a more basic assumption, which is that the pattern of work that characterizes a given society represents a mode of adaptation to its environment; if the group is to survive and perpetuate itself, a variety of tasks have to be carried out with a modicum of efficiency. However, if it is the case, as Tomkins claims, that all human activity requires motivation, and that the affect system provides the primary

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propellant, then productive activities would appear to offer a promising point of departure for exploring a given society's affective profile. As I hope to show, pursuing this strategy quickly offers leads into so many areas of a people's social life, their social expectations, their values and aspirations, even their unconscious motivations-in a word, so much that is fundamental to an understanding of their ethos. As it happens, the Tolai economy involves a rather varied set of productive tasks. However, before taking a closer look at these, and the emotions that are invested in them or which they generate, one needs to know something ofTolai attitudes toward work in more general terms.

The Tolai Work Ethic The early reports of the first Western observers of the Tolai were often unflattering in the extreme. To some of the Christian missionaries in particular the Tolai appeared as a benighted people possessed of few redeeming qualities. Thus Kleintitschen's account (1906:202-203) of their work habits is wholly in line with his unsympathetic and censorious attitude to most other aspects of their social life: he dismissed the men with contempt as an idle lot who simply strutted about, lording it over the women, who were treated as little better than slaves or beasts of burden. Other missionaries, however, who, if no less agreed on the need to stamp out paganism, did appear to be interested in acquiring a closer understanding of T olai ways and offer a strikingly different view of their attitudes toward work. Danks, 2 for example, noted how tambu encouraged frugality and industry and then, after offering some observations on their work habits, affirmed that only those who knew nothing about them would call them lazy; they were, comparatively speaking, "as busy as Europeans are" (Danks 1887:315-316). Father Meier paints a similar picture: The word "libur" which corresponds in a general way to our phrases "take it easy, enjoy life, have a good time" plays a great role in the language of the Gunantuna [Tolai] and is commonly used when you ask what they are doing. They will be loath to reply that they are working hard even if you meet them in the field and see them sweating profusely from their labours. But they will expect you not to take their "libur" literally, but rather to praise them for their industriousness. When they hold public feasts and give a public address they

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will, however, boast of the hard labour they perfonn in the field. They indignantly resent being called "sluggards" and are known to reprove in private their relations who happen to idle away their time ... they are all in all a hardworking people. (Meier 1939:108)

The Tolai have experienced profound changes in their social environment and in their way of life since Danks and Meier served as missionaries among them, yet with minor modifications their reports could well have been written today. Tolai nowadays undertake a range of activities that were unknown to them in earlier days, but the underlying attitudes toward work show a remarkable degree of continuity. We are dealing in fact with a powerful cultural attitude-a work ethic-that could sometimes surface in quite unexpected contexts. On one occasion I was talking with a minister in the provincial government. He was discoursing on the problems that faced the country as a whole, not least of which, in his view, was the absence of a dominant ideology, a sense of where the country was going and what it was trying to achieve. What he wanted to see, he remarked finally, was a society where everyone was productive; to be idle was criminal. There was surely an element of exaggeration here, but it is this kind of overemphasis that so often serves to alert one to the possibility that a particular matter carries an emotional charge where its presence might otherwise have been unsuspected. In this instance, it hints at an element of compulsiveness in the attitude toward work, a matter that will need to be explored further on a later occasion. Discussing tambu, Danks (1887:308) observes that the children, almost as soon as they could understand anything, were taught that the acquisition and retention of wealth was an important, if not the most important, duty of life. Little boys and girls, he goes on, had their stores and banks. He is referring here of course to children's games; many years later it was plain that there were also serious lessons that Tolai children had to learn at an early age about obedience and industry. Comparison with another people of the Bismarck Archipelago, the Manus of the Admiralty Islands, is instructive in this regard. Margaret Mead's celebrated account (1930) presents a picture of adult Manus life in terms that could readily be applied to the Tolai: they displayed highly commercial attitudes and a preoccupation with money-dogs' teeth played a similar role in their social and religious life as tambu did among the Tolai. But Mead's concerns on this occasion were not with the world of the adults but rather with that of the children. Her contention in fact was that a huge gulf separated the two worlds. Her view of

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Manus childhood can be summarized quite briefly. While a Manus child is taught how to handle its body, we are told, there is little in the way of social discipline. The child is brought up to a carefree existence and this lasts until early adulthood and marriage. Children have no part in the economic activities of their elders, although girls take on domestic tasks earlier than boys. The ceremonial cycle has no interest for them, and there is no concern with the world of the spirits. The Tolai present a striking contrast. On the Gazelle it is not the separation of the worlds of children and adults that impresses the observer so much as the extent to which children do participate in adult activities. Even today it is a common sight to see a woman on the path as she returns from the gardens accompanied by her young children, each of them bearing a load of coconuts or carrying a bush knife. Similarly, on ceremonial or other occasions when tambu is distributed, young children are not only present but receive a share of it. Even more pertinent here is the way mature Tolai look back on their childhood. Far from recalling a lack of discipline in their early upbringing, the accounts of my informants indicate that their own experience of childhood had little in common with the carefree, idyllic existence that, in Mead's account, Manus youngsters enjoyed. On the contrary it could be "tough": a child was supposed to ki VOlJOlJon, to remain silent and to occupy himself in doing useful things around the house. One man described how his father would see that he got up at about 5 o'clock in the morning and set him to work; he had to cut the grass, clear the ground, or perform other such tasks. The first bell for school rang at 7:50, and often it was 7:45 before he received his breakfast in the form of a banana and a piece of coconut which he had to eat on the way as he raced the couple of miles to reach the school on time. Parental concern to instill tinorom, obedience, is illustrated in an episode from his childhood that was evidently still vivid in his memory. One day he had been sent off to collect pawpaw. He was with another boy, and they grew thirsty. They picked up a young coconut and had to cut it open. He himself was leaning against a tree while his friend was trying to split the nut with a bush knife. Unfortunately, in aiming a stroke at it he caught my informant a blow on the shoulder. It was very painful and the blood began to flow. When they got home his father was furious. "You were sent to collect pawpaw, not to play around," he shouted. "How many times do you have to be told to do something1 When you are told to do something, you do it at once." Thus instead of receiving comfort and sympathy, my informant said, his father seized a broom and began to beat

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him all over. It was only the intervention of his father's sister which saved him because of the strong taboo between a man and his sister. "Still," he concluded, "it was for my own good." Other men recalled similar experiences-like the one who remembered that if he did not carry out his father's orders promptly he would be made to lift up a heavy stone and run around with it held aloft. To be sure, not all fathers were such martinets, at least in recent decades when laxity in parental discipline had become the subject of much comment. Nevertheless, the frequency with which older men would refer to their fathers as tena kankan, men of anger, suggests that the kind of experience just described was not unusual; unquestionably there was a marked cultural emphasis on instilling discipline (a tinorom) in the young, and an equally clear message that they should also busy themselves in useful ways. None of this is to say that Tolai children lacked the freedom that the children of Manus enjoyed to spend the time in their own company or seek their own entertainment in games of various kinds. My point is rather that there was also a serious concern to help them develop, once they had reached the stage where they were deemed capable of "understanding" (a but i matote), attitudes that would be important to them in later life. But just as "understanding" was thought to grow through time, so "instruction" too never really ceased. The latter notion found its most public expression in the village meetings I attended on Matupit in 1960-61 when elders regularly stood up and gave full rein to their considerable powers of rhetoric in adjuring the younger people to work hard. But to what end? The emphasis that Tolai ideology places on work prompts a variety of questions. Insofar as their productive system involves the carrying out of a range of widely differing tasks, how is one evaluated against another? What are the motives that impel one to work hard at one or other of these various tasks? And what part does work play in defining the Tolai sense of self? Before we can begin to tackle questions of these kinds we need to move beyond the discussion of work as though it was an undifferentiated category and examine in closer detail the variety of tasks for each of which the Tolai employ the word papalum, work or labor. My earlier book on Matupit included a detailed account of the island's economy as I found it in 1960-61. In describing the pattern of productive activities that prevailed at that time I was interested in such questions as how these slotted into the annual calendar, what forms of organization they required, and what they contributed to the Matupi purse. Here I cover some of the same ground, but I address myself to

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rather different issues; my concerns are with the attitudes held in respect of different tasks, the aptitudes they call for, and the emotions they appear to generate. The division of the year into two seasons, a labur (the wet), which runs roughly from October to April, and a taubar (the dry), from May to September, affects all economic activity to some extent, but it is in regard to fishing that the seasonal influence is seen most clearly: trap-fishing (a babau) is associated with the labur, seine-fishing (a umbene) with the taubar, and, following the round of the year, I begin my discussion with these. At various parts of the beach around Matupit there were areas known as pakana bili ta or ffWtonoi. From these areas women were rigorously excluded; it was at the motonoi house that men gathered when they wished to get together and where frequently they also slept at night. But more particularly, the motonoi was the place associated with fishing. Throughout the month of January, in my earlier fieldwork, if one strolled down to one or other of the motonoi, one would be sure to encounter a fair proportion of the men who were living at home and not in regular wage employment in Rabaul hard at work on the preparation of their fishtraps. Danks plainly found these traps impressive, and spoke of them as unique. He noted that the individual trap-a huge basketlike structure of bamboo construction called a wup-took two or three weeks to make, the men working on the job from early morning to late at night. As I observed the process myself very much later, it usually took rather longer; most men worked intermittently, fitting the job in with a variety of other tasks so that those who had begun to lay their preparations in November did not actually launch their traps until sometime in January. These preparations included getting hold of supplies of bamboo, soaking it in the sea for an appropriate period, and then drying it out to give it malleability, as well as the making of the "cradle" in which the basket lay while it was being put together. The central task-the manufacture of the basket itselfwas an intricate one that required skill, patience, and steady application. Each man worked on his own, though for particular operations he was able to call for assistance on other members of the motonoi or on kin or affines; usually too the older men present would move around from "cradle" to "cradle" inspecting the work and offering advice. When I myself was present the older men seemed to take particular pleasure in explaining the finer technical points and in instructing me in the terms for the various operations I was observing. Once the basket had been finally assembled, but before it could be

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launched, the owner had to provide himself with a vounai. One evening I returned home to find Turpui waiting at the house. The talk quickly turned to fishing. He told me he had not yet launched his babau (trap) because he did not yet have "the things with which to make his basket." He then explained that before he could place a fish trap at sea he needed "a vounai." His eyes lit up as he dwelt on the point that when this magic was employed the fish would come from everywhere, following the vounai until they toppled into the trap. Of the vounai itself he would say very little beyond noting that the rite had to be performed secretly and privately: if another saw it the spell cast upon it would have no efficacy. He emphasized again that without this knowledge one could not place the babau at sea, and he lamented the fact that many of the younger people knew nothing of these things. No formal ceremony attended the launching of a new babau, yet there was an undeniable sense of occasion at those launchings in which I participated. The operations required to place the basket in its position at sea are quite complex and demanding, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Epstein 1969:78) and here I only need to note that once successfully moored at its station all that was needed thereafter was regular inspection of the traps and the bringing ashore of the catch, tasks often carried out by groups of youngsters. Catches varied in size. If very small, the fish were simply given to the lads who had gone out to empty the traps and would be used as bait in line-fishing (a niil). When the catch was large, word quickly spread and women and young boys would gather excitedly. The latter would jostle one another, anxious to receive a share, which they would then rush off to sell around Rabaul; the women came to p;piai, that is, to buy fish with their own cash or tambu which they would cook and resell at the Rabaul market. Thus, although very much an activity of the men, and the "takings" of the trap belonged to its owner, there were many others besides the men directly engaged in the babau who profited from it. Fish were an important source of protein in the Matupi diet. But since most of what was caught was surplus to subsistence requirements, the babau was also an important source of cash income. Yet that was not quite how the Matupi saw the matter-or at least spoke of it. For older men, the babau season was awaited with expectation as an opportunity to accumulate large amounts of tambu. And even some of the younger men took a similar view. One day, for example, I was standing with ToKaul, then about thirty years of age, while he was engaged in preparing a second basket (a varkia, or spare), when he suddenly re-

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marked: "From this, much tambu will emerge." He proceeded to elaborate: "Young men who spend their time just wandering idly around (dia limlibur vakuku) and leading a useless existence don't know how to make a basket. But from this comes the tambu with which one marries." I pointed out that, as I understood the matter, a young man did not "buy" his own wife, the varkukul being arranged by his parents or other kin. ToKaul's father, Turpui, who had been standing nearby, quickly interposed. "Yes. But it is only if we see a young man busy on the babau that we will help him by 'buying' a wife for him. Many men never find wives because they are too idle to make baskets." In line with the general view that had early been impressed upon us that tambu was to be accumulated and not to be frittered away on everyday purchases (Epstein 1979b:165 fu.), income from the babau, whether in cash or shell, was not to be spent on immediate needs-and if one did need to make an urgent purchase the sum would have to be returned to the babau "account"-but stored away until the end of the season. Then all those who had placed a basket at sea gathered at their respective motonoi for the occasion known as vevedek when the takings for the season, in cash and tambu, were produced and publicly counted so that all might know how well they had fared. The vevedek thus gave neat expression to the elements of competition as well as of cooperation that characterized the whole babau enterprise. At one vevedek I attended at Kikila a number of the most prominent elders were present and, taking advantage of the opportunity the occasion offered for making speeches, they exhorted the younger people present to even greater efforts on the babau in future. Turpui rounded off the discussion by pointing out that at Talwat, a neighboring community a little farther around the coast, they had prepared a leo-a bamboo stucture that in appearance resembled somewhat a piece of scaffolding-and decked it with the new tambu they had earned from their fish baskets. They too should follow the same road, he declared. "Then our young men will see and begin to understand the ways of our forefathers. This is the road we are talking about through which a lot of tambu will arise. There is no work like the babau." But I feel sure that Turpui knew in his heart that he was talking into the wind. For when we were alone on another occasion he himself had mused on the matter, saying, "Our fathers used to beat us so that we paid heed and learned the customs." He nodded his head as he reflected sadly on the way these things were rapidly disappearing. "Pa ave nunure boko"-"We no longer know about these things."

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Turpui's view of the way things were developing was to be borne out by events: by the time of my return to Matupit in 1986 the babau had become a thing of the past. Those brought up in the old school had a ready explanation-it was a tamtavun kai ra tarai, the indolence or irresponsibility of the people; they had lost the habit of hard work. If I had had the opportunity to probe the matter further I might have found that it was more a matter of simple economics: the babau no longer produced enough money to warrant the effort it required. I suspect, however, that a no less pertinent factor was that the steady application over a lengthy period of time that the task demanded no longer yielded the kind of personal satisfaction that younger people nowadays sought. The position with regard to seine-fishing offers an interesting comparison for, unlike the babau, the umbene continued to flourish. Matupi used to speak of seine-fishing-as of the babau-as one of their main means of generating tambu, and they would point to old Anit, at that time still fully active in his eighties, who possessed the largest coil of shell money I had seen-said to contain a thousand fathoms-rich testimony to his dedication to the net. The case of Thomas ToBunbun is also worth mentioning here. When I first met him in 1960 he was in his early forties, a schoolteacher who was coming to be recognized as a future leader beyond the boundaries of Matupit. His occupation left him little opportunity for other economic activities of a traditional kind. However, he had recently been able to purchase a net at an auction in Rabaul. His mother and her two sisters were still alive, he told me; he had to "prepare" for them (i.e., to have shell money available in a coil so that it could be cut up and distributed on their death), but then he was in the clear-he would have no further use for tambu. For most others at this time, however, cash was as important as tambu, if not more so. This was particularly the case in the Methodist wards of Kikila and Ramp because the cash proceeds of the umbene (seine-fishing) had become the principal means of financing the building of their new church. I imagine that revenue from seine-fishing has remained an important source of cash income for many Matupi, but there are a number of reasons why I think its persistence is not to be explained wholly in these terms. These tum on certain contrasts between trap- and seinefishing. To begin with, there is the matter of ownership. Each wup, or fish basket, belongs to a particular individual. This may also have been true in the past in the case of the umbene when each man manufactured his

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own net. But by now Matupi preferred to buy their nets in the stores of Rabaul. Although there was no reason in theory why an individual should not buy his own net, most of them in fact preferred to do so on some kind of partnership, or turguvai, basis. In part, this was a matter of sharing the cost of what was quite an expensive item. But I think it also reflected the fact that at each stage of the operation seine-fishing called for a larger and more continuous measure of teamwork than did the use of fish traps. Consider first the matter of preparation. To prepare a wup, or fish basket, a man did require from time to time the help of a few friends or kinsmen, but for the most part he worked quietly away on his own. Regarding the umbene, the procedure is very different: before the net is ready for use, the rope has to be prepared and threaded, special wooden floats called a kutang have to be made, and then, together with the pumice weights, affixed to the net. The need for large numbers to be in constant attendance on the umbene is seen most clearly, however, if one goes along to the motonoi when seine-fishing is actually in progress. As many as twenty men may be seen engaged in working the net, letting it out so as to cut off the escape of a school of fish (a tun) as it darts through the water. Another group is needed to rewind the net so that it sits ready on the canoe to be let out again at a moment's notice. This emphasis on teamwork finds its expression in the traditional popoai, an elaborate rite that should precede the "launch" of a new umbene. In the one popoai that I observed, a ritual expert rendered a variety of incantations, and the performance climaxed when a crowd of children, their bodies covered with the marks of different kinds of fish that had been painted on with lime powder (a kabang), charged in from the direction of the beach and around the umbene, all finally collapsing in a heap in obvious simulation of the death of many fish in the net. The meaning of the rite is plain: it represents a "blessing" of the net, a means of assuring, through the intercession of named ancestral spirits, a plentiful supply of fish to its owners. But the popoai also had a more prosaic side. After the "blessing of the net," there was a distribution of food and tambu to a large gathering of people. Its aim, I was told, was not so much for past assistance in the preparation of the net but to secure "heir future help in "working" the umbene and helping to bring in the c. ~ch. The final point of contrast between the two modes of fishing I )ncems the business of getting in the catch. In the case of the babau th ; is ordinarily quite uneventful. The owner of the basket, accompanIed perhaps by a few lads, sets out by canoe to inspect the babau. Only if he

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returns from such a nilauma with a sizeable catch will there be a flurry of excitement as people gather to see if there is enough to pipiai, or to sell, elsewhere. It is quite different with the umbene. Seine-fishing at Matupit is bound up with the known movements of particular species of fish. These pass close inshore at a limited number of points around the island. However, the precise moment at which a school offish will pass cannot be known in advance. On most days throughout the season, therefore, lookouts are likely to be posted, keeping their eyes scanned for any sign of an approaching tun (school of fish), while numbers of other men sit or stand around the edge of the beach. For much of the time nothing happens. Then suddenly the cry goes up: "A tun!" At once everyone present charges, full pelt, into the water. The occasion offers full scope for the kind of behavior that often betokens the high spirits and excitement of the young at play. But something more than play is involved-the operation has to be conducted swiftly and efficiently if the fish are not to escape. It is indeed exhausting and demanding work but it is also, for the short time that it lasts, exhilarating. And then there is a period of waiting until another school of fish is sighted. ToKonia had contributed substantially to the purchase of an umbene, which he owned jointly with his two older brothers and an older sister, but he took no part in its use. He preferred to be at work in his gardens. When he accompanied me to the motonoi in the dry season, he was sometimes quite scathing in his comments on seine-fishing. The umbene, he would say, was for the idle (aumana tena talanguan) who did not know the meaning of real work. "See, they will sit there," he would add, "from morning till night just waiting for 'a tun.'" But very often no fish would appear until the late afternoon. The result was that other tasks, such as work that needed to be done in the gardens, were neglected. As a neutral observer, however, it seemed to me rather that the two modes of fishing involved quite different rhythms of work; each of them attracted its own followers, so to speak, by virtue of the distinctive kinds of emotional satisfaction it offered. I surmise, moreover, that in today's changed economic and cultural climate, the umbene would be more attractive, as well as financially more rewarding, to many of the younger people who could no longer find jobs around Rabaul than the more constraining pattern of work demanded by the babau. Another activity associated with the taubar (dry season) that was highly popular with the younger men was collecting the eggs of the

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bush turkey or megapode, a kiau na ngiok. Around the base of Matupi crater, and at a few other points in the vicinity, the soil is very warm, encouraging the megapode to deposit its eggs there. These eggs are quite large, are said to be highly nutritious, and are prized as a delicacy. Gathering the kiau (turkey eggs) was regarded at Matupit as a lucrative business. When at the time of my first study I used to visit the egg-lands there were usually about fifty men present who had come to dig. Each worked by himself, and success depended on one's own efforts. The younger, stronger, and more skilled diggers might expect to gather 20 to 40 eggs in the course of the day which they were able to sell at 6 pence or 5 cents apiece-much more than was to be earned by casual employment in Rabaul at that time. Nowadays the price has risen to 40 or 50 toea; I was told of one enterprising Matupi who was flying consignments to Port Moresby and Kieta where the price was 1 or even 2 kina. 3 But profitability apart, I believe the task of gathering the eggs had its own rewards too. This relates very much to the conditions under which the work was carried out. The soil at the egg sites is very light and sandy. In earlier days the implement used to search for and remove the eggs was the husk of a coconut. This was later replaced by an enamel plate, which still did not overly disturb the birds. But in time shovels were introduced; the birds learned to burrow deeper in search of firmer soil in which to lay their eggs and the men and shovels followed. As the digging proceeds the men quickly disappear from view, since many of the holes are more than 6 feet deep. When a level has been reached, the fine soil is removed with a dish or basin until a hole is uncovered where it is considered likely that eggs will be buried. This is the most dangerous and the most frustrating part of the job, because the "warren" may proceed some distance inward from the uncovered spot. The digger now has to crawl forward, head and shoulders thrusting into the narrow space. Because the texture of the soil is light, there is always the distinct possibility of a cave-in. In that event, the work of clearing would have to begin all over again. More seriously, there is an ever-present danger, if the ground collapses around one, of being smothered before others working in adjacent holes become aware of one's predicament. Skill is an important ingredient in the task-being able to detect the signs that eggs have been buried close at hand-though luck, too, plays a part. But above all, gathering kiau is an extremely arduous and hazardous operation: after a few hours the diggers begin to look like coal miners; they are grimed with sweat and toil, and they grunt with exertion. For many of

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the older men a kalukal, or dig, still held its attraction, but they would quickly be forced to retire, fortunate if they secured but a few eggs, and yet plainly, deeply satisfied. The island of Matupit, it used to be said, lived off the kiau (a toto ati Matupit i laun ma ra kiau na ngiok). For all that, there was a marked ambiguity in attitudes toward egg collecting, most plainly seen in the many village meetings when a kalukal na kiau was on the agenda. At one such meeting in Kikila a number of "owners" of land (a pai or bit na pia) declared their intention of imposing a vorovoro that would make the egg-lands taboo to collectors. Old men were no longer fit to dig for eggs, but if they were "owners" of land they could at least profit from the levy (totokom) they claimed from each successful egg collector. They sought to secure the situation by a rule restricting digging for eggs to one day a week. What concerned the elders was that many of the younger men went out collecting on other days without the permission of the "owner" of the site who was thus deprived of his levy. But if threats to close the egg-lands were prompted primarily by selfish considerations, elders could also point to other aspects of the situation. So, on this occasion, ToUrapal appealed to his audience: "Let us not think all the time of the kiau only. Let us look rather at the people in the bush. They followed the advice of the government to grow cocoa and coconuts. Now they have advanced far .... At Christmas I watched them buying in the stores, lots of food and other things for their day of rejoicing. Now it would be well for us to look for land elsewhere so that we too grow cocoa and coconuts. Let us not place all our hopes in the kiau." A year passed and the issue had not yet been resolved. As a meeting in Kikila came to a close, Turpui stood up to warn, in his finest rhetorical fashion, of the "enemy in their midst." The commandments of the church and of the government were being ignored, many important tasks disregarded, he stormed. Why? It was because of the kiau. Kaputin also chimed in, reminding his audience that if the kiau was a source of money, it had also been a source of death-and would be so again. "There are two kinds of nginarau," he declared, "a good and a bad. Nginarau for money so that we may improve the standard of living is fine, but nginarau for the kiau quickly brings death."4 Apart from protecting their own interests, the message that these older Matupi appeared anxious to get across was that younger people should not be seduced by the quick rewards and excitement of the kalukal (dig). The kalukal was for a season only, its attraction in the

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short term only; they should think rather of those activities whose dividends lay in the long term. They were referring on these occasions to work on the land: making food gardens, but above all planting coconuts and cocoa. It seemed to me that this was the kind of work they really had in mind when they remonstrated with people, urging them to work hard for money and tambu; I think, too, that it was for the man or woman who was known to attend regularly to work in the gardens that the accolade a tena papalum, a real worker, was reserved. Men carried out the heavier tasks involved in making a new food garden, but thereafter the regular care of the garden, and collecting food from it, was the responsibility of the women. Among the Tolai, women owned property in their own right, and many women held their own separate stocks of shell money as well as bank accounts. The chief source of this independent income was the sale of foodstuffs or other products they prepared, such as packets of lime powder (a Wang), which they sold in the market at Rabaul. Already in 1960 it was evident that many Matupi were buying much of their food at the market rather than growing their own. By the 'eighties this development had gone much further and many were said to live entirely on food purchased at the market or in the Rabaul stores and supermarkets. Despite this, Matupi women continued to sell at the market, or bung, which was now open daily; what they did not produce themselves they acquired, as noted earlier, by pipiai for resale. Almost from the outset of colonial rule it was above all the sale of copra which tied the Matupi in to the cash economy, providing them with the main source of their new wealth. In the period preceding the outbreak of World War II the coconut palms were growing in such profusion that it was said that they almost obscured the stars from sight. However, by 1960 the Matupi had still not made good the losses of their trees destroyed during the Japanese occupation, and income from copra sales was still far below prewar levels. In 1986, on my return to the Gazelle, merely to drive from the airport down to Matupit was to observe the remarkable transformation that had taken place in the meantime; the entire length of the narrow road was flanked on either side by a forest of palms. On the island itself, wherever one moved, large numbers of nuts were gathered and piled where previously one had seen relatively few, if any at all. Another sign of change was the multiplication of copra-driers, which now numbered at least twenty where before there had been only one. Copra was plainly the main source of cash for those who continued to live and work at home.

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However, in recent years the price of cocoa was making that crop more attractive than copra. Nor was cocoa production so physically demanding. For those whose coconut groves were in areas of bush that could not easily be reached by a motor vehicle, collecting and transporting the nuts back to the village was seen as a particularly arduous task. The earlier Matupi attempts to grow cocoa had all ended in failure, but now new hybrids had been introduced which were better adapted to local conditions, and interest in cocoa had revived with many new gardens being planted. To complete this account of Matupi work habits, attitudes toward work, and the feelings that different kinds of task tend to generate, a few words need to be said of those income-earning activities that are not village-based. The extent to which Matupi had become involved in wage employment has already been discussed. By the late 'fifties, building on the advantages of a system of schooling that was rather better than in most other parts of the country, Tolai were beginning to emerge as an occupational elite, filling many of the best posts that were at that time available to indigenous Papua New Guineans. Matupi were particularly prominent within this category of teachers, clerks, and trained craftsmen who were working in different parts of the country. But there were also opportunities for wage employment around Rabaul. Among those with little formal schooling the preference was for casual work-perhaps answering a call to unload a ship that had arrived in port or as one of a group working for another Matupi who had a contract to lay drains or build a house. These arrangements allowed them to have a foot in both the urban and the rural camps without being sucked up entirely by either; by the same token they were able to differentiate themselves from the other manual laborers employed on the Gazelle Peninsula who came from other parts of the country and whom the Tolai disparagingly referred to as vok (from the English word "work"). But here too the passage of time has seen striking changes, particularly in the field of education. Matupi who have received university or other advanced technical training have joined the urban elite of Port Moresby or Lae, while others whose education did not progress so far hold a wide variety of jobs in Rabaul and elsewhere. Particularly striking are the numbers of young Matupi women who are nowadays to be found working in the banks, offices, and stores of Rabaul. Many of these continue to live at home, but others have taken up residence in the town itself. There appear nowadays to be fewer opportunities for the

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self-employed contractor, but one new form of self-employment that has appeared is the owning and running of a licenced minibus. At least ten of these are now operating out of Matupit. Since the cost of one of these vehicles new was in the K6-7,OOO range, most were bought with the aid of bank loans. By working long hours an owner-driver would hope to make about K40 a day, perhaps K50 a day on weekends, and thus be in a position to clear his debt to the bank in a little over a couple of years. Nowadays then Matupi engage in a very diverse range of economic activities. Some of course are closely linked to the seasons, but in the main the calendar allows for a good deal of flexibility, enabling the individual to divide his time between a number of tasks that can be readily slotted into his work schedule and provide a fairly regular income throughout the year. For certain transactions tambu retains its importance, but cash has for many years been the primary means of obtaining what are now regarded as the necessaries of life as well as of raising one's living standards (ure ra boina kini). 5 Yet none of this serves adequately to convey, still less to explain, the constant emphasis on the need to work hard, the differential regard for different tasks by different persons, above all the presence of so many individuals whose work habits can fairly be said to point to a "workaholic" syndrome. This is not to claim that all Matupi worked hard or to assert that laziness was unknown among them. Quite to the contrary-and who they were was often well known. In some regard the Matupi were quite tolerant of the idle: if one chose not to work that was one's own affair; but then one had to face the consequences of that choice and could not expect siblings or other kin to rally round if one fell into trouble. Tolai attitudes in the matter are perhaps most clearly reflected in the expression a tena talaguan. This can be glossed as an idler, but it hardly does justice to the sense of deep opprobrium the term conveys: as an insult, cast at an opponent in the context of a dispute being waged before the village assembly, it was probably only slightly worse than calling him a bastard. Another term commonly used in this way was a tabauma. This is the word for a species of weed; as a term of reproach it refers to one who neither makes gardens nor works for tambu. Like the weed itself, a tabauma lives without effort. I was talking once to a Matupi woman whose home was now in Rabaul. She began to describe how, whenever she went back home these days to visit her parents, she always found them quarrelling. One day recently she had tried to discuss things with her mother, saying that it was no good that they should always be

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bickering. However, her mother thought that she was siding with her father, and she said she was going to leave him and stay with her kin at Talwat. The daughter found the whole episode so upsetting that she cried all the way home. I asked what the problem was between her parents, who were now getting on in years. The difficulty was, she explained, that her mother thought of her husband as "a tabauma," a man who had never been anything but a lazy good-for-nothing; she was strong on her side, and he on his, and they fought together the whole time. To show that these expressions carry such a strong charge of affect is of course merely to restate, in rather different terms, the high regard that is attached to industriousness. Nor was this just a matter of verbally expressed attitudes; there was also the way in which so frequently actual work habits appeared to be fueled by some inner drive. ToKonia is a case in point. Toward the end of my return visit in 1986 he found it necessary to consult a doctor about pains he was experiencing in his back. The doctor diagnosed strain and advised that he learn to relax more. I was not in the least surprised-ToKonia at this time began his day at about 5: 30 in the morning working on the coconuts he had previously collected from his grove far out in the bush and gathered by his house. Then at about 7 A.M., when people were beginning to make their way to Rabaul, he switched to operating his bus service. By midmorning there were fewer passengers moving between village and town, and he could turn to other activities, perhaps spending time in his gardens where he was in the midst of planting out his new hybrid cocoa plants. In the late afternoon he returned to another stint on his minibus to catch those who were now returning home. ToKaul was of similar age and disposition. After my return to Matupit I had called at his house on a number of occasions without meeting him until at last I felt obliged to make an appointment through an intermediary. The reason for his absences quickly emerged. He had recently lost both his brother and his sister. When he stayed around the house he brooded over their death; work kept him from dwelling on it so he left early each morning for his gardens, and sometimes it was quite late when he got back. But the most striking case of all was that of Orim. When I was first on Matupit, Orim was a young man in his early thirties, married with a family. He was said to be an excellent carpenter, and when Terarup, who had prepared the plans for the new Methodist church, was unable to be present in person to oversee the work, it was Orim who depu-

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tized. So far as I could tell he was well-liked; certainly he was known to many as hard-working and was admired for his industry. Yet he also appeared to be impelled by an inner restlessness. I was told that he would work a whole day on a house he had contracted to build at Talwat. Then, after his return to Matupit, he would go out line-fishing after dark, perhaps not coming back until the early hours of the morning. But even then he would not rest for long, and would go off and spend the next day in the arduous business of digging for kiau. When he died suddenly it sent a shock through the entire island; he had caught a chill on the stomach, the result, it was surmised, of the way he lived and worked. In many ways Orim appeared to embody in his own person some of the most cherished Tolai values, values that, as has been noted, elders regularly proclaimed when they rose to speak at village meetings: he cared for, in the sense of providing for the needs of, his wife and children, he was also said to be deeply attached to a sister whom he regularly helped with cash and tambu, above all he worked hard at a range of jobs both within and outside the village. After his death there were some who raised the question of sorcery, but for others he had simply destroyed himself by his own ways. Some complained that he had put all his energies into tasks that would enable him to "get rich quick" instead of planting cocoa and coconuts-work that "stood forever" (tur tukum); more generally, he had carried things too far. It is difficult in cases of the kind just cited to resist the view that some kind of intrapsychic conflict has fueled such a compulsive interest in work. Questions are raised here about the structure of the Tolai self, and the place of unconscious components within it. Such issues are more appropriately taken up elsewhere. For the present my concerns lie rather on the ideological level: from this perspective the point of immediate interest is that given such an emphasis on hard work where to draw the line between fulfilment of the norm and being in excess of it must always be to some extent problematic. Even on the cultural level, therefore, the Tolai attitude to work has a built-in ambiguity, and this, I want to suggest, finds clear linguistic expression in the word "nginarau." As noted earlier, "nginarau" is one of those Tolai words for which it is difficult to find a precise equivalent in English. In part, the problem is one of semantic range, the fact that often the Tolai term will cover a range of feelings that would be lexically differentiated in English. For example, for "nginarau" the Raluana-English dictionary (Lanyon-Orgill 1960) offers "anxiety," "concern," "horror," "impa-

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tience," "trepidation," and "alarm." But even this range of meanings does not do justice to the subtlety of the Tolai word: taken together, the English terms acknowledge what may be called "nginarau's" negative pole of meaning only; what the dictionary has missed completely is the ambiguity that the Tolai word embodies. The point emerges the more readily if one compares "nginarau" with "tamarigat." If a Tolai wishes to convey the feeling of keenness or eagerness in an unequivocally positive sense he will use the word "tamarigat"; "nginarau" can also be used to express keenness or eagerness, but when employed in this way it also conveys that sense of restless striving that Kaputin referred to when he spoke of nginarau upi ra kiau. Indeed, more than any other single term, restlessness encompasses best the positive and negative features of"nginarau," and in this way too encapsulates much of what lies at the back of Tolai attitudes toward work. But what promotes this restlessness? Toward what ends is all this striving directed, and what are the rewards it offers? At issue here are such questions as how the Tolai understand achievement, and how they respond to it in themselves and others. These matters are taken up in the remainder of the chapter.

Ambition "Nginarau," in its sense of restless striving, is perhaps the Tolai word that comes closest to the English term "ambition" in the latter's standard dictionary meaning: "eager" or "inordinate desire" for "honor" or "preferment." Ambition at once refers to a complex psychological process-an inner drive to achieve some goal that is seen as deeply rewarding, if not indeed its own reward. It is at the same time, however, a sociological category. Ambition has to be attuned to socially defined ends. Thus different societies not only encourage their members to different kinds of aspiration, they also seek to define and control the channels along which ambition may legitimately seek expression. The rewards of reputation, prestige, and power are the principal means by which these ends are achieved. As societies change, aspirations and ambitions also change. With the conditions that prevail on the Gazelle today, therefore, an individual Tolai has a range of choice and opportunity, if not for himself at least for his children, that was not to be imagined in his grandparents' time. It is not just that new careers have opened up, for women no less than

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for men, far beyond the confines of the home village, but that one can now aspire to occupations of a kind that had no counterpart in traditional Tolai society-as an airline pilot, for example, or even an anthropologist. For all that, there are still good reasons for focusing the present analysis on the village. In the first place, there are many, particularly those still at home, who continue to pursue a customary path in nourishing their ambitions. Secondly, the vast majority of those who are currently making careers for themselves away from home will still have spent much of their childhood in a village setting where they will have imbibed, as part of the process of socialization, many customary attitudes and ideas relating to work and achievement. In the past there were a variety of ways available to the individual Tolai by which he or she could hope to achieve a reputation or, as Tolai themselves express it, "to make the name great" (upi a iang [ina] na ngala). To begin with, as the whole of the preceding account might lead one to expect, there was hard work. So in recalling the dead, almost invariably the first words spoken were in praise of the deceased as a great worker.6 In regard to parents or other close kin, the general comment was usually amplified by reference to more specific skills: of a father that he was a fine fisherman, a tena hili ta, of a mother that she worked industriously in her food gardens and never forsook an opportunity to accumlate tambu. In such ways, for the ordinary Tolai work was quite central to one's sense of identity. Apart from diligence in those productive tasks discussed earlier, there were certain specialist skills that were practiced only by a small number of outstanding individuals, whose services would be in demand far beyond the home village: healers, ritual experts, and artists of different kinds. There is the case of Anit, for example. In 1960 he was one of the few left at Matupit who was widely acknowledged as a bit na tubuan, the title bestowed on one who was regarded as truly expert in matters concerning the tubuan. Once when I was with him he mentioned the possibility of a nitWk ceremony later in the year at Talwat, and that people there had already approached him to take charge of the proceedings (lue ra varkurai). It is unlikely that Talwat had no bit na tubuan of its own, but none would have been as old or as experienced as Anit, particularly where knowledge of protective magic (a babat) was concerned. On another occasion Anit called at my house to persuade me to accompany him to Baai so that we could record some of the Baai tapialai, or songs, of the tubuan. As we started to talk of these matters, the old man suddenly began to boast: "I am a bit na matamatam, I am a

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'source' of the matamatam [the climactic ceremony in the tubuan complex]. There is none who surpasses me (pata tikai i taun iau)." When he got to Baai, he said, he would kabange, that is, call forth in pride the name of his own tubuan. "Iau kure"-"I'm the boss!" Another term of honor that was not lightly earned was melem, an expert, one who possessed unusual skills. Such a one was Taule Belo; when I first knew him he was a man in his sixties, whose home was in Kurapun. I had the opportunity to see some of his handiwork on the occasion of the namata he had arranged for his son ToV aninar, then a teacher at the Malaguna Technical School. I was present at the taraiu during the final preparations for the young man's emergence from the bush, following a period of seclusion there. When I arrived, the pal na mamarikai, the "house of emergence"-its appearance rather like a small tabernacle-had already been completed, and everyone present was eager to impress upon me the originality and imaginativeness of the design, which had been conceived in the form of a dukduk (one of the rwo masked dancers in the tubuan complex). ToVaninar being his youngest son, this was the last "house" that Taule would build, and he had put into it all his skill and artistry. This I should appreciate, therefore, was a great occasion. But mingled with these expressions of aesthetic pleasure, there was also a strong note of local pride and self-aggrandizement. It was known of course that I had participated in the namata for Meli Paivu, the son ofToNgarama, at Kikila. Everyone now took great pains to assure me that this "house" was quite different and, by implication, more finely conceived than the one designed by ToNgarama. At Kurapun, they said, there were many melem, firstrate artists, and all had lent their skill in preparing TauIe's "house." At Kikila, however, there were no such experts save, they grudgingly acknowledged, ToNgarama himself. But see, they concluded triumphantly, ToNgarama too had actually been brought up at Kurapun. The conduct displayed in these various instances reveals a selfassertiveness that one came to recognize as characteristically Tolai linked with an intense competitiveness that was ubiquitous in their social life. Competition found its expression in a sense of rivalry not only berween individuals but in the interactions and relations of groups and categories at every societal level. The reference a little earlier to the "vevedek" at Talwat shows how closely one village would keep a watch on the activities of a neighboring community. A personal experience may be cited to illustrate how far the concern not to be outdone can arise even where the villages are both physically and socially distant

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from each other. Working in the inland parish of Rapitok, where shell money was at that time much more plentiful than at Matupit, my wife had soon accumulated enough tambu for her friends to suggest that she should have it bound into a coil, which they proceeded to arrange. When word of this reached the Matupi, they immediately felt challenged, and it was quickly agreed that they should organize "a kapti" on my behalf. This took the form of a kind of "tea party" (a kapti, from the English "cup of tea") which in the ordinary way was conducted on a rotating basis, the sponsor in each instance contributing the food and in return collecting what was contributed in the form of an "entrance fee" by all those who attended (Epstein 1969:68); on this occasion I contributed the food, and the "entrance fee" was a small amount of tambu. The coil that resulted was, not surprisingly, much smaller than my wife's. What was particularly galling to the Matupi about the whole business was that in the past, along with the other Tolai of the coastal communities, they had always thought of themselves as a cut above the people of the bush, for whom they reserved the derogatory term koloata, those unaccustomed to the sea, the "unwashed" or "uncivilized." But now these "cowboys from the bush," their new-found prosperity based on cocoa and copra, with food crops like taro as an important source of tambu, had overtaken the Matupi; from the latters' point of view it was as if the natural order of things had been subverted. But rivalry was as much a feature of relations between the sections and wards of the island as it was of Matupi relations with other Tolai groups, as the following episode neatly exemplifies. Matupi elders knew of my interest in observing the ceremonies associated with the tubuan, but, recognizing that there was no possibility of my doing so at Matupit at that time, they were able to arrange that I should go through the rite of induction known as a guboro at Raluana. When I returned to Matupit, people were keen to hear the tape recordings of the tubuan songs I had made there. Some of their comments were quite withering; I was left in no doubt that the Raluana had made a botch of it. Accordingly, the elders of Kikila and Ramp decided that a special session was called for at which I would record their own rendition of the tapialai. Then I would know how such songs should be sung, and the Raluana themselves, were they to hear them, would be moved indeed. The singing that night could be heard, I imagine, over a good part of the island. The following morning Turagil, my cook, who was from Kurapun, told me that that evening it was arranged that I would record there. Their melodies and style (a liu) were entirely different from those of Kikila;

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the expression enana ordinarily means "different," but when used as in the present context in its emphatic form, enana iat, it carries the sense of something being "quite out of this world." These references to inter- and intra-village relations show the competitive principle at work in particular social situations. By contrast, the moiety system, which serves to separate the whole population into two mutually exclusive categories, shows the way in which competition is woven into the fabric of Tolai society on an abstract plane. From one perspective, the main function of the moieties lies in the regulation of marriage. However, as I have discussed elsewhere (Epstein 1969:92, 98), the system also offers Tolai a model, a way of talking about the complex realities of their society in simple terms. From this point of view, that is to say, the whole society is seen as being composed of two moieties which exist in an eternal relationship of antagonism and opposition, social process itself being perceived as the oscillation of dominance between them through time. Such a view is reflected, for example, in the way a glorious balaguan of the past will be recalled by someone remarking that "we, the Pikalaba, stood together so that the Marmar should see our strength" or another that "formerly they [diat] were in the ascendancy, but now we [avet] have overtaken them." The simple point to emerge from all this then is that for the Tolai among the most compelling motives is the desire to assert oneself, to set one's stamp upon a situation, to be first, to win. The other side of this particular coin is the equally strong tendency to resist these claims by others and to assert one's independence. He who injudiciously seeks to impose his authority on another is likely to provoke the response: "What business is it of yours? You don't 'boss' me" (Kaum ava tago? Pa u kure iau) or "You can't order me around. I didn't choose [i.e., vote for] you" (Pa u kure iau. Pa iauga pilak u). In such an egalitarian and adversarial milieu it is the balaguan, 7 the general term employed at Matupit for a major ceremony or festival, which provides the arena par excellence in which Tolai compete for reputation, for prestige, and for power. Those who hold the stage on these occasions are the leaders within their communities-or at least those who are seeking to be acknowledged as leaders. It is in the context of the balaguan that the outside observer achieves the clearest view of the entrepreneurial basis ofTolai leadership, and the Tolai themselves find justification for one of the central tenets of their ideology: that one must work hard for tambu. It should be said at once that there is an element of mystification in this view. For example, one was commonly told that in earlier days

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young men worked to accumulate tambu in order to earn the considerable fee demanded to go through that part of the tubuan complex of ceremonies known as the nidok. In point of fact it seems clear that young men no more paid these fees themselves than they paid their own bride-wealth. An even more telling point, as Salisbury (1966:117) has observed, is that the amounts of tambu to be obtained by selling produce at the market were never going to yield enough to enable one to emerge as the sponsor of a major ceremony. In fact a traditional Tolai "big man" acted quite differently; his position rested not on the fact that he had accumulated his stock of shell money through unremitting hard labor but on his success (or plausibility) in persuading others that because of his organizing skills and trustworthiness their own funds could be safely entrusted to him (see Salisbury ibid.; T. S. Epstein 1972). However, it would be a mistake to proceed to infer from this that the cultural stress on hard work should be completely discounted. "Big men" after all did not, as though the fruit of some Melanesian dragon seed, spring suddenly from the soil fully armed and equipped for the political arena; recognition came only at the end of a long "proving" period. A clue to the nature of the process is provided in Turpui's comment cited earlier that parents were only prepared to help in the "purchase" of a bride for their son when they saw that through his own efforts he was himself adding tambu to his own rat, or basket. 8 Some remarks of ToKonia made in the course of an account of his preparations for his own first balaguan, due to take place some time after my final departure, shed a little more light on the matter. The avowed purpose of this balaguan was to celebrate the erection of a raim, a stone of remembrance that recalls the deceased members of the vunatarai. The stone had been specially designed to display four quarters, each representing one of the localities where the clan was strongly represented. The highlight of the event was to be the staging of traditional dances-a maltwene-that would include a kulao, commonly spoken of as one of the most spectacular and exciting events in the Tolai cultural repertoire. ToKonia was the youngest of a group of two brothers and a sister, but by the time of my return to Matupit all three siblings were dead. This fact alone, however, is not enough to explain why he should have been led to undertake such a major enterprise. The explanation that he himself offered took him back to his childhood. His patuana, or forebear, had been Simeon Panie, a prominent man at Matupit in his day who had owned a huge coil of tambu. In the days of the Japanese occupation the coil was cut up. Part was used to purchase

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food; the rest was buried away in the bush. Some time after the war was over, when the coil itself had passed into the hands of ToRat, his mother's brother, ToRat died. On the "instructions" (a varvateten) of his widow, the coil passed to ToKonia. The reason he gave for this was that he had always been a favorite, a bul na tadar or a makak, of Simeon because he had been a lively child, ever ready to carry out different tasks. So Simeon had marked him (i ga vakilangia) to wear a pupunairima, a very special kind of decoration worn in the dance. In this way, while still a youngster, he had taken part in a number of dances on the occasion of some of the best-recalled balaguan at Matupit. This was why, he said, he was now carrying out this "work" for them (a papalum ure diat). Simeon, he repeated, had marked him out, and now he would see that he was indeed a true man (a dovot na tutana), whereas ToKalula, ToDukduk, and IaMadau had never worked hard. "In the old days," ToKonia ruminated, "they looked carefully at one's character" (di ga gire tadap ra maukwai ra tutana). There were times in the course of a tubuan ceremony or a balaguan when the "big man" might sit quietly in the wings, so to speak, but there were occasions that also gave the one hosting the festival full opportunity to hold the stage. In an early account of a balaguan by Brown (1910: 86) the "big man" would "show off in fighting attitudes, speak and brag, tell of his wealth, of the men he has killed, of dances, charms, songs etc which he has brought ... and tell of what he intends to do." Such boastful behavior was also encountered in ordinary, everyday contexts, but in these it was generally condemned. A braggart, a lup tinata na varpin, it was commonly said, did not live long. By contrast, in the balaguan, bragging was not merely permitted, it was an integral part of the proceedings and a varpin attached to every aspect of the day's events: the number of dances staged, the skill of the dancers, the beauty of their decorations, and the amounts of food and tambu distributed. It was as though what was forbidden in secular life became legitimate in the context of rite and ceremony. As I have noted elsewhere (Epstein 1979b:185), ceremony "tamed" the impulse, transforming it by specifYing the conditions under which what was ordinarily illicit became socially acceptable and even enjoined. The balaguan was thus preeminently an occasion of triumph and pride, in which personal assertiveness and competitiveness were allowed the fullest expression. As ToKonia spoke of the preparations for his own balaguan, that the old values still had the power to move him became increasingly ob-

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vious. As he got into his stride, he edged forward in his seat, and his voice was pitched rather higher than usual; his eyes were bright and he smiled frequently, almost shyly. The sense of pleasure in anticipation was almost tangible. When he came to speak of the kulao, with its image of the ranks of plumed dancers waving aloft their artistically carved dancing staves, this ordinarily modest and unassuming man became excited in a way I had never seen in him before, and he actually began to sing the song that accompanied the dance. Nor was ToKonia the only one I encountered on my return visit who continued to seek gratification through the conversion of wealth into prestige by sponsoring a festival, a major focus of which was honoring the dead. Meli Paivu, whose namata I had attended when I was first on Matupit, had by the 'eighties emerged as Matupit's most successful entrepreneur. His business interests ranged widely: owner of a successful garage and service station in Rabaul, as well as of a betting shop, and deeply involved in tourism, he was widely reported to be extremely wealthy, though this was hardly apparent in his life-style which, like that of earlier Matupi entrepreneurs, remained frugal. Although his home was now in Rabaul, where he lived with his wife and many children, he continued to play the leading role in the affairs of his vunatarai. During the war a number of members of the clan were killed in a bombing raid and, in the circumstances of the day, had to be buried on the slopes across the inlet from Matupit. Many years later it was Meli who organized the transfer of the bones for reburial in the cemetery at Kikila, where the graves are now marked by a series of memorial plaques. The event provided Meli with the opportunity to stage a great balaguan. He had also raised the tubuan, and during my own return visit he also arranged the namata for one of his uterine nephews, a young man working in Port Moresby who, together with his father, had come over to Rabaul for the occasion. All of these activities involved the expenditure of very considerable sums of tambu. An even more interesting case in certain respects is that of William Kaputin. William had been a successful student in law at the University of Papua New Guinea, had been elevated to the Bench at a very early age, and later served as chairman of the Law Reform Commission. From his home in Moresby he made the initial preparations for a balaguan in honor of his father Daniel, who had died a year or so earlier, before coming back to Matupit to take charge of the proceedings. Since his father was a figure widely known and respected far beyond Matupit, the event was attended by a vast gathering. Mounting the affair called for a very considerable outlay of tambu to

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pay the dancers, the designers of their costumes, as well as to meet the cost of the many prestations to be made among the different categories of visitor. 9 In the past, staging a successful balaguan represented in Tolai eyes the pinnacle of ambition: hosting a minor ceremony was one of the chief means by which one established oneself as a "big man"; to take the lead in organizing a matamatam set the seal on one's achievements, spreading one's reputation far beyond one's local community. In the instances just cited we find a number of younger people continuing to pursue the customary path to renown, testimony it might seem to the remarkable resilience of Tolai culture. However, to leave it at that would be seriously misleading. In the matter of the balaguan, as in other areas of social life, Tolai institutions show even today an impressive continuity (see Epstein 1988). It is all the more necessary to stress, therefore, how the context in which the contemporary balaguan takes place is utterly different from what it was before. Consider first the role of tambu. At the time of my first fieldwork on Matupit not only were the people there poor in shell money but, given all the circumstances of their social situation at that time, the balance seemed to be tipped heavily against its survival. Today, however, the whole position has been transformed: through the recent growth in interisland shipping, Tolai businessmen have found it possible to import the nassa shells in large numbers from the Solomon Islands and elsewhere. The result is that even those who live and work in places like Port Moresby or Lae are nowadays in a position to purchase the shells with cash. That they should continue to do so is of course of considerable interest, but this cannot be allowed to conceal the nature of the profound change that has taken place in the meaning and social function of tambu. This point in turn relates directly to a second, and more fundamental, development. This concerns, from a Tolai perspective, the way the locus of power, particularly since Independence, has shifted from Rabaul to the capital, Port Moresby, which has become increasingly a magnet for those younger Tolai with social aspirations or political ambitions. Marked off by their educational qualifications and a sophisticated lifestyle, many of them indeed caught up in the politics of bureaucracy, this new urban elite moves in a world that appears to ordinary villagers"grassroots" in the contemporary argot-as remote and as arbitrary in its exercise of power as in colonial days. In these circumstances, therefore, while the performance of a balaguan at Matupit today undoubtedly brings much personal satisfaction to its sponsor, and also adds to his

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personal reputation, it is no longer a major criterion in establishing him as a political figure of stature. In today's world the real "big men" perform on quite a different stage and follow a very different script.

Secrecy and Envy The competitive aspect of Tolai society is to be seen not simply in the opposition of the moieties, in the relations within and between particular local groups, nor even on those occasions when leaders and their followers ritually confront one another in some culturally defined arena such as a balaguan. Competition is no less an attitude of mind that shapes the way particular situations are defined and hence how one approaches or responds to them. The concomitant of competition, the emphasis on success, also raises questions about how one responds to the achievements of others. The first issue concerns the importance that the Tolai attach to secrecy; the second requires us to look at the problem of envy. Secrecy is about the control of information; it is in this regard a matter of power. Among the Tolai this is readily seen in a number of institutionalized contexts. In the case of the tubuan, for example, acquiring the pidik, the secret, is central to the process by which the initiand moves from one stage to the next. Again, secrecy seems to have been essential in the performance of many magical rites. In some forms of garden magic, for example, while one man peformed the rite on behalf of a group none might draw near the magician while he uttered his incantation lest they overhear his spell; later each individual would cast his own spell. 10 But such formal contexts do not exhaust the topic. As with competition itself, we are dealing with a state of mind as much as a culturally defined ingredient in certain kinds of situation. A couple of examples will indicate that something more general is involved. Thus one's preparations for a balaguan or some similar event were a closely guarded secret, a vaninar kaugu pidik-the nature of one's ornamentation, the design of one's kangal, or headgear, one's matatar, the daubing of the body with lime powder, and so on, all needed to be kept hidden from the knowledge of others. It was very striking how when discussion of such matters came up, even though there was no one else present and no chance of being overheard, one's companion would lower his voice and begin to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. Secrecy

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in these instances is seen as necessary so that on the day of the balaguan itself one's appearance will have the full impact of surprise and people will tum to gasp in wonder. In the way in which they approach such occasions, one may speak perhaps of the Tolai holding their cards very close to their chests; questions of advantage are involved about which they are apt to be very secretive. Other contexts give the concept of "pidik" a slightly different meaning. The organization of Matupit's minibuses to take passengers from a cruise ship that has arrived in port on a conducted tour of the Gazelle offers an example of this kind. On these occasions the drivers will have been alerted by a fellow Matupi with links with the shipping lines and they will gather to meet the passengers as they disembark from the ship. One man I knew, however, had his own favorite parking spot, a little distance away. He counted on the likelihood that some passengers might prefer, instead of a trip organized by the tour operators, to hire a bus on their own which would take them wherever they wanted-an arrangement that was also likely to be more profitable from the busowner's point of view. This was his pidik, he once told me with a smile, as though in acknowledgment of his own astuteness. A final example reveals yet another motive for secrecy. One day ToDapal had called upon me. His son, having worked for some years on Buka, had accumulated savings they now planned to invest in purchasing a new Land Rover, which would be helpful in working their new block of land at the Vudal, an area recently set aside for Tolai settlement. ToDapal hoped that I would be able to offer him some advice. Before he departed he insisted that no word of what we had discussed should be passed on to another. The reason for keeping quiet about it was partly a matter of caution: if word leaked out that he was contemplating the purchase of a car, he explained, the inference would be drawn that he had money in the house, and that would be tantamount to inviting thieves to come in and help themselves; but what appeared to be of equal, if not greater, importance was the need to avoid provoking discussion of the matter lest it would arouse envy. The notion of envy is fairly accurately conveyed by the Tolai word varngu. Another word that carries much the same meaning is balabalatubu. Tubu is the ordinary word for fat or corpulent; taken with the duplication of bala, the word as a whole suggests that one is bursting with envy. Like other kakairane, then, envy is experienced in the bowels; unlike other feelings known to the Tolai, however, no clue to its presence is registered in facial or other expression. This is in line with

WORK, AMBITION, AND ENVY

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experience elsewhere l l and suggests, insofar as envy appears to be as universal as other basic affects, that it is not innate in the way that, for example, shame or anger are, but that it is rooted, rather, in the inescapable processes of human ontogeny, as some psychoanalysts have proposed (e.g., Abraham 1968:340; Klein 1957). For present purposes, however, the importance of the fact that envy cannot be read in the face makes its attribution even more a matter of inference than is true with other affects, based presumably on the projection onto others of what one recognizes as envy in oneself. It is interesting from this point of view that among the Tolai the attribution of envy must rank as one of the commonest motives invoked, in some instances by way of explaining one's own frame of mind, more frequently perhaps in order to explain the conduct of others. On the first score, for example, when shopping once in a Rabaul supermarket I greeted the young woman at the checkout counter in standard Tolai fashion: "A boina nilaun?" i.e., "How are things?" (Literally, "a good life?") "Not exactly," she replied; she had "family problems." When I asked what kind of family problems, she simply said "a varngu." It was as though her use of the term made any further explanation unnecessary. For the Tolai envy was provoked above all by the sight of another's success. This opens up of course many possibilities. But since success was so often linked to the record of a "big man" in organizing ceremqnies and the like, it will come as no surprise to learn that such figures so often became the focus of envy and the target of their rivals' efforts to bring them low. The story ofToKoai, which emerged in the course of a complex land dispute, is quite typical of its kind. It seems he had gained much renown as a bit na tubuan who had "raised" the tubuan so often that others became envious and decided that he would have to be cut down to size. Accordingly, when ToKoai was preparing once to mount a matamatam, his adversaries divided into four the betel nut (a buai) he had distributed to them to call upon their tubuans to assist at the matamatam so that, in this way, four tubuans would stand instead of the usual one for each buai. The idea was that in "raising" so many tubuans at the matamatam, each of which would need to be recompensed, ToKoai's tambu would be exhausted and he would become a broken man. Again, in the past, according to Labit, who was the oldest Matupi of his day, a favorite way of getting at a "big man" was through his wife or sisters. The period of pregnancy in those days was said to be a dangerous one because so much varngu attached to it that often a "big

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man" was obliged to call on the services of a ritual expert to prepare special protective magic if his womenfolk were to deliver successfully. At the time of my first fieldwork it was in the context ofland disputes that most often one encountered references to envy. The typical kind of case-by no means restricted to Matupit-concerned the purchase of a portion of land on which to plant cocoa. A few years later, when the purchaser was about to see some return on his investment, the original owners would reclaim the land. Customary law offered no adequate protection to purchasers in this kind of case, a situation that was beginning to generate much frustration and resentment. Others, however, spoke in more resigned tones: it was a varngu kai ra tarai, the envy and spite of the people, they would comment, adding at once" a mangana kavevet," "it is our way," as much as to say it was so deep-rooted that it could never be eradicated. Where any kind of business enterprise was concerned there too one could usually count on the presence of envy. The case of Alfred is interesting here, for at the time of my first visit he was just beginning to establish himself as one of the few successful entrepreneurs at Matupit in that period. He himself told me the story of how he began. During the war he had served with the Army on the New Guinea mainland. When the fighting finished he came back to Rabaul. The whole place was in ruins: there were no stores, nothing. He took a job as a driver with a Rabaul transport firm, the proprietor of which, an Australian, had a plantation at Raluana. At the time visiting inspectors were insisting on the clearing up of plantations to prevent the spread of malaria. All the sprouting nuts that lay around were to be disposed of. Alfred was told to help himself, and he fetched what he could back to Matupit. Throughout this period he continued to work as a driver by day; then in the evenings, sometimes until ten at night, he planted his coconuts. At one place, he said, he had six hundred nuts, at another he had not counted them. For twelve years he had continued with the transport firm, earning £4 a month. But at last his palms began to come into bearing and he was able to leave the job; he had built his house, he had put up a copra-drier, and now finally he had opened his store. "But our customs are not as yours," he remarked at this point in his narrative. "I think you have already learned much about our ways. Well, now 1 know that there are two men who are envious of me." A land dispute was indeed in the offing. The claim was that the land on which Alfred had put up his copra-drier did not belong to him; its owners now wanted it restored to them so that they could put it to their own uses. But why,

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he now demanded, hadn't they made any attempt to do anything with the land before he put up his copra-drier? For Alfred his present difficulties stemmed plainly from the varngu of others. And where he was concerned, indeed, envy very rarely appeared far below the surface; in a sense it seemed to be part of the very atmosphere that he breathed. Once, for example, he was telling me about his store. Many Tolai-owned businesses failed, he told me, because they had "too many managers." His own store prospered, however, because he managed it himself and because he kept his stocks replenished. I happened to ask how he acquired his stocks. He mentioned the name of a European, adding immediately that he did not buy from the Chinese because he saw that they grew rich at the expense of the Tolai. He then began to list a number of Chinese who had recently acquired new cars, one of them a Mercedes-Benz. "But we ourselves remain poor." Only a short time before this conversation, however, he himself was being accused of vamgu in a hearing before the village assembly for precisely the same kind of conduct he was so ready to condemn in others-seeking to place obstacles in the way of a younger man who was himself trying to start his own store. In some societies envy is closely associated with the evil eye. The Tolai do not have the notion of the evil eye as such, though they do have the familiar taboo on staring, which is experienced as profoundly distressing; they also point to the destructive power of the eye that is demonstrated in certain contexts relating to the tubuan as well as the one-time association of sorcerers known as iniet. However, as in so many other tribal societies, the association of envy with malignant forms of magic is very clear. Natural causes is not a concept the Tolai find easy to accept, even today, particularly where the person who had died was one who had achieved some prominence. There is the case of ToPapat, for example, who, it may be remembered, had been the first Tolai to own and run a motor vehicle and was one of the wealthiest Matupi of his day. Many years later it was still recalled that his death had not been natural. He had been walking off the gangway of a ship when he slipped and split his skull. For many Matupi, however, it was the work of a sorcerer who was really responsible. ToPapat had a reputation as a great miser; it was said that he would never open his palm, he was so tight-fisted. It was all the more mysterious, therefore, that after his death not a penny of his great wealth was to be found; among some the suspicion was that he had buried it. Some of these comments touching the death of ToPapat carry what

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Pocock (1973:35), discussing the Hindu concept of najar, envy, has called an implication of moral defect, revealed in one's meanness and unwillingness to share. In other cases, however, this factor did not seem to be involved at all. There were for instance a number of cases where the victim of sorcery was a woman, but significantly in none of these was the issue of sexual jealousy raised as a motive for her death; the cause rather was said to lie in resentment of the husband's good fortune in having a wife who was hard-working and had partnered him to prosperity-"mere" envy in Pocock's terms. Because of its association with sorcery, envy was very dangerous. Care always had to be taken to avoid provoking others' envy; there was a need for circumspection in all that one did. Hence, for example, the injunction not to boast, already mentioned. "Koko ra kankan ivai," "do not store up/conceal anger" is another illustration of the same principle at work, for whereas anger is dissipated when its causes can be openly discussed, when resentment is allowed no outlet it grinds away in the belly (i balakadik) and the outcome is always likely to be a sorcery attack. This constraining power of envy has elsewhere been known to have had more far-reaching consequences. Schoeck (1969:46), for example, cites Eric Wolf's concept of institutionalized envy, developed in the context of the latter's studies of peasant communities in Latin America: the ubiquitous fear of such envy, we are told, means that there is no possibility of individual economic advancement and no contact with the outside world through which the community might hope to progress. "No one dares to show anything that might lead people to think he was better. off. Innovations are unlikely. Agricultural methods remain traditional and primitive, to the detriment of the whole village, because every deviation from previous practice comes up against the limitations set by envy." Closer to home, so to speak, within Melanesia itself there is Belshaw's account (cited in Schoeck 1969:58) of how among the people of the Southern Massim "the presence of envy so restricts the leader that, whether in the interests of equality or from the fear of too evidently profiting himself from an innovation, he sometimes refrains from the very undertakings that would further the progress of the whole community." All of this is a far cry from the Tolai situation as I and others have described it. That envy is, as in these other societies, ubiquitous seems undeniable. Indeed, it would be strange if it were otherwise. As Pocock (1973:28) has observed, we do not truly envy, that is, truly covet, something that is not within our reach. We are affected more closely by

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US

the things that just seem to elude our grasp. Accordingly, we might expect that in an egalitarian society like that of the Tolai, lacking any institutionalized forms of social stratification, envy would find fertile ground in which to grow. In a sense this is indeed the case, but the intriguing aspect of the Tolai situation is that despite the rifeness of envy among them, this does not appear to have had the dampening effect on development or innovation so often reported of other tribal and peasant societies in transition. Why this should be so is among a number of interesting questions about envy for which at present we have no adequate explanation. On the immediate issue, however, I suggest that one obstacle to understanding may lie in the way in which so often envy is treated as though it had only a negative aspect; it is seen, that is to say, simply as a factor that constrains. Yet envy may also exert a positive influence, as when it induces not inhibition but emulation, or when inequalities or differences of status appear not so much to fire resentment as to present a challenge. An incident I observed once in the course of a village meeting at Kikila may serve to illustrate the point. The Councillor, Penias, was giving another of his "pep talks," urging the people to work hard and not live idly if they wanted to be strong like the Chinese. He was supported by John Vuia: "It is for us to work hard so that we improve our living standards .... Today we have seen the Chinese grow wealthy: they live well with their money. We too should be strong so that we rule them and not that they should rule us (pi koko dia kure dat)." Here was a reiteration of the familiar Tolai themes of independence and self-assertion that could only be guaranteed by the command of wealth. As we have just seen in some of Alfred's comments, there was indeed much envy of the Chinese at this time. But what John Vuia was saying was that they did not have to accept as inevitable the gulf that had grown up between the two groups; it was up to the Tolai to try to emulate the Chinese. There was in Tolai culture, it would appear, an unremitting tension between envy on the one hand and the desire for achievement on the other: each pulled in a different direction. However, the competitive principle was so deep-rooted in their way of life, lying at the very heart of their most cherished institutions, that the rewards of ambition-at least in the short term-far outweighed the risks of envy.

5 Of Kin, Love, and Anger

In the previous chapter the primary focus was on affect as it was encountered in the context of certain activities with the barest of references to the social relationships of those participating in them. In this chapter, social relationships are central, my concern being with affect as it is experienced in the context of social interaction. This is an aspect of the problem that poses particular difficulties for the anthropologist in the field. Where work is concerned, for example, the researcher may not only be able to observe, but even to participate in many of the tasks that have to be performed, and thus be in a fair position to assess those feelings that accompany the activity or those to which it appears to give rise. Observing what goes on in the process of social interaction is quite a different matter. For even when the opportunities for observation are most favorable, as in many small-scale village societies where so much of life is lived outdoors, there is much that must remain inaccessible to the fieldworker. Patient discussion with, and questioning of, one's informants can overcome these obstacles to some extent but still cannot compensate for the lack of spontaneity and, in some measure, of context, too, that is so important in the pursuit of felt emotion. For all that his circumstances are far from ideal, however, the situation of the ethnographer is rarely entirely bleak. For long now anthropologists have found rich pickings in the observation of live sequences of events, variously referred to as social situations, social dramas, episodes, and the like that have frequently grounded seminal analyses of various aspects of social life. As I hope will emerge presently, similar sources 116

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can be profitably employed in exploring affect, and in what follows I have relied chiefly on material drawn from my records of disputes waged in the village forum, or varkurai, on which to build my own analysis. I would argue, moreover, that such material is particularly valuable if one is seeking to develop a dynamic approach to the problem; it also has the advantage, especially important in an area of inquiry in which the observer's subjectivity is difficult to control, of arming the reader with a body of evidence that allows him to assess for himself the merits of the analysis presented. Inevitably, even in a group that has experienced such transformation of its traditional way of life as the Tolai, to speak of social interaction is still to speak largely of interaction between kin. On Matupit itself, as well as in the relations of Matupi with other Tolai communities, nearly all social interaction is still conceptualized or understood as taking place between categories of kin or affines. Were I aiming to present an account of the system of kinship and affinity in its totality it is clear that reliance on episodes or case material alone would make for a very inadequate analysis. I must stress at once, therefore, that this is not my aim. My hope is rather to show through the evidence of dispute material some of the kinds of emotion that are generated within particular relationships and at the same time to illustrate the emotional tone of these relationships. In addition, I believe that the use of material of this kind has a further value of its own: first, insofar as any dispute is concerned with contested claims, in exposing the emotional roots as distinct from the legal basis of those claims; and, second, in demonstrating how appeal to the emotions can play a central and regular part in dispute-management itself. In the following section I open my account with a fairly straightforward case that turns on a husband's mistreatment of his wife.

Affect in Domestic Contexts The parties to this dispute were a couple in their thirties with three young children. Their marriage appeared to be quite stable, but recently, it was being said, they had not been living well together. I first learned of their difficulties when the matter came before the Councillor and his Committee at a village assembly in Kikila. 1 Like a number of others in Kikila, ToLikun (SC7) had acquired a parcel of land at

Legend Descent Marriage Movement of women

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Figure 5. Relations of dramatis personae in the case ofIaPaep versus ToLikin.

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Napapar, an inland parish, to grow cocoa. His wife, IaPaep (SC2), opened the case by describing a recent visit to Napapar with her husband. There they had worked well together, she said. One day, however, she had been helping her brother Tuvi (SC3) to dig up taro for sale at Rabaul market. ToLikun became angry about that and he started to abuse her in the presence of her brother. Tuvi in turn was very upset (i ga mangana ligur) at what ToLikun had said, telling her that she and the children could go and sleep elsewhere but not at his place. On hearing these words she prepared to leave and come back to Matupit. While they were waiting to board a lorry, her husband approached the kitchen where she stood and began to beat her with the branch of a coconut. Then he pulled her clothes off, and she was much ashamed. When ToLikun was called upon to tell his side of the story, he agreed that he had beaten his wife but denied that he had pulled off her clothes. That was a lie. He had beaten her, he said, because she was always helping her brothers and neglected her responsibilities to her own immediate family. At this point a member of the Committee, ToPirit, turned to ToLikun and began to upbraid him. "You, ToLikun, are a man; formerly you were a 'missionary,' and fighting with your wife like this is not fitting. See here, Tuvi and Levi (SC 1) are married to two of your sisters' daughters and they live well together. As for you, ToLikun, it would be better if you were to mend your ways and show varman for your wife" (boina ba una pukwe kaum kini na taulai upi una man kaum vavina). Tuvi and Tengau (SC4) also spoke, referring to the work they had been doing on the cocoa land ToLikun had bought at Napapar. They had helped with labor and money because of their matuana (i.e., their sister's children whom ToLikun had begotten). They also referred to ToLikun's beating of his wife, saying they did not want that to happen again. "Were we easily stirred to anger" (gala na tutana na kankan tamimir turana), they said, "we would have beaten ToLikun. But we respect him as our brother-in-law just as we would a real brother." The Councillor quickly brought the hearing to a conclusion. ToLikun was clearly in the wrong in having beaten his wife and tearing off her clothes. He was ordered to pay her three fathoms of tambu and four shillings by way of making atonement, and this was produced straightaway. This then was a relatively simple case that was settled fairly quickly, but there are a number of points that need to be clarified if its full significance is to be appreciated. In the first place, among the Tolai, as

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in so many other tribal societies, marriage was regarded as much too important a matter to be left in the hands of the couple alone who were to wed. Even when the union was not actually arranged by the parents or other of their relatives, it was still very much the concern of their respective kin groups-a concern commonly expressed in the passage of bridewealth from the party of the groom to that of the bride as well as in the way the marriage ceremonies were conducted. More particularly, in the Tolai case, marriage was regulated through the moiety system. In its simplest form, such a system generates a model of marriage as an exchange, brother and sister of the one moiety marrying sister and brother of the other. Among the Tolai, however, there was a ban on marriage between close kin, in Tolai parlance ta ra gap, that is, those linked by blood, with the result that "sister-exchange" did not give rise to the same kind of perpetual alliance between affinal groups found in other societies where the regulatory role of the moieties went in tandem with cross-cousin marriage. Despite this, it was very striking that although few marriages recorded at Matupit conformed to the ideal "sister-exchange" or ki varbali type, it frequently transpired that a marriage having once been contracted between two groups the initial bond was reaffirmed and perpetuated in subsequent unions between them in the next or the succeeding generation. The marriages shown in figure 5 illustrate the principle of exchange at work. In this particular case, the two vunatarai concerned occupied hamlets situated in very close proximity, and their interrelations were so dense that it scarcely needs to be said how important it was that tension arising within one marriage should quickly be contained. The view of marriage as an exchange between opposed groups at once highlights the element of tension, and the potential for conflict, in the relations of affines. That the affinal relationship, in particular the one between brothers-in-law, is often likely to be difficult for the Tolai is at once indicated in the use of the expression kaugu tambu. The word "tambu," hitherto encountered in this study to refer only to shell money, is in fact known to many Oceanic languages; in the form tabu or tapu, it has found its way into English as taboo. Generally glossed as holy or sacred, the sense that underlies its various uses in Tolai is probably best conveyed by regarding tambu/taboo as a pointer to boundaries that cannot be crossed without risk (see Epstein 1979b: 164-165). "Kaugu tambu" (my affine) thus refers, from this point of view, to a relationship that is steeped in ambiguity; it is to one's maku, or brother-in-law, that one is entitled to look for cooperation or assist-

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ance, yet the bond is also marked by considerable distance and strain. Being brought up together within the same community helps to ease some of these difficulties, and many barnzaku of my acquaintance at Matupit not only worked well together but appeared to be on excellent terms. Yet watchfulness remained a salient feature of the relationship, as ToLikun's conduct neatly illustrates. As he himself admitted, what aroused his anger was the fact that his wife was giving to her brothers the labor he claimed she really owed to him; plainly he was deeply resentful that she appeared to favor them at his expense. But notice too the image that Tuvi and Tengau sought to present of themselves to the village assembly: they behaved throughout as brothers-in-law should, they declared, assisting with money and work on his cocoa garden, and treating him at all times with proper respect (a variru). Above all, they had not responded to ToLikun's misconduct with anger; in describing her brother's reaction to her being abused, IaPaep used the word "ligur," meaning that Tuvi was distressed or saddened-in a word, Tuvi's aggression was not directed outward toward his brother-in-law but more toward himself. If, in relations between barmaku one tends to be watchful of the other's behavior, the utmost punctiliousness must be observed in one's own if trouble is to be avoided. If the relationship of brothers-in-law is an unstable mixture of helpfulness and hostility, that of brother and sister is almost its mirror image. Brother and sister are thought of as being particularly close, the former ever ready with help and support; the element of trust is evident in the fact that so often it is with a sister that a man "banks" or stores his tambu. For all that, their interaction is also severely hampered by the presence of taboo. Tightly bound by the links of blood, they are yet separated by the differences of their sex, any hint of which must be excluded from their relationship. Although nowadays brother and sister may be seen talking quite freely to one another, it was still the case that an aged sister, who regularly came to clean around her widowed brother's place, was forbidden to sweep up inside the house-her entry was a taboo that only death could end. Viewed in this light it may safely be inferred that the source ofIaPaep's humiliation was not so much the fact that she had been verbally abused by her husband as that this had been done in her brother's presence, a fact that would in tum have provoked his own distress. The implicit sexual reference in the sceneit is possible the abuse contained explicit references too-would have been deeply shaming to them both. 2 But for the purposes of the present discussion it is the relationship of

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husband and wife that holds the most immediate interest. "Una mari kaum taulai," ToLikun was instructed: the question is what mari ("varmari" in the noun form) means in this context. It is by now an anthropological commonplace that the fact that marriage is seen as the affair of groups as much as of individual couples has profound implications for the marital relationship. Although virilocal residence was the general rule, the woman leaving the parental home on marriage to join her husband in his hamlet, she was in no way incorporated into her husband's vunatarai. Throughout her life, she remained a member of her own local lineage, continuing to exercise her rights of enjoyment in the land it claimed as its joint estate and associating herself with all its activities. In a sense, indeed, through her membership of the vunatarai she was bound in perpetuity into a chain of relationships that reached back into the distant past as well as forward into the future. By contrast, the relationship with the husband was ephemeral: when he died the links she had established with him and his kin would be ritually severed and she would become free to return with her children to stay with their own matrilineal kin. The situation described here parallels that found in other tribal societies organized around the principle of matriliny. In many of the latter, the weakness of the marital bond as against the strength of the matrilineage, seen particularly in the power of a woman's kin to intervene in her conjugal arrangements, was clearly reflected in high divorce rates (see, e.g., Gluckman 1950). In these regards, however, the position of the Tolai was quite different. 3 For despite the influence of the matrilineal principle in domestic affairs, the family group brought into being by marriage and the birth of children was an important, tightly knit, and generally stable unit in its own right. The husband was assumed to be the dominant figure in the household; it was he who was said to kure, whose voice was said to carry weight. However, the wife was able to own property in her own right: land as well as cash and tambu. As in other societies of the type, there was a marked division of labor along the lines of sex, although it appeared to me to be more flexible than was the case in those societies of Central Mrica with which I have some familiarity. At any rate, Tolai husbands and wives were often found to be working together as a team in their gardens, while in other contexts they appeared as partners; as noted earlier, a man's success was often attributed to the fact that he had an industrious helpmate who could become in this way the target of a rival's envy. It is the economic aspect of the relationship that is apt to be the most

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accessible to an outside observer, and the one therefore on which an ethnographic account is likely to focus. But the fact that data on the personal and sexual aspects are less easy of access does not render them thereby the less important or the less worthy of consideration. On the contrary, to ignore them would be, in the Tolai case, to miss much of the importance that attaches to the concept of "varmari." Like the Samoan word "alofa," mentioned earlier, "varmari" is sometimes glossed as love, but as with "alofa," too, although there is a measure of overlap between "varmari" and love the two terms operate in separate semantic fields. Watching a film once on TV in the company of a Tolai friend who was visiting me at my home in England gave me an opportunity to explore further the meaning of the word "varmari." The particular episode concerned the "love" of two brothers for the same woman. My friend immediately confirmed what I already understood, that "varmari" was inappropriate in this context: a Tolai woman could not use the expression "Iau mari u" as the equivalent of the words "I love you" addressed by the woman to her lover in the film because "love" here conveyed such an overtly sexual connotation. The term that would ordinarily be used in such a situation was mamainga, want or desire. This of course does not preclude the use of"varmari" in the context of the conjugal relationship. On the contrary, the term is wholly appropriate in this situation because, although the sexual element is plainly present, it also implies the idea of caring for or looking after one another. Where it applies between husband and wife, that is to say, it has to be understood as referring to a total relationship that grows and deepens with time. I found this point of view movingly illustrated in the following incident. One man with whom I was on very close terms had lost his wife a year or so before my return. For some time neither of us spoke of the matter, but then one day, when the moment seemed ripe, I asked if his wife had known for long that she was going to die. He then told me of the final stages of her illness, finishing by describing how toward the end she had called him to her bedside and asked him to kiss her. Then she bade him remember "our love," kamimir varmari, and to care properly for their children. We shall see later that "varmari" assumes significance, and perhaps a rather different meaning, in other contexts. In the case of the conjugal relationship at least, a unit that is so structurally fragile yet so important in other respects, appears to gain a great deal of its strength from the emphasis on "varmari," mutual caring and concern. The second dispute, which concerns a man called Esau, relates to a

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wider set of kin relationships and illustrates something of the sense of grievance that can arise within them, at the same time that it allows us to explore further the notion of "varmari" and to introduce other issues. This matter too came before the Councillor and his Committee at Kikila and was introduced by a young woman called IaBiaii (6D5). She had had to go into the hospital recently, she explained, and had left her two young children in the care of their paternal grandmother IaTaunia (6C5). When she finally came home it was to learn that IaTaunia had been complaining of their misbehavior and that she had told them to go and stay with their own maternal kin, who would look after them. IaTaunia, a woman close to seventy and long a widow, now intervened to say that she had told the children to make a fire so that they could roast some food, but they had simply ignored her. IaBiaii continued, remarking that whenever Esau (6D4), her husband, came home with fish, coconuts, megapode eggs, or any other kind of food, she always gave a share to IaTaunia and her younger sister IaKatai (6C2), also a widow. "I have never done anything wrong so far as the two sisters are concerned. I have always considered their living." IaTaunia, she went on, did not behave like IaKatai, for IaKatai was always good whenever she had to leave her children with her. Stung by this remark, IaTaunia retorted that she would look properly after her two true grandchildren (i.e., the children ofIaLait [6D2] who were of her own lineage, or vunatarai). IaBiaii, incensed in her turn, replied angrily: "From the way she is speaking, you would think some stranger and not Esau had fathered my children." Wholly in keeping with the character of these moots, neither the Councillor nor any member of the Committee made any attempt to intervene throughout these interchanges. IaBiaii continued her story. Tiale (6C6), an elderly man who had by now come to join her on the mat, had told her that IaTaunia was also complaining that she, IaBiaii, used IaTaunia's canoe to collect food for herself and her children. Tiale confirmed this and when IaTaunia demanded to know why he had told IaBiaii of this, he replied that it was because they were barniuruna (matrilinear kin). The Councillor, Penias, now spoke for the first time, asking IaTaunia why she had spoken in that way about the canoe. IaTaunia replied that she was afraid that her own canoe would wear out quickly. Esau had removed the outrigger from his own canoe, and there it just lay under his house. Now they used her canoe the whole time. Then IaBiaii had gone and told Esau what she had said about the canoe. Esau became

r--------------, I I

Legend Descent Marriage

•

•

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•

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I I I I I I

laBati (Talwat)

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laGaria

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ll. liale (6)

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I 0 laTaunJa (5)

o laBiaii (5)

ll. ll. 0 Esau (4) Tialit (3) laLait (2)

Figure 6. Dramatis personae in IaBiaii versus IaTaunia.

I

0

laTeruia (4)

ll. ToPirit (1)

I ll. Turpui (3)

0 laKatai (2)

I I I I I

ll. liakop (1)

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angry and told her that when she left his house he would give her back her canoe. "When I heard what Esau said, I thought: so the house I sleep in I bought with my canoe. Very well, I will leave the house, and he shall return the canoe. Esau and his wife are always talking about me, wondering why I am always at them to sell a few things so as to accumulate tambu just as the Councillor has advised us." 1aTaunia also complained that recently when she had gone to sell kabang at the Rabaul market 1aBiaii had not helped. 1aBiaii replied that earlier they had worked together to prepare the lime and sell it. They had in fact made one hundred fathoms of tambu with which to "purchase" a bride for Tialit (6D3), a younger brother of Esau at present working on Buka. Then one day when Tiakop (6Cl) came on a visit from Talwat she asked him if there were more lime available there. He said there was. 1aTaunia broke in: "I bought that lime with a little tambu. Anyway, Tiale is not your maternal kinsman. I am true kin of Tiale." Throughout all this Esau himself had been keeping in the background, sitting at the base of a house to the rear. Penias now asked him what he had to say about the canoe. Esau replied to the effect that the way 1aTaunia was behaving it was as though some entirely different woman had borne him. Now he wanted her to leave his house. 4 Penias turned to 1aTaunia: "What was the reason you spoke so about 1aBiaii's children that they should go to their own kin? There you were in the wrong. And what do you think about the canoe?" IaTaunia: My canoe will return to me and I shall leave Esau's house because of what he has just said. Penias: And you, Esau, what do you think? Esau: No, let her leave, for her behavior toward me and the children is not good. Penias: All right. Let us finish this quickly. Committee: The Committee wants to make peace between you and not having you living apart.

Turpui (6C3), brother to 1aTaunia and mother's brother (matuana) to Esau, had hitherto been sitting to one side. Now he stood up and addressed himself angrily to Esau. "So truly you are going to buy the house with the canoe? This canoe, you will pay for it (una tokomia), because you have used it to catch fish and all the time you have worked with it. Where is your 'love' (varman) for your mother? Let us take this matter to the Government so that it judges you, for you

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have shown contempt for your own mother. The house is not a house of copper; it is just an old kunai house [i.e., one made of kunai grass] and it is perfectly all right that 1aTaunia should stay there." Esau muttered: "All right, take it to the kiap if you like." At this point ToPirit (6Dl), who was on this occasion sitting as a member of the Committee, began to speak. First he addressed 1aTaunia quietly and coaxingly. "Well, Taunia, what do you think now?" 1aTaunia, however, was not disposed to yield. "I have nothing to say. I want Esau to return my canoe. ToPirit turned to Esau: Esau, let us think a little of those who bore us. We are not wild animals that live in the bush. When an animal gives bitth, the offspring scatter and never return to help their mother. But we are not animals because the spirit of God rests within us. It is we people who matter. Esau, when you were a child laTaunia cared for you, she fed you and clothed you and brought you up until now you are married and have established your home. If IaTaunia behaves ill toward you, nevettheless it still behoves you to help her. Take myself: I have many children and IaTaunia does not look after them. I do this myself. Now then, what do you say about the house? Remember, Esau, a canoe is not heavy, but laTaunia is. What is a house? A house means a family, it means a mother and her children, but a canoe is just a piece of wood, of no importance. Will you look after IaTaunia? Esau remained silent, and ToPirit continued: Do not spit upon her (koko una pipia tana), for you came fotth from her, not from a canoe. A canoe is one thing, a person something different. IaTaunia is now very old, she has become again like a child. Do not hurt her feelings (koko una vakadikia) with your talk. If a canoe should be damaged or lost that is no matter, but if laTaunia dies that does matter. [He turned now to the old woman.] Now you, Taunia, do not distress yourself about the house. If it falls into disrepair, Esau will build another for you. If he does not, he will stand before the varkurai again. As for your grandchildren, you should care for them properly, you should call for them to stay with you and give them things as you did before. Penias now added a final few words. He said that Esau should look after the canoe and that IaTaunia should continue to stay in the house. He asked Esau again what he thought about the house. Esau now agreed that IaTaunia should continue to stay there. "Very well, let the case finish now. It is good that you should all be reconciled (varmaram)." A few days later the canoe was lying at its usual station at the motonoi and Esau was using it again with his mother's permission. In approaching a dispute of this kind, perhaps the first thing we want to understand is what was at issue between the parties. Disputes are of

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different kinds. In some cases what is in contention will be clear from the very outset: the complainant can point to some specific breach of entitlement-for example, that the other party stole his property, committed adultery with his wife, or planted crops on his land without permission-for which he seeks appropriate redress. But in a small community where so often the parties to a dispute are neighbors and kin, where that is to say they are involved in multiplex or multistranded relations that have been in being for some time, matters are likely to be more complex. In such circumstances, reciprocity is often the primary mechanism that secures the fulfilment of those obligations that so sedulously define the relations of kinsfolk. But those same circumstances also tend to encourage individuals to be constantly on the lookout for any indication of slight, inattention to, or disregard for, their own entitlements; as already remarked, watchfulness is the character trait that is most likely to impress an observer. Accordingly, many disputes point not so much to some specific wrong for which there is an appropriate remedy or penalty, but rather to the way tension has developed within and comes to permeate some particular set of social relationships. An observer following the case sees clearly enough that the parties feel deeply aggrieved, but what is upsetting them may not always be immediately plain nor easy to disentangle. Approaching the present dispute from this point of view, we may begin by noting how IaBiaii opened the case by complaining of her mother-in-Iaw's conduct toward her grandchildren, telling them that they should go and stay with their own "true" kin. Soon it became clear that this was only part of a more pervasive sense of grievance against the old woman, whose behavior was all the more reprehensible becauseso IaBiaii asserted-she herself had always acted as a model daughterin-law. In support of this point, she noted how differently IaTaunia's sister IaKatai behaved when the children were left in her care. To the outside observer there was something strange in all this. It was true of course that IaBiaii's children were not IaTaunia's matrilineal kin, they belonged to a different vunatarai. However, the term used of the grandparent/grandchild relationship is the reciprocal tubuna, which applies both matrilaterally and patrilaterally: whether one's son's children or one's daughter'S, all are equally grandchildren. Even if the children had been disobedient, telling them to go and be looked after by their own matrikin was plainly wrong, as Penias was to point out. IaTaunia's conduct was more than merely wrong, however; it was also very unusual, for the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren was

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ordinarily very relaxed and marked by mutual affection, especially in the latters' earlier years. For IaTaunia thus to affirm her own breach of the norms was to suggest that there were long-standing grievances on her side, too. IaTaunia had, in fact, a number of complaints to bring against IaBiaii; but by far the most serious of these seemed to relate to the use of the canoe. Once again, to the outsider this concern about the canoe seemed excessive. I think it also appeared excessive to many of the villagers present at the hearing-hence ToPirit's remarks that laTaunia was becoming again like a child, with the implication that one had to make allowances for some of the things she said and did. As against this, it should also be said that there were other disputes that were grounded in similar complaints about the overuse of one's canoe by others, suggesting that laTaunia's response was also rooted in more general Tolai attitudes. At Matupit, canoes were necessary for getting to and from some of the main garden areas as well as the egg-lands. But not everyone owned a canoe. Canoes were in fact in short supply-the timber with which to make them was no longer available at Matupit-and they had to be puchased from other communities at considerable expense in cash and shell money. Many owners thus came to treat their canoes as an investment, each person using or borrowing the vessel, however closely related to the owner, being required to make a payment into the "canoe account"-a practice referred to by Turpui when he told Esau that he would have to pay for the use of the canoe (una tokomia; the noun form is totokom). In this highly "monetized" culture, a canoe was money. But as an item of property it was of more than purely commercial value: in it was invested one's sweat and one's labor; usually, too, it carried the name of a patuana. 5 In these regards the canoe appeared as an extension of the self and, where it was being borrowed by so many close kin and affines, it served both to trigger and to express the tensions that were rarely far below the surface in such relationships. So at least it appeared in the present case, one interesting feature of which is that although initially the matter appeared as a dispute primarily between laBiaii and her mother-in-law, as soon as the issue of the canoe was raised laBiaii herself receded into the background, and it was the relationship of mother and son that came to emerge as crucial. It had been known for some time that laTaunia was dissatisfied with certain aspects of Esau's behavior. She had complained before that he had not gone to Napapar to help in the work in the cocoa gardens that had been acquired there by the vunatarai. This was tantamount to

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saying that he gave domestic affairs precedence over those of the lineage. If there was what has sometimes been called a nuclear relationship among the Tolai, this would certainly be the mother-child bond. It was not simply that, as ToPirit had expressed it, it was to one's mother that one owed one's birth, for this was the case everywhere. It was rather that, in this matrilineal society, it was the link with one's mother that immediately determined one's group affiliation and all that flowed from it. Add to this that the mother was the embodiment of the principle of reciprocity par excellence: in childhood it was she who took care of so many of one's needs, and later, as one came to manhood, it was her labor and tambu that enabled one to acquire a wife; on her side, in her own later years, particularly if she were widowed, she would take up residence in the hamlet of a son, to whom she now looked as her chief support. Although in purely personal terms the relationship was not always very close, emotionally it was strongly charged. From a son's point of view, it used to be said, a mother's tears were binding; on her part there was no grief like that of a mother who had lost a son in the prime of his young manhood. For all that, it seems likely that even in the past the triangular relationship of mother, son, and son's wife was always likely to provide a fertile source of tension. But now it appeared that the tension was being aggravated by the processes of change that were at work, altering the triadic balance. The evidence of other disputes similar to the one under discussion here indicated a tendency among some of the younger men to align themselves more closely with their wives than with their mothers, producing a smouldering resentment on the latters' part. Similarly, in the present case what plainly rankled with the old woman was that when IaBiaii complained to Esau about her, he sided with his wife to the extent of telling his mother to leave his house. The whole of this dispute, I have suggested, has its roots in the complex and frequently conflicting feelings generated within a given set of culturally defined relationships. These feelings find or are given expression again in the context of the public hearing of the dispute; in everything they say and do it is evident that the parties are very much engaged emotionally. I have noted how, once the matter of the canoe was raised, IaBiaii retired to the wings, and it was Esau who occupied center stage. At this point, had he taken a more conciliatory approach he might have won some public sympathy. But Esau was under considerable strain himself, and he blurted out angrily that IaTaunia should leave the house. Here he had put himself plainly in the wrong: he had

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gone too far. Turpui, his mother's brother and leader of the local descent group, was deeply incensed and rounded on him. His suggestion that the matter be taken before the kiap's court was spoken in the heat of anger-as he admitted to me later; it was probably his way of indicating that for such an offense Esau deserved to go to prison and not to be taken as any serious expression of intention. Such a course of action would have done nothing to heal the rift, and the Committee, having already indicated that it wished to see an end to the squabbling, did not pursue the point. Esau was, I think, deeply shamed by Turpui's outburst and lapsed into sullenness (i kibubu). IaTaunia, for her part, was also proving stubborn: herself angered by Esau's public stance, she was digging her heels in, unprepared to yield. In the face of such obstinacy on the part of both protagonists, the outlook for a resolution of their dispute looked at that moment rather bleak. Yet within a short time a reconciliation had been achieved. In such seemingly unpromising circumstances how was this change brought about? As I have discussed in more detail elsewhere (Epstein 1974b), the settlement of the dispute and the return of the parties to amicable relations owed much to the skillful mediation ofToPirit who, while he counted in Tolai terms as a son ofIaTaunia and a brother of Esau, was nevertheless an outsider to the dispute because he belonged to a different segment of the lineage, and so was in the best position to adopt the role of conciliator. Here, however, I want to dwell rather on the means of persuasion by which he achieved his purpose. In following what went on at a village moot on Matupit one was often reminded of Gluckman's concept of "the reasonable man" which he saw as central to the understanding of the judicial process among the Barotse (Gluckman 1955). Gluckman was patently intrigued by the way Lozi litigants, in the course of setting out their testimony, would themselves invoke a set of standards-showing, for example, that they had acted as a reasonable father, husband, and so on should-that offered the judges a kind of juridical tuning fork with which to measure their claims. Similarly, in the present dispute, we find IaBiaii presenting herself as behaving as a proper daughter-in-law should or referring to IaKatai to show how a good mother-in-law would conduct herself; she herself was not questioned, however, about her own conduct as a daughter-in-law, as almost certainly she would have been in an Mrican court. It is in ToPirit's appeal to mother and son that we come closer to the Mrican model. Toward IaTaunia herself he uses cajolery and seeks to reassure her: if the house fell into disrepair Esau would build her another or he would

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find himself before the varkurai again. With Esau, however, he invoked the norms and values of kinship that all "reasonable" Tolai acknowledged and invited Esau to consider his position in light of those norms and values. A point worth stressing here is that, while warning Esau that he was coming dose to violating these norms, there was no attempt to humiliate him. On the contrary, ToPirit offered a measure of understanding and even sympathy. Old women, he acknowledged, are notoriously difficult; as a "reasonable man" Esau should not only be able to recognize that, but to make allowances for it. But to treat the matter as though it were reasonableness alone that was at work would be, I believe, a serious mistake, because it would ignore the way in which many of the norms and values in question were powerfully cathected. When ToPirit invited Esau to "think a little of those who bore us" he was not merely invoking a legal or even a moral norm, he was also appealing to some ofEsau's deepest feelings. Ultimately, that is, the appeal was an emotional appeal, and appropriately its most dramatic expression came right at the end with ToPirit's remark that if a canoe should be damaged or even lost that was no matter, but if IaTaunia died that was something that did matter. Soon, he seemed to imply, she would be dead, and then it would be too late to make amends. As will be seen again in a later context, mentioning the names of the dead in the course of the hearing of a dispute can produce a profound emotional response. Here ToPirit, in suggesting that IaTaunia could shortly be expected to join the ranks of the ancestors, was making a final powerful emotive appeal that it would have been difficult for Esau to resist. He capitulated, and the way was open to "a varmaram," the reconciliation that would restore varmari, "love," to their relations. The whole dispute, I have suggested, had its roots in the complex emotions generated within a particular set of dose kin and affines; what we can see now, too, is the part that emotion also plays in healing the rifts that have opened up among them. Social relations on Matupit, and the relations of the islanders vis-avis other Tolai, can be envisaged as a series of concentric circles of increasing inclusivity. First, there is the individual household, the unit ordinarily associated with a man and his wife and their growing children. This was the locus of the dispute between ToLikun and IaPaep; however, as that case showed, the household is an independent unit in only a very limited sense. Then there is the hamlet, made up of a small number of contiguous households. "Ownership" of a hamlet vests in perpetuity in a local descent group or vunatarai, but the social composi-

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tion of the hamlet can be quite variable, including different categories of kin as well as of course of affines. In the case of Esau the main protagonists lived together in the same hamlet; other members of the matrilineage lived close at hand within the same village section. Beyond the hamlet and the village section the entire island is linked in a dense mesh of ties based on the assumption of common descent or affinity. Similar sets of ties link the people of Matupit to other Tolai communities, each locally based vunatarai on the island tending to have its own distinctive set of "foreign" relations. It is in these wider areas of vunatarai and community that the third dispute, that between Matinut and TiPaul, is located. Matinut and TiPaul were two senior men of Kikila, but the hearing of their dispute was formally initiated by two of Matinut's matrilateral ortho-cousins, Tua and Nakuen, both of whom had at one time lived at Matupit, but in recent years had resided in the Raluana district. Tua's opening statement was in effect to reopen a case that had, it appeared, first been heard and settled nine or ten years before: the claim was that TiPaul had wrongfully taken tambu from Tua which, after the varkurai, he had promised to return but that in fact he had never done so right down to the present day. A number of elders recalled the earlier case and the judgment entered, but TiPaul himself refused to commit himself. "I am in the dark still," he said. "I don't remember anything about it. Did I know that they had 'judged' me on that occasion I would agree." But TiPaul was not to be allowed to hide behind what Nakuen called "a barrier of lies," and he was finally pressed into agreeing to repay the amount of tambu still owing to Tua. The question of the tambu settled, Nakuen at once proceeded to raise another complaint against TiPaul. He referred to inquiries the Native Land Commissioner was carrying out at that time in connection with a general survey ofTolai land ownership, and alleged that TiPaul had told the kiap that he, TiPaul, "ruled" at Matupit. One day, Nakuen reported, the officer arrived at Raluana and asked him about TiPaul. He replied that he did not "know" TiPaul: TiPaul was of a different vunatarai. He had then explained that he himself, together with Tua and Matinut, "ruled" at Matupit, and their father at Raluana. He told the kiap that he should consult his sister IaKolot at Nangananga to confirm his account. Finally, he concluded: "I am a native of Matupit. I am a bit na pia, an owner of land by aboriginal right, at Matupit. As for TiPaul, I do not 'know' him." Matinut himself then took up the case and embarked upon a lengthy

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account of his clan's history from its origins long ago on New Ireland to its present dispersal throughout many parts of the Gazelle Peninsula. Here at Matupit, he concluded, he and his brothers (i.e., Tua and Nakuen) were "owners of the soil." They were made angry therefore when TiPaul set himself up as though he had the "rights of administration" in the land. "How can this be when we three kure? At present it is as though we three were living as strangers at Matupit. The forebear of TiPaul was ToPulpulung, and he came to Matupit to live under the wing of our patuana." This claim immediately set off a series of angry exchanges which illuminate a variety of Tolai ideas but also reveal the depth of feeling that lay behind the dispute that the hearing was now bringing into the open. TiPaul: Don't talk in that way. Oh, I know very well that you want to cut out my forebears. I am a native of Matupit, and my ancestors too were from Matupit. Tua: When ToPulpulung died where was he buried? TiPaul: They buried him at Raulai [i.e., a hamlet within Kikila], and ToVakit too. Tua: ToPulpulung and ToVakit died and they took the bodies for burial to Davaon because they were not from Matupit. What you are saying is all lies. Nakuen: TiPaul, you had no father to instruct you about this land. As for your arrival at Matupit, we have seen no father who accompanied you. We know that you have no kakalei [i.e., a claim to land as of aboriginal matrilineal right] here at Matupit, and that is the truth. Matinut: We do not know you, TiPaul [i.e., as a member of the vunatarai]. What we know is that you are from Kunakunai. Now you can start off and make your way back there to live in your own place. You are not from here. I, Matinut, am a Matupi. I ask that IaKolot explain our position.

IaKolot explained that as the eldest of them all, she had received the varvateten, or testimony, concerning the vunatarai lands from her mother's brother as well as from her mother herself, and she went on to confirm all that Matinut, Tua, and Nakuen had said. As to TiPaul's claim that his patuana had been buried at Matupit, that was a lie: when one of his ancestors died here, he was taken to Davaon for burial. TiPaul countered this, remarking that he had his own knowledge too.

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"I shall say no more. I shall stand apart, and I shall inform my sister's sons. I shall give this information to them, not to you three." The atmosphere became more embittered as at one point Matinut, Tua, and Nakuen began to chant in unison, "Where are you from, where are you from, you who are without a father, where are you from?" Finally they broke off, shouting to TiPaul that he should pack his belongings and get back to Kunakunai. But TiPaul remained unbowed, calling back that there was none who would remove him from the lands that were his at Matupit. Matinut and the others had been brought up at Raluana, and it was they who lacked proper "instruction" about the lands here. For the moment, after this bout of mutual altercation and trading of insults, the parties seemed to have exhausted themselves, but now the case took a fresh turn as Tua demanded where the money and tambu were for the land. When TiPaul expressed puzzlement, Tua quickly enlightened him: "All that land you claim as yours-the land on which they gather the eggs. For three years now you have looked after the egg-lands; now we wish to take them at last." Issue seemed to be joined again and TiPaul responded fiercely. "So that is what you want? You want to remove me from the egg-lands? All right, if you wish to claim that land you will have to cut my throat first-then you can have it." At this point a member of the Committee intervened to remark that today for the first time they learned that Matinut and TiPaul were not of one vunatarai. "Previously we had always thought of you as one." Discussion returned to the question of the origins of TiPaul and his patuana on which a number of speakers offered their opinions without advancing the case in any noticeable way until at length Kaputin, the most senior member of the Committee on this occasion, spoke. "I lived in close proximity to the old men of Matinut," he said. "A portion of my own land lies in the middle of theirs. But now I ask you three to listen to what I say. All of us here are now satisfied that the land belongs to you three. But I beg of you to show pity on (amutal a mari) TiPaul. Let him eat a little of the eggs. For he is old, and there are not many years left to him. When he dies you will claim that land for yourselves and not the uterine nephew of TiP au1." Nakuen responded to this appeal by saying that they did not want to be "swallowed" up by TiPaul. He had been in charge of the egg-lands for the past three years, and now he should leave. But Nakuen also indicated that he was prepared to be "reasonable." "The way I see it is

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this. If TiPaul looks after the egg-lands, and takes the levy for the eggs collected there, then it is only right that he should think of Matinut too, for he is in the same position as TiPaul. Both of them are equally old." There were murmurs of assent to this throughout the gathering. ToPirit, on this occasion a junior member of the Committee, said: "See, TiPaul, all the people who are listening to the case want you to share with Matinut. What do you think, TiPaul? Do you agree to what they suggest?" Matinut, sensing perhaps that things were moving his way, seemed keen to continue the battle, declaring that from today TiPaul would leave their lands. "All should hear my words. If anyone wishes to tokom [here, to acquire the usufruct] the land, he should approach him and not TiPaul. ... " But Kaputin quickly intervened again. "Let's not start all over again. It is time that this is finished. Let us ask again what they think [of the suggestion that had been made], and if they are in agreement let them shake hands." Each of the parties now agreed to the suggestion that Matinut and TiPaul should share the profits of the egglands and as the case concluded N akuen rose to his feet and began to make a speech saying how pleased he was at the outcome. TiPaul too said he was glad, but added that what had been said of his illegitimacy was not good. But he was cut off as Kaputin called them together to shake hands. He then invited them all to come to his place the following day, when he would prepare a little food and they would sit down and eat together as a mark that peace and amity had been restored between them. This had been a complex and bitter dispute in which many offensive and deeply wounding personal remarks had been exchanged and a variety of grievances aired. The latter related to different events and to different periods of time, so that it was not immediately clear to the outside observer what lay at the heart of the matter. The hearing opened by dragging up a dispute of a decade before when TiPaul had been ordered to return to Tua the tambu he had wrongfully taken from him, a judgment with which, it was now alleged, he had never complied. This aspect of the case indicates the long memory that the Tolai have in matters of this kind-a sense of wrong is nurtured and never allowed to be forgotten until there has been full and proper redress. Yet this still leaves unanswered the question why an unsettled debt of ten years' standing should have been raised at this particular moment. It was noticeable that TiPaul himself, in reply to the opening charges now being

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laid by Tua and Nakuen, was being singularly vague and noncommittal. "Iau tuptup," he declared: he was in the dark about the whole business and could not remember any judgment against him. But he appeared to be no less in the dark about the others' present intentions; in such circumstances the obvious tactic was to bide his time until the direction the case was taking became clearer. That the reopening of the earlier tambu dispute was a tactical ploy was confirmed by ToPirit with whom I later discussed the details of the hearing: it had been introduced simply as a point from which the case might "jump" (pi na pil). Had Tua and Nakuen come to the point more directly, ToPirit explained, it would have made a rather obvious display of their desire to lead the group. However, by raising a matter in which TiPaul was clearly at fault, and one to which he had no effective reply, they put him at a serious disadvantage. What then was the main issue between the parties? The most specific grievance, which only emerged toward the end of the hearing, related to the right to control and take the profits of the egglands. TiPaul had been looking after these for the past few years, and Matinut appeared to feel that he was now entitled to a turn. Matinut could feel that he had indeed genuine grounds for complaint because the older men at Matupit at this time had few opportunities for earning cash; there was still little copra for sale and since their cocoa gardens were not yet in bearing, the egg levy was a particularly valued economic resource for them. It is not hard to see then why Matinut was anxious to see TiPaul "removed." It is all the more striking, therefore, despite the forthright and unequivocal way in which he stated his complaint, how quickly he accepted the situation once TiPaul agreed to share the profits with him. Here too then there was a suggestion of a quite specific and concrete issue, of unquestioned importance in itself, serving at the same time to allow the ventilation of grievances of a more intangible kind. This at any rate was the view stated quite explicitly by ToPirit. As he saw it, the dispute over the egg-lands was no more the crucial issue than the complaint about the tambu. The point was, he emphasized, that Matinut and TiPaul had always been regarded as belonging to the same vunatarai. TiPaul, however, had taken it upon himself to act as its "big man" and treated Matinut, usually a quiet and inoffensive man, as someone of no consequence. Matinut had submitted patiently to this treatment, but the last straw was when TiPaul sought to have his own name recorded by the Native Land Commissioner as leader of the group. Had I not noticed, ToPirit asked me finally, how they demanded that on their

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death the land should not go to TiPaul's uterine nephew but to Matinut's, a young man still in college. Interwoven then with questions of legal entitlement and economic advantage was the issue of personal precedence and amour propre. The emotional undercurrents in the case are seen very clearly in the way closely reasoned argument would suddenly give way to impassioned outbursts directed at the main protagonists' respective personae. This aspect of the case is reflected most plainly perhaps in the attempt of Matinut and his supporters to deny TiPaul his local identity as a "native" of Matupit, and in this way to repudiate any claim that he had to be a member of their vunatarai. The argument that TiPaul was not a "true" Matupi had two strands to it. In the first place, the local lineage from which he had sprung was located not at Matupit but at Davaon on the other side of Rabaul harbor: the "proof" of this was that when his patuana ToPulpulung died his body was returned there for burial in vunatarai land. As for the underlying venom, that was made plain to all in the chant "Where are you from, TiPaul? You who are without a father, where are you from?" The second strand touched on this very reference to TiPaul's illegitimacy. In a matrilineal society like that of the Tolai, one's legal status is acquired through one's mother, and one is affiliated by birth therefore to her lineage and clan. Bastardy might thus appear to be an irrelevance. It might seem to follow therefore that what makes the reference to one's illegitimacy, particularly in a public arena, so deeply insulting is that it brands one's mother as a slut. But that would be an inadequate interpretation of the situation being considered here. For the Tolai also stress the importance of the patrilaterallink in a variety of contexts. 7 For the moment, however, it is the close personal bond between father and son that needs to be noted, reflected in the way a growing lad would spend a good deal of his time in the company of his father. So, for example, accompanying his father to the gardens was an important part of the learning process not simply in agricultural or magical techniques but also in regard to the histories and boundaries of the various parcels of land through which they had passed, and other matters he would later be able to put to use in the administration of his own group's affairs. This was the point Nakuen was making when he declared: "TiPaul, you had no father to instruct you about the land. And as for your arrival at Matupit, we have seen no father who came with you." TiPaul, in short, had no claim to varkurai at Matupit because he lacked the necessary knowledge for the task. TiPaul might well

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have spent all or nearly all his days at Matupit but ultimately, such was the claim, he remained a "stranger." But Matinut, Tua, and Nakuen seemed intent on pressing the case against TiPaul even further than this: they wished to deny that he was a member of the vunatarai. The concept of vunatarai is quite an intricate one, and elsewhere (Epstein 1969:160-164) I have in fact used the data in TiPaul's case to explore some of its complexities. Here, therefore, I need touch briefly only on those points that are germane to present concerns. The first of these is that if the vunatarai were simply a descent group membership of which was defined by strict reference to genealogy alone, the question whether one was or was not a member would hardly arise or should at least be capable of quick settlement. In practice, however, the vunatarai was a highly flexible unit membership of which at any given time depended not only on genealogical ties but on the capacity of the group's "big man" to attract remoter kin to come and live "under his wing" or to join him in his various enterprises. In time, those who regularly stood together, offering each other support by contributing tambu on the occasion of a death or in the mounting of a ceremony or some other activity that required cooperation, came to be regarded within the wider community as close kin, members of a united vunatarai. This was the situation referred to by the member of the Committee who remarked: "Today for the first time we learn that you are of different vunatarai. Previously we had always thought you were one." But now Matinut and the others appeared to be intimating that they wished to "break" kinship. This was a serious matter-there was a suggestion that this was going too far, and at last the Committee had a handle on the case. Of particular interest is the mixture of authority and persuasion with which Kaputin brought the contending parties together. Legal entitlement had to be acknowledged, and here the right clearly lay with Matinut. But having been reassured on that score, Matinut was reminded that there had to be a place for "love," too, for varmario We observe here the same emotive appeal encountered earlier in the hearing of Esau's case-TiPaul was now an old man whose days were numbered and who deserved their pity. Nakuen was quick to see that the point applied equally to Matinut and, although Matinut and TiPaul both maintained a brief show of defiance, the matter was formally closed when Kaputin invited them to mark the varmaram by joining him in a meal the following day. As the gathering rose, people began moving around shaking hands-after all the harsh things that had been

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said there was an evident, almost palpable, sense of release now that amity-varmari-had been restored.

The Role of Anger The disputes we have been considering had their roots in different sets of social relationships and were triggered by a sense of grievance that took a variety of forms. Common to all these situations, however, was the way grievance invariably provoked anger, anger that could quickly be rekindled in the context of the varkurai itself, leading to heated and wounding exchanges between the protagonists. This then is an appropriate point for a closer look at the affect of anger and the part it plays in social life. Once again an episode encountered in the course of my first fieldwork seems to offer the most helpful way of introducing and coming to grips with the issues. The matter on this occasion was considered of such gravity that the hearing was conducted at Ramp before two of the island's three village councillors and all three committees. Although many of those assembled to listen to the case presumably knew what it was about, the hearing proceeded as though this were not so, and only gradually did I discover why it was regarded so seriously. A group of men had recently gone down by lorry to work the blocks of land that had been acquired by Matupi at the Vudal resettlement scheme. On their return to Matupit they learned that the driver, a man called Emil, had claimed to have spent £60 on them. Now they wanted to know what exactly he had meant by this. Emil, speaking so quietly that he had to be told frequently to speak up-something quite unusual in these cases-agreed that he had spoken of having spent £60, but on the lorry, not on them. John Vuia, who was seated on a chair near the complainants, now requested leave to speak and asked the Committee to inquire of Emil how he had obtained the £60 since it was he, John, himself who looked after the passbook relating to the lorry "account." Emil explained that £30 was John's own money, and the rest came from the vehicle "account." The money had been spent on fuel, repairs, a new tire, and a number of other things. Asked how he had obtained John's money, Emil said he had approached John's wife, IaKivung. When he got back

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to Vudal he had told John all about it, saying that the lorry would return the £30 to him. John now asked that Emil should explain how they came to buy a new tire and how the old one was destroyed. There was no reply to this, and John sought leave to speak himself. He described how Emil had destroyed the tire when they were working on the road one day near Vudal. Emil was driving the lorry and John's son, also called ToVuia, and a number of others, were engaged in filling in the potholes with small stones and earth. They told Emil that when he came to a bad patch in the road he should stop so they could alight and get to work leveling the road. But Emil paid no heed to what they said and just drove on. Since the sides of the lorry had been removed, there was a danger of their being thrown off the back, and they remonstrated with Emil. Emil flew into a rage and, noticing a tree lying in the roadside, he drove the lorry straight at it. They were all flung off the back of the lorry and ToVuia's son was almost killed, while one of the other lads had a spade-cut through his shoulder. The lorry came to a halt, Emil got out and slammed the door, swearing that the "fucking" lorry could stay where it was, and told one of them to take the key. ToVuia walked back to Vudal to tell his father what had happened. The latter asked if they had done anything to give Emil offense, but the son denied this. They went back to the vehicle together, and they saw the tire. Emil himself was nowhere to be seen. John's story was confirmed by all the lads who had been on the lorry. One of them said that Emil had wanted to kill them that day: he had driven toward a tree, stopped, and suddenly gone into reverse. ToVuia was thrown off the lorry onto the ground. The lorry came on and would have run over him but for a stump of tree that held one of the wheels. Asked what had made him so angry, Emil claimed that three of them had insulted him and put him to shame (dital ga vamila iau).8 But this was not the only aspect of Emil's behavior that gave cause for complaint. Through his contacts with administrative officials John Vuia had acquired a government contract to clear the roads around Vudal which would bring in a little more cash for those who were working down there. A problem arose, however, one day when the workers approached Emil to ask for their pay. Emil referred them to John himself. At issue here was the question of what had happened to the sum of £100 Emil had received from the kiap. Emil claimed he had deposited it in the bank because his name was on the passbook. John admitted this

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was so, but pointed out that it was he who looked after the lorry and Emil was supposed to hand over all its earnings to him. When, after further discussion of the matter of the money, ToNaia, of the Kurapun Committee, summed up by noting that Emil was in the wrong on both counts, Emil replied: "It is true that I stand alone and there are many who stand as one against me. So I know I cannot defeat them." He used here the English word "win" (pa ina win diat-I cannot win against them), which seemed to annoy the Committee, which proceeded to upbraid Emil. ToNaia himself said he was satisfied that what the others said was true and a man from Rarup, ToVulia, supported him. "This is just like the rest of your behavior," he said. Challenged by Emil to say what this meant, ToVulia embarked on a lengthy account of Emil's various misdemeanors. Among a number of incidents mentioned there was the occasion when ToVulia had a load of passengers aboard his own lorry when they met Emil and ToVaninar coming from the opposite direction. Emil suggested that they should block the road to deceive ToVulia into thinking that the vehicle had run out of petrol. Everyone climbed off ToVulia's lorry to push it to the other side of the road. As soon as they drove off they heard the engine of Emil's lorry start up again. ToVaninar later told him how ashamed he had been .... Then there was the other time he had threatened to run down ToBiaii ... . ToVulia was supported by another man from Rarup, Panaia. Everyone knew Emil's ways, he said-there was no thought for anyone (pa i nunure ra varmari). He referred to what seems to have been a general complaint against Emil that when people wanted to board the lorry he never stopped properly, and women in particular had to clamber aboard as best they could. Nor would he stop to allow passengers to alight at their destination. When the Committee proceeded to read him a lecture on the rights of passengers and the duties of a driver Emil offered as an excuse that he behaved as he did because those who sought a lift would often get off without paying the fare. Much more might well have been said on this and other scores, but John Vuia himself brought them back to the point by saying that he wished to settle the matter of the wages of those who had worked on the road. His name was on the lorry. And when that sort of thing happened people would think that he was to blame. He was regarded as a leader here, he said, and it was shameful for him to stand before the varkurai in matters of this kind. A discussion followed on what money was actually due to each of the workers until Emil finally agreed to pay them all and to recoup John the £30 by working it off through the

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lorry. The case ended with John making a short address to the Committee. This is the first time that Emil has behaved in this way toward me. I want all to know that if anything like this happens again he will be removed, and our tur guvai [literally, standing together; here, partnership1will be at an end. Now I am asking that he should begin to think a little of the people and help them because it is my name that is on the lorry. One thing that is always on my mind is that if there should be another volcanic eruption here at Matupit, Emil should bring the lorry down here so as to take all the women and children away to the place that the government has prepared for such an emergency.

Emil was recognized as a very able motor mechanic; his yard was littered with broken-down vehicles that had been towed down to Matupit so that he could tinker around with them, making use of the parts if he could not succeed in getting a vehicle back on the road. It was indeed his skill with cars and lorries that had led to his "tur guvai" with John Vuia. In other regards, however, he was one of those individuals for whom nobody could find a kind word. He was held to be arrogant, a matotono who thought of himself as having great knowledge and understanding that placed him above everybody else. But it was the element of violence in his makeup that people found most disturbing. In this regard he and another man from Kurapun, ToGirar, were commonly spoken of in the same breath. Only a short time before the case of Emil was heard, ToGirar too had been brought before the village moot at Kurapun because of a flare-up with his mother's brother, three of whose teeth he had knocked out; only a little while before that he had assaulted his mother. People spoke of ToGirar in much the same terms as they spoke of Emil: they knew not what manner of man he was for he knew respect (a vanru) for nobody. Like Emil, too, he thought of himself as standing alone, a man without kin (iau pata niurugu). But what chiefly linked them together in people's minds was that they both had explosive tempers-they were both tena kankan, men of anger. After ToGirar's assault on his mother's brother there were some who felt that the case should go to Rabaul so that ToGirar be sent to prison. John Vuia was consulted in the matter, and he counseled that it should be dealt with within the village in the ordinary way. When the hearing eventually came before the Committee at Kurapun, John himself lectured the younger man at length. In days gone by, he said, their ancestors had been "wild" men, aumana tena kankan, but government and church had shown them how to live together in peace; his, ToGirar's, was no way to behave. 9

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Deep-rooted in the Western intellectual tradition is the view that of all the passions none should be avoided more than anger (see Averill 1979:16). The reason lies in the fact that, as Ekman (1975:78) puts it, part of the experience of anger is the risk of losing control. Anger is thus a dangerous emotion because when angry you are most likely to hurt others purposely. The Tolai reason similarly: if anger is not kept under tight control it drives out varmari and thus threatens valued social relationships. However, simply to leave it at that would do scant justice to the complexity of the Tolai view of anger and the part that it plays in their social life. Indeed their attitude toward the expression of anger can only be regarded as highly ambiguous. Thus on the one hand while yielding to anger is strongly condemned, on the other it is no less evident that there are also circumstances when its open expression is encouraged. As pointed out earlier, the oft-cited adage is koko ra kankan ivai-let not your anger be stored up or hidden, for wrath that is not given open expression builds up inside you and in the end brings graver consequences than an outburst of anger-it is apt to bring death by sorcery. One feature that characterizes the proceedings in a village moot is of considerable interest in this connection: it will have been observed that in none of the instances examined in which there had been angry exchanges of abuse between the parties did the Councillor or Committee seek to intervene or otherwise restrain them. The assumption appears to be, rather, that by giving the disputants their head, so to speak, their anger will be burned out, making them more amenable to appeals to their better natures. Nor perhaps should one discount here the extent to which the varkurai presents an occasion for theater. As Keesing (1978:70) has observed, reflecting on the way among the Kwaio of the Solomons, scenes of angry confrontation and threatened violence could quickly dissolve into one of friendly betel-chewing together, much of the rhetoric of anger, for them as for us, was for public display; in expressing it, much of what real anger there is can be dissipated. But it is in the attitudes expressed toward the tena kankan that the deep ambiguity surrounding the way in which the Tolai perceive and respond to anger most dearly emerges. Older Matupi frequently invoked the expression "tena kankan" when referring to their forefathers, indicating that they were above all men of fierce disposition who were quick to anger. In some instances the reference served to distance the speakers from their ancestors by contrasting their own reasonableness and "civilized" conduct with the latters' barbarism. As has just been

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seen, this was the imagery that John Vuia employed in the hearing of the charge against ToGirar. In other contexts, however, the ambivalence was unmistakeable. For while the use of the term "tena kankan" on these occasions carried a clear expression of disapproval, the speaker's tone of voice also communicated a measure of awe. The ancestors were also ngalangala, the great ones of the past, whose anger was at once the mark as well as a source of their power. The "big men" of former times were men who inspired fear, especially the fear of sorcery, but they were also recalled for their generosity and the great ceremonies and dance festivals that they sponsored. But the use of the expression in this ambivalent fashion was not restricted to those who lived in the days that preceded the coming of the Europeans. As I have noted already, even younger men spoke of their fathers as tena kankan. ToKonia, for example, frequently referred to his father, ToVok, in this way, so one day I asked him to explain what he meant. He immediately recalled a couple of incidents from the past by way of illustration. In the days before the eruption ofl937, he said, the men of Kikila had sought the kiau (megapode eggs) at a point just below Tavurvur (Matupi crater); only afterward did the birds move to Rataraiu, now known as Raulavat. On one occasion his father had seen some men coming from Baai to dig for eggs on his land. At once he charged at them. The men of Kikila of those days were aumana karagap, quickly aroused, where the eggs were concerned. ToVok, he continued, was a man who liked everything to be in order (a lavur mangana kaina na takodo). When he went to the gardens he always looked around carefully to see that none of his food had been touched; he was always on the lookout for those who had stolen food there. Once during the rainy season he had built a shelter near his food gardens at Ralokor. One day, a Sunday, when they were still at Matupit, his father saw smoke rising from the area of his land. He immediately rose and told ToKonia to come and they set off in a canoe. "Where are we going?" he asked his father. "Don't ask questions," his father replied. They did not set off directly for Raulavat. Instead they made for Rabuana. Again ToKonia asked where they were going; again he was told not to ask questions. That was his father's way when he was very angry, ToKonia explained. They came ashore at Tavurvur, taking cover there, and then moving around on foot so that they would not be seen. It was raining at the time, and when at last they reached the spot they found a group of men sleeping in the shelter. Taking them by surprise, ToVok began to storm at them. "You lazy good-for-nothings. You

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have never helped me. I have always done everything on my own account or for my father. If you want a shelter, build your own." And he picked up the branch of a tree and fell to thrashing them. In his own character ToKonia was utterly unlike his father-he was mildmannered in the extreme-but in all the time I knew him I was never left in any doubt that, despite his father's fierce and at times even violent temperament, he deeply admired him.lo Apart from illustrating the ambivalence that surrounds the notion of the tena kankan, the example of ToVok also helps to clarify other aspects of the phenomenon of anger as it is encountered among the Tolai. Some individuals, it is plain-and this applied to women no less than to men-experienced anger with more frequency and greater intensity than others. For all that, anger was regarded as a datum of the human condition, scarcely to be avoided at some time or another by even the mildest of persons. Anger was "there," in the balana (the belly), ever ready to be aroused and then to seek expression when it was bestirred. What then stirred anger? The material that I have presented here cannot be taken to provide definitive answers to the question, but it does offer at least some clues. Sometimes anger was sparked by some obvious infraction of one's legal rights, as in the case of trespass on ToVok's land; sometimes it was a more niggling sense of unfairness as in Matinut's complaint that TiPaul had for too long enjoyed alone the profits of the egg-lands which he too claimed as his own. Sometimes again its source was less obvious and had to be sought in the buildup over time of tensions within a set of social relations. Yet within the complexly varying circumstances of the disputes examined it is not difficult to detect how so often a major factor in bringing anger to the surface was a sense of damaged amour propre. In the case ofToLikun, it was his feeling that his wife was giving to her brothers the attention that was due to a husband; in the case of Esau, IaTaunia's complaints about the use of her canoe provided the clue to her more fundamental grievances against Esau's siding with his wife and inattention to herself; in Matinut's case, it was his resentment at being treated as a mangit vakuku, in the common parlance of Melanesian pidgin a "rubbish man," and finally brought to a head when TiPaul claimed to be the "big man" of the vunatarai. The motif that runs through all of these instances is the marked propensity to perceive slight and a readiness to take umbrage; this is seen again in the case of Emil whose violent outburst at V udal, as he himself indicated, was triggered by the mockery of his companions.

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Emil's character was well known, however, and the "wild" behavior he had displayed at Vudal was wholly in keeping with the quicktemperedness and lack of consideration for others that he was said to have shown on so many other occasions in the past. More interesting therefore is to observe how those who are ordinarily regarded as quiet and inoffensive can similarly erupt when they perceive some threat to the image of self. An incident that occurred at a balaguan to mark the erection of a commemorative stone for one who had been among the most prominent men of Matupit in his day offers a nice illustration. At one point, one of the sons, who was taking the leading part in organizing the event, commonly regarded as a tena vovovon because of his mildness and patience, suddenly became very angry. It was over a spot he had indicated where he was to place an archway of bamboo on which hands of bananas were to be hung. What had happened was that another man had placed his own archway on that very spot. To one not personally involved it might have seemed a detail of trifling significance-not so to the son who promptly exploded in wrath, demanding of the other whether he had not been present at the meeting at which these matters were discussed and agreed. What was plainly at issue, sparking the son's rage, was that the unfortunate offender had ignored the instructions of the one who was supposed to "lead the varkurai" (lue ra varkurai), that is, to be in charge. The further significance of the incident, however, has to be seen in the fact that this was the first time for the son to exercise his authority in a matter of this kind, one that was traditionally a step of major importance in marking oneself out as a "big man" following in one's father's footsteps; for another to plant the bamboo at the spot the "leader" of the balaguan had staked out for himself, whether deliberate or not, was to undermine his authority and to diminish his standing in the sight of all. Such an incident also serves as a reminder that the balaguan provides not merely a setting in which one can observe most clearly the Tolai love of pageantry and public display but also an arena that gives full scope for that self-aggrandizement that was one of the chief marks of a "big man." Given such an assertive ethos we cannot expect anger simply to be disapproved; we would expect to find indeed that it is also encouraged. For, as Schieffelin (1983:183) has observed in his account of the Kaluli of the tropical forest of the Papuan Plateau, within the modality of assertion anger is an important emotion and expressive form. As with the Kaluli, so with the Tolai, "a man's temper, or 'tendency to get angry,' is an important feature by which to judge his character and

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assess the degree to which he is a force to be reckoned with. It represents the vigor with which he will stand up for or pursue his interests vis-a.-vis others and the likelihood that he will retaliate for wrong or injury. Anger is an affect both feared and admired." The way in which the Tolai perceive anger or how they think of it is to be sought not only in the responses of one's informants, or in the context of disputes, but also in their mythology and folklore. The tales told of the two culture heroes, the brothers ToKabinana and ToKarvuvu, that form a rich part of the Tolai oral tradition, are very germane in this connection. The former is recalled as having introduced everything good and useful to humans; he is the personification of wisdom and cleverness; ToKarvuvu, by contrast, cannot undertake any task without bungling it, or worse bringing utter disaster in his wake. ToKabinana represented one aspect of the Tolai ideal: the wise one who considered carefully before he spoke and acted. Temperamentally, ToKarvuvu was his complete opposite: he was of quick temper, easily aroused, one who ranted and stormed first and only asked questions afterward. Indeed, karvuvu has come to be used simply as a word meaning angry or violent. Anger in this context is thus equated with destructiveness. But when account is taken of praxis as well as of ideology we discover a Tolai view of anger that is much more ambiguous, that, as has just been seen, the man of anger is not simply feared and disapproved, he is also spoken of in terms of respect, admiration, and on occasion even awe. Recognizing such ambiguity brings us much closer to an understanding of Emil's case. For in allowing rage to take over when he had been ridiculed, Emil had acted in a way that can now be seen as characteristically Tolai. His fault, that is to say, was not so much that he was a tena kankan, but rather that his behavior showed on this and other occasions that he knew not the meaning of compassion. To be angry on occasion is to be human, and allowance can be made for what one says or does in the heat of anger. But there are limits to what can be justified, even if where the lines are to be drawn must often be problematic. In Emil's case, as in that of ToGirar, the consensus was that these limits had been overstepped. The further inference I draw from this, in effect the main point of the two hearings, is that the disapproval directed at Emil and ToGirar was not so much a response to the particular offenses that had brought them before the varkurai as a judgment on their character: they were not merely men of anger or even of violence (tena vinarubu), but rather men in whose makeup anger was not balanced by varmari. As one traces the way in which the feeling of varmari is experi-

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enced and regarded iu different contexts and fields of relationship, one can detect shifts in the meaning of the term. Running through all of them, however, and at its heart, lie the notions of compassion and concern; it is in this way that we find, as we move into the area of vunatarai and community, varmari being used not simply as an indication of spontaneous feeling but also as standing for amity and harmony in social relationships and at its widest reaches as a symbol of human solidarity itself. When anger, therefore, is purely destructive, that is when it is experienced by someone untouched by varmari, it proclaims the presence of the moral leper, one who because he is incapable of feeling concern for others threatens the very basis of community itself. The nature of such concern I shall seek to explore further in the following chapter.

6 Tambu, Grief, and the Meaning of Death

When, in 1875, the Wesleyan missionary George Brown landed on New Britain, he encountered a people whose ways contrasted sharply with those of the Samoans among whom he had previously lived and worked for many years. It quickly appeared to Brown that in their political organization, in their modes of government, and in so many of their arts of life, the Samoans enjoyed a much more advanced culture than the Melanesians; all the more remarkable therefore was the difference between the two peoples in regard to their commercial activities and attitudes, for here their positions were reversed. "A Samoan gives, a New Britain native sells or lends at interest.... There were no markets in Samoa, but every district in New Britain has one. There was no money nor any recognized standard of value in Samoa like the diwara or tambu in New Britain, for the fine mats, or other property given at marriage or funeral feasts, had no fixed negotiable value" (Brown 1910:434). Other early visitors to the Gazelle Peninsula were no less intrigued by the local monetary system and the way in which tambu was intricately interwoven into the very texture of social life. One such traveler commented that New Britain was the only savage country he had visited where the natives had a true money currency of a standard value. "With this money you can buy anything you like, a wife if desired. It is as much a standard coin of the realm as the sovereign is of the British Empire" (Pitcairn 1891:178-179; see also Romilly 1887:24). Other writers were quick to see, however, that tambu was not to be 150

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understood simply as a currency, that it represented rather a focal interest that lay at the heart of traditional Tolai culture. The point was made in an early, and still valuable, paper on the subject by Benjamin Danks, a Methodist missionary who arrived in the area only a few years after Brown, when he perceptively remarked that there was not a custom connected with life or death in which shell money did not playa great and leading part; in a passage that might fairly be regarded as foreshadowing the brand of functionalism that Malinowski was later to make his own, Danks went on to observe that if tambu were removed from the people their whole way of life would collapse (Danks 1887:316). More recently a number of professional anthropologists have carried out intensive research in different parts of the Gazelle Peninsula, and they have reported not only on the continuing use of tambu in the contemporary setting but they have also been able to elucidate the traditional working of a very complex institution (see Bradley 1982; A. L. Epstein 1963, 1979; T. S. Epstein 1968; Salisbury 1966, 1970). Tambu indeed has become among the best-documented currencies of its kind, and here therefore I need refer only briefly to some of its formal characteristics and properties. Money consisting of shells or various other objects play an important part in the life of many tribal societies; however, it is not always used as a full monetary system. In some instances, shell "valuables," are used only for certain transactions such as bridewealth; in others, they serve only a limited purpose as a medium of exchange and their chief significance lies in their ritual or symbolic value. The distinctiveness of tambu is that it is both a highly developed instrument of commerce and a much prized ritual object. Before the shells can be considered as currency, the back is removed by placing the shell in the indented eye of a coconut and neatly chipping the top off with a piece of pearl shell. This leaves an aperture that allows the shells to be threaded on a strip of rattan. In this form, and in units of varying length,l the shells count as a valid medium of exchange in all commercial transactions as well as of payment for services; such mundane purposes apart, however, the expenditure and distribution of tambu is essential to such rites of passage as the initiation of youths into manhood (a namata), the negotiation and formalization of marriage, and the frequently elaborate rites that follow a death just as it is crucial to the sponsoring of the festivals or other occasions on which the masked dancers known as tubuan and dukduk make an appearance. There is another regard in which tambu has proved to differ from so

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many other currencies of its type: its tenacity. It might be assumed that such systems would quickly crumble in the face of competition with Western forms of money with their much greater purchasing power. And indeed throughout the colonial world indigenous currencies, such as the cowries much in use in many parts of Mrica as well as Melanesia, have tended to be replaced fairly rapidly by modem cash (Einzig 1966:505ff). With tambu, however, the expectation is patently not borne out. The remarkable thing is that despite their long and deep involvement in a modem cash economy, the Tolai have continued to use shell money not merely in ritual contexts but also in a good many of their daily transactions. This persistence, moreover, has been achieved in the teeth of opposition, particularly in the earlier periods of colonial rule, from white authorities. Roman Catholic missionaries consistently preached against it, seeing in its demise possibilities for the improvement offamily life (Salisbury 1970:278). Then too the German administration itself sought to introduce a decree prohibiting the use of tambu in Tolai trade with Europeans, and would have liked to eliminate it altogether, but on the latter score failed signally.2 Much later, the Kenyan colonial official, Col. Ainsworth, called in by the Australians, at this time still inexperienced in colonial matters, to advise on "native policy," also argued for its abolition on the grounds that it was harmful to the general progress of the people (Ainsworth 1924:20). In due course such pressures from official quarters diminished only to be replaced by influences that had their roots in the changing social circumstances and attitudes of the Tolai themselves. By 1960, when I first undertook research at Matupit, it began to appear, at least in those communities most deeply engaged in the wage economy, as if the balance was now heavily tipped against the survival of tambu: certainly many Matupi were keenly aware of its decline, and among the younger people there were some indeed who welcomed the prospect of its disappearance, seeing its persistence as one of the chief obstacles in the way of their advance toward a modem way of life 3 (Epstein 1969:240-244). I did comment elsewhere, however, that prediction of its early demise could well prove foolhardy (Epstein 1979 b: 195 )-a note of caution that turned out to have been entirely justified. For on my return to Matupit in 1986 I quickly discovered that far from having disappeared, tambu had in fact taken on a new lease of life. Why tambu has persisted-more accurately perhaps why in a community like Matupit it should have enjoyed such a revival-is a complex problem raising issues that lie well beyond the scope and aims of the present study. It

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does seem clear to me, however, and of immediate relevance to the concerns of the book, that no attempt to explain the persistence of tambu, and its continuing hold on the Tolai imagination, would be adequate if it did not take account of the affective dimension of the problem. As will appear shortly, tambu is invested with powerful affect that moves people to act in various ways. In pursuing this line of inquiry we shall also find ourselves quickly led into other areas that are for the Tolai of the most profound cultural and emotional concern. I have noted much earlier Danks's remarks on the way tambu encouraged frugality and industry, also his more general observations on the Tolai as a hard-working people. By contrast, Father Kleintitschen of the Society of the Sacred Heart, a much less sympathetic observer, cited rather those aspects of their dealings with shell money that illustrated their meanness. Thus in the matter of arranging a marriage he tells us that the choice of the groom's mother's brother usually fell on a little girl since the younger the bride the less tambu would be demanded by way ofbrideprice (Kleintitschen 1906:194). By the time I began my own fieldwork more than half a century after the publication of Kleintitschen's account marriages of the kind he referred to had long become a thing of the past. However, cases were still to be encountered in which difficulties were created by a mother's brother's reluctance to offer the tambu demanded to "purchase" a bride for his uterine nephew (Epstein 1984:23-25). Indeed, disputes over tambu remained quite common and, as seen earlier in the case of Matinut vs. TiPaul, could be highly charged. At this point, therefore, I wish to present another dispute that came before the village forum at Kikila to explore more searchingly the attitudes surrounding tambu, and the emotions that accompanied them, as well as their place within the wider cultural and affective context. The case was brought by a young woman named IaKibil (7C4), who now lived with her husband John at Talwat, against one IaMating (7AI). Her complaint was that IaMating had "driven away" (iga piJak vue) her two brothers and herself by speaking ill of their mother. The dispute appeared to have its roots in differences over the tambu that was to be used in "purchasing" a bride for ToGuguna (7C5), IaKibil's elder brother. Initially, arrangements had been made for ToGuguna to marry IaBagil, a girl from Baai, and the bridewealth-lOO fathoms-had in fact been delivered when ToGuguna had a change of heart. As many as 80 fathoms of the bridewealth were returned to IaMating, the girl's kin at Baai retaining 20 for the services she had rendered her prospective affines when she had come to

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stay with them at Matupit pending the final celebration of the wedding. Now at the hearing IaKibil explained that she had come over from Talwat to learn from IaMating what was happening. IaMating told her that her own (i.e., IaMating's) tambu had been returned, but that IaKibil's contribution remained at Baai. IaMating told her that she should approach IaBagil's brother at Baai about it. IaMating's words on this occasion had deeply distressed her, IaKibil said. But as she went on with her story it soon appeared that this was but one episode in a continuing squabble about tambu and bridewealth. When arrangements for the marriage of ToGuguna and IaBagil fell through, it was decided that the tambu should go to "buy" a wife for ToKaar (7C3). But then the ToGuguna/laBagil marriage was on again and word came to T alwat that she should bring another 20 fathoms. Not long afterward word came again from IaMating that yet another 20 fathoms were required to acquire a bride for Tubuvai (7C2). On this occasion she came to Matupit together with her husband, and they saw the two baskets of tambu which IaMating was holding-the one for ToGuguna, the other for Tubuvai. Asked for her comments on this statement, IaMating agreed that what IaKibil had said about the tambu for ToGuguna and ToKaar was true, but in the case of Tubuvai, IaKibil had not helped at all; the tambu on that occasion belonged to herself and IaTivut (7B5). When IaTivut was asked about the matter she said she was not present on the occasion that IaKibil came from Talwat bringing tambu to IaMating; she agreed with what had been said about ToGuguna and ToKaar, but knew nothing ofTubuvai's case. IaKibil returned to the attack: laKibil: The day that we came to Matupit bringing the tambu to laMating for the "purchase" of a wife for Tubuvai I also brought a hundred fathoms .... laMating: What tambu is that? I know nothing of that. laKibil: It was my tambu from the sale of kabang [slaked lime powder].

A member of the Committee, ToPirit, now intervened to point out that IaKibil had mentioned the matter of the 100 fathoms raised from the sale of the kabang simply to refresh IaMating's memory, but the latter's only response was that IaKibil was telling lies. IaMating was in fact a very old woman, and the feeling seemed to be growing that she was confused about the details of what had happened on the various occasions that had been mentioned. First ToPirit, then IaTivut, urged her to try and remember properly until ToGuguna exclaimed: "You,

Legend Descent Marriage

•

•

A

laMating (1)

I

- I- -- ------.

.6. Penias (4)

.6. ToGuguna (5)

o laTivut (3)

•

laUlaka (2)

o laKibil (4)

Figure 7. Dramatis personae in IaKibiI versus IaMating.

.6. ToKaar (3)

...

B

ToBiaii (1)

.6. TuBuvai (2)

o laKalat (1)

c

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Tivut, explain about the tambu so that the matter is settled." laTivut, however, was not going to support ToGuguna, and they immediately fell to quarreling. "Don't you start talking, Guguna," laTivut began. "You are a good-for-nothing. You have never helped us. You are not like other young men who help their mothers. That day I went in your canoe to Raluana you were angry with me. Then you went and told laMiliam she should tell laMating and myself that you don't 'know' us any more. It was the people at Raluana themselves who sent word for me to come and take back my child. No, Guguna, don't you start getting angry at me. I am your mother." ToGuguna defended himself. "I was angry then because I had been very sick and you never bothered to come and see me. That is the reason I considered that we three-myself, ToKaar, and laKibil-are of a different apik 4 from you and laMating. As for your son, was there any reason he should not stay with his father at Raluana? When you were in prison at Kokopo ToKaar and I visited you regularly. But when I am sick you have no thought for me. laKalat [7eI] has also told me that when she came on a visit from the Girl's School at Tavui you told her she should stay with her father or her brothers, and that is what she did." ToPirit had been trying to soothe things, saying they would ignore these interjections, that they were all straying from the point, and so on, but it was difficult to get the parties to restrain themselves. Thus when ToKaar entered the fray to side with his brother by declaring that when he married it had not been at his own wish, laMating demanded: "Who said that? ToKaar? ToKaar, you can repay the tambu I used to 'buy' your wife for you." Once again ToPirit tried to bring them back to the matter at hand, questioning laKibil about the various occasions on which she had contributed shell money to the bridewealth for her brothers, and then proceeding: "laMating, we are satisfied now that laKibil came to the varkukul [the ceremony at which the bridewealth is paid] for ToGuguna as well as for that ofToKaar. How is it then that she did not arrive for that of Tubuvai?" laMMing: Because IaTivut "bought" with our own tambu. IaKibil did not provide any. All that IaKibil says is a pack of lies. Pepelegi: IaKibil, what do you want now in regard to this tambu? laKibil: I am not talking about this tambu just for the sake of talking. The cause of it all lies with IaMating who has said things about the three

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of us [herself, ToGuguna, and ToKaar] that are not good. She has said that our parents departed without passing on to us any piece of tambu, and that is what has caused the three of us to grieve (ligur) so much.

Throughout these remarks laMating was moaning audibly to herself: "Aw, iau-oh, me." Now she spoke. "You three are grieving-for what? All right, I agree with laKibil. I will return her twenty fathoms of tambu on the strength of her lies that that is what she contributed for Tubuvai's varkukul. Yes, I will repay if ToGuguna and ToKaar first return my tambu with which I 'purchased' their brides." laKibil began to speak again. "We three are deeply grieved about our parents ...." The sentence was left unfinished as her voice broke suddenly and she burst into sobs. "And as for laMating, she is the source of our being. Had she not given birth to our mother, then we should not be alive now." The weeping was now taken up among all of those gathered to hear the case. A group of women sitting on the far side burst into keening, and they were joined by various men. ToKaar was calling out through his sobs "I didn't see you, my father," a reference to the fact that when ToBiaii (7Bl) died ToKaar was away in Manus and could not be present at the death. ToPirit tried to speak, but his voice broke, too, and he could not continue. Beside him, his own mother's brother, Turpui, was also weeping, curious gulps of sobbing. Penias, Councillor for Kikila and the son of laMating, remained silent throughout the proceedings, his head bowed on his chest. The sobbing went on for some minutes until another elder at Kikila, Pepelegi, who was serving on the Committee that evening, managed to restore some semblance of order. Then ToPirit spoke again, though his voice still quavered. "This word that laKibil has spoken is directed at you, laMating. You, laMating, bore laUlaka who later married ToBiaii. From their union sprang the three siblings. All of the people assembled here tonight have heard what you said, laMating. You have brought great distress to us all (u valigur avet par). We shall not finish this case now because it has reached a point of great sadness (a varkurai i tikan tadap ra niligur tana), and many are weeping for laUlaka and ToBiaii." laKibil rose to leave. "Death has destroyed our life (a minat i vakaina dat ta kada nilaun). Why did you have to die before, laUlaka? If only you could have lived to carry out the varkukul, the 'purchase' of the brides for your sons." She went off, still sobbing. laMating had already left the gathering. ToPirit said they should break up, but it was

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another elder at Kikila, Tio, who had the last word. It was wrong of IaMiliam, he said, to have repeated what she had heard to IaMating. "All those who live near IaMating know her as a cantankerous old woman who is always scolding those who go near her coconut trees. Everyone knows her character." By the time this dispute came up I was already quite familiar with proceedings in the varkurai, or moot, and could usually follow a case, at least in its broad outlines. In this instance, however, the ending of the hearing in an emotional outburst that appeared to be contagious came as a total surprise, leaving me completely in the dark as to what was going on. But even before this unexpected denouement there had been much that was obscure to me. This was owing in part to my still imperfect grasp of the language, but there was another, perhaps more important, factor at work. There can have been few domestic disputes that came before the village forum that did not have a long and complex history or did not build on old resentments. But little of this background was likely to emerge in the course of the hearing itself. Much of it of course was well known to many of the villagers who made up the audience, and into it the present claims and counter-claims of the protagonists could now be slotted. Needless to say, this was an advantage that the outside observer seldom, if ever, enjoyed. The present case was no exception, and it was only later that I was able to fit together some of the pieces. Bad blood had in fact existed between the parties for a long time. It all seemed to go back to the days when IaMating had wanted IaTivut to marry a man from Kurapun. But IaTivut had fallen in love with ToPak, who took her off to his home in Raluana. In due course the marriage was formalized, but IaMating had never liked ToPak. Then after some years, when she had already borne children to ToPak, IaTivut's love changed and she became enamored of another Raluana man. The matter was taken to court, and IaTivut was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for adultery. After serving her sentence, IaTivut married her lover and they settled down together to live with IaMating; the man from Kurapun having died in the meantime, IaMating apparently was quite pleased at the tum of events. ToGuguna and his siblings, however, were never very happy about the way ToPak had been treated, for after their own father ToBiaii died ToPak brought them up as his own children. As the preceding account of the dispute shows, over the years the strained relations between IaMating, IaTivut, and ToGuguna had been

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aggravated by a variety of other incidents. But the more immediate source of the present strife lay in two more recent events: first, the varkukul for Tubuvai, and, second, the final settlement ofToPak's case when he received the tambu he was due as compensation for having had his marriage destroyed. According to ToPirit, with whom I later discussed the case, IaKibil had got wind of what was going on and probably suspected that the tambu she had brought to help "purchase" a bride for Tubuvai had in fact been used to pay ToPak. However, ToPirit made it clear that in his view IaKibil had not brought the case to claim the return of that tambu, but in order genuinely to find out what was happening. But if various details of the case remain uncertain, behind all the twists and turns of these tangled relations the crux of the present matter is quite plain. It was the reluctance of IaMating to pay the tambu to "purchase" a bride for her grandson, ToGuguna, and her maligning of IaKibil. All of this is seen most clearly in the latter's complaint at the very beginning of the hearing about the disparaging way in which IaMating had spoken of her mother IaUlaka, and her own later remarks, spoken through her sobs, that if only IaUiaka had lived they would have experienced none of these difficulties and humiliations. Speaking as she had done, it was as though IaMating, their own source,s as it were, had rejected them; she was "cutting" kinship, in Tolai eyes as grave a matter as can be imagined. Why then had IaMating acted in this harsh and uncharitable way? My Tolai informants rarely had any difficulty in relating the particularities of a person's conduct to the context of social relationships in which that person was involved, as clearly illustrated for example in the gloss ToPirit had offered on the case explaining the roots of IaMating's anger. But they also take account of the idiosyncracies of individuals, well seen on this occasion in Tio's comment at the very end that everyone knew her character (a maukwana). Others were more forthright: she was a lagodo or a tamuk, a grasping, miserly old woman who, as she approached death, was anxious to hang on to all her tambu so that it could be "cut" and distributed when she died. This last comment serves to suggest that for all its idiosyncratic component, IaMating's behavior also needs to be understood in its cultural context, that is to say in the light of culturally defined attitudes toward tambu. Some of Danks's observations are very pertinent here as when he tells us, for example, that no man was held in greater contempt than a spendthrift: "To let money [tambu1go for nothing in return orto pay

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a shell more than is necessary is considered the height of folly" (Danks 1887:308, 315). Many years later the point still holds good: tambu, one soon discovers, is not to be parted with lightly, even if it is only a matter of making a purchase; as far as possible it should be saved. 6 I should explain that saving tambu is not just a matter of not spending it, nor even of hoarding it; it refers to accumulating it in a special way. Most Tolai try to keep handy a number of skeins of shell money for their everyday purchases or transactions in precisely the same way one elsewhere carries a certain amount of cash in one's wallet or purse. But once one has acquired perhaps some 30 or 40 fathoms it is thought time to embark on the task of converting it into a coil, or loloi. At this stage the coil is left open so that one can add to it from time to time-di loe vanavana-but as it approaches 60 or perhaps 100 fathoms the owner may decide to close it. In its appearance it now looks very much like a circular tube or even motor tire. In this form, the tambu has been effectively withdrawn from circulation; it will not be touched until it is ritually "cut" and distributed at some funerary rite or similar occasion. Tolai attitudes toward tambu then are a matter of some complexity. As I have remarked elsewhere, in their everyday life the Tolai give the impression of being quite pragmatic in regard to shell money; indeed, if one's observations were confined to the marketplace one might conclude that they used it simply as a form of currency (Epstein 1979b: 165). But if inquiry is pursued, only a little less superficially, a more compulsive interest in it is soon revealed. Not to put too fine a point on it, tambu is invested with a degree of affect that would hardly be called for if its function were just as a medium of exchange. In some contexts, for example, it is as though tambu were equated with life itself. Thus in one case I heard of a man who had murdered his brother. Before leaving for a spell of work elsewhere he had entrusted his stock of shell money to his brother's care. On his return he discovered that his brother had abused his trust. In a fit of rage he killed the brother; his brother, he declared later, had destroyed "kaugu nilaun," "my life." There is a sense indeed in which tambu appears to be valued more highly than life itself or at least more than the life of the individual. Thus it is reported in the early ethnography that in precontact days, when Tolai groups waged war among themselves, a woman pursued by her enemies would sooner leave her child behind than lose her tambu (Parkinson 1887: 105). The story has an apochryphal ring to it, but it does speak to the powerful attachment of the Tolai to their shell money. And almost exactly a century later there is no evidence that the attach-

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ment has weakened. On the contrary, in a situation of crisis Tolai continue to disclose in their behavior the same underlying attitudes as their forebears. So, for example, when in 1984 Matupit faced the threat of a volcanic eruption, many of the people on the island sought refuge with their kin and affines in other Tolai communities, taking with them their stocks of tambu. In time most of them returned to Matupit, but I was told of a number of them who preferred to leave their shell money in the safe keeping of their erstwhile hosts. Tambu did function in the past as a medium of exchange, just as it continues to do today, if to a considerably less extent. But for the Tolai its significance has always gone far beyond this. The term "tambu" itself offers something of a clue, for it is the same word as that which has come to be accepted into English usage as taboo, standing for a variety of interdictions, or what is forbidden, not only among the Tolai but throughout Oceania. Thus one of the earliest notes I recorded in the field touched on the difference between (Australian) money and tambu. Of course both of these were important, my wife's cook instructed us, but it was tambu that the Tolai unquestionably prized more: "A mani ure ra nian, a tambu ure ra minat," he explained succinctly. Money is for food, that is, for mundane things, tambu pertains to death, to the realm of the spiritual. That it was indeed sacred money was plainly recognized by the psychoanalyst-cum-anthropologist Geza Roheim (1923) who referred to it as heiliges geld, and by the Sacred Heart missionary Winthuis (1926:8) who spoke of it as Gottesgeld. The point was made by some of my oldest informants at Matupit: for their ancestors, they would say, tambu was like God, "a Kalou kamevet,"7 it gave them life (iga valaun avet). The traditional notion was that only if a person's tambu were "cut" and distributed after one's death would one's spirit be allowed to enter the Abode of the Spirits (a matana kaia). Contrariwise, if one died poor, without having accumulated stocks of shell money, one's spirit was condemned to an existence of eternal misery in the land known as IaKupia. Many of these older ideas associated with tambu are no longer known to present generations of younger Tolai, and there may well be many who no longer give thought to accumulating tambu for distribution on the occasion of their own death. But even among the most Westernized, few, if any, are to be found who do not continue to acknowledge the obligation to "cut" tambu on the death of one's parents or other close kin. 8 To achieve a deeper understanding of the attachment to tambu in general, or of the emotional outburst that brought a

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halt to the hearing of the case ofIaKibil and IaMating in particular, we need therefore to examine Tolai attitudes toward death and their cultural and affective responses to it. I address these issues in the next two sections.

Focus on Anxiety Early on in Paulias Matane's novelAimbe the Pastor there is a scene in which the central character Luluai and his wife Palumia are sitting together enjoying the quietness of the afternoon. All was still and they were at peace. But then "the relaxed feeling of Luluai and Palumia changed-changed to a feeling of anxiety over the absence of their sons. Something must have gone wrong. Something had to be done to find out where they were. The physical signs of the leaves, birds, and flowers were peculiar. This was interpreted as a sad conclusion that the sons and their friends were either lost or dead." We are told little of the circumstances prompting the parents' apprehension beyond the fact that their sons had gone off with their friends from other hamlets and had not been home for a week. Was this in the ordinary course of events cause for alarm or were the parents being unnecessarily fearful? That young unmarried men should spend much of their time wandering about perhaps hunting or exploring the bush was not uncommon; it was indeed expected of them, for until they were married they were not required to devote themselves to work in the gardens or other activities that would keep them at home. We should of course not neglect to set the scene in its historical context. Matane is purporting to describe here events that took place in the days shortly before the arrival of the Europeans and the establishment of pax gennanica: before this raiding and warfare involving different Tolai groups appear to have been endemic, and travel beyond the confines of one's own community was held to be a hazardous undertaking. One also needs to consider the possibility that parental concern was stimulated by prevailing notions about tabaran, those malevolent spirits, of which more will be said shortly, that roam the bush in pursuit of their baleful purposes. But what is so intriguing about the Tolai psyche is that despite the way in which their social environment has been transformed over the past century, their response to certain situations still discloses the same kind of emotional reaction. For example, my wife

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and I were once struck by the way Matupi women who had accompanied me on a visit to the inland parish of Rapitok in order to sell fish there plainly felt ill at ease in this strange company; they sat together in a huddle and made no attempt to engage in friendly intercourse with the local people. On another day, we had stopped for a breather by the roadside within the territory of another inland village. As we stood around I noticed, lying on the floor of the vanette, the empty shell of a betel nut that one of the women had been chewing, and without thinking I picked it up and threw it into the bush. At once one of the women began to admonish me for my carelessness: did I not know that I had provided the locals with a puta, that is, a substance carrying the traces of another person's secretions that would enable them to employ sorcery against their companion. Nor, I must stress, was the expression of such apprehension confined to unschooled village women. Returning to Rabaul in 1986 I ran into a postgraduate Tolai student engaged in a research project that required him to travel to different parts of the Gazelle Peninsula. He spoke of the practical difficulties he was running into, mentioning the high cost of local transport, but then suddenly switched to talking of his worry that, moving around in some parts of the area where he was not known, someone might attack him and twist his neck. He was referring here to the practice known as a warong, a technique of killing by twisting the neck in such a way that, so it is held, no trace is left of how the victim died; my informant at once proceeded to recall an instance of the kind of which he had heard where a man suspecting he might be attacked in this way had taken the precaution of placing in his mouth a very hard betel nut. When indeed the attack came and his assailants began to twist his neck, he bit hard on the nut till it cracked. Mistaking the cracking of the nut for the snapping of his neck his attackers departed, satisfied that they had succeeded in their task. But the issue most revealing of Tolai attitudes in these matters concerns reactions to partings. Nowadays ofcourse when younger Tolai have been accustomed for many years to travel to other parts of Papua New Guinea, or even farther afield, in search of work or to advance their careers, occasions of parting are a regular feature of social life. The younger people themselves are likely to have spent the previous night at a party organized by their friends, but for the parents themselves the moment of parting is still apt to be approached with apprehension and a heavy heart, as I discovered once when I was exploring with an informant the meaning of the term lingling. "When your child goes away,

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let's say to Port Moresby," he explained, "you clasp one another's hands (amur lulul vartulai), and you think to yourself'ban una pot ra lingling,' perhaps you will return to find the place deserted, that is, to find that you are dead." It is plain then that for some today, just as for Luluai and his wife in the past, absence and separation still raise the specter of death. Though fictional and set in the past, to anyone who has known the Tolai at close quarters Matane's account carries the ring of authenticity in pinpointing the Tolai preoccupation with death, a preoccupation that even today still manifests itself both from the individual and the cultural point ofview. 9 The interest of Matane's account lies not just in the description of the feelings of Luluai and his wife confronted with the absence of their two sons; there is also reference to the manner in which the alarm bells were set ringing-inferences drawn from Luluai's observations of the leaves on the trees, of the birds, and of the flowers. Peculiarities or unexpected features in the appearance or behavior of natural phenomena are even today taken by Tolai to be signs, a vakilang, or omens-most commonly, harbingers of death. One day, for example, I encountered Alfred near his store. While we were chatting a branch of a coconut palm suddenly snapped and fell to the ground. "This is something perhaps you haven't learned yet," Alfred remarked. "For us this is a sign that someone in the barniuruna, a matrilineal kinsman, has died. We don't know who, or where, but tomorrow word will come confirming the death." Turpui, who had joined us, agreed, adding that if a fish were found floating dead ahead of one's canoe this too was an omen of death. Certain birds are also held to carry messages relating to death. On one occasion I accompanied a party of Matupi attending a funerary rite (a minamai) for a man who had died at Talwat. He was a relatively young man and there was much discussion about the circumstances surrounding his death. The prevailing view seemed to be that he had destroyed by sorcery another who had seduced his wife, and now was himself a victim of komkom, vengeance magic. While we were engaged in these ruminations a minigulai, or brown eagle, flew overhead. This bird is rarely to be seen-it was indeed the first time I had seen oneand its presence now was immediately taken as sure proof that the man for whom the minamai was being performed had indeed met his death through the medium of the komkom. In yet other cases the idea of a bird as the bearer of a message is associated with another concept-that of papadailam (or padapadailam) , the term applied to a game in which

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one presents riddles to children. The word is also used with reference to the pakupak, another bird of omen. But what is its message? Is it a death? Or a tun (a school of fish approaching)? The question is put to the bird and if it stops crying at that point that is taken to indicate the answer. All these examples are of customary notions that form part of the standardized repertoire of ideas that Tolai have at their disposal in defining, explaining, or responding to the world around them. But in addition, other happenings of a rare and unexplained character may also be spontaneously seized upon as a sign that at the same time gives voice to a sense of apprehension that rarely seems to be far below the surface. An unusual event of this kind occurred early in 1960. Various people kept asking me if I had seen or knew the white man who had just arrived in Rabaul. They were referring to an Israeli who had, so it was asserted, spent the last number of years sailing round the world in the tiniest of boats. They asked: Why was he doing it? What did he live on? How did he get his food? Where did he sleep? All very reasonable questions for which I had few satisfactory answers. Nevertheless, I remained curious about the very considerable stir the stranger's arrival had created, and I allowed myself to be persuaded to join the many others who had flocked to the harbor to view the tiny craft. It did not take long to discover that this was a vakilang. People recalled that shortly before the outbreak of the last war another European had arrived in Rabaul on a similar sort of voyage. Now many were wondering whether this was the presage to a further outbreak of purpuruan, confusion, chaos, and destruction, when many more could be expected to die. Further clues to a people's inner concerns and preoccupations are to be found in their projective world of fantasy as well as in their dreams. In the case of the T olai that world is populated by a myriad of beings usually referred to in English as spirits. I make no attempt to discuss here this large and complex issue in any detail, and mention just a few aspects that bear on my present theme. Briefly then Tolai cosmology distinguishes two major categories of spirit: spirits of the air and those that are earthbound. The former include the spirits known as a ingal and tabalivana. These are thought of as spirits of the air because they are held to dwell in the highest branches of certain trees, particularly the giau, or banyan, sharing a habitat with the birds. For this reason, it was said, the topmost mao (a variety of banana) or pawpaw was left untouched on the tree because it was the food of the ingal. Ingal and tabalivana were quite central to Tolai ceremonial and religious life, for they were the source of all artistic creativity. Unlike all the

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other spirits known to the Tolai, these spirits of the air had to be invoked by taking a narcotic known as pepe na 10m or a buai na pepe. The buai induced a trancelike condition in which one might wander alone through the bush heeding nothing but the sound of the birds or climb a high tree, lie in its branches and there converse with the spirit. In such ways one sought inspiration for a new design for a tubuan or dukduk, the two masked figures that lay at the heart of traditional Tolai religion and today remain, together with tambu, as the supreme symbols of Tolai identity, for a kangal, the special headdress of a dancer, for the words and melody of a new song for a dance festival or malangene, or for the choreography of the dance itself Ingal and tabalivana were thus thought of as "good spirits": they enriched life. In some cases indeed it was possible to form a more lasting relationship with an ingal, akin almost to a friendship, where the ingal appeared to one quite spontaneously, acting rather like a turangan, a familiar or guardian spirit. The spirits of the earth were also of many different kinds, though in everyday usage terms were often applied interchangeably, suggesting that in this area the Tolai did not insist on hard and fast distinctions. One class, made up of beings known as kaia, was linked to natural phenomena and thus usually located in a particular spot. Kaia might thus be numbered in their hundreds, if not thousands. For the most part, kaia are thought of as dangerous and destructive and so to be avoided as far as possible. One of my oldest informants at Matupit in 1960, Anit of Rarup, appeared to relish recounting his experiences with kaia and similar phenomena. In the course of one conversation, for example, he referred to a tree over in New Ireland, where he was staying at the time, which was the seat of a kaia. When the locals sought to chop it down, the next day it was found to be standing again in its original position. Thereafter the place was taboo, to be avoided at all costs. Others told stories of kaia that lay closer to home. One of these related to a spot offshore, just by Rarup. One day after the war, divers were at work there salvaging a vessel when one of them was seized by an octopus; although his companions tried to rescue him the man died and the octopus escaped. The spot became known as the abode of a kaia, and the popular view was confirmed when later some people were fishing there making use of dynamite. When a charge was detonated, hundreds offish were thrown into the air. One youth dived into the sea, but when he reemerged he appeared to be choking. He could not speak. Then it was seen that a fish had jumped right down his throat and had lodged there. He was rushed to the hospital, but he died.

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But when in general terms Matupi mentioned the kaia, the primary referent they had in mind was the volcano. An eruption is a punuongo na kaia, of all manifestations of the destructiveness of these spirits, the most dramatic and the most awesome. For all that, the volcano as the embodiment or personification of the kaia was not viewed entirely in negative terms. Once when conversing with ToUrapal near his house, where we had a particularly clear view across to Tavurvur, I remarked on the white puff of smoke rising from the crater. He then told me that the old people used to say of this that the spirits were doing their cooking (aumana kaia dia tututun). 10 It was, he went on, a kaia that created the land (a kaia i ga vaki ra gunan) , and in times past offerings were made to the spirit. In this regard, the kaia represented the elemental forces of nature with their power to destroy or create, their capacity for good or evil. In regard to those other earthbound spirits, the tabaran, there was no such ambiguity. "Devils" is the English word that perhaps best captures their character, for they are entirely malignant. There are many varieties of tabaran, and whereas some bear a human appearance, others are grotesque and fearful to behold-like the tutana vurakit, for example. Once again it was Anit who recalled an encounter with such a being. The incident occurred many years ago when he was on the Duke of York Islands. One day the people were out hunting. They were proceeding through the bush, accompanied by their dogs, amid much shouting and noise. They spread out their hunting net to round up the pigs, and as they gathered around they found that they had trapped a tabaran of the kind called a tutana vurakit (see Meier 1910). It was human in appearance and shape, but there was one big differenceinstead of teeth like a normal person it had four sharp instruments like steel nails that prevented it taking food like a human being or talking properly. They took the tabaran back to the village, and there they tried to force it into eating by threatening that if it did not eat they would cut off its arms and other parts and cook the body in an oven. Other threats too were uttered until at length the tabaran indicated they should remove its "teeth." Once these had been knocked out by a stone, the tabaran could speak, and he told of the ways of the tutana vurakit. There were many of them living in the bush; when people saw the marks of the flying fox on the food in their gardens, the creature explained, they should know it was them-the tabaran. 11 By the time of my first stay on Matupit in 1960 there were many among my informants to whom the words ingal and tabalivana meant

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little, and even some of the older people could offer little in the way of detailed information. Where tabaran were concerned, however, it was quite a different story: these were still very much part of the ongoing reality of daily life. People who were ill were thought to be especially vulnerable to sorcery or the visitation of a tabaran-sometimes referred to as a tabaran marut, a spirit that attacked one in one's own home. But usually encounters with a tabaran were reported to have taken place on the edge of the village or in the bush. Returning once from a visit to another village my vehicle broke down on the outskirts of Matupit. As 1 fiddled around under the hood, old Anton and some of the others who had accompanied me decided to walk on. That night, when 1 saw Anton again, he told me he had seen a tabaran. He had been walking along the road on the edge of the bush when he heard a curious sound as of heavy breathing: wo-wo. Without my asking, he said: "I knew it was a tabaran because my skin became gooseflesh (i ururian)." The tabaran would have attacked him, but Anton had quickly made off. For it was the way of the tabaran to destroy people, though whether they ate them, drank their blood, or what he could not say. Tales of such encounters are told and retold and quickly pass into folklore, serving to generate and reinforce a complex of ideas about the tabaran and to guide behavior. Because the bush was the haunt of tabaran and other spirits one had to be wary in moving about there, and to be circumspect in what one did lest one attracted the attention of an ebar, or "enemy"; thus only the most courageous of men would venture alone into the bush after dark, and only then because one possessed a babat, protective magic, or was engaged in some dubious enterprise that required intercourse with the spirits. The tabaran represents an aspect of their world that the Tolai perceive as threatening not only from without but also from within. Tabaran lie in wait not only as one moves through the bush, they are also fearful denizens of one's own inner world, regularly to be encountered in one's dreams and usually bearing some message relating to death. As part of my fieldwork in 1986 1 was able to persuade a group of students to describe a dream they had recently had by making a drawing of it; later 1 was able to discuss briefly the drawings with each of the artists (Epstein 1990). A striking feature of the data was the frequency with which death emerged as a theme, and the number of occasions that a figure in the dream was identified as a tabaran. For example, one drawing showed the dreamer lost in the bush. This was a frightening dream, the student told me, because he met a tabaran. The tabaran had a hu-

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man shape and appearance, and when I asked ifhe recognized the figure he replied that it was a sister who had died some time before. But even when there is no explicit reference to a tabaran in a dream the Tolai, like many other people in Melanesia, frequently find in dreams a portent of death. Again a single example will serve to illustrate the point as well as to carry our understanding of what it means a little further. One day I showed ToKonia one of the dream drawings just mentioned. To the drawing itself he made no response, but instead began to offer some remarks on dreams in general. One dreams, he said, and sometimes it is just a magit vakuku, something quite useless, without meaning. You forget it. But then something happens and then you recall it. This happened recently when he had a dream in which a woman called laLagar appeared, but he paid it no attention at the time. Then laLagar died, and he recalled the dream and recognized that it carried a true message. He had discussed the matter with a close friend, and they had exchanged accounts of other dream experiences of a similar kind. Now he went on to relate the circumstances attending the death of his elder brother ToKalula. ToKalula had been in good health, there was no sign of illness. One night ToKonia dreamed that one of his children had wakened him from sleep and told him his brother was dead. So he woke up and knocked on the door where his daughters were sleeping and called their names. But there was no answer. He knew then that it was just a dream and he went back to sleep. In the morning he asked one of the girls if she had gone to the latrine in the night. She said no. He told them of his dream. He felt then, he told me, that the dream carried a message. A couple of weeks later he took his children out to the bush, leaving them to get on with work in the gardens while he himself went on to Rabaul. When he returned in the evening to collect them he noticed his two sons standing apart from the girls. The oldest child, John, now told him that while he had been away a man had wanted to approach them. But they did not see him fully because he turned away and walked off with his back to them. ToKonia asked if they recognized the man. They said yes: they saw from his bald head that it was ToKalula. "Perhaps ToKalula is dead," ToKonia told them. So when a little later ToKalula did die, he was not surprised. When they discuss dreams in general terms, Tolai commonly remark that they attach importance to them because they carry messages of death. In practice their approach tends to be more pragmatic. The initial response is indeed apt to be one of uncertainty; one does not know

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whether to treat the dream as ominous or trivial, and significance comes to attach to it only in retrospect when its truth or falsity has been proved by events. In this regard the reaction to a disturbing dream recalls the post hoc attribution of witchcraft/sorcery following the experience of some personal misfortune, with this difference that only in hindsight can the dream truly be seen as having offered a portent right from the very beginning. More generally, the reference to witchcraft/ sorcery is apposite in quite another way. It is now an anthropological commonplace that people do not go about their daily lives in a state of unremitting anxiety simply because in their society witchcraft/sorcery is accepted as real or even that reputed sorcerers are known to dwell in their midst; for the most part they are no more troubled by these things than the ordinary citizen in a modern urban society is constantly beset by the likelihood of being involved in a motor accident. In much the same way it may be said that Tolai, as they pursue their daily routines, do not convey to an outside observer the impression that they are burdened down by apprehension or anxiety brought on by thoughts of death; however, it does appear that the subject is rarely far below the surface of their minds, and can come quickly to the forefront. That this is so has to be understood in the light of the degree of cultural elaboration that death is accorded in Tolai culture, and the complex interaction this sets in train between social requirements and personal feelings. This will be more readily understood when we have examined in the next section something of the response when a death actually occurs.

Grief and Loneliness An outburst of wailing and lamentation brings the first news of a death within the village. In the past the word was spread farther afield by the beating of a large slit-gong drum, orgaramut. Then as kinsfolk and others arrived from other settlements in response to the message of the drum they too broke into keening as they approached the place where the death had occurred. For the Tolai these expressions of mourning were the prelude to a variety of funerary and other rites that lie at the very heart of their ceremonial life. The classical position on these matters, based on his observations of the burial customs of the Andaman Islanders, was stated long ago by

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Radcliffe-Brown; if! dwell on it here it is simply because even today it still commands substantial support among many anthropologists (see, e.g., Huntington and Metcalf 1979), even if the general theoretical framework with which it is associated no longer attracts the same following. For Radcliffe-Brown of course society was seen as an ordered arrangement or structure. The components of this structure were human individuals. They were treated, however, not as psychological organisms but as persons occupying particular positions within the structure to which particular sets of rights and duties were attached. From this perspective a person is perceived as occupying a definite position within society, as having a certain share in social life and thus as providing one of the supports of the network of social relations. Death constitutes a partial destruction of the cohesion of a group: normal social life is disorganized, the social equilibrium disturbed. Rephrased in somewhat less elegant terms, death opens a gap in the social structure; it is the function of funerary rites to plug it. It follows then, as Radcliffe-Brown himself puts it, that the burial customs of the Andamanese are not to be regarded simply as the expression of natural personal feeling. They are rather the collective and ritual expression of a collective feeling. "This is evident from the fact that they are regulated in every detail by custom. It is the duty of the relatives and friends to mourn, whether they feel sorrow or not, and it is equally their duty to mourn only for a certain period" (Radcliffe-Brown 1948:285-286). It is important to stress here that Radcliffe-Brown does not seek to deny that the Andamanese do experience feelings in a situation in which death has occurred; my point rather is that the status of these feelings is left unclarified. 12 There is in fact no attempt to describe or analyze what feelings do find expression in such a context; we should not be surprised therefore that the emotion of grief finds no place in his account. There is of course no question that a funeral is a cultural event, and that much of what an ethnographer observes on such an occasion is the behavioral expression of social norms. This is no less the case with affect displays following a death, for, as LeVine (1982:51) reminds us, these too are conventionalized in that they are socially expected and follow recognizable styles of expression. But when all this has been granted, there remains the question as to whether an account that concerns itself simply with prescribed behavior or "custom" is adequate to capture the complexity of feeling to be encountered following a death in a community. And if personal feelings are not taken fully into

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account can we be confident that we have grasped all we can of the meaning that death holds for the people in question, and the resonances it sets up in their lives? Before turning to explore the Tolai material itself, let me pursue the general point a little further by referring to an account of a burial in a quite different society-not by an anthropologist, but by a novelist: Tolstoy. The passage I wish to cite comes in the course of his fictional account of his reactions to the death of his beloved Mamma. "Before and after the funeral I did not cease crying and felt sad, but I am ashamed to remember that sadness, for it was always mingled with some selfish feeling: now a desire to show that I grieved more than anyone else, now anxiety as to the effect I was producing on others, now an aimless curiosity, which made me observe Mimi's cap or the faces of those present. I despised myself because I did not experience exclusively a feeling of sorrow, and I tried to conceal all other feelings: this made my grief insincere and unnatural. Besides this I felt a kind of enjoyment at knowing myself to be unhappy, and tried to stimulate my consciousness of unhappiness, and this egoistic feeling, more than any other, stifled real sorrow in me" (Tolstoy 1947:112). Now an anthropologist of course lacks the novelist's licence for introspectionunlikely to be of much help anyway where an alien culture is concerned-and his means of access to the feelings of those participating in a funerary rite in the society being studied are severely limited. Yet curiously it was in the context of a funeral at Matupit-as my field notes attest-that I was reminded of Tolstoy's account read many years before. In cultural terms a Tolai funeral is an occasion of great solemnity, to be given over exclusively to the expression of grief, a niligur. My observations suggested, however, that vanity and egoism were no more absent from the scene than they are in Tolstoy'S description. The hymnsinging in particular, which is nowadays a regular feature of the burial service, seemed to me to give ample opportunity for display of which some at least plainly availed themselves-and not really very surprisingly, for church choir competitions have been for many years among the most popular of leisure activities. What is the point of this interpolation? Later I will seek to show that the array of emotions displayed in the context of a funerary rite can be more complex than sometimes appears in standard ethnographies. But for the moment my concern is to raise a number of questions of more theoretical import which this situation poses. For if observation does reveal the expression of emotions beyond those culturally stipulated as

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appropriate to the occasion, on what grounds are they to be excluded from one's account? Or again, if grief is to be taken as the expression of a collective feeling, what is the status of those other feelings such as vanity or egotism which also find expression in the conduct of the mourners, but which in this context would be thought of as utterly inappropriate, indeed a violation of cultural norms? In this regard we appear to be in the realm not so much of culture, but of anticulture, raising at the same time questions about the sources of these various feelings. Burials and funerary rites apart, it seems to me that among the Tolai there are a number of situations that point up the inadequacy of treating mourning behavior simply in terms of custom or culture, but demand rather the recognition that more complex processes, involving the interaction of social requirements and personal feelings, are at work. So, for example, it is to be expected that if a child dies the parents will grieve. Conventional sociological analysis would also lead one to expect that the funeral rites would be less elaborate than for an adult, particularly one of some standing in the group: the "gap" in the social structure created by the child's death can be repaired more easily than the social disturbance created by the death of one involved in a complex network of relations. And so with the Tolai it usually is. A child dies, the funerary rites are attended by only a handful of people, no tambu will be distributed, and there-at least in public terms-the matter ends. But things are not always that simple. Take the case ofTurbarat, for example. One of the leading personalities in Ramp in his day, Turbarat was a man in whose presence I rarely felt comfortable: like other Matupi I knew, he was irascible by temperament, seemingly always ready to burst into some angry tirade, but unlike the others I never saw him in a more relaxed state of mind. His mode of dress was distinctive: he always wore a black laplap-from its appearance I could never be sure whether he ever changed it. Now black is the sign of mourning, a korkor, but it was only much later, when Turbarat and his wife performed the rite known as a papakei na korkor, that I discovered a little of what lay behind Turbarat's behavior. About two years before his child had been playing in the sea. He had not yet learned to swim and he was drowned. This was a favorite child, a bul na tadar or a but na vakak, and Turbarat had gone into a period of prolonged mourning, of which the wearing of the black lap lap was the outward expression. Performance of the papakei na korkor marked the end of this period of mourning, and thereafter he would be free to don a laplap of another color. Clearly the

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papakei na korkor, like the funeral itself, is a cultural event. It takes the form of a feast-for the occasion Turbarat had been rearing for some time a huge pig that bore his own name and that of his son-as well as a small exchange of tambu between the father and mother of the child and a few other close kin. However, in contradistinction to the funeral, there is nothing prescribed about it at all. It may be said that Tolai culture allows for, perhaps even encourages, such expressions of grief for a dead child and provides a formal mechanism for marking an end to it, but the prolonging of the period of mourning for two years beyond the child's death has to be understood, at least on the conscious level, as an expression of personal loss, and perhaps unconsciously as an expression of guilt. A very different set of circumstances, and a different aspect of the problem, is presented in the case of ToKaul. I have mentioned earlier that on my return to Matupit in 1986 I had found some difficulty in catching him at home. When eventually we did meet at his house he explained that he spent most of his time these days working in his gardens. When I had known him earlier he had also been hard-working, but he had busied himself with a variety of tasks so that one frequently saw him around the village. His remarks now therefore carried a suggestion of excess, a suspicion that he himself immediately confirmed by remarking that if he stayed at home he got depressed, he was borne down by thoughts of his brother Walter and his sister IaMidi, both of whom had died in the space of the past couple of years with the expectation of many active years of life still before them. It seems to me that anthropological theories, whether built up around a concept of society or of culture, which do not take account of the way individuals so often experience emotion are seriously inconvenienced by data of this kind. ToKaul had participated fully in the rites to mark the death of a brother and a sister, and he had displayed to the full all the grief that is built into the concept of "niligur" and that which is demanded of a mourner on these occasions. He had fulfilled his duty by "cutting" and distributing tambu. And yet when all the rites had been completed, and the normal period of mourning long expired, he had not yet succeeded in throwing off his malaise; in his balana (his belly) he continued to gneve. But in the end the problem is best pursued in the context of the funeral rites themselves. For the Tolai it is the burial that today provides the occasion par excellence for the expression of grief, and therefore the best context in which to begin to explore how the Tolai experience

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grief, what they perceive its nature to be, and what inspires it. A little earlier I referred to a scene in Matane's novelAimbe the Pastor, and here again it is helpful to view the situation from a Tolai perspective as presented by a Tolai. There is another scene in the novel where the sound of the garamut (the drum) brings to Luluai news of the death of Min at, the second ranking "big man" in the district. Luluai hurries to the spot where the mourners have gathered round the body of the dead leader. For all the noise created by those present wailing at the top of their voices, Luluai was able to distinguish the words of what Matane refers to as the prayer of Minat's widow: Wooo .... eeee.... wooo .... eeee Minat, Miiiinaaat... . The tall tree ... . My tall tree ... . My tree oflife... . My protector ... eee ... eee My provider ... wooo ... wooo .... Why did you go? eee ... eee Why did you leave me? I am on my own ... I am just me ... I am miserable Taurara .... (Matane 1979:24) The ethnographic literature also contains some valuable information on Tolai bereavement behavior. Thus in his account of funerary customs the Roman Catholic missionary Winthuis (1926:58) records the lamentations of a mother bewailing the death of her son: "Oh, my son, now you have died leaving me. Oh, where have you gone? ... You wonderful dancer, the plumage in my head-dress, now I shall never see you dance again, leaping as though on glowing coconut embers. My body is tom with sorrow and pain. Who will now bury me when I come to die? Who will scatter tambu over my grave? All will revile me, for I shall have no shell-money left. Oh, woe is me, woe is me." Many years later I myself witnessed a very similar scene when I attended the funeral of a young Matupi man, ToPia, who was killed when a pole he was helping to erect to carry electricity power lines crashed on top of him. At the funeral I happened to be standing close to the elder sister of ToPia's mother. She was quite desolate with grief. As she lamented I was able to pick out the odd phrase "00 iau . .. iau a biavi [Oh me ... I am utterly wretched]." According to ToKonia, who was also standing

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nearby, she also uttered phrases like kaugu turandavai, kaugu turaJom, and kaugu kangal. All of these are expressions relating to the adornment worn by male dancers; recalling Winthuis's account, they speak in Tolai terms of what is most likely to delight a mother's heart. She also used the phrase a nga i tantangi, literally, the path is weeping, meaning that death is the path we all have to tread. "But I should have died before." In all of these instances there is a striking similarity in the fonn the lamentations take. At first glance indeed the similarity of the images invoked suggests a standardized response that is culturally enjoined. To some extent this is so, but the matter is also more complex than this, for on closer inspection each plaint reveals its own distinctive features. Taurara's outburst is the most conventional, and since this is a fictional account that is what we might expect. In the second case, Winthuis is referring to an actual burial when a mother grieves over the loss of a son, and here the more personal note is immediately apparent. It is indeed as though the woman's grief is divided: mourning the loss of a beloved son, she laments too the prospect of her own death without a son to "cut" tambu on her own behalf, for without this her fear is she would cease to be remembered. Finally, at the funeral I myself attended at Matupit the mourner in question was again an older woman, a classificatory mother bemoaning the death of her classificatory son. In her lament there was no reference to tambu, she did have sons of her own; her complaint was rather that the order of nature had been subverteddeath is the path of us all true, but in the proper way of things the old should predecease the young and not live to mourn their children. There are differences then in the ways people give expression to their grief. More generally, there are also differences in the way funerary rites are conducted and experienced depending on a variety of circumstances. Olnsider, for example, the death of Orim, referred to previously (pp. 98-99, above). By that time I had attended a number of funerals on the island, but in none had I witnessed such scenes as marked the burial of Orim when his wife and sister danced frenziedly on the edge of the grave, and it was only with the greatest effort of the menfolk that they were restrained from throwing themselves on top of the coffin when it was finally lowered into the trench. Or take the death of ToPia, just mentioned. This was the occasion of the largest gathering of its kind that I had observed at Matupit,13 and I found myself standing among the outer ring of spectators without a clear view of what was going on at the graveside. As the burial service continued there was quiet all round. Many of those whom I could observe at close quarters

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had their eyes closed as if in deep thought or stood with heads slightly bowed. Then, I think: as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, the keening began. Among those immediately around me in the outer ring weeping was not general, though many had tears in their eyes. The weeping died down, then broke forth again. The sound is impossible to describe beyond saying that it bespeaks utter anguish. IaNavara, ToPia's mother, had fainted, and her lifeless body was lifted over the heads of the throng and carried back to her house. She was followed by a sister who had to be supported as she lamented. A group of younger women had also emerged from the crowd around the grave and they too were wailing uncontrollably. Gradually they sought one another out and wrapped their arms around one another in an act of mutual comforting (vamaram) that was at once both a giving and a receiving of solace. One was led away, stumbling and scarcely able to stand upright, as two other women held her aloft. Not very long after this there was another death at Matupit. This was ofToUrapal, the last surviving member of that group who had received their schooling at N amanula in German days, and one of the most respected among the elders who had provided Kikila with its leadership when I stayed there in 1960 (see Mennis 1972). Despite this, although the whole of the island was again represented at the funeral, there was not the same huge crowd such as had gathered for the obsequies for ToPia. Nor was there anything like the same display of intense emotion at the graveside. For the most part, indeed behavior was quite restrained. Only one woman-a daughter-seemed to be truly overcome with grief. She carried a white cloth in her hands and, moving rapidly to and fro, kept brushing with it the sides of the coffin and the flowers piled high above it, crying the while "una kakaile, una kakaile," "you will sing, you will sing"-a reference to the fact that ToUrapal had been a leading figure in the congregation of Seventh Day Adventists at Matupit, and now they would no longer hear his voice in the choir. Some of the menfolk at the graveside who were most closely related to ToUrapal dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs from time to time, and others such as ToKaul, who was a uterine nephew, or matuana, appeared to be deeply upset, but grief was controlled. I gained the impression that it was not so acute as in the case of ToPia because ToUrapal had lived so long, a notion that was quickly confirmed by one of my companions who remarked on ToUrapal's rich and full life (i tar ot kana kini, best translated perhaps by the English expression "he'd had a good innings"). It was also reflected in the mood with which we

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departed the cemetery: there was a good deal of good-natured banter and even joking that I had not encountered before on such an occasion.l 4 As I have already said, it cannot be questioned that much of the behavior one observes in the context of a Tolai funeral can only be understood by reference to well-known rules governing these occasions. On this score one can readily agree with Radcliffe-Brown that natural personal feeling cannot be taken to hold the key to explaining the phenomenon. But that is not to say that personal feelings can therefore simply be ignored. To the contrary, given the diversity of conduct revealed on these occasions, and the complexity of motivation that lies behind it, it seems to me that to regard what goes on at a Tolai burial merely as a collective and ritual expression of a collective feeling or, in the more expressive but essentially similar notion that Durkheim (1968 :443) used in speaking of the Australian Aborigines, one weeps not simply because he is sad, but because he is forced to weep, is quite inadequate. There is a further, and rather different point, to be made. For it is not a very great step from the orthodox standpoint to the claim that the frenzied scenes of grief that can occur at a Tolai funeral are usually a matter of show only,15 an unpleasant expression of ethnocentrism of the kind to which Renato Rosaldo (1984) has rightly drawn attention: exotic Others do not experience real grief as we ourselves do! For the Tolai all the familiar forms of bereavement behavior I have been describing are expressions of"niligur," a term that can be variously translated as "distress," "grief," or "sorrow." "A niligur" does not necessarily require the shedding of tears, but crying, a tinangi, is the behavioral mode in which it most commonly declares itself. The announcement of a death, the later burial, and certain other rites are the occasions par excellence for outbursts of crying, but there are also other times when crying is customary and yet again others when it erupts spontaneously. Indeed, the many different contexts in which crying is apt to be encountered provide one of the clearest indications of the way in which the theme of death has been elaborated in Tolai culture. Let me offer but a few examples. On the occasion of a namata, the rite that serves to transform a youth into a man, enabling him to marry, the young man and a group of his companions are required to spend a period of seclusion in the bush (dia paraparau). On the appointed day, when word has been received that preparations in the village are complete, the procession begins to move slowly out of the bush. A kind of tabernacle called a pal na mamarikai, specially constructed in the taraiu

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(a sacred grove or area associated with the tubuan cult), is borne aloft; underneath walks the initiand surrounded by his helpmates while yet others throng around. As they enter the village, the cortege is greeted with triumphant salutes proclaiming the name of the tubuan whose particular features have been incorporated in the design of the tabernacle; meanwhile some of the women will have burst into copious weeping. On inquiring about this, one is told that they are bewailing deceased kin whose death is recalled by the appearance of the tubuan, which is always associated with a particular descent group. The namata, a ceremonial occasion, stands at one end of a continuum. At the other are those wholly informal situations in which an individual spontaneously begins to weep. Once, for example, I had gone to call on a man whose son 1 had met when he was studying in England and had still not yet returned home. As soon as 1 mentioned the son's name, tears began to form in the man's eyes. Similarly on my first return to Matupit in 1968 after an absence of some eight years 1 discovered that a number of those 1 had earlier known well had since .died. I was struck by the fact that their widows broke into weeping as soon as they saw me; my presence now, I was told, recalled their husbands with whom 1 was on such close terms but now were no longer with us. Between these two extremes are cases like the outburst of crying 1 recorded at the hearing ofIaKibil's complaint against laMating described earlier. 1 have in fact been present on a number of occasions when crying has occurred in a public setting (Epstein 1984:7); here 1 want to refer briefly to one of these episodes because I think it helps to clarify what prompts the outburst of crying in these situations as well as its wider meaning. The matter concerned a possible split within the urur of Kilingalingen. The urur is an association of neighboring hamlets whose members engage in a variety of cooperative activities, especially in matters affecting the congregation to which they belong. For some time there had been murmurings within the Kilingalingen group that some members were not pulling their weight, and there were even suggestions that they be invited to leave. The exchanges at the meeting indicated that feelings were running high. At length Kaputin, the leader of the urur, and one of the most highly respected of the elders at Matupit, rose to to speak. "My brothers," he began, "I have thought much about this matter. 1 have worked hard on behalf of the group, and now 1 feel that the time has come for me to ask leave to lay this work down. 1 am no longer a young man, my strength is spent. 1 am weak from the illness that now

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lies in my stomach. But first I want to ask the thoughts of the urur. What shall we do with the small sum of money that belongs to the urur? Shall we hand it over to the fund for the building of our new church? Or shall we divide it up among the urur members?" Further discussion followed which began to go over old ground when Tio intervened. If Kaputin wished to lay down his position as leader of the urur, that was alright, he said; they would seek another to undertake the task. But he must not resign from the post to which the people had assigned the two of them on the committee set up to organize and oversee the building of the new church. Kaputin replied: "Tio has spoken well. In my mind only death will take me from my work on the church committee." At this point his voice broke, and he burst into sobs. He struggled to control himself in order to complete his remarks. "My brethren, I want you to know that in my mind I had but one thought, to help the group. Now I shall cease.... " The gathering broke into a hubbub of different voices, some urging that the urur be disbanded, others that it should not be allowed to die. Finding that there was no apparent way out of the dilemma, Penias, the Councillor, brought the meeting to a close saying that they should make another attempt to straighten the matter out when John Vuia returned from his trip to the Vudal. In all of the cases just mentioned it was the connection with death that precipitated the crying; in all but one it was triggered by some association that brought to mind a deceased kinsman. In the case of the dispute within the urur, Kaputin's tears followed immediately in the wake of his remarks foreshadowing his own demise. 16 In general, it is expected that women will give way readily to grief and will cry copiously; men are supposed to be made of sterner stuff, able to control their emotions. On this occasion, Kaputin had plainly failed in this regard. But when one looks carefully at this and the other cases of its kind where there was an eruption of crying in the context of a varkurai or other public debate, without wishing to suggest in any way that the parties were conscious of what they were doing or were acting deliberately, it seems as though there is also a strong "manipulative" element present. Certainly the ouburst of crying always appears to come at a point where crisis in some set of relations has been brought into the open. That is to say, in a field of relationships where harmony should prevail-most commonly because the parties share a common patuana, or ancestor-instead fission and separation threaten. Tears, the expression of grief which follows the final separation brought about by death, are used, so to speak, to appeal for unity in what appears for Tolai to be

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the most emotive way: the message carried by such behavior, never formulated consciously, seems to be that tears heal our divisions by reminding us of our mortality and the finality of parting that comes with death. To grasp these ideas the more fully I believe we need to understand the link between grief and loneliness that appears to be deep-rooted in Tolai experience. The recognition that loneliness represented an important, if not central, category of Tolai experience came to me only in my final spell of fieldwork. Perhaps the first serious intimation of it came in a pen-andpencil test given to a class of Tolai primary school pupils. This consisted in presenting the class with a list of twelve emotion terms in English. Each pupil was asked to select two of these and then write a couple of brief essays, the opening sentences of which would be "I remember once when I was very--." It is not necessary to discuss here the results of the test. All I need note, immediately striking because, for reasons discussed elsewhere (Epstein 1990), I had not expected it, was the sizeable number of these thirteen- and fourteen-yearold pupils-IS out of a total of 95-who chose to recall an occasion when they experienced loneliness. A couple of examples are worth quoting as indicating the context as well as the flavor of the experience. I remember once when I was very lonely. It all happened last year on the 25th December. The sun was setting and the village was very quiet and lonely. All the people were traveling out for Christmas picnic and I was the only girl left behind. I looked around but I could not see anybody or hear any noise. The village was very quiet and empty and there was nobody around to talk to, laugh and make fun with. It was getting darker by now and the feeling of loneliness was filling all of my heart and mind. I couldn't think of anything else that night accept [sic] the feeling of loneliness was overcoming myself. All I did was just crying. I was thinking to solve the problem by committing suicide. In the year 1982 during the month ofJanuary, my parents left us and went to New Ireland. When they left at the airport, I didn't want to see the plane taking off. I went to the car park and sat beside the road. When the plane left, my uncle and aunt, brothers and sisters, came to me. When I saw them coming to me, I went to sit under a pine tree by myself. When auntie called me to come and have a cold drink I just nodded my head, meaning I didn't want it. So when we returned home, I just went straight to the beach and slept on the sands longing for my parents ....

I also found the observations of certain Europeans very illuminating in the matter. There was, for example, the conversation I had with a Roman Catholic sister who had taught Tolai schoolchildren for many

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years. Mentioning some of the things I felt I was just beginning to learn about the sense ofloneliness among the Tolai, she at once responded by asking if! had not noticed that a Tolai child never came to school on its own; they always came in small groups. A little later in the course of the same conversation she spoke of the decline of the traditional culture, noting in particular how young children no longer had any knowledge of the old tales and legends. Some years ago at a school where she was teaching they sought to counter this tendency by introducing a school magazine. The children were asked to get their parents or others in the village to tell them kakur (folktales or legends), which the children would write down, and these would be printed in the magazine. One such tale written by a youngster had always stuck in her mind: it told of his being tossed into the water when his canoe overturned. He was able to swim ashore to an island. It was deserted; the phrase that stayed in her mind was that there was not a single coconut there. This summed up for her the feeling of utter abandonment that the tale conveyed. Intriguingly, precisely the same imagery recurs in some of the drawings of dreams that I collected from young Tolai students and have presented and discussed elsewhere (Epstein 1990). Yet another interesting discussion touching the same issue that I had was with Dr. Christine Bradley, a fellow anthropologist who had herself worked in a Tolai community a few years earlier. When once I mentioned some of the data that was beginning to come to hand relating to loneliness she at once recalled an incident that, she said, had puzzled her at the time, but following what I had just said she felt she now understood better. It concerned a Tolai nurse whose patient had died unattended. Afterward the nurse kept repeating to her, "She died alone ... she died alone .... " This was a reference to the importance of a kini vartulai, when the spouse, close kin, and children sit around and hold the dying person's hand, "escorting" him or her, as it were, into death. 17 To feel lonely appears then to be a fairly general experience among Tolai. But can one say a little more precisely what the Tolai mean when they speak of being lonely, whence the fear of being alone derives, and what is the connection of the feeling with death? Some remarks taken from another of the Boisen school essays offer an interesting lead into the discussion. The pupil in question recalled his loneliness when he first began to attend the school: "I had no one to talk to because I was the only one attending the school from our village. I was so lonely that I tried to transfer to Rabaul High School. In the classroom I did not talk

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or play around or do anything I'd like to. I was so lonely that I was nervous to answer questions in class .... I was feeling miserable and did not do my schoolwork properly. Sometimes I felt like crying." It follows that being lonely cannot simply be equated with the absence of company (see Klein 1984:300). In this instance the youngster was among classmates who were fellow Tolai and spoke his language. Yet evidently he felt cut off from friends and kin from his own village-it was as though he were among strangers, isolated and lonely. Since a primary concern at this point is with meaning, it is to the stock terms of Tolai discourse that we should turn. The standard expression to indicate that one is on one's own is--kolono or ki varkolono. This can be a purely descriptive usage, but often it also carries an affective charge. Once, for example, a young man had returned home after a long period of absence as a student. Soon after his arrival his mother became very irate with two of his brothers who were preparing to leave the house on some purpose of their own. "Your brother has just come home, and he will be on his own (ma na ki varkolono)," she upbraided them. So that he should not feel lonely (talakeke), word was sent to a cousin to come and keep him company. The mother was angered not simply that her returning son would be alone, but that his brothers were leaving him alone. In a sense they were deserting him. We touch here on an interesting complex of ideas. There is, for example, as mentioned a little earlier (p. 163, above), a very expressive word in Tolai: lingling. This refers to a house, a village, or wider tract of land that was once occupied by people, but has now been forsaken; it conveys a sense of desolation. The island that appeared in the story repeated to me by the Catholic sister as well as the ones that appear in my collection of dreams were all desert islands-lingling na gunan or, more accurately, lingling na lolo-in this sense. Lingling then can be rendered as forsaken or abandoned, but it cannot be used of people. However, it does appear to have a close etymological link with the word ling as in the expression a nat na ling, meaning an orphan. In a kin-bound society it might seem at first glance that the lot of an orphan, while unfortunate, would not necessarily be an altogether unhappy one; after all classificatory kin might be expected to act as surrogate parents. But among the Tolai this appears not to have been the case, and many stories are told of the mistreatment and neglect that are likely to befall the child that has lost both parents (Meier 1939); he is spoken of as among the most miserable of creatures. In this regard, nat na ling has much in common with another Tolai word, "biavi," a term that

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similarly conveys to Tolai a sense of utter wretchedness. "A biavi" would be used of those rare men and women who never married, who had none to care for them or otherwise befriend them-they were utterly alone and misery was their lot. But it was in the context of death that one was apt to encounter the word in its most expressive form-as has been seen already in the account of the funeral of To Pia. In this and other instances of the kind (see Winthuis, cited in Epstein 1979b :160), then, use of the word "biavi" conveys the feeling of being quite forsaken, the sense of having been abandoned utterly. It would seem indeed that death, as it is conceived by the Tolai, is likened to being left behind or abandoned. The point has to be considered from two angles. In the first place, the dying person is seen as taking a journey into the unknown. This is why in extremis he should not be left unattended, but in the approaching loneliness of death should be comforted by the presence of close kin and others. The other side of the coin is that when a death occurs it is the living who are left behind, a point that emerges plainly in the examples of lamentation cited earlier. From both these perspectives, that is to say, death represents not just the final parting, it is above all the measure of ultimate loneliness.

The Pageant of Death Exploring the concept of "niligur," and noting how it emerges and is used in a variety of contexts, bring us closer to the Tolai understanding of grief. Yet, as I suggested at the very outset, to treat the emotions as if they were cultural constructs only is to run the risk of missing questions of a kind that ought to be asked if other important aspects of the problem are to be understood and explained. Along with various psychologists who have addressed the issue, I assume that grief comprises a stereotyped set of psychological and physiological reactions of biological origin (Averill 1968; also see Izard 1977). In this connection one notes, for example, the characteristic expression of grief already described many years ago by Darwin: "After prolonged suffering the eyes become dull and lack expression, and are often slightly suffused with tears. The eyebrows not rarely are rendered oblique, which is due to their inner ends being raised. This produces peculiarly formed wrinkles on the forehead .... " (Darwin 1969:177; also see Ekman and Friesen 1975:116-128).

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But in the light of our own interests there is an even more important point. Taking cognizance of the ample evidence of griefiike reactions in apes and monkeys, Averill (1968) has argued that grief is a biological response the evolutionary significance of which is to ensure group cohesiveness in species where a social form of existence is necessary to survival. This is accomplished by making separation from the group, or from specific members of it, an extremely stressful event both psychologically and physiologically. What is not entirely clear in this formulation is the nature of the mechanism by which such stress serves to achieve social cohesion. I suggest the step in the argument that Averill has missed is that the complex psychological and physiological processes that underlie the expression of grief involve important consequences. Some of these have again been described by Darwin (1969:176): "The circulation becomes languid; the face pale; the muscles flaccid; the eyelids droop; the head hangs on the contracted chest; the lips, cheeks and lower jaw all sink downwards from their weight." Loss of energy has also been commonly noted. The behavioral concomitants of these various changes are well known. After a period of initial shock, awareness of loss develops and a state of despondency ensues. This is a period marked by intense mental anguish, above all by apathy and withdrawal (Averill 1968:723). In its consequences, that is to say, grief plainly emerges as an antisocial phenomenon. That is, by its very nature it poses a serious problem for society: how to assuage the anguish of the individuals concerned, and at the same time reawaken the interest that would restore them to group life. There is no single solution to the problem; different societies offer various solutions in line with the other adaptations to the environment that they have made as well as with their cultural preoccupations or ethos. Where the Tolai are concerned this consists in what I have spoken of earlier as their cultural elaboration of death, which is mirrored most clearly in the encouragement given to the expression of grief through the provision of so many occasions for recalling one's sense of loss, occasions that are in turn transformed into gatherings of festival and celebration. The process has something in common with that envisaged by Gilbert Murray (1937:244) in his reflections on the nature of tragedy in ancient Greece: " ... a full facing of tragic facts, and in form a resolute transfiguration of them in poetry." The remainder of this chapter attempts to document this process. When a Tolai dies, a first concern is to bring comfort to the bereaved, and it is important to understand what form this takes. Once

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when I was without transport of my own, I had arranged for ToKonia to come and collect me in his bus and take me somewhere. He was very late in arriving and when he finally turned up he immediately explained that he'd had a small duty to perform (ta ik a varvakai). laLagar, a kinswoman patrilaterally related, had just died, and he had gone along to join with the others who had gathered at the house of mourning. So far as I could gather, very little was said during his stay; the important thing was simply his presence there. Some aspects of the funerary rites appear to fulfill a similar function. At the funeral of To Pia, for example, there was an announcement from the graveside that there would be a distribution of shell money of the kind known as a palum tambu. In the past when someone died it had been the practice to send a few fathoms of shell money to leading men in the different parts of the island. Only afterward was there a general distribution among the people as a whole. Nowadays only the latter custom was followed and now, following the announcement from the graveside, the crowd slowly began to disperse and people made their way in the direction of the house of ToPia's parents. As they began to arrive they sat scattered around in small groups of three and four reluctant, I was told, to be the first to come forward to take their place by the house lest all eyes were laid upon them and they would be greatly embarrassed (vavirvir). Accordingly it was only after the call went forth from the master of ceremonies that everyone finally took their places around the house, the men to one side, the women to the other. What followed was a rather long drawnout affair. First there was a presentation of buai (betel nut) to each individual present. Then followed the actual distribution of tambu. At irregular intervals the eight men involved on this occasion in making a prestation took it in tum to move round the assembled menfolk, casting a length of tambu before each one, including children; 18 among the women gathered on the other side of the house a similar distribution was taking place. Throughout the whole of this time people sat quietly on their mats. While there were some who exchanged desultory remarks with a neighbor, most appeared to remain silent throughout. It was as though what needed to be communicated on these occasions was achieved by one's very presence; the mere fact of coming together (a pinot guvai) is seen as in itself a source of comfort, a recognition of the duty to share the mourner's burden of grief, and so ease it. Psychologists have commonly noted how anger is implicated in grief, and anthropologists too have sometimes reported a similar connection. Thus in an unusual and absorbing paper, Renato Rosaldo

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(1984) has described how out of his own personal experience of bereavement he finally was able to grasp what Ilongot had told him of how rage, born of grief, impelled one to kill-how the act of severing and tossing away the victim's head enabled one to vent and hopefully throwaway the anger of bereavement. Schieffelin, too, has shown in the case of a Papua New Guinean people, the Kaluli of the Papuan Plateau, how loss provides not merely the point of contact between anger and grief, but also the point at which grief may be transmuted into anger and effective action. "A raid to kill a witch responsible for a death is the satisfying result of the transformation of grief into anger" (Schieffelin 1985:177). We are dealing here with what ethnologists would call instances of redirected aggression; in more psychological terms we might say that the distress of grief which would otherwise be experienced inwardly, increasing one's anguish, is discharged outward, so diminishing it. Achieving this end does not require resort to violence along the lines of the headhunting Ilongot nor even raids of the kind mounted by the Kaluli; aggression against others can take less obtrusive forms. Thus among the Tolai, despite the profound and continuing influence of Christian teaching for over a century, the notion of death by natural causes remains a concept difficult to grasp, even by the most highly educated (Kaputin 1978), and even today a death at Matupit, save in the case of the very old, is apt to provoke murmurings about the work of sorcerers.l 9 In such contexts one was still likely to pick up dark hints of resort to komkom, divination to establish the identity of the sorcerer and then steps to accomplish his dispatch by the use of vengeance magic. The subsequent news of the death of a putative sorcerer, or of one of his kin, offered the unquestionable proof that the komkom had done its work. By such means is grief assuaged: mourning can be put aside and the tenor of ordinary life restored. Comfort and the directing of one's anger outward are important mechanisms that enable people to cope with their grief. But they are essentially solutions to an immediate problem: they operate only in the short term. This is seen, for example, in those rules found in so many societies that prescribe a period of formal bereavement for a period of, say, thirty days, or even a year, at the end of which mourning is lifted and one is expected to return to the business of everyday living. Where the rules provide for vengeance killing then here too execution must come fairly expeditiously if its aim is to be achieved. The Tolai, however, take matters very much further, in a sense protracting the process by means of a series of mortuary rites that may be staged over a consider-

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able number of years. The performance of these various rites has the effect of reviving grief by recalling the dead, but at the same time it provides a means of directing negative emotions into more positive channels. It should be stressed that Tolai mortuary rites do not take a fixed or standardized form. Here, as in other areas of their culture, there is much variation in the details of custom in different parts of the Gazelle, though the same major symbolic motifs do seem to recur in all areas. Even within the same community there will be noticeable differences between one performance and another: an activity included in the one is omitted in another, and so on. So much depends on the circumstances surrounding the event, in particular the status of the deceased being honored and of the surviving kin who sponsor the ceremony. Change has also been an important factor here. For reasons mentioned earlier, Matupi stocks of shell money had become seriously depleted at the time of my first fieldwork there. In consequence one heard constant complaints about the attenuated form many funerary rites had come to take or that no large-scale balaguan had been staged on the island for many years. But by 1986 the position in regard to tambu had changed out of all recognition, allowing for the revival of a ceremonial life that had earlier appeared to be in the process of disappearing. 20 The rechanneling of emotions that I have suggested as an important aspect of the later mortuary rites is illustrated in its simplest form in some of the ceremonies that followed the death ofToIlot, John Vuia's older brother. In the days before the introduction of the system ofNative Local Government Councils, Tollot himself had been a luluai at Matupit, and given John Vuia's own very high standing not only there but within the wider Tolai community, it was understandable that these should have been the most elaborate ceremonies I observed on the island at that time. 21 About a week after the burial and other associated rites (Epstein 1969:232-234), there was a performance of what was called a langlagur, led on the first night by Kaputin, and on the second by a leading elder of the Pikalaba moiety at Ramp. The main feature of the langlagur was a procession of women, their foreheads and faces adorned with lime powder and carrying arm baskets of the kind normally used only by men, from the hamlet of their male leader to ToIlot's house where his kinswomen were still gathered in mourning. The procession moved very slowly through the village; there was a pause at intervals of about ten yards, when the women broke into a special kind

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of song known as a taktak praising the vunatarai of the deceased. The words of the taktak ran as follows: ToVuia na tut papa na malagene na kutu tambu na ubu ra matai go ra kor

[ToVuia will arise and dance, cutting tambu to bedazzle the eyes of the throng]

The verse was repeated, substituting each time the name of another member of the matrilineage. Then, as they approached the house of mourning, they were answered by songs from the women within. The men's bags, all newly made that day, were now heaped on the ground; the contents-a tin of food, matches, soap, sugar, tobacco-would go to the women who were staying in ToIlot's house. What followed was in the nature of general entertainment, designed to put everybody in good humor and marking an end to mourning. One of the women, dressed as a man, was conducting her choir with a calculated exaggeration of gesture, while others stepped out and performed grotesque dances. It was an occasion for clowning and buffoonery. One young woman had dressed as a New Guinea laborer and was parodying the New Guinea style of dancing. A guitar provided the accompaniment for another dance that was performed with a good deal of knockabout humor. Finally, two women of Kikila, also dressed as men, showed a genuine comic talent with a series of skits on the behavior of various Europeans which had everyone rolling with laughter. The langlagur for Tollot involved the active participation of people from Kikila and Ramp only; as already noted, it took place in the week following the funeral. Despite the fact that it formed part of the biggest set of ceremonies of any kind I had observed at Matupit, it remained nevertheless a parochial affair. A balaguan, by contrast, is a much more elaborate event. In the first place, it is ordinarily designed as a memorial, a varvanuknuk, not just to one person but to a set of persons all of whom had died some years before. Shortly after my return to Matupit in 1986, while walking around the island, I visited the cemetery at Kikila. The area was clearly well tended with crotons everywhere and fresh flowers on many graves. There were an impressive number of gravestones, vatnaim, some of which must have been quite costly to put up. But what caught my eye particularly was a row of attractively designed headstones. These were dedicated to a group of men and women who had died or had been killed during the last war and had had to be

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buried on the hillsides across the water from Matupit. A few years before their bodies were brought down for reburial at Kikila. A balaguan was staged to mark the occasion, sponsored and organized by Meli Paivu, who had now emerged as Matupit's most successful businessman of the day, to whose vunatarai most of the dead appear to have belonged. I have also mentioned earlier ToKonia's plans for a balaguan that was to take place a few months after my final departure, the central purpose of which was to celebrate the erection of a raim, a structure of remembrance dedicated to the vunatarai. Sponsoring such a balaguan is a major undertaking. Not only does it call for considerable resources in cash and shell money, it also requires much careful planning and organization: enough food has to be provided for the hundreds of guests who are expected to tum up; there is the whole complex business that is involved in the staging of the dances-the highlight of the event; and not least, a variety of tasks has to be allocated to different people, a matter that in itself calls for the exercise of considerable social skills if enemies are not to be made. The balaguan then recalls the dead to whom homage is paid, but the main effect of the day's events is-or should be-to transform the occasion into a moment of triumph for the sponsor and the surviving members of his vunatarai. Like those other great balaguan of the past, which are still recalled and talked about, it is the sponsor's hope that his own will also live on in the memory of people long after his own death. 22 But for all the importance of a balaguan, and all the talk that one generates, for the Tolai the great climactic rite is the matamatam. Salisbury (1966:119) speaks of it as a clan memorial ceremony, an apt description that covers well those occasions I learned about in the course of my first fieldwork which were said to be for the purpose of cementing the graves of all the departed of the vunatarai. Salisbury also speaks of it as being linked with the "raising" of the tubuan. The masked figure that goes by the name of tubuan is indeed an indispensable feature of a matamatam, although its appearance is not confined to such occasions. For example, in the case of a bit na tubuan, a man held in high repute because he is known to be versed in the mysteries of the tubuan, the tubuan may be "raised" to bury him when he dies, as occurred in the case of ToNgarama shortly before my last return to Matupit. The matamatam, then, is distinguished not so much by the "raising" of the tubuan as by the fact that the dukduk also appears. My Matupi informants insisted that there could be no matamatam without the presence of the dukduk, an observation also recorded by Errington (1974:98) in his

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study of ritual on Karavara in the Duke of Yorks. The point is important because it at once draws attention to the interesting role certain emotions play in these ceremonies. Jacob Simet (1977), a Tolai anthropologist and himself a Matupi, has pointed out that many writers have wrongly assumed that the tubuan is female, the dukduk male. It may indeed be the case that some tubuans carry a male name; for myself I can only note that all the tubuan names I chanced to record were female, taking the female prefix Ia (as, e.g., IaTakin). Moreover, the fact that the tubuan is held to give birth to the dukduk, as Simet himself acknowledges, would seem to underline strongly the association of tubuan with femaleness. The tubuan may perhaps be thought of as an incarnation or personification of the spirit of the vunatarai. Particularly noteworthy here is that when the tubuan emerges from the taraiu, or sacred grove, even the immediate environs of which are absolutely taboo to women, and makes its way along a path where it may be beheld by women, the female members of the vunatarai greet it with an outburst of weeping, the emergence of the tubuan serving to recall how the passing of so many of their kin has left the land forsaken and desolate (tingling). By contrast, the dukduk, and especially the kangal, its special elongated headdress, are regarded as supreme symbols of male pride. In such ways a kind of splitting mechanism operates allocating contrasting emotions according to sex. 23 Recalling the departed of the vunatarai, and the expression of grief revived in this way, are integral to the matamatam, but in the context of the performance itself grief is plainly subordinated to the expression of emotions of a very different kind. The matamatam is preeminently an occasion of triumph and pride in which personal assertiveness and competitiveness are allowed the fullest expression. I have cited earlier (p. 106, above) Brown's account of the boastful behavior that characterized balaguan he himself had attended close on a century before. Then, when the "big man" who was sponsoring the ceremony had finally completed his "performance," he presented some portions of tambu to the other "big men" there who proceeded to boast in similar fashion. This might be followed by a challenge by the host to all present to try and remove his butur. The butur was a small tree on which in the past the "big man" would have placed his offerings to the dead. Then, prancing around and brandishing his spear, he would invite his audience to challenge his supremacy. Only those who were wealthy in tambu of course were in a position to rise to the bait, for if they were

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successful in removing the butur they would be presented with tambu and other gifts that would have to be returned at some future date; it was in effect a challenge to stage a ceremony of equal splendor. Some of the details of custom have changed since Brown's day, and some perhaps are observed in one community but not in another. But the same themes or motifs remain. At Matupit the word associated with boastful behavior is a varpin. As observed earlier, the Tolai tend to be committed to a fierce egalitarianism. Hence if a man feels himself to have been slighted or insulted he will exclaim angrily in terms of selfaggrandizement: "U toia upi u tata ure iau? Iau a iap. Pata tikai i taun iau." ("Who are you to talk about me? I am the fire that burns. There is none who surpasses me.") There is much else in similar vein. In everyday life such boasting was strongly condemned. A braggart, a lup tinata na varpin, it used to be said, did not live long. In the context of the major ceremonies, however, such behavior was not merely permitted, it was integral to the nature of the occasion, and a varpin attached to every aspect of the day's events: the number of dances put on, the skill of the dancers, the beauty of their costumes and decorations, the amounts of food and tambu distributed, and above all perhaps the number of people who were attracted to attend. 24 As other anthropologists have observed (e.g., Turner 1968), it is as though what was forbidden in secular life became legitimate in the context of rite and ceremony. Ceremony "tamed" the impulse, transformed it by specifying the conditions under which what was ordinarily illicit became socially acceptable and even enjoined. As Salisbury'S (1966) account plainly shows, a matamatam has important economic and political aspects. As with the balaguan, this is the arena par excellence in which "big men" seek to measure themselves and to be measured. It has other aspects too. Around the theme of death the Tolai have constructed a spectacular pageant in which a highly developed sense of color and of artistry can be fully indulged. In all these ways it can readily be seen how ceremonies like balaguan and matamatam contribute to the cohesion of society. Yet many puzzling questions remain, particularly in relation to tambu. It is at this point indeed that we encounter the kind of situation, to which I referred in my introductory chapter, where the data challenge us to move beyond the sociological, the cultural, or the ideological levels in terms of which my analysis has thus far been framed in order to deal with those features in the material suggesting that unconscious processes are at work. Two issues may be mentioned here to illustrate what I have in mind: the first,

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the inconsistency of attitudes revealed in the handling of shell money in the context of a matamatam and in its more mundane daily use; the second, the symbolism of the leo, the bamboo scaffolding to whose meaning I shall return shortly. Hosting a major ceremony, it has been seen, is an immense source of prestige; but more, it is the means of converting prestige into power through the deployment and manipulation of tambu. The giving away of wealth is a most notable feature of these occasions, and is accompanied by tremendous excitement. Salisbury describes how, for each dance, a roll or coil of tambu is taken from storage and publicly cut before lengths (pidik) are thrust into the hands of each dancer. Giving, indeed, is the order of the day and it reaches "frenzied proportions in the evening as the dances finish" (Salisbury 1966: 121). Power lies in the gift (a tinabar), because it imposes an obligation on the recipient to make return in due course, and because, by the same token, it represents a challenge. Hence at a matamatam, to cite Salisbury's account again, "normal Tolai penny-pinching is in complete abeyance .... Any important man seizes the opportunity to tabar all and sundry, but especially other important men. He throws a fathom or so at the feet of a friend/rival, and his followers hurl pidik on to the pile for the recipient to pick up. The latter then seeks out another friend/ rival to tabar, and waits for the next matamatam, when he will reciprocate (bali) the gift he has received" (ibid.). The careful observations recorded here of what goes on at a matamatam reveal at once a curious pattern of alternation where behavior and attitudes touching tambu are concerned, a sharp oscillation between the clinging and tightfistedness so evident in everyday life and the lavish, even abandoned, giving so characteristic of a ceremonial occasion. As I first began to ponder the matter, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Epstein 1979b), it seemed to me that this was but one of a number of contradictions that the study of tambu disclosed. Pursuing the point, I noted how tambu served as a pointer to a variety of conflicts within the Tolai system of values, in an important sense even cloaking them. I went on to argue that behind such conflicts, and congruent with them, lay other kinds of conflict of an intrapsychic character that had their roots in infantile experience. Then, following leads drawn from the psychoanalytic literature, I proceeded to explore at length the relations between tambu and anal erotism. In this way I was led to see the possibility that among the impulses that find their expression in the context of a matamatam are those particularly associated with anality. In these

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circumstances I do not need to retrace ground covered elsewhere save where this has seemed necessary for an understanding of the analysis I am here seeking to develop. My point of departure for the analysis presented here then is the view, derived from psychoanalytic theory, that the anal phase of infantile development is the focus of various intrapsychic conflicts that are likely to gather around the act of defecation: as between the demands of retention and elimination, and in regard to the struggle for autonomy and the handling of aggression. We may see Tolai mortuary ceremonies, I suggest, as a projection and resolution of these conflicts through their expression in disguised form. I have argued then that tambu is a coprosymbol, a displacement of the original infantile interest in excrement. In other words, by means of a cultural device, which emphasizes the importance of accumulating tambu, Tolai are able to gratify the retentive impulse to the maximum extent possible: until death, when it is yielded up and distributed to the accompaniment of praise and acclamation in the rites that mark one's own passing or in those that later honor the dead of one's vunatarai. Using the same framework of ideas, the analysis can be carried further to shed light on other features touching the role of tambu in a matamatam. The central point was made by Freud (1918:81) when he remarked that feces are the child's firstgift (italics in the original), the first sacrifice on behalf of his affection, a portion of his own body that he is ready to part with, but only for the sake of someone he loves. "To use faeces as an expression of defiance. . . is merely to turn this earlier 'gift' meaning into the negative." We are confronted here with the two faces of aggression, both of which find their full representation in the context of the mortuary rites. Faced with a conflict over the modes of retention and elimination, the psychoanalyst will expect his patient to entertain, as Erikson (1963:59) puts it, peculiarly messy fantasies of total elimination against selected individuals, especially those close to him who by necessity are forced to make demands of his inner treasures. Erikson goes on to comment that while the patient's deeds of passive and retentive hostility often remain unrecognizable to him and to his intended victims, he would constantly be compelled to undo, or to make amends, to atone for something done in fact or fantasy. Some of these "messy fantasies" are plainly to be seen in various of the ideas that Tolai hold in regard to sorcery (Epstein 1979b:178-180). Such notions, however, are essen-

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tially the projection of one's own hostile impulses and a measure of one's own guilt. It is wholly appropriate therefore that death should also be the occasion of sacrifice, the final act of atonement, the yielding up of one's tambu by which, in the past, one ensured acceptance into the Abode of the Spirits. That tambu is also a symbol of hostile aggression, a transformation of the anal impulse, is evident in the context of a matamatam in a number of ways. The cutting of the coils of shell money is held to be mystically dangerous, and those who are to undertake the task protect themselves by daubing the body with a powder known as a matatar. Again, in cutting up the coil the man hacks at it furiously. Then he moves round the assembly, breaking off lengths of shell money which he casts contemptuously at the feet of the recipients. They for their part studiously ignore the "gift." In these acts there is a plain hostility, but its sharpness is blurred as it becomes fused with a more positive expression of competitiveness. At this point I can turn to the second of the two issues mentioned above: the meaning of the "leo." The leo is an essential prop in the staging of any ceremony designed to leave a mark on the memory and may be erected on occasions other than a balaguan or matamatam. One may recall here, for example, the leo raised for the obsequies for ToIlot at Matupit, but that which is put up at a matamatam is expected to be vastly more impressive. It consists simply of a huge frame, built up of bamboo supports and crossbeams, surmounted by carved representations of tubuan and dukduk and hung, for all to admire, with numerous coils or loloi of tambu. What is the meaning of such a display? The coils do not belong to the "big man" alone; they are contributed by members of his vunatarai, by partners who regularly stand together (tu'lJuvai) with him in such activities, or they are loaned by others of the same moiety. In this way balaguan or matamatam may come to be spoken of as an affair of, say, the Marmar as against one staged by the Pikalaba. At a conscious level then the display of tambu on the leo may be seen as expressing the creative aspects of aggression and pride, the sense of power and achievement that legitimately belong to the man who through his enterprise, his organizing skills, and his capacity to mobilize support is able to stage a successful ceremony. But, pressing the analysis beyond this point, and accepting my proposed view of tambu as a coprosymbol, it becomes possible to see the loloi on display, in appearance like great wheels, as transfigured representations of the

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anus. Thus, dominating the dancing ground and the entire stage, the leo stands as a supreme symbol, affirming and reconciling the conflicting values of triumph and contrition, dominance and submission. Pursuing the analysis in this way from a psychological perspective, and taking full account of unconscious factors, illuminates, I believe, not only many facets of the tambu-complex, and the emotions associated with it, but also the connections between these and other areas of ethos and experience that have been traversed in this chapter. In various contexts we have noted a preoccupation with death. For the Tolai death is above all a fearful thing. Yet it would seem that it is not so much the physical fact of death that is the source of this fear (see Epstein 1979b:181) as the ideas and fantasies that are woven around it. Especially noticeable is the way death, separation, and loneliness are perceived to be so intimately connected, a point that emerges with particular clarity in the data on dreams. But it is above all in the ceremonial context that the concern with death is most accessible to the observer and finds preeminent cultural expression. In the analysis of balaguan and matamatam, what is revealed, as I hope to have shown, is the conjunction of a number of themes: mourning and loss, atonement and triumph. Recent work on mourning and loss, I suggest, offers some clues to the meaning of this, at the same time lending resonance to some of my own findings and suggestions just mentioned. Thus for Bowlby (1969,1973), the prototype of grief is to be found in detachment from the mother: once the child has formed a tie to a mother figure, which ordinarily occurs by the middle of the first year, its rupture leads to separation anxiety and sets in train processes of mourning. The child responds to loss by grief and anger in an effort to recover the beloved object. What is the relevance of this to the Tolai situation? One possibility to which Bowlby's views draw attention lies in the fact that among the Tolai there is an increasing detachment of the mother from the child as she becomes pregnant again, and finally gives birth, a sequence of events that will ordinarily coincide with the period in which anal erotism achieves maximum intensity, between eighteen and twenty months. In other words, the onset of the child's sense of loss coincides with its efforts to assert its autonomy in the matter of defecation. 25 In tum, separation fosters its sense of guilt toward her, which can only be assuaged by an act of atonement: through the proper yielding up of its feces the child recovers the mother's love. Such a view helps to shed further light on the symbolism of tambu. For the Tolai, the coil of tambu, which only a little earlier I suggested might be thought of as a

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transfigured representation of the anus, may now be seen too as a symbol of the vagina, through which one achieves rebirth. In my fuller discussion of tambu elsewhere I drew attention to the way the concept of tambu/taboo served as a boundary marker between different realms, social and symbolic; tambu not only indicates the areas where trespass is forbidden but it also serves to mediate the passage between these realms or to make reparation when the taboo has been violated. This applies no less to the most fundamental prohibition of all: the incest taboo. Hence, just as the "cutting" of tambu in the mortuary rites affirms the taboo, so in a sense it abrogates it at the same time. In these rites the Tolai finds his triumph over death as, purged of guilt, he is able to enter a new life in the Abode of the Dead. This, I suggest, is the most profound significance of the loloi, the great wheel of tambu, that in death one is born again and finally able to return to the mother. Rooted deep in the unconscious, the "cutting" oftambu still persists despite the fact that its traditional ideological underpinnings-the notion of a matana kaia, an afterlife in the Abode of the Spirits-have disappeared.

7 Affect and the Self

In earlier chapters I looked at the way emotions are generated in, or are associated with, certain kinds of activity or fields of relationship. Then in the previous chapter I sought to show how understanding of particular Tolai institutions, tambu or shell money, for example, could be deepened if full account were taken of the affective dimension of the problem; pursuing this line of attack quickly led into other areas ofTolai culture and behavior, to an appreciation of data of whose significance one had previously been unaware, and of connections among the data that had not hitherto been perceived. In all these contexts one was dealing with the affects in their social aspect. This has meant putting to one side another dimension of the problem: that it is individuals who feel emotion, and that our concern also lies with what is a matter of personal experience. We are thus led into an area that some anthropologists have recently come to define in terms of a culturally constituted self positioned at the nexus of personal and social worlds (Lutz and White 1986:417). The concept of self is a notably elusive one, which has sometimes been used by anthropologists and others in different ways. However, as applied by those anthropologists who have adopted an interpretative approach to their discipline, the central concern would seem to be increasingly with the way people construe themselves and how their constructions are culturally phrased. As was observed much earlier, such an approach is seen as having intrinsic interest in that it brings exotic Others much closer to home. But it also has theoretical importance because, as Smith (1985:84) has re198

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marked in this regard, as reflexively conscious creatures people are influenced by their self-conceptions: "their metaphors of selfhood become in part self-fulfilling prophecies." In line with this revived interest in questions relating to "culture and self" there have been calls for a better developed ethnopsychology that would focus on the way "contrasting peoples conceptualize their human nature and their personalsocial processes" (Smith 1985:83). As is evident in the work of Levy as well as in many of the contributions to the symposium Person, Self, and Experience, edited by White and Kirkpatrick (1985), attention to the emotions is quite central to this program. Introducing a set of papers on the theme of self and emotion, Levy points to some of the questions that need to be taken up: for example, does the received Western model distort the actual function of "shame" and "guilt" in relation to the self in non-Western communities? Or again, are there other emotions systematically affecting self-integration? (Levy 1983: 129). I myself will want to say something of the experience of shame and guilt in the Tolai context, but before turning to this matter it seems to me that there are some prior questions that need to be considered. Some of these have been touched on by Levy himself in other publications. Thus, generalizing from his understanding of Tahitian categories, he distinguishes between a state of sickness or exhaustion and an "emotion": in the first instance the emphasis is on something wrong in the relation of a person to his own body and to his internal environment; regarding an "emotion," the emphasis is on something wrong in the relationship of the person to his external physical and social context. The emotions, that is to say, are feelings that are connected with the external relationships of the self, of"!." As Levy himself puts it, "The difference between the nonemotional, 'My foot hurts me,' and the emotional, 'I am angry with him because he stepped on my foot,' involves in the second case a relationship with another" (Levy 1984a :221; 1984b :403). But even if the distinction holds in the Tahitian case, expressions such as "i iap ra balagu" (my belly is on fire) in Tolai or "my heart bleeds" in English, both of which relate to an inner bodily upset but also plainly refer to the experience of an emotion, cast doubt about its being very meaningful cross-culturally. Nor is it easy to see how, for example, such states as being angry or disgusted with oneself are accommodated by a formulation that defines emotions as feelings that are connected with the external relationships of the self. But an even more basic weakness in his position, it seems to me, stems from the failure to address the prior question how the self

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comes to be implicated at all in our understanding of the emotions. Why, that is to say, should the concept of the selfbe thought necessary to the discussion of affect? In apptoaching this question I believe it is necessary to take a rather wider perspective than does Levy and those others who treat the emotions in purely cultural terms. A simple illustration will serve to make the point. Anyone who has ever held or placed a cat before a mirror will have quickly discovered that it gives no sign of recognition of itself as a cat. The cat, we would say, has not developed a sense of self. However, casual observation also reveals that that same cat, sensing some threat in its environment, perhaps the presence of another cat entering its territory, reacts by arching its back, retracting its claws and hissing in what few would have difficulty in regarding as a display of anger. Such displays are a matter of reflex, they require for their understanding no reference to a concept of self. Now it is possible, even likely, that experimental work with lower animals will show that the matter is more complex than such casual observations would lead one to suppose. But what does seem clear is that when chimpanzees that have been socially raised are similarly tested before a mirror they show that they are capable of taking themselves as objects in a more conceptual way than is involved in scratching or self-grooming (Gallup 1977 cited in Smith 1985:62). It appears then that we have to take account of evolutionary processes marked as much by continuities as by developmental shifts. Thus, where humans are concerned, there will be many occasions as when, for example, someone steps on one's foot, when one can be expected to react angrily without the need to invoke the notion of self in order to explain that reaction. However, the circumstances that serve to activate human anger are not always so straightforward. Take, by way of example, the episode mentioned earlier where in the context of a balaguan the sponsor and chief organizer of the ceremony had exploded in anger because another man had placed a bamboo archway, to which bananas were to be attached, on the spot on which it had previously been agreed the host's own archway should stand. There was no direct physical threat involved here, but the sponsor plainly perceived the action of the other as a threat to his authority, undermining his position as the one who was entitled to lue ra varkurai (i.e., to be the one in charge). But I noted too in the earlier discussion that one would have missed the full significance of the host's outburst if account were not also taken of the fact that this was his first time to exercise authority in a matter of this kind, one which was traditionally a major step in marking

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oneself out as a "big man" following in one's father's footsteps. One might add that it can readily be imagined how in such circumstances a man might be led to feel ashamed at his failure to control his feelings in such a public setting and would then discharge his shame in anger at himself. It is to understand such subtleties of response that we need to postulate the existence of a self: the hurt that provoked the sponsor of the ceremony to anger was not in any way physical, but possibly of an even more distressing kind because it involved a threat to his image of self. In such situations we can see at once how the symbolic adds a whole new dimension to the meaning and experience of the self in humans. More concretely, such scenes also show not merely how the self is implicated in activating a particular affect, but also how one emotion can trigger another, so illustrating something of the inner dynamics of affect. In taking anger as exemplar for purposes of exposition Levy has in fact selected an affect that, as I have remarked in an earlier context, tends to seek its discharge outward onto another, so that in many instances the expression of anger does indeed appear as connected with the external relationships of the self. Yet further consideration shows that even here his formulation misses much of the complexity of the situation, since the response to the same event may vary considerably, as Ekman's (1975: 79) discussion brings out so clearly: An insult, a rejection, an action which shows disregard for your feelings, may anger you. You must care in some way about the person who psychologically hurts you in order to feel hurt and angry about it. An insult from someone you have little regard for, a rejection by someone whom you would never consider as friend or lover, may at best call forth contempt or surprise .... In some cases you may care so much about the person who has hurt you ... that you rationalize his hurtful acts by finding some basis in your own actions for his hurtful behaviour; you then feel guilty rather than angry. Put in other terms, you become angry with yourself rather than with the one who hurt you.

To understand this potential for variability of response calls for a dynamic approach that takes account not only of what goes on externally but what also goes on internally, and of the continuous interaction between the two. But the discussion does not simply point to the need to invoke a concept of the self in very general terms, it also draws attention to some of the aspects or dimensions of the self that need to be explored if the self is to be understood in its ethnographic context. Perhaps the first point to emerge is the requirement of self-awareness: to take account

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of this in one's descriptions and analyses is to require the presence of actors or performers consciously-and even unconsciously-interpreting ongoing action (see Johnson 1985:84). Self-awareness in tum implies separateness, the sense of those things that confer individuality and mark our differences from others. Pursuing this line of thought we encounter questions about boundaries, the means by which the self seeks to maintain its distance from others and the role of affect in this regard. Then, as already seen, there is the issue of the image of the self, which is bound up very much with questions about self-evaluation, the evaluation of the self by others, and the complex interaction of the two. In exploring below the various dimensions of the self in the T olai context I organize the discussion around such terms as individuality, selfhood, and identity. None of these has achieved in the literature the degree of refinement that would seem desirable, and as things stand there is some overlap between them. Despite this, as I hope to show, each can be used to illuminate different aspects of a complex matter.

Individuality and Character In their contribution to a volume that both reflects and has in tum importantly contributed to the current interest of many anthropologists in the concept of self, Shweder and Bourne (1984: 194) observe that to members of sociocentric organic cultures the concept of the autonomous individual, free to choose and mind his own business, must feel alien, a bizarre idea cutting the self off from the interdependent whole, dooming it to a life of isolation and loneliness. Linked to each other in an interdependent system, we are told, members of organic cultures take an active interest in one another's affairs, and feel at ease in regulating and being regulated. This is a pronouncement very much in the mould of those models of polar opposition so favored by sociologists and anthropologists of an earlier day that might by now be supposed to have served their purpose. But clearly not, for similar assumptions have come to color much ethnographic reportage. Of particular interest here are some comments of Errington offered in the context of his study of ritual on Karavar, a small island in the Duke of Yorks whose inhabitants share with the Tolai a basically similar language and culture, including the same use of shell currency and the cult of tubuan and dukduk. Karavarans, Errington (1974:26)

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tells us, "do not regard individuals as having an inviolable 'inner' core of the sort that we in the West conceive our 'self' to be. The Karavarans have no understanding of the self-regulation we call 'character.' They do not speculate about each other's motives; they do not appeal to each other's conscience. An individual, in their view, is not controlled by anything resembling guilt; there is nothing corresponding to an idea of 'sin.' People are understood only in behavioral terms. Karavarans will note that a man is a chronic gossip or cigarette smoker, but no one is interested in why he has those characteristics." Or again, "since Karavarans do not distinguish between character or between role and person, an individual is what he does" (ibid.:28). I myself could offer evidence on the Tolai that would seem to accord with Errington's account. Consider, for example, the manner in which Turpui recalls the story of his life. After listing a great many places he had visited as a young man, he continued: Such were my travels. Later I returned to Matupit and after a while I was married. And I begot my first child. I will pause here, for such was my youth. But there are many things which I have seen which pertain to our forefathersmany customs which I have seen myself, and things which they performed over me. For example, when they "bound" me (dia ga vivin iau) and I stayed in hiding in the bush. Then they performed the namata for me. I performed the nidok too and I saw the dukduk in the bush, and later I myself was to organize a nidok too .... All these things I have seen; and like the patuana before me, I have "cut" tambu for those who have died. The account is liberally sprinkled with "1's," but it confines itself to externals and the tone is wholly impersonal in a way that recalls an early paper by George Brown (1898), "Life History of a Savage," that presents a view of the life of a New Britain native by describing the customs appropriate to each stage of it. Much the same kind of response was obtained when sometimes an informant was asked to recall his parents: one's father had been an expert in all aspects of the babau (the making and use offish baskets), I might be told, or a fine singer or composer of songs and so on; a mother was recalled by some simply as one who had worked hard in the gardens and striven to accumulate much tambu-replies that suggested, in Errington's terms, not so much a person as a role. But such data were far from representing the total picture. Among my informants there were also those who offered more rewarding responses that were richer in terms of personal reminiscence, as well as revealing a sense of character, as I will discuss further shortly. For the moment,

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however, my point is not so much to refute Errington's claims, but to suggest rather that the matter raises issues that are wider than he supposes. All societies in fact have to cope with the problem of individuality, with the way in which one person is differentiated from another, and interesting questions are raised therefore about the different kinds of solution adopted, as well as about the degree of cultural emphasis the issue is given in societies of different type. Pursuing such questions calls for consideration of a broader range of data than Errington provides. At first glance the question of individuality might seem to have two distinct sides to it: on the one hand, the perception of the individuality of others, on the other, attention to one's own. The matter is apt to present itself to the fieldworker in this way, I suspect, because the problem of access to the data is likely to differ so much in the two cases. In the one, the source of information is commonly quite direct: it finds expression in the language, in other customary ways, or in external behavior readily observable; in the other, it will rarely be but indirect, a matter of inference. Further reflection, leading to further inquiry on the ground, shows however a close interconnection between them in that expressions of interest in the attributes and qualities of others usually quickly reveals a recognition of, and interest in, one's own. Brief reference to physical appearance, which appears everywhere to be a matter of absorbing interest, will serve to illustrate the point. Tolai use various criteria in distinguishing themselves from those of other ethnic groups as well as among themselves: by degree of pigmentation, whether one is short or tall, fat or thin, and so on. Awareness of the bodies of others is so keen indeed that youngsters have no trouble in identifying the one who dons the costume of the tubuan simply by glancing at the masked figure's lower limbs, the only part of his anatomy left exposed. All physical features that are not artificial or the product of accident are explained as being hereditary, a notion neatly summed up in the saying that "a katkatur a katkatur, a iava a iava," "a katkatur [a variety of banana] is a katkatur, a iava [another variety] is a iava," meaning that each kind reproduces its own, it does not give rise to another. Nor is this a matter of abstract "native theory"; such notions frequently crop up in everyday discourse and show not only the keen interest individuals can have in their own physical features but that they also have a part in defining one's sense of personal identity, as I think the following incident recounted by ToKonia illustrates. I had asked him once about the contribution of the parents to a child's makeup. By way of answer he told me how recently when he and his family were sitting together

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over their meal the youngest daughter suddenly asked: "Tama, point out which one of us looks most like your mother." ToKonia told them he was very pleased with the question, and then answered that he thought it was one of the older girls. The others responded that she must have been very pretty. The child asked again about his father, and he said it was John, his firstborn. When Tolai talk about these matters in general terms they tend to stress the transmission of physical features through the father, but on this occasion ToKonia pointed out that no one was like one parent alone. Thus his father had been very dark, his mother much paler, and their children were a bit of a mixture. Again, he pointed out, you found some features that ran through the members of a family such as the dark spots that appeared on different parts of the skin (taktakpuputa) or the slight "dent" that appeared on one of his own toes. Just as the social categories we use to classify others also serve to define ourselves, if only negatively, so expressing interest in the individuality of others can quickly point to no less an avid interest in one's own. The Tolai hold that not only physical features but personal attributes, too, are transmitted through the blood. One might be told, for example, that so-and-so had inherited his father's black skin and with it his father's bad temper also. Another interesting example was provided by one of the candidates for the House of Assembly elections in 1968 who regularly opened his speeches by announcing that he was Epineri Titimur, the son of Epineri Titimur. The Tolai are a matrilineal people but interestingly, as I remarked a little earlier, personal qualities are often said to be passed on through the father. In this instance, the candidate's father had been a man much admired among Tolai of the Rabaul area, and Epineri's reference to himself as the son of his father was a way of suggesting that he had inherited the same qualities and so was worthy of the electorate's support. Epineri was making his point indirectly; others in discussing the election among themselves were more explicit-when it came to supporting a particular candidate, it was said, it was not just a boina tinata, his fine words or oratory that concerned the people, rather what they looked to was his character. I have used the expression character here to gloss the Tolai term maukwana, already encountered in regard to IaMating (p. 159, above). As already mentioned, insofar as they may be said to recognize character at all, Karavarans measure it purely in behavioral terms. In characterizing others, Tolai, too, tend to focus on externals, on what is most readily to be observed in their behavior. Their perception of character

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in this sense is most commonly expressed through the use of the word tena, a term that is used in a variety of ways to classify a person or to refer to his attributes. So, in conjunction with the appropriate noun, it may indicate that one is a coastal dweller (a te na ta), a carpenter (a tena madak), a member of the iniet, or association of sorcerers (a tena iniet), or, more relevantly in the present context, it may refer to propensity. It is in this latter regard that an individual may be referred to as a tena kankan, one of angry disposition, a tena vaongo, an inveterate liar, or a tena bingkinit, one given to thieving in a sneakish manner. I suggest, however, that the issue here is more complex than Errington allows. To take the examples that he himself gives, Tolai would refer to a chronic gossip as a lup tinata or one who was always smoking cigarettes as a lup pinpin. The expression lup here carries the sense of habit or addiction. Tena too conveys this sense of being prone or given to some particular kind of action, but sometimes it also has to be seen as saying something more. So, for example, to speak of another as a tena talaguan is not just to refer descriptively to his idle habits, it is also to make a comment on his moral qualities, that he fails for instance to fulfill his obligations to his wife, children, and other kin by not working as a proper person should. Similarly, the term a tena varmari, applied to one known for his or her compassion, refers not only to that person's external acts but to the inner qualities that lie behind them. The use of "tena" apart, there are other expressions and ways in which Tolai interest in character may be seen. On the first score, for example, a man like ToNgarama was sometimes spoken of as a madu na tutana, a person of genuine humility; it was also said of him pa i nunure ra tinata, meaning that he was never known to raise his voice in anger. He was, in fact, as I knew him, a quiet, contemplative man, highly regarded within the community for his deep knowledge and understanding of his own culture and greatly respected as an artist and bit na tubuan. 1 But he was respected no less as an honest man, one who did not become involved in land disputes, making false claims, or engaging in intrigue as so many others were said to do. Consequently, when on a rare occasion he did speak out in the course of the hearing of a dispute what he had to say was at once accepted without demur-something quite unprecedented in my experience of these occasions. Finally, I may remark briefly how, when people tum to reminiscence, recognition of character, usually implicit but sometimes quite explicit, commonly occurs. An instance of the kind is to be found in ToKonia's reference (p. 145, above) to his father as a man who was in a sense obsessed with

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order, one for whom everything had to be in its proper place. Such judgments must surely be based on close observation of others, as well as knowledge of oneself, in very varied circumstances; they allow one to infer how another is likely to react in some given situation and how accordingly one should adjust one's own behavior as well as how one's own conduct and reactions are likely to be judged. These observations lead me in turn to suggest that Errington's comments on the lack of interest among the Karavarans in others' motives could hardly stand unmodified were they to be applied to the Tolai. Certainly on Matupit, asking questions about why people had behaved as they did on some occasion or other rarely posed much of a problem for my better informants, and often their responses revealed a keen awareness of others' motivation. But lest this be thought simply to meet one assertion with a counter-assertion, let me refer briefly to a specific case by way of illustrating the general point. During my first stay on the island a number of instances of theft occurred. Suspicion fastened on a young man whom I shall refer to simply as ToAn.2 There were some who regarded him as a thoroughly bad lot: he had been before the village assembly on a number of occasions on charges of stealing and, following his latest escapade, when witnesses claimed to have seen him break into a clinic in Rabaul, he was taken to the police station there. For many Matupi this was just one more episode in a sorry tale that told of ToAn's deviant ways. For all that, there were also some at least who spoke with understanding of his situation and urged that he be treated charitably. In doing so they pointed to his upbringing and background. The lad, I was told, had been born before the war broke out. At that time his mother was unmarried; she was widely believed to have committed incest with a Matupi man who died sometime afterward. Later she married a man from Baai. But the latter was said not to have cared for his stepson because he was not his own child. While the war was going on the mother returned to Matupit with the boy, but she was killed one day when hit by shrapnel from a bomb. One of my informants who was offering me this account described the mother as a tena hingkinit, one who sitting with a group of people would stealthily pick up another's things and make off with them. Another now added that in their custom when someone was bad it was because he had followed the ways of the parents. Right from his earliest days ToAn had been something of a problem child. And so it was down to the present. Further light is cast on the Tolai view of individuality if we turn to other areas of their culture. Their use of personal names is of interest

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here. As among ourselves, what are usually regarded as personal names are also bestowed upon nonhumans such as domesticated pigs or even on material objects such as a canoe or a motor vehicle. Presumably in these cases it is because there is a close human connection whereby the animal or thing is seen as in some sense an extension of the self. The personal name, preceded by the appropriate prefix, ordinarily To for male,Ia for female, was the standard form of address in all forms of interaction, even between children and adults, and use of formal kinship terms was scarcely to be heard save when dealing with affines. The naming of a child was the parents' choice. The common practice was for husband and wife to agree to take it in turn to name their children so that the equal claims of both parties in begetting and rearing them were recognized. The personal name-a iang na gunan as distinct from the Christian or baptismal name, a iang na punupuk-was commonly chosen to commemorate some event with which the birth coincided and it would later recall. So, for example, ToIngilit recalls the arrival at Rabaul in 1914 of the Australian Expeditionary Force, referred to locally as "the English." Similarly, IaVinilau is a reminder of the Japanese occupation when people at Matupit had to flee (vilau) to the area known as Ralokor, while the name IaNiba also recalls this period as one in which there was much suffering as a result of food shortage (iba = to want for something, to be poor). Other names might refer more simply to the day or month of birth, as ToParaide (Friday) or IaNuar (January). Later in life the iang nagunan might be replaced by a nickname (a iang na varveula, literally a joking name) which usually seized on some observed idiosyncrasy of the person concerned. Thus one man had been given the name ToLar because he was born just before the dawn (a lar). Later, because of his enthusiasm for linefishing (a niil), he became known as ToNiil, which until I learned the story I had always supposed to be his proper name. Another man acquired the nickname ToPakitia because of his habit of passing people by (pakit) who wished to board his truck and of ignoring those who greeted him. All such names were once "new" names, but when the persons who carried them died the names tended to pass into a general name pool to be transmitted to descendants in all lines; a glance at a genealogy is often enough to show how many children these days carry the names of long-deceased forebears. In such ways, personal names serve to identity individuals; at the same time those same individuals share in a large pool of names that are readily recognizable as Tolai throughout the Gazelle.

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Something of this same stress on the individual, though it too leads ultimately to submergence in the collective, can be seen in regard to the creation of rights in land. The basic principle ofTolai land tenure can be stated very simply: a pia kai ra vunatarai-ownership of the land vests in the vunatarai. However, there is also the recognition that all such rights were originally carved out by an individual, those claims being established by the first person to work and mark out the particular parcel in question: with his passing, however, the personal rights he had created became vested in the group-a joint estate had been created. This explains why so many plots of land carry the name of a founding ancestor, a madapai or vunapaina, and why in so many disputes over land the litigants are so centrally concerned with invoking the names of long-deceased patuana and establishing their matrilineal links with them. It also explains why today when Tolai speak of being able to purchase land they see it as a way of bypassing the customary law and transmitting it to their sons. 3 Implicit in these social arrangements and principles of land tenure is a view of the individual as someone who imposes himself upon his environment, domesticating it and moulding it to his will; by carving an estate out of virgin bush he establishes himself as an individual, "his own man," yet in the end the land itself, and with it his identity, are swallowed up by matrilineage and clan. It is a view of things that finds its apotheosis in the figure of the "big man." As it happens, Tolai "big men" commonly turn out to be the sons of fathers who had themselves been acknowledged as "big men." Although in this matrilineal society men do not inherit their fathers' wealth, there is nonetheless advantage to be derived simply from growing up close to a "big man" because of the kinds of experience and knowledge that it offers. The Tolai are aware of such matters, but they do not see them as controverting their fundamental assumption that one can only achieve "bigmanship" through one's own efforts. Sahlins's (1963:289) well-known delineation of the Melanesian "big man" is entirely apposite here. "Big men do not come to office; they do not succeed to, nor are they installed in, existing positions of leadership over political groups. The attainment of 'big man' status is rather the outcome of a series of acts which elevate a person above the common herd and attract about him a coterie of loyal, lesser men .... Little or no authority is given by social ascription: leadership is a creation-a creation of followership." More specifically in the Tolai context, one's name becomes big insofar as one is able to impose oneself on others through

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force of personality and resourcefulness-the ability to command others through the manipulation of wealth. In Japan, we are told, displays of egoism are interpreted as being aggressive and are permitted only in certain circumstances as when under severe stress or as a result of unbearable provocation (Johnson 1985:123). Tolai values, by contrast, point in quite the opposite direction; as seen in earlier contexts, Tolai ceremonies offer more than ample scope for displays of selfaggrandizement. But if the matter were allowed to rest just there it would offer an over-simple and rather one-sided characterization of the "big man" and of the way in which he was regarded. The reality is more complex. One aspect of the ambiguity that attaches to the figure of the "big man" was seen in the earlier discussion of the concept of the "tena kankan." This was a term that was used frequently by my older Matupi informants when they referred to the ngalangala, the great ones of the past, men renowned for their ferocity and their readiness ever to explode in anger. There was little doubt of the admiration, even awe, expressed on these occasions as these older men recalled various of their ancestors who had lived in precontact times. But it was equally plain that simultaneously they also sought to distance themselves from their patuana as though to assert their own mildness and moderation. A similar ambivalence was also to be seen in regard to other "big men" who had lived and died more recently, as the case of ToPapat, mentioned earlier, illustrates. ToPapat appears to have been the epitome of the Tolai entrepreneur in the colonial period, converting success in the cash and wage economy into status within the village partly by placing many of the younger Matupi in jobs in Rabaul, partly by his sponsorship of ceremonies. He was, it will be recalled, the first New Guinean to purchase and run a motor vehicle-an event that brought luster to his name and prestige to the whole of Matupit. Yet mention of ToPapat was also apt to prompt reference to some of his less admirable traits. He was, it was said, incredibly tight-fisted, too mean indeed even to spend money on decent food. But what was remembered above all was that after his death no trace could be found of the great wealth he was supposed to have amassed. This gave rise to much speculation as to what might have happened to his money and tambu, but nothing was ever firmly established. But whatever the truth of the matter, for many Matupi it was just another manifestation of the ways of "big men": many deposited their tambu with such at "big man" as an expression of their trust only to discover on his death that he had squandered it for his own ends, leaving to his heirs in the vunatarai only his debts. There

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could scarcely be a clearer expression of the conflicting emphases in the Tolai ethos: the recognition of the individual and the importance of individuality on the one hand, and the claims of the group, the priority of the vunatarai, on the other. For all the play that individuality is allowed in Tolai culture, it is evident that a fully fledged, all-pervasive ideology of individualism of the kind familiar to Western society has never been allowed to develop. However, pace Shweder and Bourne, the notion of a sociocentric organic culture is not the one that springs most readily to mind where the Tolai are concerned. In this context, continua seem to have more to offer than do those dichotomies that would situate Western society at one pole and most others at the opposite one; from such a perspective, if one may for the moment borrow Dumont's (1977) categories, the Tolai are closer to Homo Aequalis than they are to Homo Hierarchicus.

The Emotions of the Self Much earlier when exploring Tolai understanding of the classification or clustering of the emotions I noted how the perception of the relative frequency with which particular emotions were experienced by oneself or by one's fellow Tolai was linked with the image of self that a given affect appeared to project. In general, respondents were not keen to admit to feelings that would cast them in a bad light. But the relations of affect and self are at once more immediate and more complex than this. As I sought to show in the previous section, when we are dealing with anger in humans, for example, we quickly discover that in some of its expressions we can only understand the phenomenon by taking into account a notion of self. Here I want to carry discussion of the issue further by focusing on certain affects that are now commonly recognized to be involved with the self in an especially intimate way. Those psychologists who have worked most recently on the expression of the emotions in man have sought for the most part to build on the foundations laid by Darwin, who was probably the first to point to the association between shame and self-consciousness. Thus Tomkins who, as has been seen, placed the movement of facial musculature at the heart of his inquiry, makes the point that while the face is seen as the site of all the affects it is experienced as most salient in shame. This is because the self lives where it exposes itself and where it receives similar exposure

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from others (Tomkins 1964:2, 133). Approaching the matter from quite a different perspective, psychoanalysts have been arriving at similar conclusions. Lewis (1981:55), for example, departing from the classical position formulated by Freud, speaks of the experience of shame and guilt as involving the person in tension or agitation about the self in its relations to others. Finally, within anthropology too there is evidence of a changing theoretical stance that begins to point in a similar direction. Levy (1983), for example, introducing a set of papers for a symposium on self and emotion tells us that the original intention was to devote discussion to reconsideration of shame and guilt, but quickly moved to more general questions about the relations between self and feeling. Among the views offered on this occasion was that of Michelle Rosaldo who argued that "'selves' vary, in part, among groups characterized by different cultures and social structures and that consequently the ways feelings 'defending' selves work also vary," a view with important implications for them of the meaning and functions of shame and guilt. This then would seem an appropriate point to examine the Tolai material bearing on these matters not only to help in completing an important part of the ethnographic picture but to seek the more general lessons that the data may yield. It may be instructive to begin with an epistemological point. Among ourselves, as we know from introspection, from psychoanalytic case reports, and from rare studies of the kind conducted by Helen Lynd (1958), the experience of shame often relates to the most intimate recesses of the self Although in theory communicable, in practice shame is not ordinarily communicated to others: even for the patient in analysis, shame, it has been said, is phenomenologically the most acute affective "resistance" to overcome (Lewis 1981:1, lll). We can readily understand therefore why the phenomenon does not lend itself readily to conventional sociological inquiry and, by the same token, why those who approach the topic from this standpoint are led to make use of such "soft" evidence as literary sources-many of the most telling examples and illustrations in Lynd's study are drawn from the works of major novelists or other sensitive observations of the self culled from autobiographies. Working among a group such as the Tolai I have found the same reticence in people in talking of things of which they had reason to be ashamed. For all that, the research situation was not on all fours with what I should have had to confront had I been conducting my study in a modern urban industrial society. The difference, I suggest, lies in the fact that among the Tolai-as in so many other

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societies of similar type-cultural rules allow for the use of established shaming techniques in a public setting. That is to say, in his own personal experience the ethnographer knows shame subjectively; there is awareness of a feeling of discomfort, however mild or acute, that is produced from within the self. But in the field it is apt to be encountered in the form that Schneider (1977) distinguished as shamedisgrace, the shame that follows discovery or public exposure of one's shameful conduct. This circumstance, I believe, goes some way to explaining why some anthropologists of an earlier day saw shame as a more "external" experience than guilt, and its function chiefly as an instrument of social control. As I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Epstein 1984), the approach adopted by these scholars is open to criticism at a number of points and, as will be seen again below, tended to leave certain questions unanswered, and indeed unasked. However, given that much of my own material-for the reasons just mentionedwas encountered in the context of the varkurai, or village moot, to take first the role of shame as sanction seems to offer a convenient point of entry to the discussion of the phenomenon in its other aspects. There were a number of ways in which shaming techniques might be employed in the context of the varkurai. One took the form of a reprimand from a member of the Committee. An excerpt from the hearing of a land dispute offers a good example of the kind. As the parties, who were cross-cousins, argued among themselves about their respective entitlements one of them suddenly demanded of the other, "What did you do when [my father/your mother's brother] died?" He then answered his own question with the comment, "U ga pupunang na mao tana." This is an expression that refers to the way in which a person going off to the gardens will sometimes bury some ripe bananas (a mao) in the ground. When he passes by again, perhaps in a few weeks' time, he will dig them up and eat them. But sometimes he forgets all about them, remembering only when it is too late, and he says to himself, "Well, never mind." In the present context the point being made was that the death of the speaker's father had been ignored by his uterine nephew: like the mao, he had been buried and forgotten. This was no doubt a highly insulting remark to which the other party responded angrily, "Don't talk to me like that. Do you want to see something? What is it to me? Nothing, I can do it." Remarks of this kind are tantamount to a threat of sorcery. Both parties had plainly overstepped the mark, and earned a reprimand from the Committee: were they not ashamed? A little later it was suggested that they all sit down together to share a

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meal because of the hard words that had been exchanged between those who were such close kin. A variant form of reprimand was that known as a tinata na niur, literally a word of complaint or chiding. This usually took the form of some older person present shaming into silence a younger litigant who was being recalcitrant by reminding him that the speaker-male or female-had made the payment in tambu that enabled the other to marry or by some other form of words that indicated his indebtedness or dependence. All these incidents involving a public reprimand were relatively low-key, and for the most part appeared to work very effectively. In other situations I witnessed, however, the circumstances were much more dramatic, and the experience of shame plainly of a higher order of intensity. One case of this kind I have examined in detail elsewhere (Epstein 1984), so all I need note here is how the hearing was brought to a sudden close when Turpui, owner of the canoe around which the dispute had revolved, and maternal uncle of two of the parties involved, was asked for his views on the matter. "It is true that I 'chased' ToKutu and ToPitap," he said, "but I did so out of anger. Now I am deeply grieved because they were the ones who gave the name IaGaria to the canoe. And yet they did not lend any assistance in working on it, and this upset me. This woman IaGaria gave us birth, and just in the same way that many patuana in the past gave the names of those who had gone before to their canoes so we do so too-and we have IaMamia, Teno, TuPap, IaPaep .... " At the end of this speech Turpui's old blind sister, IaTeruia, was weeping. When moments later the Councillor called for ToKutu, it appeared that he had already left the gathering. He was so deeply shamed, I was told, that he had taken himself off to the beach where he could be alone. Meanwhile, all the others were invited to rise and shake hands, and there was a general passage as, guided by the Councillor, people moved around and shook hands in an act of reconciliation-save ToPitap who, evidently too upset by what had transpired, had turned away and was sobbing almost hysterically. A mother's complaint about her married son provides my final example of the way in which shame can be generated within the context of the varkurai. The case was brought before the Councillor and his Committee at Kurapun by a woman I shall call IaTinana; her grievance was that her son ToNatuna no longer gave any thought to his parents. In the days before he was married it was not like that, but now that he had a wife he no longer thought of them at all. When she approached him

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for a little money he ignored her. "Tell me," she asked, "am I not his mother? If we were both dead there would be nothing wrong in what he is doing-but we are both alive." She then referred to an occasion when her daughter-in-law had prepared a little food and ToNatuna came to fetch them to his house. When they arrived they sat on the verandah. "We sat waiting and waiting, but no food was provided, and then when it was already late we rose and left. All the time he was with his wife." When the son was called upon to reply he explained that in regard to the incident of the food he had told his parents that the food was ready and that they should eat. His wife was pregnant and he was with her. He had told his wife that when she went off to the gardens to work or gather food she should return home when it was still daylight, and not late at night. That day she had come home later, and she was not well. IaTinana interrupted at this point to say that ToNatuna had cursed her that day, and called her a bastard, but he denied it. All the time, she continued, he spends money on taxis to take his wife to the hospital at Vunapope. Then she referred to other incidents, which indicated that ToNatuna was also siding with his wife against his own brother. ToNatuna defended himself against these charges and complained in his turn that his mother had been demanding the return of the tambu they had spent on the "purchase" of his wife. Now, he declared, he was agreeable to returning that tambu to her. At this point the Councillor intervened to ask IaTinana if it were true that she had asked for the return of the tambu na varkukul. She admitted that she had said so-it was because she was so angry. ToGoragoro now reprimanded her, saying it was forbidden to say such things. At the same time he admonished ToNatuna, saying that he should respect his father and his mother as laid down in the Ten Commandments. ToNatuna's elder brother also spoke: "I was born before you, my brother. I have looked after my father and mother. But you, you do not return the love they lavished on you. I have heard all about this matter before, but I did not wish to speak about it because I did not want to see it develop into something big." A senior member of the Committee now took over. "It is time now for a proper settlement. IaTinana and ToNatuna, you are mother and son: it is proper that you should hear and obey the word of judgment. You should rise and shake hands so that all of this is forgotten and you live again properly together in the right spirit." ToGoragoro added some further words of advice. "Listen, Natuna, you should think of

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your parents while they are still alive. For myself, there have been many times when my father has been angry with me because I have spent money on my wife and children. But when this happens, I do not return anger with anger but tum aside." After this the case quickly finished. IaTinana was agreeable to shaking hands, but her son walked away in silence. He was, it was said, deeply shamed by all that had passed. For an understanding of the phenomenon of shame in a Melanesian setting, Hogbin's (1947) paper Shame: A Study ofSocial Conformity in a New Guinea Village remains an important text. Hogbin uses the English term here to translate the indigenous concept of maya. For the people of Busama, he tells us, the expression "maya" sums up their attitudes to a breach of custom; it refers to the shame and embarrassment of a person whose unorthodox behavior has been found out. This appears to have been particularly the case where one's exposure took place before the village assembly, for elsewhere Hogbin (1946b:53) observes that the community was so small that a convincing demonstration of public disapproval was sufficient to make most of the culprits thoroughly ashamed of themselves: they kept out of sight and for a time visited friends in other villages or else remained behind closed doors while not actually at work. At first glance, then, it would seem that there is much here that readily fits the situation at Matupit-certainly "vavirvir," the term that Tolai most commonly employ nowadays when referring to shame phenomena, has much in common with "maya," while certain of the material, presented a little earlier, shows on Matupit too how shame can operate as an effective and sometimes powerful instrument of social control. However, it is not so easy to see how the facts reported in the case of IaTinana and her son can be accommodated within Hogbin's formulation. Thus it is not immediately patent just what breach of custom or impropriety ToNatuna had committed. It was clear from the hearing itself, and confirmed by those with whom I later discussed the matter, that the case had its roots in the mother's growing resentment that her son was paying more attention to his wife than to her. In particular, as I only learned afterward, it rankled with her that whereas before his marriage he had stored his tambu with her, now it was his wife who looked after it. It was also clear that ToNatuna did not regard himself as a "culprit." Quite to the contrary, for at one point in the hearing when the mother remarked that she had been made angry because these days her son spent all his money on his wife, ToNatuna quickly fired back, "Whose wife is she that I should not spend money

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on her?" Underlying this dispute then was not some specific breach of custom but rather a tension that had developed between mother and son that reflected a changing conception of the mother-son-daughterin-law relationship. Nor, it should be added, did the hearing lead to any immediate reconciliation of the parties or any sign of contrition on ToNatuna's part. According to my informants, as I have already indicated, he was so ashamed that he simply walked away, though it also seems likely that at this point there had not been time enough for his anger to cool and that in turning away from his mother and the others he was moved as much by anger as by shame. The point here of course is not that shame does not serve as sanction; it is rather that while the kind of analysis Hogbin offers draws attention to one of its social functions, it sheds little light on the nature of the phenomenon itself. To achieve this we need to carry the analysis a good deal further .by raising a number of questions that find no place in Hogbin's account. An immediate point is that while there is no quarrel with Hogbin's assessment of the importance that the concept of "maya" holds for the people of Busama, I think it is also fair to say that one could easily come away from a reading of his paper with the impression that exposure to shame was the appropriate and habitual response to, or sanction for, all breaches of custom. On the evidence he has presented in other of his accounts of their culture this is not the case in Busama, and it is certainly not so of Matupit. In point of fact, the occasions on which shaming was resorted to in the context of a "varkurai" at Matupit were relatively few. An obvious first question that needs to be put therefore is what determined the circumstances that made shaming appropriate or inappropriate, effective or ineffective. And if shame does come to serve as a sanction, what is the mechanism at work that enables it to achieve this purpose? Answering the second question requires that we also ask with what kind of experience we are dealing. Let me take up each of these issues in tum. The first matter is most conveniently approached by contrasting two disputes that have already been mentioned: the first between two elders of Kikila, Tio and TiPaul, the second the dispute that arose over Turpui's canoe. The first, it will be recalled, was a quarrel that erupted in the course of a village meeting about conflicting claims in the egglands, but very quickly the two men had fallen to hurling abuse at each other in what was a grossly improper manner. There was only one brief-and indirect-reference to shame when one of them protested about the form in which the complaint was raised:

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It is proper, I tell you, for me to eat from the land of ToNgarama because we are "brothers." But it is not good that you should scold me before the assembled people. If ToNgarama has something to say about the land it were better that he come along to see me and we discuss it. And that goes for you, too, Tio. I don't live very far away.

But neither man allowed any sense of embarrassment he might have felt deter him from the further exchange of insults until at last Tio came back to the point at issue. "Whoever thinks that I planted on another's land, let him bring me here to the seat of judgment (ta ra kiki na varkurai) so that we are judged. And if it is found that the land belongs to another I shall not speak again." At this point it was Kaputin who intervened and begged them to stop squabbling. "Already your words have wandered far from their source and neither of you is talking of the points with which you began. If there is a dispute between you over the land then there is a 'court' here to try and settle it." Perhaps glad of the respite, the two men desisted and neither said anything further. There can be no doubt that for two senior members of the community to quarrel publicly as they were doing, in particular criticizing and hurling grossly offensive insults at one another, was in itself shameful conduct, as is indicated in some of the remarks just cited; but in fact, neither man exhibited any characteristic shame-reaction. It might be said that, if either did experience shame-feelings, these were discharged in anger directed against the other. Compare this with what happened in the dispute over Turpui's canoe. There, too, one of the protagonists (ToKutu) had been the target of the other's (Turpui's) shaming shafts, but instead of returning anger with anger there was an intense shamereaction, and ToKutu withdrew to be alone on the beach. The difference between these two situations has to be sought partly in the nature of the dispute, partly in the way in which the criticisms were couched; both of these factors in turn are a function of the social relationships of the protagonists in each instance. Tio and TiPaul were members of different vunatarai who stood in this context as "enemies." They faced each other, that is to say, as social equals opposed over a question of legal entitlement. As Kaputin points out, this is a matter a court can adjudicate, a point acknowledged by Tio himself who says in effect, "If I did wrong by collecting eggs from another's land, let the court punish me." In a word, what is in issue in this dispute is a question of responsibility for one's deeds or misdeeds; the parties do not see the situation as offering a threat to their sense of self-esteem, and it is anger rather than

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shame that is expressed. The position ofToKutu and ToPitap was quite different. They stood not so much accused of some legal offense, but of a failure to fulfill their moral obligations to their own closest kin, the members of their own vunatarai. But it is also plain that ToKutu's reaction was prompted not only by the exposure of his fault but also by his clearly expressed sense of having been rejected, that his mother's brother, Turpui, did not want him in the group. In pursuing this point we are able to take up the second question about the way the shaming mechanism works. In ToKutu's case, the onset of shame, as I have indicated in the fuller account of the dispute elsewhere, appears to have been triggered by certain remarks of ToUrapal who was closely related to him as tamana, or classificatory father; it was brought to an intolerable pitch by the rebuke of his mother's brother with its highly emotive invoking of a number of ancestral names. When ToUrapal reminded ToKutu of the assistance he had rendered the latter's vunatarai in the matter of bride-purchase, and in the performance of certain mortuary rites, he was of course making the simple point that although he was not a member of ToKutu's matrilineage, he had nevertheless earned a right to a voice in its affairs. Of more immediate relevance to present concerns, however, is that in making that point he employed what was called a tinata na niur. As noted a little earlier, this was a particular form of words expressing dissatisfaction that was said to be a particularly effective means of bringing to heel a younger person who was being obstreperous and of reducing him to silence. To say to another "I 'purchased' your wife for you" is not so much to rebuke him for his misconduct as to attack him at the very core of his being, his self; it is a denial of his sense of autonomy, a reminder that he remains, rather like a child, in a position of dependence; for a fully grown man like ToKutu, who was himself the father of children, this must have been especially galling. We have seen, in a variety of instances scattered throughout my text, how in disputes involving close kin, the varkurai would come to a climax in an emotive appeal to certain highly cathected norms to which no one who wished to be regarded as a full member of the community could fail to respond. The aim of the varkurai in a case of this kind was rarely to humiliate but rather to restore amity among estranged kinsfolk and to allow the errant one to take his full place among them again. At first sight the facts in ToKutu's case might not seem to fit easily with this formulation, but closer scrutiny of what went on there suggests that in fact similar psychosocial processes were at work as in other cases,

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which the dramatic outcome expressed in ToKutu's self-exile should not be allowed to obscure. At one point in the hearing, IaTeruia, who was ToUrapal's wife and Turpui's sister, could no longer contain her anger and burst out that ToKutu and ToPitap were a couple of useless rogues. But when Turpui himself rose to speak it is noticeable that although he admitted at once that he had acted out of anger, this was followed by an expression of sorrow of what had happened. What Turpui appears to have been saying in effect was that if the two men were of the kind who habitually ignored the claims of the vunatarai the whole episode would have been less painful; but this was not so-they were the ones after all, he pointed out, who had given the name IaGaria to the canoe. This identification was then given a further emotional twist when Turpui proceeded to name other ancestral figures, precipitating an outburst of weeping among a number of those present. On ToKutu's part, anger, grief, and identification were also evident, not least when he declared that he and ToPitap would dissociate themselves from the group because Turpui had shown that he no longer wanted them-it was they who were rejected! There was in ToKutu's reactions an element of self-pity, but by his self-exile he had also purged his offense. At any rate when I saw Turpui a couple of days later, he was clearly prepared to let bygones be bygones; it all arose from words that had been spoken in anger, he said, but soon peace would be restored and there would be a reconciliation (a varmaram). I took this to mean that all the parties would come together to share a meal, as had happened in other similar cases with which I was familiar. I would observe that the events just recounted are entirely consistent with the theoretical view of shame enunciated by Silvan Tomkins. For Tomkins shame is above all characterized by ambivalence. This is connected with the fact that its very expression is a compromise-formation; at the same time that one lowers one's eyes or turns away one's head, one continues, as it were, to peep. It follows then that in the ordinary way shame occurs only when there has been an incomplete reduction of the affects of interest and joy. Adopting this perspective, the differences between such cases as Tio and TiPaul and that ofTurpui and ToKutu can be expressed in terms of the way shame is differentiated from contempt, which is best put in Tomkins's (1964:2, 140) own words: Shame-humiliation is the negative affect linked with love and identification, and contempt-disgust the negative affect linked with individuation and hate. Both affects are impediments to intimacy and communion, within the self and between the self and others. But shame-humiliation does not renounce the object permanently, whereas contempt-disgust does.

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As indicated above, Tomkins's views on the nature of shame and the other affects derive primarily from the prior attention he gives to the movements of facial musculature. Indeed, he is led in this way to see, for example, shyness, shame, and guilt as one and the same affect in the sense that they all involve the same underlying neurophysiological processes. But that, he would be quick to remark, does not mean that they are experienced in the same way. On the contrary, he stresses that the conscious awareness of each is quite distinct. For the moment then what can be said of the way the Tolai experience shame? To begin with, let me refer again to the occasion of the palum tambu for ToPia. It will be recalled that people making their way slowly toward the house of mourning did not immediately gather around it, but remained scattered around in tiny groups of threes and fours. This reluctance to take their places reflected the feeling that on such occasions it was not good that one should thrust oneself forward (vakir i boina ba una pot lua). "You saw," ToKonia explained later, "how we all went forward together with our mats. The important thing was that you came forward not as it were of your own choice, but in response to the call (a nioro). Oscar gave the call so that they would not feel embarrassed (pi koko diata vavirvir). " It is this awareness of the gaze of others focused on oneself that is the source of that sense of inner discomfiture that Tolai refer to when they use the word "vavirvir." It is a feeling that can vary enormously in duration and intensity: it may register only momentarily or it may persist for some time to the point that it congeals into a trait of character; it may be experienced as so mild that it can be dismissed with a shrug or it can be so acute that one can face neither one's friends nor oneself. This last was the situation in which ToKutu found himself when he took himself off to the beach, a form of behavior for which the Tolai reserve the expression vana na tamtabunua. According to Meier (1939:117), in an extreme situation one might go so far as to commit suicide. My own Matupi informants claimed to know of cases of this kind in New Ireland, but could recall no instance of the sort among themselves. What circumstances might prompt the experience of shame in its more intense forms? As was seen earlier, one answer would lie in Hogbin's suggestion that it was the exposure to public view of one's breach of custom or propriety. On Matupit, too, a person could be deeply shamed in this way, but the matter is plainly more complex than this for, as the case of ToNatuna shows, a person could know intense shame even where it was not clear that he had committed any specific wrong; the source of his distress, so I was told later, lay in the things his mother

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had said publicly about him, the assumption being that others might believe them. A small incident encountered outside the context of the varkurai helps to shed further light on what is at issue in situations of this kind. ToKonia was with me one day when I called on one of the elders at Kikila to record his genealogy. My informant had been very cooperative and offered names and other information in many instances without my needing to ask, but when I came to a particular woman, who was the last of a line, and asked about her, I noticed that the elder said nothing, as though he had not heard my question. Something must have alerted me and happily I did not press the point. Later ToKonia was able to tell me that the woman in question had borne two illegitimate children. In a matrilineal society such as that of the Tolai an illegitimate child suffered no legal disabilities, but for all that bastardy remained a status to which a strong social stigma attached. ToKonia told me that had my informant and I been together on our own he might have given me the details of his sister's children, but they were too shameful to mention in the presence of a member of another vunatarai. For someone like my informant, acknowledged on all sides as a pillar of church and community, the damage in this case was all too plainly to amour propre, to his sense of self, even though he personally was utterly blameless. Through the lapses of one with whom he was closely identified, his own high standards were compromised; his failure, that is to say, lay in his own eyes. I noted just a moment ago how, from one perspective, the Matupi data fitted neatly with Tomkins's view of shame that he derived from his general theory of affect. Now we may observe how they also appear to conform to the expectations of the model developed by psychoanalysts for whom shame is now commonly seen as being experienced chiefly in terms of feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, failure, worthlessness, and the like-feelings that are elicited by the exposure of some act or quality that one perceives as reflecting discredit on the self. Or rephrased to give more explicit expression to the concept of the ego-ideal, shame occurs when in some confrontation with the self goals and images presented by the ego-ideal are not reached, bringing therewith an uncomfortable awareness of one's own inadequacies (Piers and Singer 1953:29; Lewis 1971:21). In psychoanalytic thought the ego-ideal develops through a process of identification, ordinarily through imitation or emulation of an admired or beloved parental figure. Now in modem Western society the relationship with parents is often experienced in markedly idiosyn-

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cratic ways, and those things that arouse shame in the individual are thus themselves often likely to be highly idiosyncratic and known only to the person concerned unless disclosed to an analyst or some other confidant; from a psychiatric point of view it is these idiosyncratic aspects that so often tum out to be crucial in providing clues to the nature of the patient's distress. In a New Guinea society such as that of the Tolai the relationship with the parents also has its idiosyncratic aspects, and it is possible, even likely, that individual Tolai also experience shame in idiosyncratic ways. But this is an area to which for obvious reasons an anthropologist is least likely to have access and where many of the questions he would like to put have to go largely unanswered. However, it would be a serious mistake to place all the emphasis solely on those elements of superego formation that relate only to the individuals concerned. To adopt such a position would be to miss the point that the process is not merely a matter of the relations between the child and a particular set of parents; because the parents themselves are members of society, what they communicate to the child is itself already heavily stamped by the local culture. In other words, the child internalizes not just some set of personal standards but, more importantly, many of the dominant values and ideals of the society as these are mediated to him through the parents and others. The point is readily illustrated in the case of the Tolai in the frequency with which references to shame recorded in my field notes were linked in some way to a lack of tambu. For a Tolai to be without shell money was not just a mark of poverty or even misfortune, it was a matter of profound shame-not to be able to make a payment of tambu where this was customarily required, above all not to be able to "cut" tambu on the death of one's parents or to arrange for its distribution on one's own, reflected not only on the individual concerned but also on his local descent group, or vunatarai, and in some contexts even on the community at large. In these and other similar situations, that is to say, the onset of shame was intimately linked with the failure to achieve customarily defined standards by which in this society men and women gained and held the esteem of their fellows. The capacity to experience shame works in this way to provide a bridge between self and society, on the one hand contributing, where the individual is concerned, to the development of the sense of personal identity and on the other, from a cultural perspective, to the protection and maintenance of basic social values. Thus the Matupi data I have presented are congruent with the views

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expressed by psychoanalysts that shame and other shame-related phenomena are all concerned with negative evaluation of the self. Yet this material also raises the question whether such a formulation covers all those situations that give rise to the experience of shame. There were, for example, a number of situations of a kind not hitherto considered which were all associated with an intense shame: being observed naked, in the act of defecation, or in sexual intercourse. Common to all of these is that they relate to the human body or at least to bodily functions. In the light of what has already been said, it would seem to follow without difficulty that shame pertains to them because all involve a heightened consciousness of self by the fact of discovery or exposure. However, what part the ego-ideal has to play in these contexts is less easy to discern; some other factor seems to be at work. Let it be said at once that Tolai do not find anything intrinsically wrong in the acts of defecation or sexual intercourse. I suggest therefore that if they experience shame when observed in such circumstances, this is not because defecation or sexual intercourse reflect discredit on the self but rather because they have suffered an invasion of privacy simply by being observed in an act that leaves the self exposed. Further clues to the link between shame and privacy may be sought in examining some of the other attitudes and ideas that Tolai hold in regard to defecation and sex. For some anthropologists the body has become in recent years a focus of interest as a metaphor; how the body is conceptualized in different cultures is seen as a way of saying things about society and its ordering (e.g., Douglas 1966; 1973). The approach is illuminating, but what one misses in many of these accounts is any recognition that bodily functions are so often invested with powerful affect. If feces, for example, simply represented "matter out of place" it is difficult to see why references to the act of excretion and its products should spawn the range of emotional responses and attitudes toward it that it does, and how such responses might be achieved. There was the occasion, for example, when the question of night-soil removal was one of the items on the agenda of a village meeting at Kikila. It had been discussed before, and one man had been asked to look into the cost of clearing the buckets. When he reported back there were complaints that the price quoted was too much. One man then suggested that they carry the buckets to the roadside themselves. This at once raised a stir, and soon all the women were giggling and laughing. One old woman quipped that as the men carried the buckets on their heads they would be followed by all the flies on the island; this in turn prompted an angry

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response from the men. Since these meetings ordinarily proceeded with decorum, particularly on the part of the women, the matter had dearly touched some delicate nerve. Defecation was in fact regarded as a highly private act to be performed in a spot where one could feel sure one was free from prying eyes. The point was brought home to me one day when, discussing hamlet histories and like matters with Kaputin, he explained how his own hamlet Kilingalingen had got its name. In the past, before it had become densely populated, it had been an area to which many repaired when they wished to defecate, but since it did not offer too much cover people would keep turning their heads from one side to the other (linga) as they squatted (ki) to check that they were not observed. This reticence in tum links with the fact that feces for the Tolai is the prototypical form of puta, the term used for any substance that, because of its peculiar intimacy with one's bodily self, was held to make one vulnerable to the evil designs of another who had acquired a sample of it. In these circumstances sorcery and shame worked together to maintain a sense of privacy. Sex, too, is a matter about which cultures are rarely, if ever, emotionally neutral, and Tolai are no exception in the matter. The topic is indeed a complex and difficult one which I make no attempt to cover here in extenso, merely touching on a few aspects that are pertinent to the present theme. To begin with, if one's understanding of these matters were based chiefly on conversations overheard among men in the taraiu, the grove sacred to the tubuan, or at the motonoi, or beach, both areas from which women are rigidly excluded, one might gain the impression of an approach to sex that is open, uninhibited, and free from "hang-ups." Talk among men on these occasions is punctuated by much ribaldry: there is a great deal of noisy laughter as they exchange bawdy reminiscences or in other ways revel in their male sexuality. Outside these male bastions I was struck by the fact that some Tolai at least felt free to discuss sexual matters in ways that would have been unthinkable in other areas where I have worked. Thus I knew of one household where the daughters regularly advised their father of the onset of their menses, and would even ask him to slip into the chemist's when he was in Rabaul to buy their tampons. 4 All of this, however, would represent a very partial view of the situation, for there were also dear rules proscribing talk of sexual matters between particular social categories. I have mentioned earlier an interesting example of the kind when Matupi expressed themselves shocked at the shamelessness of Japanese soldiers

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who spoke to Matupi children about the use of contraceptives. But it was in the relations of brothers and sisters and between affines that the constraints were most clearly marked. Although the rigor of the old rules governing the interaction of brothers and sisters has now softened, so that these days they may be seen mixing socially, any overt reference to sex would still be regarded as quite improper and shameful. Shame also entered into the relations of affines: it was taboo for a man to sleep in his brother-in-Iaw's house if the latter's wife was also there; similarly, while a man might talk quite freely with his son-in-law about sexual matters, the latter would not sleep in his father-in-Iaw's house if the mother-in-law were there, even though the older forms of avoidance behavior have now been abandoned. A similar situational approach may be detected where it is sexual conduct rather than mere talk about sex that is concerned. It was my firm impression that there was a frank enjoyment of sex by men and women alike both within and outside marriage. Within marriage a woman was free to make the first advances, each partner seeking the other's satisfaction as well as his or her own; as one of my Matupi friends once remarked in this connection, Tolai regarded it as highly desirable that the two should finish together (dir a par varurung). It was also apparent that in marital love-making gratification was sought in ways white missionaries were known to disapprove. Even more interesting perhaps, given the marked emphasis on an ideology of male dominance (see Bradley 1982), is that in matters of sex men were prepared to allow that women were more knowledgeable and skilled and would admit that in this area they deferred to their wives-a tutana i muria, it would be said; a man follows what his wife says or wants. Outside marriage, the frequency with which one picked up references to maiira, love magic, left little doubt about the zest with which men and women pursued extramarital liaisons. A nice example that illustrates Tolai attitudes in these matters is provided by the case of a man who found himself accused of sorcery following the death of ToPia. He was greatly incensed by the charge, and one evening attracted a crowd of people to whom he was venting his grievance. "If I was a sorcerer I would not have a car, I would not have a fine house or eat good food because I would be thinking only of killing people with a taring [a form of poison]," he declared. If it were over a matter of a woman, he went on, yes, he would admit to that, but never to sorcery. His father, too (who had been one of the most prominent members of his congrega-

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tion), had loved many women, but in all his life had never known sorcery and had never taught it to his son. Yes, he announced finally, if it were a matter of women he would rut bat diat, have his revenge by stealing into their houses at night and having their women. But for all the evident pleasure they took in sex, they tended to be very reticent in their public behavior, frowning on any open displays of erotic interest. 5 Tolai contrasted their own conduct in these regards with that of other Papua New Guineans with whose ways they had become familiar. Although far from prudish or puritanical in the way that has been described for some other groups within the country (see, e.g., Young 1971), Tolai considered sex as a very private matter-to be enjoyed certainly, but essentially within the privacy of the house. So, for example, when I remarked once to a Matupi man that in some parts of New Guinea the gardens were a favorite trysting place for lovers, my companion's response was disdainful in the extreme: "Such people do things just any-old-how (dia pait vakukuia) ." To have sexual relations in the gardens, he made clear, was taboo. In part this reflected concern about the risk of exposure such conduct entailed, and the shame that would attach to it, but certain mystical notions were also involved: it was held that the woman's exuviae generated in the act of intercourse were transferred to the man, and this posed a threat to the growing crops. Here again, then, shame and magical ideas combined to engender, or at least protect, the sense of privacy.6 These findings are congruent with, and lend support to, the views expressed by Schneider (1977: 36) that there is a category of phenomena that are not negatively evaluated or seen as discrediting as such, but that arouse shame by the fact of their mere exposure. Such a view enables one to perceive more clearly the function of shame in defining and protecting the boundaries of the self. But I believe it is possible to press the matter a little further. Among the Tolai, as elsewhere, sexual badinage is a common feature of the social intercourse of young men. But when one of the peer group marries, his former companions can no longer easily visit him at his house; their earlier camaraderie with its sexual overtones would be recalled and would become, I was told, a source of constraint and shame. In this way house, and even hamlet, become an area of privacy on which others do not intrude lightly. Pursuing this line of analysis, we may also note, as already remarked, how the vunatarai, and even on occasion the island of Matupit itself, may be exposed to shame as a result of the behavior of one of its members. Thus shame serves to define not only

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the boundaries of the self but also of the social self, more precisely perhaps those "extensions" of the personal or individual self that are so important to the sense of identity, as I will discuss presently. In the sense that the circumstances in which individuals may experience shame can vary considerably from one society to another, within different segments of the same society or within the same society at different points of time, shame plainly has to be accepted as a cultural construct. But equally plainly the matter simply cannot be left at that. Because the experience of shame is rooted in physiological processes, varying neural and psychological consequences are apt to follow; depending on the level of intensity of the emotion, questions are raised about the way the feeling of shame is discharged. Where, for example, the level is relatively mild, the emotion is experienced as purely fleeting, and it is quickly dissipated. But what happens when, as can so often be the case, the experience of shame proves to be most painful and discomfiting? One possibility is that the individual discharges his shame outward by directing his resentment and anger at the one who provoked it. Another is where the shame is, as it were, accepted as a punishment directed at the self. Something of the latter process can be seen at work in the case of ToKutu whose shame-reaction showed no element of aggression redirected against others; it was concentrated entirely on himself. Absenting himself from the group was, as it were, a way of acknowledging that he was in the wrong; it was a form of selfpunishment that expiated his offense and opened the way to a reconciliation. In this context, what I have been speaking of as shame also comes close to what is ordinarily understood in English as guilt: the experience in question combines loss of self-esteem with a sense of wrongdoing for which atonement must be made. Such a view, I believe, is wholly in accord with Tolai thinking in the matter as it is reflected in linguistic usage. Nowadays Tolai have two main terms available to them in speaking of shame phenomena: vavimr and niruva. Both are commonly glossed in English as "shame," and they may even be used interchangeably. However, my informants found no difficulty in distinguishing between them. As seen earlier, "vavirvir" is probably more accurately translated as "embarrassmentshame." By contrast, "niruva" related more to "shame-guilt." By way of illustration, I was told, niruva was experienced when a crowd of people learned of one's wrongdoing (a nirara): one's head was cast down. But the more basic issue is whether feelings of guilt are experienced in the absence of the public exposure of one's wrongdoings. Since there are

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considerable difficulties in getting informants to discourse freely in these matters-for the very good reason that, as with shame, issues of a very intimate kind are concerned that one prefers to keep hiddenanthropologists interested in the question have sometimes been led to adopt indirect means of assessing how far guilt feelings characterize the members of a society (see, e.g., Whiting and Child 1973:227). My Matupi data offer a number of examples of this kind where the experience of guilt can be inferred from customary forms of behavior and belief. Thus if a woman were experiencing difficulty in childbirth, this was commonly attributed to her adultery during pregnancy. To the outside observer, the underlying assumption in these instances must be that knowledge of her offense has made the woman unable to relax; this is confirmed by the fact that the woman is questioned about her conduct and the view that if she confesses and names her lover the delivery will proceed normally. Then again there are certain customary notions relating to the flying fox. As noted earlier, because the ganau inhabits caves and comes to life only at night, it is held to have dose relations with the spirits of the dead. In particular, there was the notion that those who died without wealth in tambu, who were not admitted to the matana kaia, might be left to take up their abode in a flying fox. According to Danks (1909:454), should such a creature be disturbed during the day and fly across country, the people were full offear until it settled somewhere; should it happen to do so on a tree overhanging a village, the residents were all greatly disturbed, especially if they had recently taken part in killing and eating a person, for the excrement of the ganau in such circumstances was said to herald death. In this complex of ideas, the droppings of the flying fox dearly represent the means by which the dead exact their vengeance. The ideas themselves draw their meaning from associations that are rooted in projective fantasy and in turn point to the presence of unconscious guilt-issues to which I will return in the next chapter. But for an understanding of the experience of guilt in daily life, and the circumstances that prompt it, we really need data of a personal kind that can only be provided by one's informants. For reasons to be elaborated presently, such material is difficult to gather and, in my experience, only from a few individuals with whom one enjoys particularly dose relations. I was discussing emotion terms with one of these one day and I referred to the word pinpidian which a number of others had offered for guilt. My friend doubted this saying that "pinpidian" referred rather to the pain one felt when beaten on the buttocks, i maki, it pains or

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aches. But then he went on immediately to add that one could also say i maki ta ra balana, one aches inside. By way of illustration he mentioned how a man might think of divorcing his wife and taking another woman; then he hears the voice of God. It is as though God is beating him and he drops the idea; God beats you and so you are led to repent (nukpuku). He himself revealed, unwittingly, a trifling example of the experience when in an earlier conversation the word dadat cropped up. Ordinarily this is the term for tense or tension, such as the tension generated when a rope is pulled tight. But it is also the expression that a wife might address to her husband expressing approval of the fact that his penis was really stiff or taut. I noticed that as he uttered the word he grinned shyly as though aware that what he had said was slightly improper. With another friend the matter once surfaced quite spontaneously. This was a Tolai I had known in Rabaul who was spending time in England as a postgraduate student. During this period he was a visitor at our home on a number of occasions, and it was on one of these that he told us of a distressing phone call he had received from his wife at home informing him that their eldest son was very ill and not responding to treatment. Talking to my wife about the situation, he spoke of his feelings of guilt about being away from home at this time and leaving his wife to carry the burden on her own. He also spoke of making amends when he got back to Papua New Guinea, promising that instead of spending all his evenings in various kinds of social activity he would stay at home more to be with his wife and children. Some time later I took the opportunity to pursue the matter further, asking what terms he would have used for his feelings if he had been discussing his situation with his fellow Tolai. For guilt he had no hesitation in offering iau kainake, which, after some moments of further reflection, he confirmed. "Iau kainake" means, literally, "I am thoroughly bad"-an obvious expression of self-condenmation. He then went on to elaborate in more general terms, pointing to various contexts in which individuals might be expected to experience strong feelings of guilt. He referred, for example, to a fierce family row that had blown up between one of his brothers and their father when he was last at home. His mother had been so upset by it that she had not been able to take food for days. Now, my companion explained, if anything were to befall his father or mother his brother would be overcome with feelings of guilt saying "a minat iau vuna tana," "I am the cause of his/her death." He then recalled an actual case where something similar had happened.

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Down at Cape Hoskins, in an area of resettlement, a dispute had broken out between a Tolai and members of another ethnic group. The matter was never satisfactorily settled with the result that the father of the Tolai protagonist was hacked to death. The son blamed himself for this saying that if only he had listened to his father's advice, the latter would be alive still (gala na laun boko). "I killed him" (Iauga doka). Gaining access to material on guilt was probably the part of my research task in 1986 that gave me the greatest difficulty, and in the brief account offered here there is much that remains necessarily obscure. Some of the problems are of a general kind likely to confront anyone who seeks to investigate the phenomenon of guilt. As the psychoanalyst Helen Lewis (1981:1, 25) has observed, recognizing that one is in a state of guilt is often difficult. "What we are aware of is thought or cognitive content that will not let us relax. So, for example, we say that we are bothered about something, that we are worried and can't shake it off-without being explicitly aware of it, we are in a state of guilt." A similar situation, I believe, holds in the case of the Tolai who might say in like circumstances "i tagura ra pakagu," "it gets me down" (literally, leaves one without energy) or "i kava ra balana," "it grinds away at one's innards." But the fieldwork setting offers other obstacles to inquiry. The relationship of ethnographer to informant differs fundamentally from that of psychoanalyst to patient: the fieldworker occupies no privileged status vis-a.-vis his informants-it is he who has to seek them out and not vice versa, and therefore he cannot expect, still less insist, that they lay bare to him what belongs to the secret self. Shame, too, of course also relates to what one guards most privately, but it presents fewer difficulties to the fieldworker who, as I have already indicated, commonly encounters the phenomenon in the form of shame-phenomena observed in the public arena; guilt, by contrast, save in some ritual contexts, lacks such social "visibility." I believe that these factors, as suggested before, help to explain why some scholars of an earlier day were persuaded that among Japanese and other nonWestern peoples shame was a more conscious phenomenon than guilt, more easily verbalized, and hence more readily perceived by outsiders as influencing behavior. 7 From this perspective, guilt was essentially a Western phenomenon, in tribal societies it could be almost entirely discounted. There were some other anthropologists who, influenced by psychoanalytic ideas, did acknowledge that guilt was well known through the whole spectrum of human societies, but they too, like those concerned with shame, focused on the part it played in social

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control (see, e.g., Whiting and Child 1973). Now it can readily be seen from some of my examples how feelings of guilt can deter one from wrongdoing, but this would be plainly inadequate to cover some of the other instances where the guilt feelings were generated not so much by an actual wrongful deed but by a failure to meet standards of conduct accepted by oneself as right and proper. Thus in the case of the postgraduate student in England, there was no actual breach of propriety to which one could point, yet he plainly felt guilty about having left his wife at home to cope on her own with their domestic problems and spoke of making amends when he got home. Again, in the case reported from Cape Hoskins, the point is not that the son did kill his father; self-condemnation stemmed from the fact that in failing to heed his father's advice, it was as if he had killed him-and for that one had to atone. What these examples illustrate is how for the Tolai, as elsewhere, guilt and, as examined earlier, shame too are deeply implicated in the concept of self: they are indeed the emotions of the self par excellence.

Tolai Identity in the Modern World We should not be surprised if in their discussions of the self psychoanalysts should proceed as though the issue pertained only to the individual person. For how the matter is perceived depends in large measure on the circumstances in which the phenomenon is encountered; these in turn have a close bearing on the primary data with which a particular field of discourse has to operate. With the psychoanalyst, the encounter takes place in his consulting room. Hence even with an analyst as sociologically aware as Erik Erikson, for whom the concept of ego-ideal always implied a psychosocial process, a function of the interdependence of inner psychic and outer social organization, it is still the individual patient who provides him with his point of departure, his basic perspective, whether this be a child struggling to master his aggressive impulses, a marine, a casualty of war who has lost his inner sense of integrity, or great historical figures like Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi. It is from such a vantage point that the self can come to be thought of as "the unifying tendency in the person's experience" (see, e.g., Lewis 1963:77). The situation of an anthropologist in the field, utterly dependent upon his informants and for much of the time

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operating in "natural" and unbounded settings, is quite different and produces in turn a perspective as well as primary data that are also different. Stressing that they have to deal with a self that is culturally constituted, some anthropologists have rejected the psychoanalytic assumption, remarking that "our notions of a constant 'I' are not found in tribal cultures in which kinship and identity are forever things to be negotiated in diverse contexts" (M. Rosaldo 1984:146). Yet however much of novelty there is in the approach of these anthropologists to the self, the more conventional interests in social relationships and social interaction clearly remain very much a focus of observation and analysis in their work. Given the circumstances in which the anthropologist goes about his task this emphasis upon the social is precisely what one would expect. It seems all the more curious, therefore, that in none of this recent discussion of the topic has there been any recognition of the quite specific way in which affiliation to social group or category bears importandy on the self, in a word that the social construction of the self also has to take account of a group dimension. The relevance of group and category for an understanding of the self derives from two interrelated processes that are fundamental in the organization of social life: differentiation and identification. By differentiation I refer to the process by which a society acquires its structure, that is to say, the ways in which its members are classified according to the various roles they perform and the groups and social categories to which they belong. A further feature of overriding importance, all too often overlooked, is that such delineations always involve a two-way process. In a word, in differentiating others one is at the same time defining oneself: in a context of groups and categories every "they" implies a "we," a set of persons with whom one identifies. In sociological terms then differentiation represents a sociocentric perspective, a view of social categories as "objective" or external to the individual very much in the way in which Durkheim perceived collective representations; identification represents the other side of the coin, speaking to the same process but in its internal and subjective aspects. In psychological terms, both differentiation and identification rest upon cognitive processes, the one concerned with discrimination, the perception of difference, the other with recognition of shared resemblances. But the point of particular interest here is how identification, because it so closely involves the self, carries a powerful affective charge: through identification one may become so merged in the group that the achievements of its members are celebrated as one's

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own, and an attack on one of them draws the same reaction as an attack on oneself; in some instances, indeed, it is as though there is no identity outside of the group. As I have argued elsewhere (Epstein 1978: 102), in a polyethnic situation the sense of ethnic identity is always in some measure a product of the interaction of forces operating on the individual and group from within and those impinging from without. One may thus envisage in purely theoretical terms an identity that is at one pole wholly imposed from without and owes little to inner commitment or at the other one that draws entirely on inner resources and owes little to outside pressures. As it operates in practice, however, the sense of ethnic identity of any given individual will tend to fall somewhere between these poles depending on the relative strength of the external and internal forces; in this context it is identification that provides the measure of inner strength. This link between identification and the concept of identity in tum suggests how affiliation to a particular group can be important in shaping the sense of self. Pursuing this line of argument, my task now is to explore the parameters of identity among the Tolai, noting its various expressions, the way it has changed and continues to change, above all the part that affect has played in giving it its particular cast. For the Tolai in the past-and in considerable measure even todaytwo principles played a major part in the defining of group membership and promotion of a sense of group identity: locality and descent. As I have already indicated, moiety and vunatarai affiliation were important in a variety of situations; offering too a favored means of self-identification, the descent group was a major focus of loyalty. But in relations between people from different parts of the area it becomes apparent that locality offers the more economical organizing principle-at the marketplace, for example, it makes better sense for stallholders to form village blocs rather than try to group themselves along vunatarai lines, since members of the same vunatarai are likely to be distributed among a number of different local communities. 8 Accordingly, it seems that in most instances of extra- or inter-village encounters locality provided the primary medium of self-identification; once provenance was established, however, it was descent that was likely to be emphasized. The importance of place in establishing one's identity may be seen in a variety of ways. The initial link with locality was established not so much by birth in a particular hamlet as by the fact that the placenta (a tava na but) was buried there. I was told how sometimes in the course

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of a quarrel the question would be thrown at one: "Where were your nappies washed?" (Di puk ra mal na takim ta duve ra pakana? )," implying that the person addressed was not a native of the place, a true member of the community. Given that residence was ordinarily virilocal, most children grew up in the hamlet where the father resided, not that to which they belonged as of matrilineal right. But long after they had moved elsewhere, many still recalled the natal hamlet where the placenta had been buried. The importance of local divisions on Matupit has also been noted. As an illustration of the intensely competitive relations that existed between different sections of the island I described earlier the response to the recordings of the tapialai tapes I had brought back from Raluana. Similarly, shortly after my return to Matupit in 1986, I played a cassette of the songs I had recorded on the occasion of the mortuary rites for Tollot (p. 189, above) to a group at Rarup, among whom was an elderly man, Panaia. Observing him closely I noted that he was listening intently. This, he explained, perhaps for the benefit of the younger people present, was the music of Kikila. And then, as a tear formed, he added, "I was there," as though to explain his feelings. It is in such ways that we gain some sense of the intensity of local association. In yet other contexts it was the island as a whole that served as the unit of self-identification. A te Matupit was a native of Matupit, but the expression a bulMatupit (bul = child) probably carries the greater resonance, suggesting someone who is a Matupi to the very core. Something of the importance of being a "true native of the place" has already been seen in the angry exchanges recorded in the dispute between Matinut and TiPaul (p. 134, above). But it is in relation to outsiders that the relevance of local affiliation emerges most clearly, and sometimes indeed it is the outsider's perceptions of the Matupi response to the wider world around them that offers the most eloquent testimony to the strength of local attachment. Some observations of Father Christie, a Roman Catholic priest in Rabaul, are illuminating in this regard. He was telling me once of the ordination of the first Matupi-born priest, Father Tami. The event was anticipated with great enthusiasm at Kurapun, the Catholic section of the village, and the preparations had been going on for some time with the cooperation of all. And then they struck a hitch. Everyone had come together to help prepare the decorations within the village, but nothing, Father Christie noticed, had been done about the area that lay on the other side of the causeway that linked the island to the mainland. He raised the matter with them, but

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after much discussion it was still apparent that they were reluctant to tackle the job. Thinking to persuade them to change their minds, he finally suggested that he should bring down some members of the youth group from Rabaul. The Matupi, however, did not fall for his stratagem and promptly accepted his suggestion. That was fine, they agreed, because the other side of the causeway was town! It was also Father Christie who offered another example of the Matupi sense of community and their attachment to place. At the time of the threatened volcanic eruption in 1983 the provincial government was said to have suggested plans for the evacuation of Matupit and the resettlement of its people elsewhere. The Matupi are reported to have replied that they found the proposal agreeable provided the government could find another island to which they could be transferred as a community! They were fully aware of course that no such place was available, and so the Matupi stayed put. This profound sense of local attachment has its roots deep within the self. But the identification with other members of the local community, which this implies, also bears directly on the sense of self in all manner of ordinary, everyday occurrences. The matter has to be seen both in its negative and positive aspects. The former is best illustrated by an item that was raised once at a village assembly called in Kikila in 1961. The speaker referred to the fact that many prominent people were now visiting Rabaul from Australia and from overseas to hold meetings with Tolai representatives and to learn the thoughts of the people. When representatives got up to speak on such occasions, he continued, they needed to remember that they were speaking not for themselves but for those they represented, and therefore were obliged to consult their constituents beforehand so that their views were carried to the meeting. What lay behind this complaint was immediately clear to everyone. Shortly before, another Matupi, Epineri Titimur, had created quite a stir when at a meeting attended by the Administrator, the representative of the Australian government in Papua New Guinea then on a visit to Rabaul, he pointed out that the Australians had been running the country for the past fifty years. When, he proceeded to ask, were its people to receive self-government? In all of this, the present speaker now observed, the name of Matupit was involved. At the government office in Rabaul, where he worked, he had become the butt of jokes. Matupit had been mentioned. He was a man of Matupit, and he had been deeply shamed by the remarks that were being passed all over town by Europeans, Chinese, and others. 9

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More frequently it was the impression of pride in being Matupi that I drew from my conversations with the islanders. Turpui's account of earlier days on the island, when Matupit was a "town" and events like the Kaiser's birthday were publicly celebrated there with great pomp, will be recalled in this connection. The theme was taken up by many others on various occasions but from different angles. In this way I would be told of old men like Anton ToMana, for example: Anton was a hale eighty or so when I first came to know him who in the 'thirties was a Paramount Luluai (or wetpus) and in his youth had been a seaman who had traveled to many foreign countries. As a result he, and others like him, had seen much of the ways of the Europeans and learned from them, my companion of the moment pointed out. "In these respects Matupit led all the others." What followed sounded like a litany: "So Matupit was the first to take over. many items of the Europeans such as gramophones. The first indigenous trained carpenter was from Matupit, and so was the first New Guinean to learn Western musical notation. At Matupit they were the first to build fine houses and install water tanks. You didn't see houses like that in the bush." At this point he concluded rather lamely, "Of course today the people inland are coming along quite quickly because they are growing, producing, and selling much cocoa and copra.... " Implicit in these remarks is the expression of attitudes and values that were deep-rooted in the Tolai ethos: the element of self-aggrandizement, the sense of gratification that came of being in the van of progress and put one ahead of all of one's rivals. The rivals the speaker had in mind were primarily the members of other Tolai communities, but the social context in which these relations were being played out had long been undergoing a process of transformation. As I have sketched in chapter 2, the arrival of the whites and the establishment of a colonial regime in New Guinea quickly created a new social environment in which a Tolai identity, hitherto embryonic at best, soon began to germinate. What determined this process principally was the pattern of involvement that came to distinguish Tolai relations with the wider society the European hegemony had brought into being. Unlike so many other groups elsewhere in New Guinea whose integration into the new cash and wage economy was achieved through labor migration and the provision of an unskilled labor force for the towns and plantations, Tolai involvement was mediated chiefly through the land. The land not only continued to meet their subsistence requirements, it also became the major source of their new wealth as the Tolai responded

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enthusiastically to official encouragement to produce copra for sale as well as food crops for an expanding local market. In addition, of course, there were the opportunities created by the presence on their very doorstep of the town of Rabaul as a port and administrative center. Numbers of Tolai did work there, but the important point to note is that from the town's early days they tended to seek there "free" casual employment as domestic servants, boat boys, laundrymen, and the like. Such "loose" employment suited Tolai best. Continuing to live at home in their nearby villages, and to participate in village activities, they used the town as a marketplace and as a source of employment for augmenting their cash income from time to time, as well as for the diversions it had to offer; manifestly, they had not been integrated into an urban system. Proximity to Rabaul offered a number of other advantages besides opportunities for casual employment. As the capital of the Mandated Territory, Rabaul was the hub of all social and economic development. An important by-product of this was access to schooling. Thus many Tolai received training in the first technical school in the country started at Malaguna, just round the bay from Rabaul harbor, in the early 'twenties. In the mid-'thirties, seemingly in response to pressure from the Tolai, the Administration set up the first government (i.e., nonmission) school, the Waterhouse Memorial School at Nodup, which was to have a profound influence in later years. Yet another influential factor was that the Gazelle also provided the headquarters of the various missionary bodies active in the Bismarck Archipelago, and their training institutions, therefore, were also located there. Given the nature of local conditions, the missions had adopted a policy of working through indigenous catechists who were posted to the different villages of the area; but many on the completion of their training were sent out as teachers and "missionaries" to more remote parts. The Tolai were well to the fore in this development, and Chowning (1969) has described the influence the teachers and "missionaries" wielded as emissaries of Tolai culture. I myself was able to glimpse something of this situation through the eyes of non-Tolai whom I met in Rabaul. One young man who came from Nakanai on the west coast of New Britain, and now worked in an office in the town, told me how in earlier days many Nakanai people came to the conclusion that Tolai ways were better so they had copied the style of Tolai houses and even of Tolai canoes. But it went much

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further than that. At school they had been taught in Kuanua, the Tolai language, and church services were conducted in Kuanua, too. Quite recently, the young man said, the Bible had appeared in translation in their own Nakanai language. I was left in no doubt about his feelings in the matter when he remarked, finally, that by the time the hymnal also appeared in his own language he would be dead. In the period between the two world wars the Gazelle Peninsula bore all the hallmarks of a colonial society stratified along racial and color lines. My Matupi friends recalled the period as one marked by many discriminatory rules in the enforcement of which they were subjected to many personal indignities. For all that, it is also plain that throughout these years they were coming to enjoy a measure of autonomy and opportunities for meaningful achievement that were simply not available to other indigenous groups. By the time I conducted my research on the Gazelle in the 'sixties major changes in policy on the part of the Australian authorities affecting all areas of social life were bringing further rapid changes to the area, developments that in turn were encouraging the Tolai to an even sharper view of themselves as a distinctive group. The new wealth that was the product of a now more diversified economy was reflected in a degree of self-assurance unknown in the past: Tolai now thronged the stores, offices, and banks of Rabaul, which before the war had been the preserve of the whites. But it was in regard to paid employment that a change in the pattern of involvement with the world beyond the village was chiefly to be seen, a change that was to playa more important role in the development of Tolai ethnic consciousness. Before the war, as has been remarked, Tolai did seek casual employment in Rabaul, and some, too, had gone to work in the goldfields on the New Guinea mainland. In the postwar years, however, this situation was completely transformed with the emergence of a significant category of Tolai "white-collar" workers, mainly teachers and clerks, many of whom were posted to stations throughout Papua New Guinea. There were also artisans, skilled carpenters, and mechanics who would find employment or win contracts for jobs in other parts of the country where local men of the required degree of skill were not yet available. Even when they joined the Constabulary or the Pacific Islands Regiment, the Tolai appeared to enjoy an atypical status. Thus all the Matupi of whom I had a record who joined the police were employed as sergeant/interpreter clerks, or drivers, or belonged to the police band. In short, Tolai who

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worked away from home in the early 'sixties stood out as an occupational elite, keenly aware that they were working in areas and among people much less advanced than their own. Growing familiarity with other parts of the country fed the burgeoning sense of Tolai self-awareness. To begin with, there were the differences of physical environment and climate that sharpened Tolai appreciation of the beauty and bounty of their own area. On this score the most trifling of occurrences could spark a reminder of the contrast as when, for example, ToKonia had once purchased some bananas at Rabaul market. As we peeled them he suddenly remarked: "Over in Madang or East Sepik you won't find mao like these. If you buy bananas there, as soon as you peel them you will see that inside they are already rotten, that there are worms there." But primarily it was people, in particular their perceived ways, that provided the Tolai with a focus of differentiation. The social distance they saw as dividing themselves from other people is summed up most economically in their use of the expression "a vok." The term derives from the English word "work," and in this sense refers to the unskilled manual labor that Papuans and New Guineans came to the Gazelle Peninsula to perform. They were menials, whereas the Tolai saw themselves as free to eschew this demeaning form oflabor. But vok also served in other ways to allow Tolai to distinguish themselves from other indigenes. Dress was an important marker of difference in this connection; vok were readily picked out not so much by their physical appearance as by their clothes-"dirty shirts and tom shirts," and it was in this regard that the derogatory connotation of the term was most clearly expressed. The word was also used in this way as a term of contempt for a younger Tolai who was foolish enough to be seen by his fellows wearing shorts and shirt-i da ra lJOk, he's just like a vok, it was said. For Tolai at this time laid great stress on proper attire-by which they meant the lavalava, or Samoan loincloth, for men and the "Mary blouse" with wrapped skirt for women for everyday purposes; for Sunday best or other special occasions men wore a tailored lavalava together with a white shirt and black tie. At that time, too, even Tolai "white-collar" workers did not adopt Western-style clothing, as was so often true in other parts of the Third World, although some Tolai were still remembered as having done so before World War I; during the period I was first in the field, for a Tolai to have donned trousers would have earned the rebuke that he was imitating the whites. Vok were recognized not only by their dress but also by their "wild"

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ways. Over the years there had been from time to time violent incidents involving New Guineans and Tolai in Rabaul. One of these, of which I was told many years after the event, illustrates well the role of ethnic stereotypes and their importance for ethnic identity. It appears that after a party a man from the Highlands was killed on his way back to his quarters. His fellow tribesmen, or wantoks (from Melanesian pidgin, meaning speakers of the same language) in the contemporary argot, suspected a Tolai and, armed with knives and axes, they sought him out at his home. What had particularly shocked my Matupi informant was that they had chopped up their victim as though he were an animal. This was the fashion of the vok: "pay back." When something like that happened, the proper way to deal with it was through the courts, the Tolai remarked rather smugly, but these people did not understand such things; the implication of these statements did not need to be spelled out-Highlanders were barbarians still, the Tolai were civilized! Attitudes toward language represented another factor that reflected the changing Tolai sense of self. In one of the most polyglot countries in the world Melanesian pidgin or tok pisin quickly established itself as the medium of communication between New Guineans and Europeans and Chinese, and was the lingua franca among New Guineans of different ethnic groups (among Papuans, Motu served the latter function). On the Gazelle, tok pisin thus became associated with New Guineans from "foreign" parts-a tinata na vok. In earlier days the Tolai themselves had employed pidgin freely, and their own language contributed a high proportion of words to the pidgin vocabulary. Now in the 'sixties they continued to use it in council meetings when kiaps were present or when they otherwise had to deal with whites or Chinese, but within the village its use was frowned upon-young men overheard conversing among themselves in pidgin or using pidgin expressions when addressing an elder could expect to be soundly rebuked: "Of what place are you a native? Are you from the Solomons? Don't you know how to speak tinata tuna?" ("U a but mamave? U a but Solomons? Pa u nunure ra tinata tuna?"). And while undoubtedly some of the younger people resented this kind of conservatism, I was also struck by the fact that a number, including some of the more educated, drew pleasure from speaking their own tongue, and spoke of it with pride. No doubt the latter feeling also owed something to the way in which, through the influence of the missionaries, tinata tuna had spread throughout much of the Bismarck Archipelago to become one of the

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most extensive language groups (with Enga and Chimbu) in the entire country (see Salisbury 1976). As this development in regard to language brings out so clearly, Tolai ethnic identity was forged in part through a process of differentiation, in this instance by discriminating between those who spoke pidgin and those who did not, but it also drew strength from what Tolai contributed from their own inner resources-pride in their own tongue. Language is of course an aspect of culture, and by employing it as such a strong diacritical index in intergroup relations they were also using it to mark their wider sense of cultural distinctiveness. But here another point assumes importance. An ethnic group cannot be understood simply in terms of contemporary events and relationships; because it is a group that has an existence in time, it also has to define itself in relation to its past. This does not mean that the group requires a history, at least in the sense of a chronicle of past events that form part of a heritage shared throughout the group-the Tolai as yet do not have such a history (see Neumann 1988)-but it does require a sense of the past, some measure of identification with the group's progenitors. This can be a complex issue, not simply because it is apt to be marked by ambivalence, but also because, as notably among the Tolai, perceptions of the past change with the passage of time. The early missionaries, eager to deliver the Tolai from their heathen ways, dubbed them "a people of darkness" (a tarai ta ra bobotoi), and undoubtedly something of this attitude rubbed off on them at the time for even in the 'sixties traces of it were to be detected in certain contexts, as in the case of T oGirar cited earlier (p. 143, above). In other contexts the attitudes expressed were much more ambiguous as when, for example, in referring to their forebears as tena kankan, men of anger, my informants also revealed their admiration, if not awe, for those who had gone before. Then again there were those situations where other emotions prevailed that were untouched by ambivalence. One day, for example, a crowd of people gathered round my house to hear the tapialai, songs of the tubuan, I had recorded at Baai. As the singing came to a close, Turpui entered the house and started singing a song himself. "Kai ra umana ngalangala," he interrupted himselfto murmur repeatedly, "of the great ones of the past." He said he would fetch ToNgarama so that they could record it together. Those we had just heard, he went on, were all new; they had been composed under the influence of the buai, but this one was kai ra umana ngalangala, it was from way, way back: it originated with the matamatam itself! It is indeed the persistence of the cult of the tubuan

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and dukduk, and with it the institution of tambu, that most clearly indicates the strength of Tolai identification with their ancestors, all the more significandy because of the efforts made by officials and missionaries in the past to persuade the Tolai to abandon them. Instead they survived to become supreme symbols of modem Tolai identity-and most appropriately so, given their close association with death and the ancestors. The role of tambu as a symbol of identity emerged very clearly in the comments of various informants. One of these was an Englishspeaking Tolai whom I had met very early in my fieldwork. Our discussion had quickly turned to tambu, and he told me that the lengthy trip to Nakanai, and the increased price the locals were now demanding for the raw shells, was making its acquisition very costly. Why then, I asked, should they go to so much trouble? After all, I added, there were so many things that people now wanted that could not be purchased with shell money. My collocutor set out to enlighten me. It was true, he said, that money was not to be despised, it was necessary for buying many things, but tambu was something quite different. "There is a longing for tambu. People dream of it. You've read Treasure Island? Well, this is our Treasure Island. It is our treasure. If we didn't have tambu, we would not be Tolai; we would be a different people." Similarly, it was no accident that with the emergence of Mataungan some few years later the movement should take the masked figure of the tubuan as the principal symbol of Tolainess even if, as Grosart (1982:149) claims, it was also recognized as having meaning for other Papua New Guineans who had no knowledge of the tubuan. Yet what I have been attempting to describe here of the emergence of a new Tolai identity, and the features that gave it its content, is still far from the whole picture. The whole history of Tolai involvement in the wider society which at the time of my first fieldwork had been developing in Papua New Guinea for close on a century was unusually complex. Change did not proceed smoothly; it was marked rather by erratic swings and the conflicts, both social and psychological, to which this situation gave rise. As I have suggested in my fuller discussion of this issue elsewhere (Epstein 1978), the social transformation on the Gazelle Pensinsula which had served to generate a new sense of Tolai identity also carried within itself the seeds of what was now emerging as a major crisis of identity for Tolai in the early 'sixties. By this I was referring to two interrelated features of the local scene that were beginning to manifest themselves. First, at the village level there were signs among some of the younger and more educated people of dissatisfac-

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tion at the pace and direction of social change. In a community like Matupit this found expression in a variety of ways: in profound differences of attitude within the community with regard to education, to interracial marriage, but best summed up perhaps in relation to tambu, the continuing pursuit of which was seen as perpetuating the authority and control of the old men and placing obstacles in the way of advance into a modem society. Coinciding with these developments was a growing realization that many of the problems most deeply affecting their lives were no longer matters that could be resolved at the purely local level nor even in Rabaul; decisions in these matters were increasingly having to be referred to Port Moresby. As recognition of this shift in the locus of power dawned, there began to develop an increasing interest in participating in a national political arena; the social counterpart of this development was the glimmering of a new possibility, the sense of being not just Tolai, but being citizens of a new nation. Such was the situation on the Gazelle Peninsula as it appeared to me after I had completed my second spell of fieldwork there. By 1986, when I made a return visit, some of the seeds of development that I had earlier detected had now come to fruition. In particular, Independence had been achieved and Papua New Guinea had taken its place among the nation-states of the modem world. It is far beyond my present task to consider this and the other momentous changes the country has experienced in the past couple of decades. Instead I wish to touch briefly on two aspects of the recent changes that seem to me to bear importantlyon the question of Tolai identity: wage employment and urbanization. Many strands have always entered into defining the pattern ofTolai involvement in the wider society that lay beyond the village, but in my own discussions of the matter I have always laid the primary stress on the economic nexus. The most important changes in this regard that I detected in 1986 concerned participation in the wage economy. Thus at Matupit I very quickly discovered that the numbers of islanders now in wage employment had increased considerably since my first visit but, even more significantly, there were changes too in regard to who worked, the kind of work they engaged in, where they worked, how long they were absent from home, and so on, creating a situation quite different from the one I had previously encountered. One of the most interesting aspects of this development concerns the position of women. In 1960 opportunities for Tolai women in paid employment were minimal; now they were to be found holding jobs in

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the Administration, in banks, offices, and stores not only in Rabaul but in Port Moresby, the capital, and other towns. A second aspect of the changed situation relates to education. I have noted how, as a result of the headstart in schooling the Gazelle Peninsula had gained over other parts of the country, Tolai had begun to emerge in the 'fifties as an occupational elite, numbers of the younger among them working in other parts of the country as craftsmen, teachers, "missionaries," and "white-collar" workers. Later, as secondary schooling expanded, and tertiary education opened up, the initial position of advantage they enjoyed could be exploited further; so, when the University of Papua and New Guinea was established in Port Moresby, an unduly high proportion of the early intake of students were Tolai, who emerged as graduates to take some of the best posts in administration that the newly independent country had to offer or, if they preferred, to take up careers in a range of professions. This expansion in the range and quality of employment went hand in hand with rapid urban growth. Conducting research in a community like Matupit, the change in this regard most immediately apparent to me was the growth in Rabaul's population: no more than around 4,000 in 1960, it had now risen to about 15,000 of whom some 10,000 were said to be Tolai. From that same vantage point, some of the consequences of this development were no less plain-a marked change in the relations of village and town. In earlier years, as I have said, many Matupi worked in Rabaul, but without exception they continued to participate in the life of the village. At that time no Tolai lived in Rabaul, and as evening fell and stores, shops, and offices closed, the streets of the town emptied as Tolai returned to their villages. IfMatupi urban workers enjoyed some financial advantage over their village confreres, I argued, it was owing to the fact that they were able to participate simultaneously in both the rural and urban sectors of the economy. This was true not simply of those who had jobs in Rabaul, but also of those who were working farther afield in other parts of the countrytheir absence was rarely protracted, and gardens or plantations could be maintained by one's wife and/or kin. This situation now no longer obtained, or certainly to nothing like the same extent. The village had lost much of its earlier "pull," in part because for younger people in particular, a job in Rabaul or elsewhere was now likely to be more remunerative than staying in the village even if they had land there for food gardens or cash crops. In part too living in town offered them the attraction of being able to put a distance between themselves and their

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kin, thus escaping at least some of the burdensome claims that kinsfolk can assert. However, it would plainly be going too far to say that having a house or flat in Rabaul meant severing one's connections with the village. For many there was still regular intervisiting, and at least some of the Matupi I knew who now resided permanently in Rabaul continued to be actively engaged in the affairs of their vunatarai. Even so, it was clear that they could no longer take part fully in the daily economic life of the village and much that was culturally associated with it.lO It scarcely needs to be added that what has just been said of those living in Rabaul applies with even greater force to those making careers for themselves in towns such as Lae or Kieta and above all in Port Moresby. Port Moresby, once a small colonial town, was now a rapidly growing city; as the capital of Papua New Guinea it served increasingly as a magnet to those coming from all over the country in search of work. The figure I heard mentioned in respect of Tolai in Moresby was 4,000. Whether that figure is accurate or not, their presence there in what are undoubtedly large numbers raises many questions. In the first place, given the strength of local attachment among the Tolai, how does the sense of place fare in the milieu of the city? Certainly Matupi in Moresby did not live in settlements of their own as did the Hula, for example (Oram 1977), nor did they seek to reproduce there the social organization of the village which May and Sheldon (1977:22) appear to suggest is the common pattern of adaptation to urban conditions. They did, however, remain deeply involved in a network of wantok relationships-the local expression for a phenomenon, commonly referred to today as ethnicity, that has almost universally accompanied Third World urbanization. However, given that the members of a local community such as Matupit who were living in Port Moresby did not constitute a homogeneous group in terms of occupation or life-style, the issue that arises is whether in the urban setting they contipued to interact more intensively among themselves than with others, or at least whether they found some means of giving continuing expression to their sense oflocal identity. Other questions are posed concerning the wider ethnic community. A major attraction of Port Moresby for the Tolai has been the job opportunities a capital city is able to offer those with higher educational, technical, and professional qualifications, and the status that goes with them, which Rabaul simply could not match. Many of the Tolai I met in Port Moresby-leading politicians, senior public servants, lawyers, architects, and the like-were established figures of the new

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urban elite; their manifestly Western and middle-class life-style was utterly remote from the life of the villages in which their childhood had been spent. Some I knew had married Australian girls, and all included members of other ethnic groups in their personal networks. Yet they also remained interested and deeply knowledgeable about what was going on "at home," and in some instances at least continued to participate in the affairs of their vunatarai. What was particularly striking about my meetings with these people-some of them Matupi, some of them belonging to other localities-was the evident pleasure they felt in having me converse with them in tinata tuna. I I In all of these various ways they acknowledged, even asserted, their continuing sense of themselves as Tolai. Yet undoubtedly behind this semblance of continuity there were processes at work making for change. As with other diaspora, the T alai dispersion created a situation in which members of the group were brought increasingly into confrontations with the self that brought in their wake questions about the future of Tolai identity. The present study directs attention to some of these questions; attempts at answers can only come, however, from further research in the towns themselves.

8 Epilogue: The Anthropologist as Onion-Peeler What a tremendous number of layers! Will the heart of it never come to light? [He pulls the whole onum to pieces] My God, no, it won't! Right to the centre It's all made of layers-but smaller and smaller. Nature is witty! Ibsen, Peer Gynt (1972:396)

The central aim of this book has been to present some account of the way of life of a specific group of people, the Tolai of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, that takes full cognizance of the part the emotions play in the various aspects of their social existence. The task, that is, has been seen as essentially ethnographic. Unfortunately the matter is not quite so simple as it sounds. Any attempt to describe the emotional life of a human group, one's own or some more exotic one, calls for data of a kind that until quite recently anthropologists and other social scientists deliberately eschewed, the matter being held to lie beyond their remit and consequently beyond the scope of prevailing paradigms. But once such data are admitted to be of interest, however, difficult questions are raised about presentation, about interpretation and analysis, not least about understanding or explanation. If one is to come to grips with the emotions as an anthropologist some brush with theory cannot be avoided. 248

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As noted at the very outset, a "hands off" policy, shared by many distinguished anthropologists whose approach to their discipline differed markedly in other respects, for long effectively blocked serious study of the emotions. A number of factors underlay this antipathy. No doubt there are genuine, indeed formidable, difficulties in seeking to research affect under field conditions, and a concern to protect disciplinary boundaries has also played an important part. But behind these one may perhaps detect other factors that are deep-rooted in the nature of the emotions themselves. In the first place, feelings are acknowledged to have the power to move people to action. To have embarked on their study, therefore, would have meant corning to grips with the tangled issue of human motivation and hence compelled recognition of an interface between the areas of the sociological, the biological, and the psychological. It is also a property of the emotions that they are not always under control; in that they tend to be eruptive, they are also unpredictable. Phenomena of this kind were not amenable to the prevailing modes of anthropological analysis, and would indeed have posed a threat to the view of science of the day to which these anthropologists felt committed. In recent years, however, there has been a veritable sea-change in the intellectual climate with the result that interest in the emotions has suddenly burgeoned among psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and others, a development that has generated a good deal of discussion of theoretical and methodological issues both within and across disciplines. I do not need to survey here this body of literature in detail; however, the kind of approach I myself have sought to develop in this study can only be understood when set in the context of certain of the ideas and assumptions that have come to inform the work of others in the field. Within American anthropology the recent upsurge of interest in the emotions, at once evident in a number of publications that have drawn a good deal of attention (e.g., M. Rosaldo 1980; White and Kirkpatrick 1985), is a recognition of the importance of an aspect of human experience in its own right, but it is also rooted in a broader concern to see the development of a systematic ethnopsychology. Ethnopsychology in tum draws upon a more widely based set of assumptions that underlie what some would see as an emerging new paradigm within psychology and other areas of human science: social constructionism, replacing what Rom Harre (1986) has dubbed the older reductionist one. Two fundamental notions may be mentioned here as characterizing

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the constructionist position as it bears upon the study of the emotions. First, there is the way it regards emotions "not as natural responses elicited by natural features which a situation may possess, but as socioculturally determined patterns of experience and expression which are acquired and subsequently feature in, specifically social situations" (Armon-Jones 1986:33). To this claim constructionists add a prescriptive thesis: emotions are a socially prescribed set of responses to be followed by a person in a given situation. The response is a function of shared expectations regarding appropriate behavior (ibid. citing Averill 1980). Lutz's (1988) elegant account of everyday sentiments on the Micronesian atoll of Ifaluk offers an opportunity to see how these twin ideas are fleshed out and come to shape the ethnographic enterprise when an anthropological perspective is adopted; it also brings out clearly how the constructionist approach is seen to diverge from that of the psychologists, most of them still trapped by their own linguistic categories and the use of the experimental method. In its most general terms, the major charge to be leveled at the psychologists is their tendency to look at emotions in isolation from the social field: as Lutz (1988:212) observes, this leads to an emphasis on emotions as singular events situated within the individual rather than as emotional exchanges between individuals. Insofar as the circumstances in which the researcher into affect encounters the data are likely to have an important bearing on the way he or she views the emotions-in the case of many psychologists through the use of experimental techniques or other tests under, or at least analogous to, laboratory conditionsthis is a valid and important point, and one to which I will return a little later. Linked to this general criticism are two complaints of a much more specific kind. The first relates to what Lutz perceives as the stress on the physical in the view of the emotions taken by Western culture, the second the assumption that in dealing with human emotion one is in the presence of universals. Let me take up briefly each of these issues in turn. On the first score, Lutz finds evidence of the association of emotions with the physical in Western culture in the predominance of body images in talking about them ("his stomach knotted up," etc.). Nor do academic psychologists escape this cultural bias, their theories being grounded in the mind/body dichotomy that pervades Western thought. Tomkins is held up as a representative figure in this regard (1988:66). It needs to be said, therefore, that from Lutz's point of view Tomkins is an unfortunate choice of target. It is true of course that Tomkins defines

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the affects in terms of muscular and glandular responses located in the face but also distributed widely throughout the body; what Lutz does not seem to have appreciated is that she has seized upon a passage in which Tomkins is concerned with certain processes that provide, as it were, the underpinnings for the primary building blocks of an enormously complex system in which neurophysiology, expression, and phenomenology, as well as language, all have an acknowledged role. l As should be evident from the quotation I have offered as my frontispiece, Tomkins took no simple, dichotomous view of the relations of mind and body, reason and emotion. The need for flexibility, if the affects are to achieve their communicative function, is exemplified most clearly in his concept of the central assembly which, as explained earlier, allows the affects, memory, perception, and thought, as well as components of the nervous system, to combine in varying and complex ways in response to the needs of an ever-changing internal and external environment. From another point of view, the flexibility of the system is seen in the tendency of affects to combine or blend not only with other affects but also with ideas that derive from the conceptual systemwhat Tomkins refers to as affect-complexes. The importance of such complexes is immediately attested to in the ordinary language of everyday speech. Thus to take an example already cited in an earlier context, in English anger labels a primary affect, hostility refers to affect too, but with the added connotation of a more extended and more complex feeling and cognitive state. Irritability refers to hostility that waxes and wanes in response to provocation, but which has a permanently low threshold, and so on. In the terms of Tomkins's theory, the primary affects are each distinguished by a characteristic mode of expression, but it is no less part of that theory, for the reasons just considered, that in actuality expression can be expected to be highly variable. Language makes a similar point: in real life situations one rarely, if ever, experiences or encounters emotions in a pure form. Tomkins's views on the ways in which we employ language to talk about the emotions are also relevant to Lutz's other charge that psychologists assume the universality of the emotions, again reflecting the cultural view that natural processes are more invariant than cultural ones and, therefore, that emotions are both more uniform crossculturally and less culturally malleable than is in fact the case. For Lutz, as for other constructionists, it is the brute fact of cultural diversity that provides one of the most compelling reasons for treating emotion as a cultural rather than a natural category. As Harre (1986: 10) notes, there

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are several modes of cultural variation among emotion systems, but in nearly all cases the crucial issue is the difficulty of translating terms that have their meaning rooted in one culture into those of another, or even within a single cultural tradition from those of one period to those of another. As an example, Harre takes the case of the Ifaluk word metagu. In certain contexts, for instance in the presence, real or imagined, of a threatening or dangerous object, he points out, "metagu" is appropriately translated by the English word "fear." In other regards, however, the concept of "metagu" is very different from fear. Among the Ifaluk, those who are submissive and passive in metagu-provoking situations are commended. The moral qualities with which the concept is associated are such that it would be a gross mistranslation to treat "metagu" as equivalent to fear. On this score one can readily agree with Harre and Lutz: as seen, too, in an earlier reference to the Samoan concept of "alofa," key emotion terms from one lexicon may not have their precise equivalent in another. That in making use of emotion terms we are dealing with cultural constructs cannot be gainsaid. But simply to leave the matter there would be to pass over a crucial aspect of the problem. The emotions, it has sometimes been said, function in ways analogous to language. Now where language is concerned, the linguists teach us, lexical items are arbitrary signs: between the Tolai word davai, the Bemba word umuti, and the English word tree, there are no discernible etymological links. Emotion words offer no exception: they are the fruit of linguistic convention, we cannot know how they originated, and have to accept them as given, exploring their meaning as cultural constructs. From this point of view we should not be surprised that the emotion terms of other vernaculars do not always translate readily into English. But what is surely curious is that so often when we come to examine the key terms in different emotion lexicons it turns out that there is considerable overlap in meaning: "metagu" can in some contexts be glossed as fear, the Samoan "alofa" does overlap with love. If the emotions are to be treated simply as a matter of cultural construction, there would seem to be no limits to the number and range of emotions to be encountered as we survey the world's cultures, and the chances of semantic overlap in the emotional domain should be no greater than finding the same words (with or without the same meaning) in unrelated languages. Why then should this kind of overlap occur so regularly? Here is a problem that the constructionists make no attempt to solve-one indeed of which they appear to be unaware. Thus the whole matter is more problematic than Harre, Lutz, and

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their confreres are prepared to allow. I suggest that what complicates the issue is the question of emotional expression. Building on the pioneering studies of Darwin, theoretical psychologists such as Tomkins and experimentalists such as Ekman have devoted much attention to the ways humans give expression to their emotions, in particular through the movements of facial musculature. What their work points to is the presence of a limited number of primary or fundamental affects, each of which-when full allowance is made for the variability that is a function of the difference in the degree of intensity with which an emotion is experienced, or the fact noted just a moment ago that in real life emotions are rarely, if ever, encountered in a pure form-can be identified by its characteristic and distinctive mode of expression. Affects then refer to certain capacities rooted in our evolutionary past which depend for their realization on certain neural mechanisms being activated in various sets of circumstances or under certain conditions. If this perspective is adopted, then it follows that it is quite inadequate to treat the concept of emotion, as Lutz would have us do, simply as a cultural category and not as a natural one; to the contrary, it has to be treated as both cultural and natural. This is indeed Tomkins's position. For none of the emphasis in his theory on expression can obscure the importance he attaches to the learning process in the experience of affect. What indeed characterizes the breadth of his approach is his insistence on the way in which affect has always to be viewed in the context of culture, history, and ideology. But for present purposes the point is best exemplified in the course of his consideration of some of the attributes of the affect system. Notable here is his refusal to use single terms for what he calls the primary or basic affects, because this might suggest that we are dealing with isolable or bounded psychic entities; instead, as I have already indicated, he refers to continua such as, for example, interest-excitement or distress-anguish, the continuum in each instance being calibrated in terms of density of neural firing or stimulation. This quickly leads into a suggestion, already noted in a passage I have quoted extensively, how variation occurs in the process of labeling the emotions in different cultures because the terms cover different ranges on the scale of calibration or refer to different affect complexes (pp. 16-18, above). In the face of an indisputable cultural and linguistic diversity, Lutz and others appeared to have found ready to hand a stick with which to beat the psychologists, enabling them to dismiss the latters' claim to universalism in regard to the emotions. So far at least as Tomkins is concerned the charge, as we now see, is a

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trumpery. For the lack of fit between different emotion terms in different lexicons, which was seen as so damaging to the "reductionist" case, turns out to be precisely what Tomkins's theory would lead one to expect. As in the earlier discussion asserting that emotion is a cultural rather than a natural category, so here too the methodological error lies in treating uniformity and diversity as in some way opposed processes. This is not the case: as biologists have long appreciated, uniformity and diversity have to be regarded as two sides of a single coin, differing but complementary perspectives on the one life process. In fairness to Lutz it should be said that early in her study (1988:4) she does state that it is not her aim to cut the body out of emotions. In effect, however, this is precisely what she does. For, in line with the emphasis on language that characterizes the work of all the constructionists, her account is primarily concerned with "emotion talk," and pays no attention to emotional expression. Given that anthropologists of a constructionist persuasion appear to be chiefly interested in cultural differences, we may ask of course whether neglect of the way the emotions are expressed really matters. I believe it does, and for a variety of reasons. In the first place, failure to pay attention to how the emotions are registered means that questions that would seem to be raised by the very approach adopted by the ethnopsychologist are apt not to be addressed. An interesting example is to be found in Lutz's report of an incident in the early days of her fieldwork that was important in helping her to define the "gender environment" in which she was to work. Her "adoptive" parents had been giving her an "initial primer" in what and what not to do. Emphasizing that she should not go into the island store if there were more than two men inside, her "father," Tamalekar, concluded by telling her that thenceforward she was to consider herself their daughter, and that he himself would refer to her before others as his daughter. A week later a "mass meeting" of the island's men was called. Lutz indicated an interest in attending, and she was escorted to it by a middle-aged man from the village. Tamalekar was already there. The account continues: "Seeing me, he anxiously asked, 'Where are you going?' and looked both uncomfortable and displeased when he heard I was interested in observing the meeting. As direct requests are rarely refused, he did not respond but waved me to sit off to the side by his relatives" (1988:37). The incident provides a nice illustration of Lutz's view of how emotions emerge and are communicated in the context of social interaction. But the intriguing question here is how does she know that Tamalekar was anxious? One has to assume that she inferred

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it from some gesture or expression on his part just as she had just inferred his discomfiture from his looks. If Lutz's own knowledge of others' feelings in the context of her interaction with Ifaluk depended on inferences drawn from expressions, gestures, and the like, one is led to wonder how in interaction among themselves Ifaluk know what others are feeling and how they should respond. If it is true that the Ifaluk do have a repertoire of expressions by which to register anxiety, displeasure, and the like, ought not this data also be included in the ethnographic record where emotion lies at the heart of the inquiry? No less to the point, would the inclusion of such material not provide important evidence for assessing the claims of those psychologists who have adopted the universalist stance? Lutz's brief reference to disgust (1988:212) offers a tantalizing illustration of the point. Ifaluk, she tells us, speak of niyabat (disgust) over having to walk along a muddy path; this she sees not so much as a reflection on a feeling as a statement about a perceived relation between self and world. Perhaps we would be in a better position to judge this view if we knew what there was in walking along a muddy path that made it disgusting for the Ifaluk, and if we knew too how the Ifaluk registered disgust. An answer to the latter question might well shed some light on the former, and at the same time enable us to pinpoint where the Ifaluk notion of disgust resembles or differs from what is regarded as disgust elsewhere. But the point of these remarks is not to underline the fieldworker's failure to make observations along these lines-my own accounts are at times no less deficient in this regard-but to draw attention to some of the blind spots that result when emotional expression and the physiological processes that underlie it are excluded from one's theoretical focus. Most obvious perhaps is the way one misses access to the kind of checklist that a concept of primary or fundamental affects at once offers the ethnographer in the field; such a checklist is a constant reminder of questions that need to be asked if the full range of basic affects is to be covered. At a later stage of the research, the assumption of a limited number of such affects introduces some means of bringing order to the data, in this way opening up, at least in a preliminary way, the possibility of cross-cultural comparison. But the more serious issue is the way the primacy that the constructionists accord to culture in their view of the emotions leads to a lack of awareness of a variety of questions that plainly fall within the anthropologists' remit. Thus no ethnopsychologist, to my knowledge, has taken account of the attributes of the affect system as these have been dis-

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cussed by Tomkins, and the possibility that these might have a bearing on matters of anthropological interest. Consider, for example, what Tomkins has referred to as the toxicity of affect. Anger and shame, for instance, can be highly punitive, making heavy demands on the individual: complex physiological processes are involved which, beyond a certain level of intensity, generate inner discomfort or tension; relief comes through the discharge of affect. The problem may be handled in a variety of ways: discharge may be sought outward in aggression directed toward another, it may be directed inwardly toward the self, or the solution may take some form of compromise-formation. How in any situation the matter is resolved may depend on the temperament of the individual (s) concerned as well as on social context, but I believe there is evidence to indicate that cultural factors are also at work, as I discuss again below. Treating the emotions simply as cultural constucts, it is difficult to see how constructionists can pose, still less answer, questions of this kind. Rejecting too an evolutionary approach, it is no less difficult to see how they would confront the question as to why human beings need emotions at all. Nevertheless, nothing in the thrust of these remarks on the constructionist stance should be taken to suggest that the theories of the psychologists should be swallowed whole. Adopting an anthropological perspective, it quickly becomes apparent that the methodology that informs the work of so many psychologists exposes them too to a variety of criticisms. As noted a little earlier, there is the emphasis on the individual at the expense of the social that Lutz has rightly deplored; it appears that even the most sophisticated of psychologists sometimes find difficulty in appreciating that individuals are not isolates, but that they have a sense of self that is apt to be intimately bound up in their involvement in various social groups, categories, and networks. 2 On the latter score, it is very striking to note the marginality of the concept of self in the work of experimental psychologists, as a glance at the index of some of the major texts will indicate (e.g., Izard 1977; Plutchik 1980), whereas for the ethnopsychologists it is of course quite central. A further reflection of the same point is to be found, I believe, in the discovery that these same authorities turn out not to be very helpful when it comes to some of the emotions an anthropologist is most likely to encounter in the field-in the present study, for example, concern, envy, loneliness, all of them quintessentially emotions of connection linking self and other. On a rather different tack one may also remark

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how evolutionary concerns can sometimes lead to a naive functionalism that is somehow reminiscent of Malinowski's concept of the institution tied to the fulfilment of some basic need (see, e.g., Plutchik 1981). It seems that psychologists leave themselves open to charges of these kinds partly because the primary data on which they have relied in the past have been obtained from individuals who find themselves placed in some kind of "test" situation, partly because the insistence on laboratory-like conditions itself derives from the self-image of the psychologist as dealing in "hard science." It is important to stress therefore that in recent years psychologists themselves have been coming to recognize the limitations of the classical approach and the need to seek their data in contexts that allow for the more spontaneous expression of emotions. As research along these lines gets under way it seems likely that psychologists will come to a closer appreciation of what anthropologists have to contribute to the overall endeavor. Anthropologists for their part need to learn that their own aims and those of the psychologists are not necessarily opposed, and should reflect rather on their complementarity. I have approached the present study as an anthropologist, but it is also evident that I have drawn on ideas culled from the work of psychologists. As cross-cultural studies of personhood and self got under way it quickly became patent that how the emotions are conceptualized and experienced is profoundly shaped by cultural factors. The ethnopsychological stance has indeed brought a new dimension to our understanding of the emotions, but to acknowledge this is not to accept that the emotions can be treated simply as cultural constructs; they are that, but they are not that alone. As I have sought to show throughout, to commit oneself to the constructionist position is to adopt a blinkered perspective that obscures some of the most interesting issues touching the nature of the emotions. In my own case, therefore, while focusing on the way a distinctive human group, the Tolai, think about and experience the emotions, I have also been keenly aware of the need to explore that sociocultural particularity in the context of assumptions about universal human capacities. A word should be added at this point about the kind of data presented in the study, and how it was gathered. Field methods can be assumed to reflect theoretical concerns, and in most cases the expectation is probably borne out. But one also needs to recognize that the field situation itself is likely to impose its own constraints, too, whatever one's theoretical predilections. Catherine Lutz, for example, tells us

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that she spent most of her time on Ifaluk in the company of women (particularly those classified as her relatives) in cook huts, gardens, and birth house. This of course fitted perfectly with her interest in "naturally occurring discourse" about the emotions. The circumstances of my fieldwork were rather different. Gender considerations apart, the house I occupied was on a hamlet site that was rather isolated and still in the early stages of being established; it offered few opportunities for sitting around and engaging in casual interaction with hamlet neighbors. I did of course visit regularly the various motonoi, or beach areas, that were the main points of assembly for the men, and took whatever other opportunities offered to be with people, but in a community where men and women regularly departed early in the morning for work in their gardens or to go to Rabaul, I quickly found myself looking to the village assemblies or varkurai as a major source of material on a range of issues. For the study of affect, the varkurai was particularly important because it offered the opportunity to observe behavior and gather data of precisely the kind that my own theoretical approach required. For all the emphasis in her account on "emotion talk" Lutz, too, of course, like all anthropologists, cites actual incidents that she herself observed or of which she was informed. This is what Gluckman (1967) liked to refer to as "the method of apt illustration"; this contrasted with the "case method" approach where some social situation or episode came to provide the very focus of analysis. In the study of the emotions this emphasis on action sequences seems to be valuable in a number of ways. In the first place it is apparent that as with "naturally occurring discourse" episodes can provide a context in which the meaning of the terms people use in talking about the emotions can be explored, but focus on the action sequence should also serve to bring out that the emotions are not simply a matter of talk, that one has to deal rather with what is a matter of felt experience. The method also offers a way of overcoming a difficulty that is perhaps likely to arise in all areas of fieldwork-the fact that there are some matters that people may not in fact discuss a great deal yet may be of great significance. In my own case, for example, there were a number of aspects of emotional experience and expression, such as the outbursts of weeping in the public arena which I have mentioned on a number of occasions, to the full import of which discussion with my informants had offered no clues and of which I would almost certainly have remained in ignorance if I had not encountered the phenomenon in the context of the varkurai. On the more strictly methodological level,

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what marks the approach is the dynamic dimension it introduces to the task; in the varkurai, or some similar set of social circumstances, the emotions can be observed, so to speak, in a context of conflict. At one point the situation may appear as a kind of dialogue in which, a particular emotion having been triggered in one party, the motivational power of the affect system provokes a response in the second; at another it becomes plain how the emotions are being stirred for manipulative ends. There is one other feature of the approach which I take to be of great methodological importance: in place of the more common form of ethnographic description, which proceeds by way of general statements and at times is somewhat abstract, the focus on the episode draws attention to the events that make it up and the persons who are party to it and so provides the reader with some kind of check on the analysis as well as a basis for alternative interpretations. Yet for all my concern with emotion as felt experience, I have, in fact, along with Lutz and others, taken the lexical aspect as my point of entry to the problem. Even if one had not fully appreciated it beforehand, the experience of fieldwork quickly drove home the point that an important part of the research task was to learn the relevant terms and to explore their meaning. Then again, in terms of presentation, an initial focus on emotion terms seemed helpful in familiarizing the reader with some of the main categories available to the Tolai in their discourse about the emotions. But I was also led to take this course by less pragmatic considerations, for it seemed to me that, the question of meaning apart, there were a number of ways emotion terms raised interesting questions in their own right, that they were in this regard part of the more general problem. An immediate issue concerns the array of emotion terms that is offered by different languages, and the extent to which, as well as in what ways, the emotions find verbal representation in them. I think the list of Tolai terms set out in table 1 offers evidence of a lexicon relatively rich in this connection; nor should one neglect in this regard how many terms are, and others can be, built up by reference to the balana, purporting in this way through metaphor to describe sensations experienced there, and thus giving added flexibility to linguistic usage in talking of emotional experience. It does appear indeed that the Tolai lexicon offers a wider range of emotion terms than do some other languages reported in the literature; but as matters stand at present, too few comparative studies have yet been carried out to allow of generalization in the matter.

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Considering further the terms listed in table 1, it will be quickly noted that they cannot be taken to refer to discrete emotions. Some are plainly related to others, in some instances expressing variation in the degree of intensity, in others the variation resting on some other criterion. Two related issues are raised here: first, the process of discrimination and, second, the way in which the emotions are perceived to be grouped or classified. On the first score, it seems clear that the greater the degree of discrimination, the greater the refinement the language allows when it comes to speaking of one's feelings. And what is evident here is that however relatively rich in some respects the Tolai lexicon appears to be, many terms carry a wide semantic range, leaving the more precise meaning of the word in question to be settled by context or even in some cases perhaps to remain uncertain. But there is an implicit comparison here of which one must be aware. For discrimination has to be seen as a two-way process: ifTolai uses one term where English, for example, offers a choice of several, cases can also be found where the opposite situation holds. For example, Tolai distinguish verbally between a number of contexts and kinds of experience which would be adequately covered by the English word "excitement." Thus they would use "gugu," which can ordinarily be glossed as "happy," to express the pleasure and excitement evident in eye and gesture on encountering at a gathering a kinsman/kinswoman one had not seen for some time. At the other pole, so to speak, is "karagap," the excitement that accompanies sudden anger or rage. Another term commonly used is dadadar (ra pakana) , which is onomatopoeic, suggesting the chatter of teeth; it refers to trembling with excitement. One of my informants used it once when seeking to explain to me the concept of langoron. He recalled how once when he was attending a malagene, or dance festival, he noticed that close to where the musicians sat and at the spot in front of which the dancers performed, a very young coconut had been planted. This was "a langoron": treated magically, it was held to have great potency in drawing a throng to admire the skill and beauty of the dancers. Now, my informant continued, he was astonished when the man who was leading the dance approached the langoron, and suddenly his whole body began to shake violently (i dadadar) until he bent down, picked up the coconut, and smashed it. The term "langoron" then refers to what has been planted, and the magic (a papait) secretly performed on it; but it has also come to be used more generally for the excitement that is generated by the dance itself, which is indeed the meaning given in Tolai dictionaries. 3 Another term used in this context

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is dungat, which refers to the confusion and excitement of those watching the dance. The use of such different terms points not only to the way excitement is held to be experienced differently in different kinds of situation, but also to specific sets of cultural interests. In other cases, as with anger, to be mentioned again shortly, discrimination serves to suggest that we are in an area of cultural elaboration. That some terms can be seen as closely related to one another while others presumably are not, at once raises questions of grouping or classification; pursuing this line of inquiry should lead directly to a closer appreciation of the more general indigenous view of the emotions, the local "theory." However, the matter is not quite so simple. Apparently the Tolai are not alone among human groups in lacking a homespun and comprehensive classification of the emotions. If schema there is, it must be implicit and has to be sought out indirectly. Accordingly, a few anthropologists-myself included-have adapted methods developed by experimental psychologists seeking to explore similar kinds of issue in Western society. But the circumstances the anthropologist encounters in the field are not always congenial to inquiries of this kind; different approaches have to be adopted, and different results may be obtained. Thus the hierarchical clustering of terms within a neat unitary structure reported in the studies by Gerber and Lutz, mentioned earlier, was not reproduced in my own. In my own case, following Plutchik, I invited my respondents to make their judgments of similarity/difference by assessing the lexical items on the list three times, on each occasion using a different term as the point of reference. Only in the case of "gugu" (happy) could the judgments be seen to slot into a simple pattern in a fairly clear-cut fashion. In the other two cases (where kankan, anger, and vavirvir, shame, were used) there was also some evidence of clustering, but when the three sets of judgments were brought together many discrepancies appeared. A number of factors seem to underlie this outcome, but I believe that the major one, and the one that casts most doubt on the possibility of arriving at a simple, unequivocal hierarchical cluster, is that the three points of reference appeared to present respondents with intrinsically different levels of difficulty. For various reasons mentioned earlier, I would not want to claim too much for my "experiment." At the same time, the results-such as they are-suggest a tendency that to my mind makes good sense. It would appear then that in certain contexts Tolai do see the affects as falling within certain clusters or categories, but the composition of these sets is not fixed or absolute. Rather, how the relations between different emotions are per-

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ceived depends on such matters as semantic range, on the ambiguity that is built into some emotion terms, above all on context and perspective, on how a given situation is defined. In short, the Tolai view is fluid and dynamic, militating against the ordering of all the terms along the lines of a single overarching diagram. Support for this view comes from another "experiment" in which I sought a rating of the emotions in terms of frequency of personal experience and their assumed importance for the Tolai as a whole. As figure 4 brings out clearly, the factor that most influenced the ratings was whether one's responses projected a favorable or unfavorable image of self. There is another set of questions to which I think an initial focus on lexicon immediately draws attention. If we cast our eyes once more over the list of standard Tolai emotion terms, there is likely to be little of surprise or puzzlement in our reaction. As translated, the Tolai lexicon appears to include not only the primary or basic affects that are listed by different psychologists, but also many other terms that are common to Western discourse on the subject. Of course emotion terms are only labels at best, clumsy attempts to pin down and describe the nature of our feelings. The issue that is raised here therefore is how far the expression, experience, and meaning encompassed by a Tolai word relating to an emotion are accurately denoted by the English word used to translate it. To a considerable extent much of my book may be seen as an attempt to answer this question, and it is unnecessary therefore to pass in review again here all the evidence in detail. Instead I will discuss the matter briefly, using a small sample of terms to illustrate what I see as the twin processes at work: of uniformity and diversity, similarity and distinctiveness. Let me begin with anger. Tolai recognize anger, it seems to me, in much the same way as we ourselves do: by observing one's face and demeanor. If asked to be more specific about the signs that alert them to another's anger they do not point to particular facial movements or aspects of one's bearing; it seems clear rather that they are responding to a gestalt that has been perceived subliminally, and is indicated in some such phrase as "the face did not wear a happy expression." From informants' comments on the onset and passage of anger the way in which it is experienced is also familiar: "you feel a stirring in the gut that soon spreads through the whole body, you are aroused and suddenly you become aggressive and ready to fight." In these regards we are dealing with the same affect among the Tolai and ourselves. However, when set in a wider social and cultural context I believe it be-

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comes no less dear that for the Tolai anger takes on quite a distinctive significance. A due to this lies in the variety of terms Tolai employ to distinguish the different ways anger may be experienced. In absolute terms they are not more numerous than the words available in English, but when viewed in the context of the Tolai lexicon itself, they appear to point to some degree of cultural preoccupation. Tolai attitudes and views about anger quickly reveal a profound ambiguity. To begin with, anger was accepted as part of the human condition, scarcely to be avoided at one time or another even by those of the mildest disposition. Anger was "there," in the balana, the belly, I have remarked, ever ready to be aroused and then to seek expression when it is bestirred. But how was one to deal with it? It is here that we encounter the first evidence of ambiguity, if not contradiction. One side of the Tolai view of the matter was summed up in a phrase I heard repeatedly: koko ra kankan ivai, beware of hidden anger. Anger, so the message ran, should not be bottled up; it should be released lest, stored up within, it bred a festering resentment that could in the end lead to sorcery and death. The village assembly, or varkurai, frequently provided a setting in which the principle could be seen exemplified in practice, the protagonists to a dispute often being allowed to engage in angry exchanges without attempt at interruption by Councillor or Committee; the assumption appears to have been that by giving the disputants their head, so to speak, they would quickly exhaust themselves and then, their anger burned out, they would become more amenable to appeals to their better natures. However, there was also an aspect of Tolai thought that coincided with the view, deep-rooted in the Western intellectual tradition, that of all the passions none was to be avoided more sedulously than anger. The reason for this lies chiefly in the recognition that part of the experience of anger is the risk of losing control; anger is a dangerous emotion, because when under its sway you are likely to cause harm to others. Tolai would carry the point further, observing that if anger is not kept under tight control it drives out varmari, concern or compassion, and therefore threatens valued social relationships. We find in this situation a pointer to yet further ambiguity in the Tolai approach to anger. I refer here to a point already discussed earlier at some length: the profound ambivalence that attached to the person of the "tena kankan," "the man of anger." To speak of another as a "tena kankan" was in the ordinary way to register an intense disapproval of his character and ways. But in many instances it was not

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difficult to detect how distaste was tempered with respect, admiration, even awe. This was particularly the case, I found, when my older informants spoke of the ngalangala, the great ones of the past, almost invariably characterized as tena kankan, men whose anger was at once a mark as well as a source of their power. The "big men" of former times were men who inspired fear, especially the fear of sorcery, but they were also recalled for their generosity and the great ceremonies and dance festivals they sponsored. "Big men," in a word, embodied in their persons the values of a highly competitive society with a markedly assertive ethos. In such circumstances we should not expect anger simply to be disapproved; we should expect rather that it would also be admired and encouraged. Recent studies of emotional life have stressed the strong moral component in anger, that implicit in the display there is often a claim to justification (see, e.g., Averill 1979; Lutz 1988). Data on the contexts in which the Tolai give vent to anger lend support to this view. Sometimes, as we have seen, it was sparked by an obvious infraction of one's legal rights, sometimes it was a more niggling sense of having been unfairly treated or came as the end-product of the build-up over time of tensions generated in some set of social relations. No less striking, however, was how often the sense of damage to amour propre was a factor in bringing anger to the surface. Then again it is noteworthy how in some circumstances the question of whether anger was justified or not remained problematic. I have mentioned the case of a man whose explosive outburst at a balaguan was prompted by the discovery that another had placed an archway where he himself had planned to have his own stand. Since the matter had been covered in the previous discussions about the arrangements for the occasion, the one whose responsibility it was to "lead the varkurai" clearly saw the act as undermining his authority and diminishing his standing in the sight of all: it was as though he had been held up as a figure of ridicule. But where the emotions are concerned, matters are rarely so straightforward. No doubt he felt he was in the right and was entitled to be angry, but it is also likely that he felt ashamed at not being able to control his feelings on such a public and important occasion. The incident also has a wider and rather different significance, for it illustrates a marked propensity to perceive slight and a readiness to take umbrage that was among the most common character traits that I encountered at Matupit. Envy provides me with my second example. It is probably one of the most common emotions anthropologists run into in the field. The Tolai

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certainly were very familiar with it, and offered it frequently as a motive for others' behavior. For some indeed a varngu kai ra tarai, the spite or envy of the people, was seen as one of those characteristics that most clearly stamped their life-style: it was a mangana kavevet, "our way," it used to be said, as if to imply that Tolai were different in this regard from other peoples. This of course is far from so. Aristotle's observation (cited in Sabine and Silver 1986:174) that we envy those whose possession of, or success in, a thing is a reproach to us seems as apposite to the connotation of the word envy in contemporary Britain as it is to that of the Tolai word "varngu." Envy is not included in the list of basic or primary affects offered by different psychologists. In Plutchik's (1980: 162) structural model of the emotions, for example, it appears as a blend of sadness and anger. Curiously, however, the facial movements and other signs that ordinarily characterize these two affects find no visible expression in envy. In fact, envy offers no external clues to its inner presence. Envy also presents difficulties when it comes to ascertaining how it is experienced. This is a matter that people are reluctant, if not indeed unable, to talk about easily. As Sabine and Silver (1986: 168, citing Rochefoucauld) point out, envy is so shameful a passion that we can never dare to acknowledge it; as can be seen in the data set out in figure 4, the Tolai view points in the same direction. Clearly envy touches an aspect of the self that should remain hidden, from oneself perhaps as much as from others. When an anthropologist in the field does come across it, therefore, it tends to be in the form of statements by informants that attribute envy to others. Such statements take one of two forms. In the one case the informant offers envy as a way of explaining others' behavior, for example the laying of a charge before the village moot and the way in which the dispute was handled. In this instance one has to assume that envy was "recognizable" partly because the informant was able to project onto one or other of the parties feelings with which he was familiar in himself in like circumstances, partly because it was the kind of situation for which envy provided the appropriate cultural interpretation. In the second case, the informant speaks of another's envy being directed at himself and feels threatened by it. Here, too, projection appears to be at work, but it is the projection on to another of the informant's own hostility-it is the kind of projection that is so commonly associated with paranoia. What then are the kinds of situation in which envy tends to be generated? From one point of view there might seem to be no limit to the

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range of circumstances that can spark one person's envy of another. But running through all it seems possible to infer the presence of two elements: one, the sense that one wants what someone else has just because that person has it and does not deserve it; and two, the desire for satisfaction by demeaning or somehow punishing the other. In a word, envy is not just a matter of inner feeling, it also has a destructive aspect that seeks discharge outward, though it may also be seen as diminishing oneself. In seeking to delineate the character of envy in a group such as the Tolai one quickly discovers that its meaning seems to be pretty much the same as elsewhere. But this should not lead us into imagining that we are dealing with precisely the same phenomenon or that different societies do not raise different kinds of question about it. Envy does appear to be universal, yet it does not follow that all human groups respond to envy-provoking situations in the same way. Certain features of the Tolai situation usefully illustrate this point. Thus it has been commonly observed of tribal and peasant societies how what Schoeck (1969:46ff.) has called the "envy-barrier" stands in the way of individual economic advancement and community development. In this regard the Tolai stand out as strikingly different. As has been shown, envy also bites deep into the Tolai psyche, but this has not set up insuperable obstacles to change. On the contrary, right from the onset of the colonial period Tolai communities have competed with one another in accepting innovation. How are we to account for this pattern of response? The matter is undoubtedly complex and one that requires further intensive research, but one point does appear to stand out. In its traditional social arrangements Tolai society was always markedly competitive. In a social system to which the institution of "bigmanship" was central, the emphasis was on encouraging leaders who were ambitious and self-assertive. Where social differentiation, particularly in the form of control of wealth, was so integral to the working of the society, the hold of envy had to be countered by a more positive approach to perceived inequality: admiration and the desire to emulate. There was, I have suggested earlier, an unremitting tension between envy on the one hand and the desire for achievement on the other: each pulled in a different direction. However, the competitive principle was so deeprooted in their way oflife, lying at the very heart of their most cherished institutions, that the rewards of ambition-at least in the short termfar outweighed the risks of becoming the object of another's envy. What distinguishes the Tolai situation then is not that they do not

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know envy but rather the way they respond to it and seek to master it by encouraging the pursuit of more positive goals. Here, as elsewhere, one's fate is seen as lying largely in one's own hands. Grief and loneliness complete my sample. The face of grief seems everywhere to be very similar: predominantly the expression of distress or sadness. Ekman and Friesen (1975:115) distinguish the two: there is suffering in distress, and the response is active as one seeks to remove its source, even though this is to no purpose and unavailing; by contrast, one can speak of sadness when distress is controlled deliberatelywhen the loud, active elements are not visible, but only the more socially acceptable signs of sadness. I believe both expressions are readily to be discerned among the Tolai. At first glance, indeed, the Tolai experience of grief in the aftermath of death seems the least problematic of emotions. Yet if there is much in their response to loss that is instantly familiar to a Western observer, it is at once equally plain that the display is also governed by cultural rules. One discovers quite quickly too that the meaning that attaches to death, which above all serves to activate grief as well as other attendant emotions, differs in important respects from that with which one is acquainted in one's own society. It was interesting in this regard to find on my return to Matupit in 1986 how with the ending of colonial rule the practice of burying the dead in cemeteries, on which the colonial authorities had insisted, had given way to the traditional mode of interment in the hamlet in which one had resided or which one's vunatarai claimed to own. But most striking of all is the integral role in the culture that has, as it were, been allocated to death; to adapt Shapiro'S (1989) expressive term, Tolai culture is thanatocentric, and the affect most closely associated with death, grief, or niligur, runs like a thread through so many areas of their social life. Tambu, the Tolai form of shell money, is the sine qua non: without adequate resources in tambu there can be no proper distribution at the obsequies, no proper mourning for the dead. In the past certainly, and undoubtedly for many even today, no fate could be imagined more tragic than to die without having someone to "cut" tambu for one or predicament more shameful than to have one's close kin depart without being able to perform a kukutu or palum tambu. As Tolai themselves commonly expressed it, it was this need for tambu that underlay their work ethic. "Una dekdek upi ra tambu"-"You must be strong for tambu"-was the cry the elders at Matupit repeatedly directed at the younger people. Hard work brought not only material rewards, it was above all the guarantee of one's independence, so that others would not

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be able to "kure," or "boss," one. Then again it was access to tambu, the power that came from the ability to control and manipulate wealth in the form of shell money, that held the key to political leadership. It was this ability that defined the "big man," whose apogee came in his successful hosting of various ceremonies, above all the climactic rite of the matamatam associated with the cult of tubuan and dukduk. All of these are complex affairs involving many elements, but all may also be fairly characterized, in the telling phrase of Ward Goodenough (1955), writing of the neighboring Nakanai, as pageants of death. The centrality of death colors not only Tolai institutions but also their emotional life. Grief, it has been remarked, is commonly found in interaction with other affects and attitudes. Of particular interest in the Tolai case is the connection between grief and loneliness. I should say at once that I had not expected loneliness to figure prominently among the emotions commonly experienced by Tolai. For one thing there is the widely held view that while loneliness is widely experienced, has indeed become a major social problem, in the urban and industrial societies of the modern West, it is scarcely known to "members of sociocentric organic cultures" of the kind conventionally studied by anthropologists (see Shweder and Bourne 1984: 194). Such views are grounded not only in theoretical suppositions, they also find support in the ethnographic reports of anthropologists. A recent and pertinent case in point is Read's (1986:166-167) account of the Gahuku of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The Gahuku, we are told, do not place a premium on privacy-life in a village is marked by an intensity and the knowledge of others: the conditions of social life simply do not allow for the feelings of loneliness. 4 For long indeed I had assumed that the position among the Tolai was very similar, but toward the end of my fieldwork I began to stumble on clues-in the responses of children in primary school to pen-and-pencil tests, in conversations with Europeans who knew the Tolai at close quarters, and above all in the material I collected on dreams-that gradually led me to recognize how important the fear of being on one's own or being left alone was as a category of Tolai experience. It seems, moreover, that this experience differs in important respects from loneliness as it is commonly reported in the literature on Western societies. In the latter, loneliness is commonly taken to refer to "feeling-states" that persist for considerable periods of time, such as attitudes or life conditions. In discussions in the general literature it is precisely this kind of consideration that has led to the uncertainty surrounding loneliness as an emotional experience (see

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Wood 1986: 185). Among the Tolai loneliness as a persisting state or condition is covered by the term "biavi": this refers to those rare individuals, men or women, who have never married and have none to care for them, or to orphans who are similarly deprived of care and affection. But to the schoolchildren who wrote their essays, the students who produced their dream drawings, and the adults with whom I discussed the matter, the experience of loneliness plainly referred to something rather different: it pointed not to an enduring state but to the immediate impact of another's departure and the fact that one had been left behind. And, as I have sought to show in a variety of contexts in the body of the book, parting is associated with death. For the Tolai, I have suggested, death represents the ultimate loneliness. I have not attempted here to present a completely rounded emotional profile for the Tolai, but enough has been said, I hope, to indicate some of its major features. Tolai experience many of the emotions that are familiar among ourselves, and most of the terms they employ can, I believe, be readily glossed by English counterparts without too great a measure of distortion. But important though this point is, it still represents only part of the picture. For the Tolai emotion profile also has its distinctive features, to which a number of factors appear to contribute. In the first place, although there is often some overlap with terms in other lexicons, rarely, if ever, is there complete coincidence. In a word, there is always likely to be some divergence of meaning across languages. Then again there is in some cases a cultural bias so that, translated into action, the emotion in question is manifested in particular patterns of behavior. Finally, we may note how so often an emotion is accorded such dominance that it stamps the entire ethos with a distinctive cast. Seeking to delineate these various features is of course part of the anthropologist's task, but I believe it is also part of that task to try to account for them. In their own efforts to explain the emotions a number of psychologists have invoked evolutionary theory: the emotions are to be understood in terms of the adaptive functions they subserve. But if, as anthropologists have been tireless in pointing out, there is such a degree of diversity as between cultures, it seems that we have to think not only in terms of general, that is, panhuman, adaptation, but no less of special or local adaptation. Progress along these lines calls for more intensive cross-cultural studies than are currently available to allow of meaningful generalization at this stage; studies of regional homogeneity and variation might seem a useful first step in this direction. It is with

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this in mind that in what follows I have attempted to sketch in my own approach to the problem which I have likened to the efforts of an onion-peeler. Because shame is one of the few affects that has received a certain amount of attention in the Melanesian ethnography, it provides a convenient focus for exploring the different ways in which the human capacity for feeling shame is adapted, elaborated, and put to use in a number of societies within the region, as well as seeking to account for them. The concept of shame has been said by anthropologists to be universal throughout Papua New Guinea; however, we are also told from time to time-and sometimes by the same authorities-that shame is more important or is given more emphasis in some groups than in others (see, e.g., Langness 1973:192). There is no necessary contradiction here. At the same time it is not easy to see what meaning attaches to these various statements unless the criteria on which judgment is based have been carefully specified. Here, in order to focus the discussion, I have fastened initially on one attribute of shame that is limited in its possibilities for variation, and thus allows some measure of comparison. I refer here to the ways in which it seeks discharge. As a preliminary point I would note that how an individual responds to the experience of shame will depend, among other things, on its level of intensity. Where, as is most usually the case, the level is relatively mild, shame is experienced as purely fleeting and is quickly dissipated. But sometimes it can be felt much more intensely. The assumption I make here is that where, so to speak, society "promotes" shame in particular ways for its own purposes, the more intense experience that this is likely to entail will require some more complex form of discharge, and this will find varied but characteristic expression in different societies. Beyond a certain pitch of intensity, that is to say, shame is apt to prove a most painful and discomfiting experience that is likely to generate resentment and anger against the one who has provoked it. How then is this situation to be handled? There seem to be three possibilities: the aggression can be directed outward against another; it can be directed inward, that is against the self; or both these processes may be given simultaneous expression in what is a compromise-formation. Let me consider each of these in tum. The discharge of shame by the directing of aggression wholly outward must be rare. I would suggest indeed that it can only occur where shame has been brought on not by the exposure of one's own limitations or misdemeanors but of another's. Sack (1974:83) mentions an

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extraordinary case of the kind among the Tolai. He points out that in former times if a woman came to be talked about because of some impropriety-whether this was proved against her or not-only her death could remove the shame. In the actual case cited it was the woman's own son who led the party that carried out the execution. But in dealing with shame-phenomena the most common situation is where shame is the response to the exposure of one's own inadequacies and failures. Since shame in these circumstances is experienced as a negative evaluation of the self, discharge tends to involve some form of aggression directed inward, but an interesting feature of many of the societies of Papua New Guinea is the way modes of discharge defined as culturally acceptable combine aggression against the self with redirection against another. A few examples will help not only to clarify these points but to illustrate something of the range of variation that is to be found in the ethnographic accounts. Consider first the Tolai term tamtabunua, which is used for the kind of conduct displayed by ToKutu in the episode discussed earlier. ToKutu's shame-reaction, it will be recalled, occurred int he context of a dispute being heard before the village assembly when, as the case reached its climax, he suddenly departed the scene to be by himself on the beach. This development seems to have been triggered by his admonishment first by ToUrapal and then by his mother's brother Turpui invoking the names of a number of the dead of the vunatarai. Now what I think is noteworthy about his response is that although he had been plainly angered by much that had been said in the course of the hearing, his shame-reaction showed no element of aggression directed against others; it was directed solely against himself. Absenting himself from the group was, as it were, a way of acknowledging that he was in error; at the same time, it was a form of punishment which expiated his guilt and opened the way to a varmaram, or reconciliation. It seems clear that the use of the term "vavirvir" in such contexts, which I have glossed as shame, points also to a strong overlap with guilt: the experience in question combines loss of self-esteem with a sense of wrongdoing for which atonement must be made. Quite a different view of shame emerges from Young's (1971; 1974) superb analyses of social control in the community of Kalauna on Goodenough Island. Wowomumu, which Young translates as "shame," is in fact a complex concept that, as he tells us, covers the emotional spectrum from shyness and mild embarrassment to something akin to guilt and morbid self-hatred. At the latter extreme it frequently shades

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into, or triggers, a state called veumaiyiyi. "Veumaiyiyi" is another concept difficult to define precisely, but at its heart lies the notion of casting the shame back at the person who has shamed one by presenting him with something of one's own; in this arrangement, that is to say, elements of aggression inward and outward are given equal expression. A similar ideational structure underlies the complex and elaborate institution of "giving to shame" called abutu. But although similar in regard to mechanism, "veumaiyiyi" and "abutu" operate in quite different social contexts. The former belongs to the domain of interpersonal relations; "abutu," by contrast, is an affair between groups and belongs to the field of "politics." Perhaps for this reason, in the case of "abutu," it is the element of hostility directed at one's enemy, the attempt to crush and humiliate him, that appears to be dominant, but in fact the presence of self-injury is no less crucial, for the curious thing about "abutu," as Young (1971:192) observes, is that it is the "burden" of the winning side to be deprived of food and to have less to eat than the losers. By way of further example, the Orokaiva concept of sisira also merits mention as yet another distinctive variant on the theme of self-injury and shame. Among the Orokaiva, sensitivity to meh, or shame, seems to be particularly highly developed so that if a person feels he has been wronged in some way a characteristic response is to destroy his own property in a fit of sisira. Reay (1953:117) points out that the only person an Orokaiva can effectively punish is himself: the wronged man is sorry for himself, and he ensures that everyone else, including the person who wronged him, feels sorry for him, too (see Williams 1930:333). How are these variations to be accounted for? In the present state of our knowledge no firm conclusions can be drawn, but exploring the question along different dimensions in turn-the sociological, the cultural, and the psychological-may at least enable us to suggest some of the relationships among the data that further research might fruitfully explore. Since we are concerned with the way different societies make use of or exploit the sense of shame, the role of shame as sanction would seem to offer a useful way of opening up the sociological aspect and providing at the same time a convenient axis along which different groups might be located. The point I am seeking to make here can best be introduced and illustrated by glancing at Todd's (1936) account of the way shame enters into the process of dispute-settlement in Southwest New Britain.

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Todd contrasts in this regard the wayan action is handled in a Western court with what he found in Mowehaven. In both situations the matter proceeds by way of argument, but in the latter "the disputants argue not from their just claims as we ordinarily understand them but on the basis of their superior prestige due to wealth, land rights, citizenship, rank etc or by pointing out the opponent's failure to fulfil his social obligations to silence him by bringing him to shame." In a word, in Mowehaven a man is shamed and loses prestige if an action is brought against him, particularly if the claim is valid. He then seeks to save face by making a counter-allegation against his creditor or to raise his own prestige and lower his opponent's by paying him an amount far in excess of that of his debt (Todd 1936:413-416). Elsewhere in New Guinea, however, as in some parts of the Highlands (see, e.g., M. Strathern 1974) or among the Tolai, a very different picture obtains: in these societies disputes are dealt with in a public forum and in a regular manner that can leave the ethnographer in no doubt that one is observing some form of judicial process. Complaints are stated in an orderly way, witnesses are called, evidence is weighed, and throughout argument is conducted with reference to rules of various kinds. This is not to say that in these latter societies shame has no part to play at all in the matter of dispute-management, but its role is ancillary rather than primary; among the Tolai, at least, it seems clear that resort to shaming techniques is not central to the varkurai and occurs only under certain circumstances. 5 At the other end of the scale are those groups, such as Goodenough and Orokaiva, wherein the judicial function is so undeveloped or even nonexistent and extensive use is made of shaming techniques in the form of abutu or sisira. There seems then to be a close connection between local conceptions of shame, more particularly the means that different societies characteristically employ for promoting and discharging shame, and modes of dispute-management. The latter, however, must be seen as deriving from, and reflecting, other features of the social system: in particular, as I sought to show in Contention andDispute (Epstein 1974a), local organization and the structure of authority. So, rephrasing the continuum in these terms, we have at one end societies like Melpa or Tolai which, with their elaborate exchange systems, encourage the emergence of leaders with pronounced entrepreneurial skills who can command considerable authority within their own local communities at the same time that they weave important links between communities. At the other extreme are those societies represented by Goodenough or Orokaiva

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where social relations are more localized, where trade and hence entrepreneurial skills are undeveloped, and "big men" have in fact little authority they can assert in settling disputes. In her account of social control in Orokaiva, Reay (1953:117) makes the important observation that the masochistic sanction of self-injury, with its purpose of invoking the offender's pity, was in sharp contrast to the outward aggression that marked their relations with their hostile neighbors; and she goes on to suggest that the weakness of the internal judicial system was originally owing to the necessity of keeping overt aggression geared toward the enemy groups. To maintain constant warfare with outsiders, internal aggression had to be severely limited, even aggression toward wrongdoers. The use of shame as an instrument of social control, that is to say, has to be seen as part of the wider process of a group's adaptation to its natural and social environment. To say, however, that how shame is conceptualized as well as that the social role it plays vary with the way in which society is organized is not to exhaust the topic; for a more probing understanding of the meaning of the phenomenon we also need to see shame in its cultural context in which one can explore its links with other emotions, ideas, and values. In this way we have seen in the Tolai case, for example, how this negative emotion has also to be viewed in positive terms in its relations to pride, to ambition, and to the values that underlie the institution of "bigmanship." A somewhat different set of connections emerges from Young's account of shame-phenomena in Kalauna. Thus Young makes it clear that we can only hope to understand "abutu" by relating it to a series of other concepts central to Goodenough thought: tofaha, tolokona, sisikwana, and the like. These concepts give expression to distinctive values and attitudes in regard to food, to work, to magic, and to sex. Abutu, in other words, is not to be thought of simply as a structural device; it is also a cultural category and as such an essential element in a complex and coherent system of ideas and values. These in turn embody a set of attitudes which, with their emphasis on conservation and self-control are epitomized in the role of the kaiwabu, the ceremonial "master of the feast" at the major festivals. On the predetermined day of the festival's conclusion, and before the visitors arrive for the final distribution of food, the kaiwabu takes his place on a specially constructed platform from which can be viewed another platform piled high with food and butchered pigs. From the moment of seating himself cross-legged on the platform at midmorning to the time of departure of the final guests at dusk, the kaiwabu should not be seen to move,

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speak, eat, drink, or do anything except gaze fixedly at the crowd and chew betel. For the incumbent himself the role must surely represent a considerable physical ordeal of self-discipline-and, indeed, only certain younger men are seen fit to undertake it-but from another point of view it is the kaiwabu's capacity to master himself that determines whether the festival will be regarded as a triumph or a disaster. In this shame-conscious culture, as Young (1971:249) observes, a man masquerading as a kaiwabu who has to leave the platform to urinate, or to combat the heady effects of an excess of betel with food or water, would be the laughingstock of the watchful guests. As with Reay's discussion of "sisira," the complex of attitudes Young has so elegantly uncovered is also seen to serve an adaptive function; as he (Young 1971:185) himself phrases it, there is some sort of dialectical relationship between the environmental conditions of Goodenough, the experience its people have enjoyed or endured with respect to these conditions, and their cultural attitudes toward food. Young is not arguing here for a rigorous ecological determinism, but he does remark how the ambivalent set of attitudes the people of Kalauna express toward the size and state of their bellies and gardens seems inextricably bound up with attitudes toward a fickle environment. Young himself makes the point that he has eschewed the psychological dimension of the problem and thus left a number of questions unanswered. Some psychologists would see this as an opportunity to introduce the question of personality, but because the issue has been raised at a number of places in my account I want to focus here on what attention to unconscious processes has to contribute to our understanding of affect. I have referred in the introduction to Freud's conviction that it was surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it, that is it should become known to consciousness, but confronted in their practice with the phenomenon of repression psychoanalysts came to recognize the need to speak of unconscious affect (Freud 1915; Knapp 1958; see also Plutchik 1980:84-85). The matter is also one that may come to the attention of an anthropologist in the field, and in a number of ways. Thus Lewis (1981:1, 25) has observed, as mentioned earlier, that it is frequently difficult to recognize that one is in a state of guilt because one becomes absorbed in the very activity that seeks to make amends. Turbarat's prolonged mourning for his young son who had been drowned is a case in point. I have little doubt that if the question of guilt had been put to him he would have denied it, may not even have found the question meaningful, but I think his feelings

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can be readily inferred from much of his conduct. More commonly, however, repression is more deep-rooted so that the individual may be totally unaware of the processes at work in his or her psyche, and the anthropologist, too, only slowly comes to suspect their presence as he pursues the meaning of symbols in social life, fantasy, and dream. In these instances one may well be aware of a feeling, but it is the source of that feeling, the intrapsychic conflict that underlies it, which remains beyond the reach of consciousness. The aim of the anthropologist in focusing on such unconscious processes is to deepen his understanding of the affects and the way they enter into the particular institution or pattern of behavior concerned, but its wider aim must be to establish connections in the ethnographic data that had not previously been seen as related. Elsewhere I have adopted this perspective in seeking to understand the Tolai attachment to tambu and some of its cultural concomitants and, in another paper, to explore the sense of loneliness that seemed to be such an important part of their experience (Epstein 1979b; 1990). Here, pursuing our discussion of shame-phenomena, I try to show how by going on to take account of unconscious mental processes one can begin to approach questions that are plainly posed by the data but are apt to be missed when only a sociological or cultural perspective is adopted. The Kalauna emphasis on conservation and self-control, given expression in so many contexts, and reflected so dramatically in the role of the kaiwabu, poses precisely such a question. For how in fact are such attitudes developed? Many of the concepts of Goodenough thought mentioned a little earlier appear to be so affect-ridden, to say nothing of the ambivalence that attaches to them, that I find it difficult to accept that the question can be answered satisfactorily adopting purely a cultural perspective. It seems to me that we have to assume rather that the attitudes concerned are an outgrowth or reflection on the cultural or conscious plane of a psychological substrate in which unconscious processes are also at work. This suspicion is heightened by certain striking similarities between Tolai and Goodenough attitudes, particularly in regard to the oscillation between a marked stress on retention and the opposite tendency at times to give away-a pointer to intrapsychic conflicts that Freudian theory associates with the anal phase of psychosexual development. This is not to claim that precisely the same unconscious processes are to be found among both Tolai and Goodenough. In fact, I believe this is not the case; although there are similarities, there are also likely to be important differences. The point I am anxious

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to stress here, however, concerns the mode of approach to the data. From this point of view, and for present purposes, the symbolism of abutu is very illuminating. The central feature of abutu is to put one's opponent, one's nibai, or "enemy," to shame by presenting him with food in such quantity that he cannot possibly make immediate return. Now this statement at once discloses a seeming ambiguity in Kalauna attitudes toward food. For the people of Kalauna food is the supreme symbol of love and amity, and the giving of food is the chief expression of solidary social relations. Yet in the context of "abutu" it serves primarily as an instrument of aggression. How is this apparent contradiction to be explained? Translated into psychological terms I believe that what the situation implies is a profound ambivalence toward the giver of food, prototypically the mother, a loving and nurturant figure who has also in some way provoked the hostility of the child. But this hostility cannot be allowed overt expression; it can only be discharged in disguised form in some ritualized context such as abutu, where the aggression can be redirected against "real" enemies. But I consider that the data also allow us to make the further inference that this discharge of hostility takes an anal form, that is to say, the food that is cast at one's opponents in a competitive exchange takes on the symbolic disguise of an anal product. The symbolism of the yam is of particular interest here. It is the yam that constitutes the central item in an abutu contest. Now the fact that they come in different sizes makes the yam very appropriate to a competitive exchange, but we also need to note the other special properties of the yams selected for such an occasion; for the yams men labor so assiduously to produce for just this purpose are hard, rotten, and inedible. Elsewhere in Melanesia there is an explicit equation of rotten food and feces (see, e.g., F. Panoff 1970), and I suggest that on Goodenough, too, a similar association holds so that the yams selected for abutu carry precisely this symbolic significance. However, the role of yams is also related to the more general issue of male pride. On this score, it is interesting to note, as Young himself points out, that in parts of the Sepik yams are the focus of a phallic cult. He also makes it clear that this is not so on Goodenough, and I think we can now discern the reason this should be. For on Goodenough male pride finds expression not in phallic vigor as in the Sepik (Tuzin 1972) but rather in penile control and other forms of self-denial; it is as though anality had come to influence the phallic phase itself, as well as to give competition its distinctive cast. For here on Goodenough it is as though, on the level of

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the unconscious, the measure of a man was to be able to display his prowess and humiliate his rivals by producing bigger turds than they did. What I am suggesting then is that abutu, a projection on the symbolic plane of infantile intrapsychic conflicts, combines both oral and anal elements; its central impulse is reflected in the means it offers of exacting revenge by forcing one's enemies to eat excrement. It may seem tempting to dismiss this kind of conjecture as somewhat fanciful, perhaps even a product of the author's own unconscious fantasies. Thanks, however, to Young's rich and varied ethnography I am able to offer one piece of supporting evidence that deals with quite a different aspect of Goodenough culture, evidence that in fact I only came to read sometime after I had formulated the core of my present argument. The relevant point occurs in a paper in which he considers what makes people in Kalauna laugh: "The scatological genre of Kalauna humour consists largely of latrine jokes, feculent buttocks, and the fun of flatulence. Most casual obscenities are in an anal vein, but nicely calculated to offend the cardinal value of oral containment. 'Eat my shit!', 'I shit in your mouth!' are common forms of rough banter between peers" (Young 1977:77). In thus pursuing the unconscious roots of the attitudes that serve to give the concept of shame and the way in which it is put to use on Goodenough a distinctive character, aspects of custom and behavior that might otherwise have appeared as quite unrelated can now be seen as part of a larger pattern. However, it scarcely needs to be added that an analysis along the lines just attempted has been built up around inferences that derive from psychoanalytic theory; the connections postulated remain hypothetical. Psychoanalytic theory would itself suggest that the kind of evidence required to support (or refute) these views needs to be sought in the nature of the infantile experience and childhood development in different societies. So far as shame in Melanesia is concerned, Hogbin (1946b) has drawn attention to different ways of instructing children in a number of societies within the region and suggests how these different methods may be associated with different conceptions of wrong-doing in these societies, while Reay (1953) has offered some fascinating glimpses of the infant's experience at the hands of the mother among the Orokaiva that suggest clues to the nature of sisira; more generally there has been the pioneering research on child-rearing practices and their social consequences conducted by the Whitings and their colleagues over many years (e.g., B. Whiting and Edwards 1988; J. Whiting and Child 1973). However, as to systematic empirical research on the socialization of

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affect that takes full account of infantile experience and the role of the unconscious this is a field that still waits to be properly tilled. Recent interest in the emotions stems from important changes in the intellectual climate and the concomitant search for new paradigms in the social or behavioral sciences. As Kuhn (1962) taught us many years ago, paradigms fall out of favor not so much because they no longer provide answers to the questions being asked, but rather because workers in the discipline concerned have become quite interested in different sets of questions. To this formulation I would want to add the suggestion that within the social sciences the dominant paradigm at .any given time is apt to embody or project a particular image of man; when the paradigm changes we are also likely to encounter a movement away from the image that was purveyed by the earlier model. One important expression of such a switch within anthropology which is especially relevant to the aims of the present study has been the way in which a central concern with society and its workings has yielded to a more anthropocentric focus, a switch from an image of man as role-player to one of meaning-maker. It would be quite wrong of course to imply a homogeneity of outlook running through the work of all those who have been influenced by these changing perceptions of the anthropological task. All do however appear to share certain underlying assumptions. As indicated earlier, the most salient of these is the stress on interiority, the attempt to grasp things, as it were, from the inside. This tendency finds its expression in a number of ways. In the first place, at the societal level, there is an immediate concern with indigenous categories and classifications, the attention paid to folk-models-a development that owes so much to the influence of Levi-Strauss yet also, as we have seen, diverges from his approach in very important respects. In the second place, interiority finds expression in the recognition of the individual as an actor and in an accompanying interest in issues of identity and the self. As indicated at the outset, it is the concern with such issues that has led to the recent development of ethnopsychology, and with it of serious interest in the study of the emotions. This approach has opened up important lines of inquiry and produced some admirable ethnographic accounts. At the same time, as I have sought to show at a number of points, it is also methodologically flawed. But behind the various criticisms on specific issues that I have leveled, there is a more general doubt about the image of man that informs the method. By a curious irony, some remarks of Clifford

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Geertz, whose influence on younger workers in the field has not only been clearly marked but also happily acknowledged, may serve to illustrate the point. Reacting to the cerebral image he finds in the Gallic stucturalism of Uvi-Strauss, Geertz (1973: 355) complains that "what Uvi-Strauss has made for himself is an infernal culture-machine." In a very real sense, though in quite different ways, is this not just what the ethnopsychologists themselves have done? Lutz, for example, in her study of the Ifaluk, stresses that her aim is not to cut the body out of the emotions, but the way she has presented her account accomplishes just that; similarly, Michelle Rosaldo speaks much of the heart among the nongot, but it is a heart that appears to pump no blood. For my part I have sought a view of the emotions that acknowledges their roots in the body, and sees the relations of affect and cognition, of reason and feelings not in terms of an invariant opposition but rather of complex and ever-changing patterns of interaction within social environments themselves ever changing.

Notes

1: Exploring Affect 1. Introducing Lincoln's book The Dream in Primitive Culture, Seligman (l935:xii) remarks: "Today no anthropologist would regard as adequate any explanation that did not give full weight to the emotional element." In retrospect, this surely has to be read as a curious aberration of judgment concerning the conventional view in the matter within anthropology at that time. 2. Although psychological anthropology is not coterminous with cultureand-personality, the field of study from which historically it emerged, the concept of personality remains a central theoretical concern. All the more interesting, therefore, as a glance at any standard text of a decade ago will reveal, is the relative lack of concern with affect as such (see, e.g., Bock 1980; Spindler 1978). 3. Perhaps the most powerful expression of this point of view is to be found in Uvi-Strauss's frontal attack on the biological and psychological reductionism of functionalist theories of totemism which he concludes with his wellknown pronouncement that impulses and emotions explain nothing. Causes, he affirms, can be sought only in the organism, which is the exclusive concern of biology, or in the intellect, which is the sole way offered to psychology, and to anthropology as well (Uvi-Strauss 1962:71). While the passage could hardly be clearer as to his theoretical intentions, some of his other writings show a notable lack of consistency in applying the underlying principles. Tristes Tropiques (1974), for example, yields many instances where psychological explanations are offered for cultural phenomena. But it is in the unlikely context of a discussion of reciprocity in The Elementary Structures ofKinship that surely the most interesting example is to be found. The scene presented is of two strangers sharing a table in a cheap French restaurant. In a delightful analysis of the situation, Levi-Strauss notes how the couple feel alone and together and how 281

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an almost "imperceptible anxiety is likely to arise in the minds of these table companions with the prospect of trifling disagreements that the meeting might produce. The fleeting but difficult situation thus created is resolved by the exchanging of wine-an assertion of good grace which does away with the mutual uncertainty" (Levi-Strauss 1969:59). 4. So, for example, Michelle Rosaldo's statement that culture makes a difference that concerns not simply what we think but how we feel about and live our lives. "Affects, then, are no less cultural and no more private than beliefs" (cited in Levy 1984a:217); c£ Lutz and White 1986. 5. A further reflection perhaps of how much, at bottom, the ethnopsychological view of the emotions has in common with that of Parsons, for whom the emotions ("or affect on the normal human adult level") were to be regarded "as a symbolically generalised system" so that affect is never "id-impulse" as such (cited in Murphy 1971:74). 6. For detailed discussion of these exchanges, and the issues they raise, see, e.g., Ekman 1977, 1980; Ekman and Oster 1982. 7. Tomkins's major work, Affea, Imagery, Consciousness, was originally planned in three volumes, but only the first two were ever published. A more recent summary of his views has been presented by Tomkins himself (1981), while some revisions of the theory have been presented in Tomkins (1984). Many features of the theory have also been taken up by Izard and find explication in his textbook Human Emotions (Izard 1977). I understand that the whole work has now been completed and is available in four volumes. 8. This view was challenged and debate of the issue reopened in an important paper by Zajonc (1980). Since then various meetings and workshops have provided opportunities for the main protagonists to come together and join issue over their respective points of view (see various contributions in Scherer and Ekman 1984 and Izard, Kagan, and Zajonc 1984). Tomkins (1981) contains his own trenchant critique of the cognitive position. 9. In a paper that puts the author plainly in the "emotions as cultural artifact" camp, Solomon (1984:251) observes that it may be reasonable to suppose that a man who gnashes his teeth and shakes-after he has been sideswiped by an ox-is angry. But that supposition, he goes on, is reasonable only insofar as we assume that he shares a substantial set of concepts with us. Apart from the fact that his choice of image is hardly very convincing, what Solomon overlooks is that the anger response provides the information that enables us to deal with a situation either by mobilizing the body for action or as a warning to another party. If the anger display was not in fact readily recognizable, there might be no time to discover whether we did or did not share a set of meanings with the one who was angered. 10. Wierzbicka (1986:588) was plainly unfamiliar with this view when she wrote that she would find universalist claims much more credible if the feelings in question were lexically encoded in all natural languages. In Tomkins's theory this is precisely what one would not expect to find. 11. Spiro's (1986:282) critique of cultural relativism includes a powerful rejection of cultural incommensurability by Renato Rosaldo but couched in very personal terms. He points out that when Renato Rosaldo came, out of the personal experience of bereavement, to understand that his own feelings of grief

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and anger were identical with those of the Ilongot-a view that he had rejected in his earlier ethnographic reports-he characterized the theory of psychological incommensurability (to which he had fonnerly subscribed) as the "pernicious doctrine that, my own group aside, everything human is alien to me." 12. There are also disadvantages. The camera can be an intrusive instrument, particularly if one happens to be working with only one or two informants. In these circumstances ii: is indeed difficult to see how the researcher could film at all except as a member of a team, one of whom was the cameraman. While I was on the Gazelle Penisula, I learned that Dr. Karl Heider, an anthropologist, and Paul Ekman were engaged in a collaborative piece of research on affect in an Indonesian community which did make use of video cameras. One looks forward to their research reports with great interest.

2: The Tolai 1. The northwest monsoon is usually referred to locally as the wet or rainy season. Rabaul itself is protected by its position from the southeast monsoon and receives most of its rain during the labur, normally less than 100 inches. 2. In the Tolai vernacular (tinata tuna, the true or proper word/language), ngala means great or big. "Sorry" is the English word adopted into Melanesian pidgin. Its use here is all the more interesting in that in the matter of language Turpui was somewhat of a purist who had been known to berate young people he had encountered who were talking among themselves in tok pisin (Melanesian pidgin). 3. The Tolai word luluai, meaning leader in war or, in some communities, an individual of great wealth, was adopted by the Gennans for those whom they nominated as village officials: their task was to assist the government by carrying out minor judicial and administrative functions. Some account of how the system originated is found in Rowley (1958:213-219; see too Firth 1982). 4. A glimpse into the cultivated style of life of Matupit's first European residents is provided in the accounts of some of these early visitors. So, for example, "the Hernsheim house was reached by a shady path from the wharf.... It had all the amenities which made life in the tropics a pleasure-a music room, and a garden pavilion with billiard room (Baessler 1895:101). Of the billiard room, in its own building close by Thiel's bungalow, another traveler remarked that it would have excited admiration anywhere: its white walls were decorated artistically with native weapons and ornaments (Mackellar 1912:131). Geoffrey Dutton's splendid novel, which tells the story of "Queen Emma," is also very illuminating in this context, providing at one point a vivid account of a New Year's Eve party given by Max Thiel which was attended by Queen Emma herself and many other guests from Herbertshohe (now Kokopo) (Dutton 1976:237-239). Queen Emma (Mrs. Forsayth) was the owner of the first commercial plantation on the Gazelle; Ralum, her home at Gunantambu, along with that of Max Thiel at Raulei, provided the two main centers

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around which so much of the social life of the expatriate community of the day revolved, according to no less an authority than Governor HaW himself (1980:47). A third home, which seemed to attract gatherings of the younger set, was that of Richard Parkinson and his wife Phebe, who was a younger sister of Queen Emma. 5. Estimates of the number of Tolai actually killed vary. Mackellar, whose report was based on an account written to him sometime after he had left the area, puts the figure at more than two hundred; in a much fuller account, based on archival research, Firth (1982:79) states that it was about eighty to a hundred altogether. But whether fewer or more, the Germans had made their point: this was the last occasion on which they needed to engage the Tolai in armed conflict. 6. Despite the fact that the German administration had introduced tight control over the acquisition ofland by expatriates, it has been estimated that by 1914 the Tolai had lost close to 40 percent of their arable land (Rowley 1965:118). The most extensive alienation occurred in Vunamami and the surrounding villages (Salisbury 1970:14); Tolai communities on the other side of the bay were more fortunate in this regard, the nature of the terrain making the area unsuitable for commercial plantations. However, this is not to say that the Matupi were unconcerned about possible threats to their own land. I was told, for example, that a parcel of land at Ramp had been made over to the Methodist Mission to prevent it from falling into the hands ofHernsheim. Hernsheim himself mentions that the small island was so densely populated that he was not able at the time to acquire additional land to extend the station (Hernsheim 1983:81). With the growth of Rabaul a new situation was created; as I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Epstein 1969:47-66), land became a central issue in the relations of village and town, generating a string of disputes that in some instances have continued right down to the present day. 7. Ralum plantation, for example, employed more than 150 laborers. Most of these came from the Solomon Islands, the remainder from New Ireland; the workforce did not include a single Tolai (Pitcairn 1891:163; also see Firth 1982:103). 8. Of some interest in this connection are the remarks of one of my Matupi friends. Much to my astonishment, he told me once that in the past, before the Germans arrived, no coconuts grew at Matupit or elsewhere in Tolai country. However, when the Germans came and saw how well suited it was to the growing of coconuts and other things they sent some Tolai to India to see for themselves. Among these was a man called Enock from Baai: it was he who brought the lama to Matupit and persuaded the people to plant it. The presence of the coconut is in fact amply attested to in the reports of the earliest visitors to the Gazelle (e.g., Romilly 1887), so that my informant must have been referring to a new variety introduced, like so many other trees and plants, by the Germans because of its commercial possibilities. However, the main point here is the avidity with which the Tolai took to producing copra. By 1910 "chiefs" in some parts were reported to be earning 300 marks a month from copra, and having stores of 10,000 silver marks (cited in Salisbury 1970:36; also see T. S. Epstein 1968:37).

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9. Nor was the training wholly utilitarian. One Matupi man, Tami, had studied music; some of the hymns he composed are still included in the Methodist (United Church) hymnal. 10. Remarking on Gahuku receptivity to change, Read (1986:135) comments that there did not appear to have been major beliefs and practices that a good many people felt compelled to protect and preserve. So, for example, the most "stunning" of all the traditional institutions, the final initiation of males into the nama cult, was on the brink of extinction in 1950 and now has ceased to be. The Tolai too have long been regarded as innovative, but they have clung with remarkable tenacity to what they see as their central institutions: tambu and the cult of tubuan and dukduk (the local counterpart of the Gahuku nama cult); even today there is no indication that these have lost their hold on the Tolai imagination. 11. Later, gold was to become an important earner, a development that gave the Mandated Territory rather greater solvency than the Protectorate of Papua. Of this state of affairs, Keesing has remarked that it "does not necessarily represent a satisfactory financial situation, but rather the consequences of a stringent policy of cutting coats to the cloth of local revenues and imperial purse" (cited in Stanner 1953:28). 12. In the matter of European attitudes toward Chinese, the following letter in the Rabaul Times (14.12.28) is quite characteristic both in tone and content: "We learn that our esteemed co-residents, the Kongs, are at present passing through a period of severe financial depression, and money in Chinatown is so tight as to be invisible .... Considering that the majority of them were originally brought here to labour as coolies, and that since then they have been allowed by the Administration to get a pretty strong grip on local business, it is very gratifying to some people to see them brought up with a round tum." This earned a rejoinder from a Chinese reader that their position would not be so bad if some of the Europeans paid off their debts in Chinatown. As to white attitudes toward blacks, these are well summed up in another letter to the paper appropriately signed "Master": "I noticed on Sunday that a number of natives attending lotu [church] were wearing shirts [forbidden under Native Regulations]. There is no need to humiliate the boys, but they must not be allowed to lose sight of the fact that they are natives .... There is one native from the Malaguna Boys' School who wears pants and no lavalava [Samoan loincloth], and it is thought that steps to suppress this practice should also be taken" (Rabaul Times 8.2.29). 13. The event, needless to say, created quite a stir among the white residents of Rabaul. While there were some who found nothing objectionable about it, others were deeply incensed and demanded to know if it were permissible in law for a native to own and run a car-and in the end the matter was indeed referred to the Crown Law Office (PIM 1935:20). The Matupi themselves, in characteristic fashion, recall the episode as marking yet another "first" to their credit. 14. Groves was an educationist who served as Supervisor of Education in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea between 1922-1926. Later, during 1931-1936, he carried out anthropological research in the Western Pacific

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area, including New Guinea. Cilento was the Territory's Chief Medical Officer of Health in this same period. IS. The term employed throughout the country for an administrative officer. 16. My informant on this occasion was Thomas ToBunbun, son of ToBunbun pere, and himself a graduate of the school who was later to win prominence in public life. For a contemporary view of the school, see Groves (1936:1S6). 17. By his own account, it was John Vuia, assisted by Daniel Kaputin, who took the lead in starting the kivung. ToVuia was later to play an important part assisting David Fenbury in introducing the idea oflocal government councils to the Tolai. From Matupit, according to a Nangananga informant, a man called ToRumet carried the "kivung" concept to Raluana, where it flourished and came to figure prominently in the Anti-Councilor Dissident movement of the early 'fifties (see Epstein 1969:2S6-262; Fenbury 1980; see also Neumann 1988). 18. Budget allocations give the clearest indication of change in the scale of commitment. In 1938 the revenue of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea was a little over £ASOO,OOO, of which just under half derived from the tariff on imports and exports (Reed 1943:20S). By contrast, the Commonwealth grant to Papua New Guinea in the decade 19S3-1963 rose from £AS.S million to £A2S.3 million and local revenue from less than £A3 to £AlO.S million. The latter figures are drawn from Paul Hasluck's account of his years of office as Minister for Territories; his comments on them are therefore also worth noting: "Every year throughout that period we had to fight for our money. I never came out of Cabinet in any year without disappointment and a feeling that I had failed again to persuade the Government of the urgent needs of the Territory" (Hasluck 1976:64). 19. The winner in the Rabaul Open Electorate was Epineri Titimur, a man living at Matupit who had gained notoriety some years earlier when at a meeting with the Administrator, then on an official visit to Rabaul, he asked when the people of Papua New Guinea were to achieve self-government. In the Kokopo Open, Oscar Tamrnur, still in his early thirties, had an even more convincing win. Shortly before he had attracted attention by the leading part he played in the Raniola incident when a group of Tolai villagers descended upon a plantation, drove off the migrant laborers employed there, and proceeded to plant their own crops before they were compelled to uproot them and retreat by the intervention of an armed detachment of police. For a fuller account of these various developments, see Epstein 1970; Chowning et at. 1971).

3: The Language of the Emotions 1. Kaputin died about a year or so before my return to Matupit. It is possible that John was also stirred by hearing again the voice of his old friend. But since I did not pursue this point with him, this remains no more than speculation.

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2. The village section of Kurapun would also have claimed its own distinctive "style" of song-its liu. Such a Jiu was subject to a kind of "copyright"; others could perform it only on the occasion of their own dance festival or ceremony if they had obtained the prior permission of the "owners," for which they would be required to make a payment in tambu. 3. Mead's reference to a "lack of curiosity about motivation" among Samoans seems to be making a similar kind of point. Finding her informants unwilling or unable to provide "character sketches" of members of their households, Mead concluded that Samoans had only a rudimentary interest in, or understanding of, the behavior of others. Many years later, Gerber, asking the same kind of question, received the same kind of reply. But then, she reports, "after a period of confusion, I discovered a way into my informants' interpersonal assessments. If I brushed aside their initial plea of ignorance, saying, 'Yes, I know-but why do you think, in your own mind, that he did this?' suddenly my informants' eyes would light up. 'Well,' they would say, 'in my own mind ... ' and then would follow an explanation that (to my disappointment) frequently had nothing to do with emotions" (Gerber 1985: 133). 4. Literally, the true word or speech. The word kuanua is also commonly heard these days to refer to the Tolai language, but strictly speaking this is a usage introduced by the Methodist missionaries. When they first arrived on the nearby Duke of York Islands and came to inquire about the people on the Gazelle Peninsula, they picked up in the answer given the word "kuanua": its meaning apparently is simply "over there." 5. One such study is that reported by Lutz (1982), the main conclusion of which appears to be that for the Ifaluk emotion words are defined and sorted by informants according to the situations in which the emotion occurs. My immediate comment on this would be that it is difficult to be sure just what this means. It is clear of course, as Lutz herself observes (1982: 120), that "emotion is elicited in social interaction and in interaction with environmental events," but that is a very different thing from saying that the words are defined by situation, without reference to internal states. We may have a pretty fair notion as to what emotions may be called for in a given situation, but if we accept Lutz's view the words that serve as labels for the emotions in question would tell us little of what Ifaluk feel or experience in that situation. As it happens, in her various ethnographic reports Lutz does make repeated reference to what the Ifaluk "felt" or "experienced." What is more, these reports also indicate that there were occasions when the Ifaluk did refer to their feelings when making use of or explaining the meaning of emotion words. The term fago, for instance, offers many examples of the kind: "We really felt bad inside-like our insides were being torn" or again, " ... if they do not actually experience the feeling offago, they will remain socially deficient" (Lutz 1980). It is of particular interest to note in this connection that some of the ways the Ifaluk think about the emotions clearly parallel views also reported to be held by Samoans. Samoans with whom she discussed their emotional life, according to Gerber, offered few descriptions of internal sensations. They directed their attention externally into the social world in ways, Gerber herself remarks, much as Lutz has described for the Ifaluk. But Gerber, whom Lutz cites in support of her own position, is led by this finding in quite a different

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direction, for she quickly goes on to state her belief that the Samoans did experience internal sensation in association with emotions, although they were unable to express it verbally. In support of this view, Gerber refers to the external signs of affect and the somatic changes she assumes occur at the same time. Samoan unawareness of physiological action, she concludes, is a matter of relative attention (1985:137-138). By contrast, Lutz's commitment to a more extreme "culturalist" position is reflected in such statements as that "metagu and other emotions are not heart flutterings or clammy palms, although Ifaluk can and do speak about such physical markers of emotions" (Lutz 1983:251252). 6. Matane, who was shortly afterward to receive a knighthood, was a sophisticated man who had spent many years away from home, among other things as his country's ambassador to the United States, to Mexico, and then to the United Nations. More recently he had served in the Cabinet as Minister for Foreign Affairs. But in no sense could one speak of him as having become alienated from Tolai culture. Back on the Gazelle, he had his home in a remote village on the edge of Tolai settlement and was actively engaged in village affairs, including participation in the staging of the tubuan ceremonies. More to the point, like so many other English-speaking Tolai of all generations whom I have met, he expressed a pride in the language and a pleasure in speaking itindeed once he discovered that my own tinata tuna had not been entirely forgotten, he insisted whenever we met that we talk nothing else. 7. Even those anthropologists who are unsympathetic to the interpretative stance accept that translation is central to their task, and none would pretend that this is easy. In general, learning the meaning of emotion terms in another language poses the same problems as other words that deal with complex human phenomena in another cultural setting. For the most part, the fieldworker confronted with a novel expression proceeds to formulate a "hypothesis" about the meaning of the word that then has to be "tested" in many different contexts until satisfied that one's own use of the term accords with local usage. Working among the Tolai I also had access to a number of dictionaries. However, the dictionaries present their own difficulties, since rarely do they pay much attention to the contexts in which words are ordinarily used; they are best resorted to, therefore, as a supplementary tool. Then again in 1986 I could seek help among English-speaking Tolai where this was not an option in 1960. Thus in addition to Matane, I also approached a number of others to help in translating the terms on my word list. With one exception, all were primary school teachers. Like Matane, most found the task to be less easy than they had imagined, though it was also evident from their responses that a major source of difficulty in completing the exercise was that their standard of English was much poorer than I had anticipated. I quickly discovered, indeed, that in exploring the meaning of words working with non-English-speaking Tolai yielded the more reliable results. But working with emotion terms does present another kind of difficulty, because one often has to cope with two sources of uncertainty: it is not simply that the meaning of the vernacular word may be unclear, the English words offered as a gloss may themselves be equivocal. Acknowledging this problem in

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her Ifaluk study, Lutz (1988) explored the "folk" meaning of English terms by questioning a number of American informants, but she also makes it clear that this was not systematic research on a par with her Ifaluk work. Given that serious research on the folk meanings of the ethnographer's own language is rarely likely to be a realistic option, I have taken a more pragmatic line. Where possible I have always tried to relate my use of English terms to the discussion of their meaning in the relevant literature; above all, my chief endeavor has been to show how the meaning of the words has been derived from the varying contexts in which they have been used. 8. The use of the term imana (brain) as a metaphor for source or that which controls is also found in land matters. So a man might speak, for example, of kaugu imai ra gunan, the particular portion of land on which his patuana, or ancestor, through whom the claim is asserted, first settled or worked. 9. In many instances no equivalent of the English word was offered at all. This could mean that there is no corresponding term in tinata tuna. It could also mean that the respondent was unfamiliar with the English word. It is impossible to be sure which factor operated. What is clear is that, as just indicated in footnote 7, the schedules offered many examples of a faulry grasp of English. Thus in a number of cases the active form of the verb was offered where this was plainly inappropriate as when, for example, to feel abandoned was rendered as nuk vue, literally, to think away, i.e., to forget. In yet other cases, the translation was literal but missed the point that the Tolai word did not refer to human feeling. Kinanang, for example, does mean alone, but not lonely: ordinarily a Tolai likes to eat the main dish of the meal together with a relish. It is when there is no relish, when one has to eat the one dish alone or by itself, that one uses the term "kinanang." A number of other difficulties were encountered. Some words offered by respondents or listed in the dictionary were not known to my Matupi informants. This may reflect marked dialectal variation in different parts of the Gazelle Peninsula; in other cases I was told that it was an old word no longer in everyday use. Accordingly, none of these terms has been included in table 1. 10. Later on an English-speaking Tolai with whom I happened to be discussing the matter drew my attention to the fact that, properly speaking, langotbJ refers not to a greedy person but to a miser: the passion of a langotbJ is not for acquisition, but to hang on to what one has got-it is niggardliness, which is indeed the meaning given in the Raluana Dictionary (Lanyon-Orgill 1960). The point is a significant one which will be taken up again on a later occasion.

4: Work, Ambition, and Envy 1. Fajans (1983:166), for example, distinguishes between emotion as signitying a private, subjective state that mayor may not be socially and culturally motivated and sentiments that are culturally constructed patterns offeeling and behavior which initiate and motivate activity in the world. While

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I agree with her point about the need for such a distinction, I should also note that Fajans is working with a view of emotion/affect very different from the one adopted here. 2. The Rev. Benjamin Danks followed the Rev. George Brown in establishing the Wesleyan Methodist Mission on the Gazelle Peninsula. Arriving in 1878, Danks settled at Kabakada on the north coast. While he had no hesitation in speaking of the Tolai, in the language of the day, as savages, Danks could also recognize that "these wild men ask the momentous questions we ask, viz.-Whence? Whither? Why? And the answers which satisfY them are found in the manners and customs of the people" (Danks 1910:451). Father Joseph Meier, of the Sociery of the Sacred Heart ofJesus, spent the years 1899-1914 on the Gazelle Peninsula where he was closely associated with the inland Tolai community of Rakunai. His scholarly interests in Tolai religion, philosophy, and society are reflected in an impressive body of papers that contain a wealth of information of a kind unlikely to be known to many younger Tolai today. 3. There are 100 toea to the kina. At the time I was in the field early in 1986 the kina was almost exactly on par with the u.S. dollar. 4. When I first encountered this association between death and the kiau, I assumed that it was a purely figurative way of stressing the hard work that the kalukal involved. In fact I was to learn that over the years there have been a number of fatal accidents, though I do not know precisely how many. 5. Many Tolai in Port Moresby are to be found among the urban elite there, and follow a Western middle-class life-style. On Matupit itself, however, even those who were in the best financial position to enjoy a boina kini made no attempt to follow their urban cousins in the way in which, for example, they furnished their homes. In general, the position remained much as it had been earlier described by Scarlett Epstein (1968:92), who reported of Rapitok, an affluent inland parish, that its contemporary prosperity, founded on the marketing of copra and cocoa beans, was still unmatched by any significant improvement in living standards. In more general terms, the same author was to point out elsewhere (1970:56) that a decreasing marginal propensity to consume was what served to distinguish the economy of the Tolai and other New Guinea groups from that of other societies of the Third World. In a word, in the Matupi conception of "a boina kini" utility still counted for more than personal comfort or elegance and refinement. 6. Interestingly, this could apply even in the case of a non-Tolai. When I showed the picture of the former German colonial governor Dr. Hahl to Turpui, his first comment following recognition was "a tena papalum ta ra umana ngala na uma." I take this to be a tribute not so much to Hahl's own physical exertions but to his work in encouraging people to make large food gardens. 7. Balaguan itself appears to be a compound of the words bala, stomach or guts, andguan meaning to stir up as with a spoon or to buffet as waves a canoe. Thus it points to or suggests the tremendous excitement that these occasions generated. 8. The use of the term rat in this context refers to the practice whereby the parents of a newborn child would deposit a sum of tambu in a "rat," or basket. In effect this was the opening of a tambu account in the child's name. As the

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child grew up, it was expected to add to the account the tambu earned by his or her own efforts. 9. I did not learn the details of expenditure in this case. ToKonia reckoned that his own balaguan, which was to be a much more modest affair, would cost him from 700 to 800 fathoms of shell money. 10. In these circumstances, unless forewarned, an outside observer might be present on such an occasion without being aware of what was going on around him. It was commonly said that there were now few left at Matupit who knew the spells (a varvui) for garden magic. However, the secrecy that attends the matter makes it virtually impossible to discover who, if anyone, actually continues to practice it. 11. The expression "green with envy" might appear to contradict this assertion, but in fact does not. One may read it as an idiom that treats envy as though it were readable on the face. I suspect that the underlying idea is of bile that the feeling of envy generates in one's innards which is revealed in one's sickly pallor. On the more general point, Schoeck (1969:8) notes it as remarkable how seldom envy has been personified in art, and a little later adds: "We can depict a person who is woe-begone or joyful, but it is practically impossible to represent a man by himself in such a way that anybody who looks at the picture will instantly grasp that this man is envious. To do so requires a social situation, or symbols whose connection with envy is common knowledge to everyone within the particular culture."

5: Of Kin, Love, and Anger 1. For an account of the setting and procedure on these occasions, see Epstein (1974b). 2. My record of the case does not make clear (and I neglected to inquire afterward) whether Tuvi was also present when his sister was beaten and her clothes torn from her back. That would have been a further source of shame to them both, the shame of the one feeding the shame of the other. 3. I am referring here to the situation as I found it at Matupit in 1960. By the mid-'eighties it was evident that the whole basis of marriage was changing, and in very complex ways that I seek to explore in a separate publication (Epstein 1991). 4. This was a house put up and formerly occupied by Esau. He and his wife now had another house nearby. 5. For an illustration of the importance of this point, and of the way in which reference to a canoe and the patuana whose name it carried could trigger an emotional outburst, see the case cited in Epstein (1984: 7). 6. For further discussion of the application of the concept in the Tolai context as well as a critical appraisal of the concept itself, see Epstein (1973). 7. This is not to be thought of as a recent development due to the processes of social change. For an interesting account of a similar situation, with its con-

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comitant stress on the high social value attaching to fatherhood, see Michel Panoff's (1976) discussion of patrifiliation among the Maenge, another matrilineal people in New Britain but much less exposed to the forces of change than the Tolai. 8. My notes do not indicate whether this point was taken up at the hearing. Emil's complaint seems to have been that the others were "mocking" him by repeating his orders in a derisory manner. 9. These remarks ofJohn Vuia about their forefathers have to be read in the context of the case. Taken at face value, they come very close to the position of the earlier missionaries who referred consistently to the period before the Europeans arrived as the time of darkness (ta ra e na bobotoi)-a view that, as was seen earlier, was repudiated by John himself no less than by other Tolai. Tolai attitudes toward their ancestors and the past are complex and are discussed further below. 10. Once while we were discussing dreams, and aware how he frequently spoke of his father as a tena kankan, I asked whether his father ever appeared in his dreams. ToKonia replied that he did; he recalled these as pleasant dreams, for it was as ifhis father was alive and he could enjoy talking to him again.

6: Tambu, Grief, and the Meaning of Death 1. The standard unit of measurement is the fathom (a pokono) , a string of threaded shells stretching between the two hands when the arms are held out sideways. In addition there is a whole series of smaller units. Thus the fathom divides into two papar, literally, a "side," measured from the chest to the fingers with the arm outstretched. In the smallest units the shells are counted in pairs, a tip na rip, constituting five pairs or ten shells, a wartuk, twenty shells, and so on. 2. It appears that early European traders found themselves compelled to acquire their own stocks of shell money, even to make the trip to Nakanai on the north coast of New Britain where the shells were collected, in order to pay for the copra and vegetables they wanted from the Tolai. According to Grafvon Pfeil (1899:119), the value that the Tolai attached to tambu and the common use it had achieved even among Europeans meant that the amount of tambu in circulation was insufficient to meet the demand for it. Apparently cettain Europeans then conceived the idea of having tambu manufactured in Europe. The venture proved unsuccessful. The Tolai at once recognized the shells as counterfeit, and refused to accept them. 3. Of some interest in this regard was the attempt within the Seventh Day Adventist congregation at Matupit in 1947 to raise the question of giving up the custom of varkukul, the payment of bridewealth in tambu. Although some of the younger people favored the idea, the elders were opposed and the matter was dropped. 4. Literally, a hand or bunch of bananas. The banana tree provides the

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metaphor by which Tolai refer to the divisions or segments within the lineage, commonly spoken of as apiktarai. For further discussion, see Epstein (1969: 124-125). 5. The expression used here was a tena vinauma ure amital.A tena vinauma refers, literally, to one who works in the gardens, in this context, then, a producer. 6. See Epstein (1979b:165 fn.) where I describe how my wife learned this lesson early in her own fieldwork in the inland parish of Rapitok. 7. Kalou itself was not originally a Tolai word but, introduced by the first evangelists who came from Fiji, it has now passed into the language. 8. As an example, I may mention a young Matupi woman who was employed in one ofRabaul's pharmacies. Very attractive in appearance, and always smartly attired in the Western fashion, she now lived in Rabaul with her Australian husband and their children who were being educated in Australia. As I had come to know her quite well, I felt able to ask her once if she still regarded herself as Tolai. "Of course," she replied and, as though offering proof, she drew out from under the counter a bag of tambu shells. It was her preparation for her parents' death, she explained. 9. The imagery that Matane employs in his preceding paragraph in setting the afternoon scene is also revealing in this regard. "The quietness of the beautiful afternoon was most relaxing .... The fowl lay quietly in the dust under a ruga tree. The birds flew almost noiselessly towards the setting sun, as if mourning its death. The flowers turned their faces to the sun, as if they had heard the same message about the death of the sun. Because they could not leave their permanent places, they sent their sympathy along with the quiet breeze." 10. But Matupit also had its sceptics. Neumann (1988:215) reports that when, in 1987, he asked ToPai of Rarup, after the death of ToU rapal in 1986 the oldest man on the island, about the connection between the kaia and the volcano, ToPailaughed and proceeded to give him a lecture on the geological causes of eruptions. This was not the only instance in which ToPai showed his independence of mind: he loved to poke fun at the story of Diararat, the first man to settle on the island, and he would also dismiss as nonsense tales told of the way Matupit had been built up by the process of "land reclamation" known as bobolwn. 11. It was forbidden to eat food that had ripened in the gardens and had been touched. If one saw the marks of its having been eaten, what was left was described as a ibai ra ganau, the share or portion of the flying fox, a creature that, because it inhabits caves and becomes active only at night, is held to have close communion with the spirits of the dead. For further discussion of ideas attaching to theganau, see Danks (1910:454). 12. Compare in this regard the well-known passage in which RadcliffeBrown attacked Malinowski's anxiety theory of ritual: "I think that for certain rites it would be easy to maintain an exactly contrary theory, namely, that if it were not for the existence of the rite and the beliefs associated with it the individual would feel no anxiety, and that the psychological effect of the rite is to create in him a sense of insecurity or danger" (Radcliffe-Brown 1952:148-

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149). For a helpful discussion of the whole issue, see Jahoda (1982); also see Homans (1941). 13. Gatherings for funerals, varkukul, etc., at Matupit were very much larger in 1986 than they had been in 1960. We have here an illustration of the way in which "modernity," far from working to threaten traditional institutions, in fact serves to strengthen them. A telephone call enabled close kin to fly back quickly from Port Moresby or Lae; on the Gazelle itself there was no shortage of transport to ferry people from one village to another. 14. There was another feature in which ToUrapal's funeral was unusual. In the ordinary way, given his status in the community, one would have expected a large distribution of tambu to have taken place. This did not occur. The reason was that because of his great age-he was into his nineties by my reckoning-it had been decided that the kukutu tambu should take place before his death. Accordingly a large-scale ceremony had been held the previous year at which ToUrapal himself was present. This was another factor affecting the mood prevailing at the actual funeral: the burial came now as a kind of afterthought and further mourning was uncalled for. 15. This is the position that Winthuis (1926:57) comes close to affirming when he remarks, "Es ist jedoch alles nur Komodie," although he does grudgingly allow that among the closest relatives of the dead he sometimes discovered real sorrow. 16. These were not the only occasions on which I recorded the crying of adults in public. Thus a woman who was aggrieved by the rumor-mongering or other hurtful behavior of a neighbor might draw public attention to her grievance by sitting outside her house and crying in a loud voice, i tangi vango. This appears to have something in common with the practice of laumamala, described by Young (1971: 124) in his account of social control on Goodenough Island. However, the examples of the kind I offer above were certainly the commonest I encountered. 17. See also in this regard the lament of ToKaar that he was not able to be present when his father died (p. 157, above). 18. The tambu cast at one in this way is received with apparent indifference; one does not even eye it, and it simply lies where it was thrown until the gathering is about to break up when it is placed in one's rabong, the small bag that almost every Tolai has with him in which to carry his "small change" in shell money, a few betel nuts, and other odds-and-ends. But if the appearance is of having received something utterly worthless (a magit vakuku), in reality one watches very carefully to be sure you have mentally recorded who has presented tambu to you, as all such prestations have to be returned on some future occasion. 19. The case of ToPia was again interesting in this regard. Of course the news and circumstances of his death at once provoked a good deal of discussion, and not only within Matupit. There were some who took a "modem" line: in their opinion ToPia had probably had too much to drink over his lunch break and so was not alert enough to heed the warning of his companions to jump clear when the pole fell. For many, however, matters took a different tum when some time after the funeral a youth from another village was alleged to

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have been found hanging around near the grave. This was enough to prompt thoughts of sorcery, for there is a notion that by tapping the juices of a body that has recently been buried one can acquire a babat, magic that will protect against any attempt at vengeance. The lad himself seems to have been beaten up, but suspicion itself fastened on a man from Matupit. The latter was so incensed by the stories that began to circulate about him that one night, sitting outside his house, he was heard demanding, as it were, "trial by komkom." Shortly afterward he was to be seen driving around Rabaul with a message painted on the side of his vehicle. This alluded in cryptic terms that only a Tolai would understand to the charges being leveled against him. Drawing attention to them in this very public fashion was his way of throwing them back in the face of those making them. 20. Another quite specific change is worth mentioning here. It had been the custom in former times to bury the dead in the ancestral hamlet. In the colonial period this practice was forbidden, and the people were required to have village cemeteries. With Independence, the current tendency seems to be to reinstitute the traditional mode and then, perhaps a year or so after interment, to erect a tombstone on the spot, the occasion being ritually marked. For further discussion, see Epstein 1988. 21. Working closely with the Australian administrative officer David Fenbury, John Vuia had played an important part in introducing the system oflocal government councils to the Gazelle. Prominent in local politics, he later served as member of the Legislative Council in Port Moresby. 22. That staging a balaguan has a political purpose in both traditional and modern contexts was evident in ToKonia's plans to invite a minister in the Provincial Government (who was a fellow Matupi) formally to open the proceedings. But however it might appear that ToKonia was also following the traditional path to becoming a "big man," the fact is that the stage on which Tolai politicians now performed covered the whole of Papua New Guinea, and actors on this national stage dwelt in a world quite remote from that of "grass root" politicians. For further discussion of the point, see Epstein 1988. 23. The institution of "tubuan" and "dukduk" is much too complex for extended discussion here. However, one feature, yet another powerful expression of the opposition of the sexes which is central to Tolai ideology (see Bradley 1982), deserves mention in this context. According to the myth of origin of the tubuan, this was first discovered by a group of women, but the men managed to steal it from them, and thereafter retained it for themselves, its secrets a source of their power. In ethnographic terms such a motif is found widely distributed. For a detailed discussion of the theme in its varied expressions, see M. Strathern 1989. 24. A balaguan or matamatam that succeeded in drawing a vast crowd was sometimes referred to as a vuira. A vuira is a bird that is particularly attracted to the pawpaw. If there are ripe pawpaw about, not one bird but whole flocks of them would descend on the spot. Such was the festival to which people similarly flocked in the hundreds. 25. Of interest too in this connection is an earlier finding of Spitz and Wolf (cited in Lewis 1981:85) that one-year-old infants who had experienced ade-

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quate mothering for several months and then were abruptly deprived of it by sudden loss were particularly inclined to autoerotic "fecal play." Such "fecal play" was interpreted as the infant's symbolic representation of the maternal "object," fondled in substirution for maternal loss. I did not inquire into, nor do I have any data on the question of, "fecal play" among Tolai infants at this stage. In any case, as indicated in the text, the experience of separation from the mother would come much later than in the cases on which Spitz and Wolf's findings are based. I have referred elsewhere to the "fecal games" played by older Tolai children, and have suggested how in its thematic structure the balaguan reproduces certain of the features of the game played by children known as a pip (Epstein 1979b:169, 187).

7: Affect and the Self

1. When he died a short time before my return to Matupit, he received the signal honor of having his tubuan raised to bury him. 2. This is the Tolai expression used when one cannot remember or does not wish to mention the name of a person; it is the equivalent of the English Soand-so. 3. It should be noted, however, that such an arrangement does not necessarily mean the end of matrilineal inheritance within the vunatarai. A man may buy land he would pass on to his son-in effect he buys it for his son-but it would be entirely in keeping with traditional ideas that on the son's death the land would go not to his son but to his uterine nephew. It may be expected that many disputes will come to revolve around this very point. 4. When he mentioned this, my informant discussed the matter in an entirely matter-of-fact way, giving no indication that he thought there was anything unusual in his behavior. An educated woman I met in Port Moresby to whom I mentioned the matter did not appear to find anything in the matter unusual either. However, there is no way of knowing how general this kind of attitude was throughout the village. 5. I am referring here chiefly to the situation as I found it in 1960. My impression is that in the 'eighties standards were more relaxed, reflecting trends at work within the wider society of Papua New Guinea, and especially in the towns. 6. Building on Briggs's (1970) account of an Eskimo group, the Utku, Moore (1984:10) observes how physiological needs and other psychological ones begin to appear as distinct causal factors in their own right (even if they operate in a distinct social setting). However, as his rare attempt to explore the various dimensions of the phenomenon makes very clear, privacy is a highly complex issue raising many issues to answer which, even if such a task were within my competence, would take me far beyond my present brief. 7. For a critique of this position as it bears on the Japanese, see, for example, De Vos (1985).

NOTES TO PAGES 234-268

297

8. For further discussion of this issue in quite a different social milieu-the Copperbelt of Zambia-and the similarity of outcome achieved there, see Epstein (1981:195). 9. For another similar incident, which touched off one of the most acrimonious debates I heard at Matupit, see Epstein (1969:283-285). 10. A small incident can sometimes be indicative of the wider-ranging processes at work. At Raulaveo one day a grandchild of ToKonia was running around the place. He was about three years old. I was surprised to discover people talking to him in pidgin. He was being brought up in an ethnically mixed area on the edges of Rabaul where he spoke only pidgin. Now he refused to learn tinata tuna, so when he was brought down on a visit to Matupit everyone had to converse with him in pidgin. 11. For a fuller discussion of the question oflanguage and Tolai ethnKity, based on research conducted in Port Moresby in 1971, see Salisbury (1976). So far as I know, no systematic research has been conducted on this or any other aspects of Tolai life in the diaspora in the period since Independence.

8: Epilogue 1. The bibliography in Unnatural Emotions has references to two of Tomkins's papers, one on script theory (1979), the other (1980) offering some modifications of his general theory, but curiously there is no reference at all to his major work Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. The internal evidence suggests that Lutz has not read this or, if she has, has failed to grasp Tomkins's theoretical position or the full range and power of his ideas. 2. It should be remarked that the failing is not confined to psychologists but, curiously enough, is found among anthropologists too. Those anthropologists, for example, who have harped most on the individualism of Western society appear to have been beguiled by their own rhetoric; certainly they do not seem to recognize the group dimension in identity that has given issues such as ethnicity the salience it has come to acquire not only in the Third World but in so many countries of the West. For a similar kind of point made in regard to the work of Edmund Leach, see Fuller and Parry (1989:12). 3. It is worth reporting that I first came across the word langoron in the context of a discussion of a softball game. Two teams from Matupit were competing in the Final of the local Rabaul championship, and the whole of the island seemed to have flocked to Rabaul to watch the match, which generated intense excitement (langoron). As one of my Matupi friends once spontaneously remarked, softball had much in common with the traditional malagene, or dance festival, and for those in the towns, or living on the edge of one, it might well be said to have taken the latter's place. Of interest here too is how readily the emotion terms can be transferred from one situation to another, however novel the latter. 4. For some Westerners at least there is a close link between the notion of

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privacy and the sense of being left alone. There is a nice example of this in Briggs's (1970) account of her stay among the Utku where initially she perceived being cooped up with an Eskimo family in their igloo as a threat to her privacy. Discussing the issue once with Andrew Strathern, he remarked how at times in fieldwork among the Melpa he longed to be on his own; this was an attitude that the Melpa, and the Tolai, too, find difficult to understand as well as a condition hard to tolerate. 5. Andrew Strathern's (1977) account of pipit does not specifically deal with the point, but I gain the distinct impression that resort to shaming as a technique of dispute-management is quite minimal among the Melpa.

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Index

Abandonment, theme of, 182, 184 Abraham, K., III Affect: as amplification, 14-15; anthropology of, 5; attributes of, 14-16; and cognition, 17; cultural factors in, 256; culture, tensions between, 9; discharge of, 256; in domestic contexts, 1171f; dynamics, 10; and lexicon, 21-22; as muscular response, 18, 24, 251; negative/positive, 80; as providing information, 14, 18 Affect blends (complexes), 16, 18,251 Affects: characteristics of, 22-24; flexibility of, 251; negative and positive, 80; periodicity of, 15; toxicity of, 256. See also Emotions Affines,120-121 AhTam,36 Ainsworth, Col. J. 39, 152 Alfred, 112-113, 164 ~wfa,11,123,252

Ambition, 100-101, 115 138,222; and anger, 146, 264 Andamanese, 171 Anger, 64, 145-149,238; ambiguity in attitude toward, 263; avoidance of, need for, 263; expression of, 262; and grief, 186-187; and identification, 220; moral component in, 264; and the self, 200-201, 262-264; varieties of, 68, 262. See also Tena kankan

~nwur-propre,

Anit,90, 101, 166, 167 Anton ToMana, 168,237 Anxiety, and death, 162, 165, 170 Aristotle, on envy, 265 Armon-Jones, c., 250 Australian administration, post-World War II policies of, 44-45, 239 Averill, J. R., 184-185,250,264 Bahau (trap-fishing), 87-90 Baessler, A., 283 Balaguan, 52, 104, 105,244; as arena for "big men," 147; description of, 106107; etymology of term, 290; as memorial, 189-190; and political leadership, 109; preparations for, 105-106; role oftambu in, 108, 190; staging of, 190 Balana (gut, stomach), as seat of emotions, 62, 63-66,146,174 Basic affects, 18-19 Bateson, G., 20 Belshaw, c., 114 Bum, 67, 78, 183-184; and loneliness, 269 "Big men": and anger, 264; and balaguan, 108; character of, 52,105,209-210; decline of, at Matupit, 52; envy of, 111; as tena kankan, 145 Bit na pia ("owner" ofland as of aboriginal right), 94, 133 "Bit na tubuan" (expert on the tubuan), 101,190,206

311

312

INDEX

Boasting, 192 Bock, P., 281 Bogershausen, G., 30 Boredom, 81 Boring, E., 3 Bowlby,J.196 Bradley, c., 151, 182,226,295 Briggs, J. L., 296, 298 Brother-sister bond, 121 Brown, G., 30-31,106,150,191,192, 203,290 Bung (market), 33; at Rabaul, 49, 88, 95 Biirger, F., 37 Busama, 216, 217 Carteret, P., 30 Cash economy, Tolai involvement in, 3738,40,96-97 Central assembly, concept of, 17, 18,251 Change, Tolai attitudes toward, 38, 4041,46; "directed" change, 44-45 Character, perception of, 106, 158, 159, 205 - 206; among Karavarans, 203 Chewong, 57, 58 Childhood, experience of: on Manus, 85; among Tolai, 85-86 Chinese: envy of, 113, 115; in Rabaul, 36, 39,285 Chowning, A., 238, 286 Cilento, Sir R., 40, 286 Clan, 51. See also Vunatarai Cocoa, 96; Tolai Cocoa Project, 44 Coconut: importance of, 32; "introduction" of, 284 Cognition, and affect, 17 Cohen, A., 3-4 Comfort, on bereavement, 185 -186, 187 Compassion, 149. See also Varnum· Competition: as attitude of mind, 109; emphasis on, in Tolai culture, 102104, 115, 195,266 Concern, 149,256 Copra, 39, 95 Crying. See Weeping Cultural construct, emotion as, 8-9, 252, 257 Cultural constructionism, and emotions, 250-256,257 Cultural focus, concept of, 82 Cultural relativism, 11, 19 Cultural variability, and emotions, 19 Culture-and-personality, 25, 281

Danks, B., 83, 84, 87, 153, 229, 290, 293; ontambu, 151, 159-160 Darwin, c., 11,20,80,184, 185,211, 253 Davitt, J., 21, 55 Dead, emotional impact of mentioning the, 132, 179-180 Death: as abandonment, 184; centrality of, 267-268; cultural elaboration of, 185; dreams as portents of, 169-170; pageant of, 184ff; perception of Japanese attitudes toward, 43; preoccupation with, 163-165, 196; reaction to, 170. See also Tambu Devereux, G., 4, 28 DeVos, G., 296 Discipline, emphasis on, 85-86 Disgust, 18-19,66-67; on Ifaluk, 255 "Display rules," 22 Distress, 69; and pain distinguished, 62 Douglas, M., 224 Dreams, 168-170 Drive system, 14; drives and affect compared, 14-16

Dukduk. See Tubuan Dumont, L., 211 Durkheim, E., 4, 26, 27, 178,233 Dutton, G., 283 Ecological diversity, 32-33 Egg-collecting (kiau). See Kiau Einzig, P., 152 Ekman, P., 20-21, 22, 29, 32, 35, 201, 253,282,283 Ekman, P., and Friesen, W. V., 18,184, 267 Ekman, P., and Oster, H., 282 Embarrassment, 221. See also Vavimr Emotions: academic neglect of, 2, 249; appeals to, 132, 139,219; approaches to study of, 6-7; classification of, 21, 59,69,261; as combinations, 16; as continua, 16, 19; cross-cultural variation in verbal representation of,S 759,259; as cultural constructs, 8-9, 21; discharge of, 10,256; expression of, 24, 53, 55, 253-255; and image of self, 77-79, 201; obstacles in way of studying, 2-3, 6, 61-62; source of, in balana, 106; Tolai theory of, 6265; varying intensity of, 15, 16, 19, 24 Emotion terms: ambiguity in meaning of,

INDEX 74-75,77; cross-cultural variability of, 16, 262; difficulties in translation of, 10, 15,252; focus on, 21, 55-57; overlap in meaning of, 19-20, 259; paucity of, and emotional states, 5859; and the research task, 259-262; semantic range of, 19, 74, 77, 260; standard Tolai terms, 65; translation of, 16, 24; and question of universality, 57. See also Affect Employment, wage, 96-97, 244-245 Envy, 78, 110-115,265-266; "green with," 291; lack of visible expression in, 265; need for concealment of, 265; as obstacle to innovation, 114-115; as projection, 265; psychologists' neglect of, 256 "Envy-barrier," 266 Epineri Titimur, 205, 236, 286 Epstein, T. S., 44,105,151,284,290 Erikson, E. H., 194,232 Errington, F., 190,202,203,204,206 Ethnic identity, 234; stereotypes, 241 Ethnopsychology, 7, 9,12, 199,249,257, 279 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 27 Evil eye, 113 Excitement, varieties of, 460-461 Face, role of, 18; salience of, in shame, 211 Facial display, inhibition of, 24 Facial expression, 55; in interest, 81 Facial musculature, movement of, and affect, 221, 251 Fajans, 1., 289 Father-son, 138, 145-146,230 Fecal play, 296 Fenbury, D., 286, 295 Firth, R. W., 2 Firth, S., 33, 37, 283, 284 Fisher, N. H., 30 Fishing, magic, 88, 91; with seines (a umbene), 90-92; with traps (a babau), 87-90 Fortes, M., 27, 43 Freeman, J. D., 5 Freud, S., 9, 23, 24,194,212,275 Fuller, c., and Parry, J., 297 Funerary rites, 171-173, 174-179, 185190 Gahuku, 268, 285 Gallup, G. c., 200

313

Geertz, c., 2, 7-8, 82,279-280 Geertz, H., 55 Gerber, E. R., 9, 10-11,21,60,69,74, 261,287-288 Gluckman, H. M., 4,122,131,258 Grandparents-grandchildren, 128 Greed, 67 Grief, 171, 173, 175, 184-185; and anger, 186-187,267-268; expression of, 184,267; and loneliness, 181,269; as marter of show, 178; prolonging of, 174; and separation anxiety, 196; and social cohesion, 185; and tears, 180 Grosart, I., 48, 243 Groves, W. c., 40, 285, 286 Guilt, 228; experience of, 230-231, 275; inference of, from customary notions, 229 Gunan, 48-49,52,84 Gusii,57 Hageners,9 HaW, Dr. A., 35, 284, 290 Harre, R., 249, 251, 252 Harre, R., and Secord, P. F., 23 Hasluck, Sir Paul, 44, 286 "Heart" and "head," Tolai evaluations of, 63-64 Heelas, P., and Lock, A., 7 Heider, K., 282 Hermeneutic approach, 7, 11, 19,55 Hemsheim, E., 35, 36, 283, 284 Herskovits, M. J., 82 Hiart, L. R., 59, 60, 68 Hogbin, H. I., 216, 217, 221, 278 Homans, G., 294 Howell, S., 57-58, 98-99 Hula, 246 Hunter, Capt., 30 Huntington, R., and Metcalf, P., 171 Husband-wife, 122-124 Huxley, A., 1 Ibsen, H., 248 Identification: with the ancestors, 242; and the self, 233-234 Identity, ethnic, 234; group dimension in, neglect by anthropologists, 297; and locality, 234-237 Ifaluk, 55-56,62,69,74,250,252,255, 258,280,287 Illegitimacy, 138,222 llongot,9,56,187,280,282

314

INDEX

Independence, achievement of national, 47-48,52 Individuality, 204, 205, 206, 207-208, 209 Inheritance, of personal attributes, 205206; of physical traits, 204- 205 Iniet,113 Interest, as affect, 80-81, 82 Involvement, changing pattern of, 237238,244-245 Izard, c., 67,81, 184,256,282 Izard, c., Kagan, J., and Zajonc, R., 282 Jahoda, G., 294 Japanese: contrasting ethos ofTolai and, 210; occupation of Gazelle by, 41-43; Tolai attirudes toward, 42-43 Javanese, 9, 55 Johnson, F., 202, 210 Johnson, R. W., and Threlfall, N. A., 30

Kaia, 32, 166-167, 293 Kakairane, 62, 63, 67, 110. See also Emotions Kaluli, 147, 187 Kaputin,54,94, 107,135, 136, 139, 179-180,188,218,225,286 Kaputin,William,107,187 Karavar, 190,202-203,205,207 Keesing, R., 19, 144 Kiau (megapode eggs), 93-94,145,290 Kivung na baramana, 41 Klein, M., Ill, 183 Kleintitschen, A., 83, 153 !Znapp, P., 2, 7, 275 Kokopo, 31, 34 Kramer, A., 36 Kuhn, T., 6, 279 Kwaio,l44 Labit, III Labur (north west monsoon), 33, 87, 283 Lamentation, 170, 175 -178, 184 Land: alienation, 284; shortage of, 45-46 Langness, L. L., 270 Language: and affect complexes, 18; and emotions, 251; andethnicity, 297; pride in, 241-242, 247 Lanyon-Orgill, P., 99, 289 Laziness, 97-98 Leach, E. R., 12, 297 Learning, role of, in emotion, 17

Leo, 89; symbolism of, 193, 195 Leventhal, H., 6 LeVine, R., 25, 57,171 Levi-Strauss, c., 4, 7, 26, 279-280, 282 Levy, R. 1., 7, 19, 199,200,201,212, 282 Lewis, H. B., 212, 222, 231, 232, 275, 295 Lexicon: focus on, 55-59; the Tolai, 6279 Ligur(niligur), 54,121,157,172,174, 178, 184 "Limits of naivety," 4-5 "Lingling"(forsaken), 163-164, 183184, 191 Local Government Councils, 44-45 Loneliness, 181-184; absence of, among Gahuku, 268; psychologists' neglect of, 256; and separation, 269 Luluai system, 44, 283 Lutz, c., 55, 56, 62, 69,74,250,251, 252,253,254,256,257,259,261, 264,280,287,288,289 Lutz, c., and White, G., 8,19,198,282 Lynd, H., 212 Lyng, J., 36 Mackellar, C. D., 36, 284 Madapai, 50, 209 Maenge,292 Malinowski, B., 257, 293 Manus, 84-85 Markets, 33, 126. See also Bung Marriage, as exchange, 120 Matamatam, Ill, 190, 191, 192, 193 Matane, P., 61, 62,162,164,175,288, 293 Mataungan, 47-48, 243 Matriliny, 122 May, R.]., and Sheldon, R., 246 Mead, M., 12, 84, 85, 287 Meier, J., 83, 84,167,183,221,290 Melpa, 273, 298 Moieties, 50,104,120,195 Morris, R., 81 Mother-son, 129-130; tensions, 214216,217 Murphy, R. F., 9, 282 Murray, Gilbert, 185 Nadel, S. F., 4 Namata,49,178-179

INDEX Names (personal), 208 Native Local Government Councils. See Local Government Councils Needham, R., 58 Neumann, K., 242, 286, 293 Ngarau (nginarau), 74, 94, 98-99 Niligur. See Ligur Niruva (shame-guilt), 228 Omens, 164-165 Onion-peeling, 27, 248ff Oral aggression, 25 Oram, N., 246 Orim, case of, 98-99,176 Orokaiva, 272, 273, 274, 278 Pain, and distress distinguished, 62 Paivu, Meli, 102, 107, 179,313 Panoff, F., 277 Panoff, M., 292 Paraparau,47,178 Parkinson, R., 160, 284 Parsons, Talcott, 8, 282 Patrifiliation, 292 Patuana (old man/ancestor), 51, 129 Penias, Councillor, 115, 124, 126, 180 Pfeil, Graf von, 292 Piers, G., and Singer, M., 222 Pitcairn, W., 150 Plutchik, R., 3,4,13,16,57,58,67,69, 256,257,261,265,275 Pocock, D. F., 114 Population growth, 45 Port Moresby, 52, 245, 246 Powell, W., 32 Pribran, K., 3 Privacy, 224- 227; lack of, among Gahuku, 268; Moore on, 296; among Utku, 296, 298 Property, as extension of the self, 129 Psychoanalysis and affect, 24-25, 222223 Pui (bush), 48-49 "Queen Emma," 283 Rabaul, 30, 31, 39-40, 52,112,284; decline of, 108; economic status of, 238, 244; growth in population of, 245 Rabaul Times, 40, 285 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 171, 178,293 Radi,H.,39

315

Read, K. E., 268, 285 Reay, Marie, 272, 274, 275, 278 Reed, S. W., 286 Repression, and unconscious affect, 2324,275-276 Respect (variru), 121, 143 Restlessness, 100. See also Nginarau Roazen, P., 9 Roheim, Geza, 161 Romilly, H., 150,284 Rosaldo, Michelle, 9-10, 22,55,178, 186,212,233,249,280,282 Rosaldo, Renato, 178, 186,233,282 Rowley, c., 38, 39,283,284 Sabine, J., and Silver, M., 265 Sack, P., 270 Sahlins, M., 209 Salisbury, R. F., 33, 44,105,151,152, 190,192,193,200,242,297 Samoa(ns), 11,60,69,74,150,286, 287-288 Scherer, K., and Ekman, P., 13,282 Schieffelin, E. L., 147, 187 Schneider, C. D., 213, 227 Schoeck, H., 114,266,291 School, founding of first government, 41 Schooling, 38,41,45,96,245 Secrecy, 109-110,291; and envy, 110 Self: approaches to, 199-201; boundaries of, 202; and emotion, 68-69, 200, 242, 284; focus on, 8, 198; image of, and emotion, 77-79, 211ff; marginality of, in work of psychologists, 256 passive aspects of, 75; perceptions of, 77 -79; psychoanalytic views of, 232233; states of, 71; Tolai terms relating to, 68-69; threats to, and onset of anger, 147 Self-awareness, 202 Seligman, C. G., 281 Semantic range, 67, 74, 77,99. See also Emotion terms Sentiment, 82, 289 Separation (anxiety), 164 Sepik,277 Sexuality, and privacy, 225-226 Shame, 26, 127,212; ambivalence of, 220; and anger at the self, 200-201; in animals, 63; and boundaries of the self, 227; as cultural category, 274275; as cultural construct, 228; dis-

316

INDEX

Shame (continued) charge of, 228, 270-271; as "external" experience, 231; on Goodenough, 271-272; and invasion of privacy, 225-227; and leadership, 143; mechanism of, 221; in Melanesia, 16; in Mowehaven, 273; among Orokaiva, 272; overlap with guilt, 228, 271; and privacy, 224-225; psychoanalytic views on, 222-223; putting to, 241; as sanction, 213-220, 272-273; and sex, 224, 226- 22 7; shaming techniques, 273; and sorcery, 225 Shame-disgrace, 213 Shapiro, W., 267 Shweder, R. A., 21 Shweder, R. A., and Bourne, E. J., 202, 211,268 Simet, J., 191 "Sister-exchange" marriage, 120 Snlith,M.B., 198, 199,200 Soil fertility, 32 Solomon, R., 282 Sorcery, 113-114, 163-164, 170, 187, 194,213,226-227,295; and anger, 144; and fear of, 145 Spindler, G., 281 Spirits, 165-167,274-276 Spiro, M. E., 2, 282 Stanner, W., 285 Stehn, c., and Woolnough, W. G., 31 Stephen, D., 47 Strathern, A. J., 21, 298 Strathern, M., 273, 295 Surprise, 18 Symbolism, of yam, 277- 2 78 Tabaran (malevolent spirits), 162, 167169 Tanmu,33,51-52,84,99,103,150, 151,152; and affect, 153; as affine, 120; and anal erotism, 194-195; attitudes toward, 160-162; "banking" of, 121; and "big men," 106; as bridewealth, 154-159; compulsive interest in, 160; contradictions in attitudes toward, 193-194; as coprosymbol, 194; and death, 161ff, 267-268; disputes over, 133, 137, 153-159; distribution of, on death, 186; dying without, consequences of, 229, 267; as

encouraging frugality, 83, 254; and fishing, 88- 89; giving away of, 193; lack of, and shame, 223; opposition to, among younger people, 244; persistence of, 152-153; stress on accumulation, 160; as symbol of Tolai identity, 243; and taboo, 161; and unconscious aggression, 195; and vunatarai, 139; and work ethic, 84, 105 Taubar (southeast trades), 33, 87, 92 Taule Belo, 102 Tena kankan (men of anger), 86, 143, 144,148,210,242,263-264; ancestors as, 242. See also Anger Thiel, Max, 35,283 Tinata tuna (Tolai language), 59,61,66, 68,241,247,283 ToBunbun,41 ToBunbun fils, 90 ToDapal,110 Todd, J. A., 272, 273 ToGoragoro, 215 Tollot, 53, 188-189, 195,235 ToKaul, 88,98,174,177 ToKonia, 53-54,92,98,105-107,145, 169,186,190,204-205,206,221, 222,240,295 Tolai Cocoa Project, 44, 47 Tolstoy, L., 172 Tomkins, S., 3,10,13,14,15,16,17,18, 19,24,26,67,80,81,82,211,220, 221,250,251,253,254,256,282, 297 ToNgarama, 102, 190,206,218,242 ToPapat, 40, 113-114,210 ToPirit, 119, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136,137,154,156,157,158 ToUrapal, 94,167,177,219,220,270, 271,294 ToVue, Ronald, 34 Tubuan, 189; association with death, 179; mtnatubuan,101,111,206;and "femaleness," 191; identification with past, 242-243; as personification of clan, 191; "raising" of, 190; recognition of, as human figure, 204; songs of, 103-104,242; spirits, contact with, 166; as symbol ofTolai identity, 243 Turbarat, 173-174,275 Tut;gupai, 51; in fishing, 91, 143 Turner, V. W., 192

INDEX Turpui, 33-34,41,88,89,94, 105, 126, 129,131,164,203,214,218,219, 220,237,283 Tuzin, D. F., 277 Unconscious affect, 23-24, 275-276 Universality of emotions, 19,251,253 Urbanization, 245-246 "Vampire-men," 25-26, 40, 42 Vannari, 119,122-123,126,132,139140, 148-149. See also Compassion; Concern Varngu, IlIff. See also Envy Vavirvir (embarrassment/shame), 65, 186, 216,221,228,271. See also Shame Volcanos, 30; threatened eruption of, 31, 236; as /taia, 31,167,293 Vuia, John, 53-54, 115, 140, 142-143; and introduction of local government councils, 286, 295; and obsequies for brother Tollot, 53,188-189 V unapaina, 50, 209. See also Madapai Vunatarai, 49-52; celebrations of, 190191; concept of, 50-52,133,139; and land claims, 133-134; and land ownership, 209; leadership of, claims to, 137; and loyalty, 234; membership of, 139; and shame, 223 Vevedek, 89

317

Wage employment, 40, 238-240; women in, 244. See also Employment Wawn, W. T., 35 Weeping, public outbursts of, 157, 179, 220; on appearance oftubuan, 191 Westernization, 40 White, G. M., and Kirkpatrick, J., 7-8, 10,56,199,249 Whiting, B. B., and Edwards, C. P., 278 Whiting, J. W. M., and Child, 1. L., 229, 232,278 Wierzbicka, A., 57, 59, 282 Williams, F. E., 272 Williams, M., 30,44 Winthuis,P.J., 161, 175-176, 184,294 Wolf, E., 114 Wood, L. A., 269 Woolf, R., murder of, 36 Woolford, D., 47, 48 "Workaholic" syndrome, 97-99 Work and affect, 82-83; compulsive interest in, 98-99; and identity, 101; stress on hard work, 98; work ethic, 84-100 Wrong,D.,9 WU,D., 36 Young, M., 227, 271, 272, 274, 275, 277, 278,294 Zajonc, R., 282