What Gifts Engender: Social Relations and Politics in Mendi, Highland Papua New Guinea

What gifts engender

What gifts engender Social relations and politics in Mendi, Highland Papua New Guinea RENA LEDERMAN Department of Anthropology, Princeton University

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521104999 © Cambridge University Press 1986 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1986 This digitally printed version 2009 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Lederman, Rena. What gifts engender. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Mendi (Papua New Guinea people) 2. Papua New Guinea - Social life and customs. I. Title. DU740.42.L43 1986 306'.0899912 85-21283 ISBN 978-0-521-26713-7 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-10499-9 paperback

Contents

List of tables, figures, and maps Preface Acknowledgments 1. Mendi coming into view Introduction The region and the population: background The region and the population: the social dynamics of land use The "subsistence bias" and another approach to Highland political economies 2. Sent relations: solidarity and its limits Introduction Individual action, collective responsibility Individual autonomy, political participation, and leadership Social relations between clan members Exogamy, antigamy, and the sem-twem distinction The structure of intergroup relations Names, categories, and the reality of groups Clan membership and the exclusion of women 3. Twem: personal exchange partnerships The significance of the Southern Highlands The articulation of twem and sem Twem and the life cycle Persons and things Twem etiquette The structure of exchange networks

page vii ix xi 1 1 5 10 14 19 19 21 26 30 37 40 52 55 62 62 65 70 81 89 103

vi

Contents

4. Gender ideology and the politics of exchange Introduction Women and exchange Comparing women and men Twem, female participation, and its limits Sent, gender hierarchy, and its limits

117 117 119 128 132 135

5. Twem and sent in context Inequality, reciprocity, and incremental gifts Prestations of marriage and death Large-scale ceremonies

141 142 154 162

6. Sai le at Senkere: the politics of a Pig Festival Introduction Anthropological background The Mendi Pig Festival Outline of Suolol political history Record of events The sai le, Highland Pig Festivals, and the structure of exchange

174 174 175 178 182 187

7. "Development" in Mendi Introduction Twem, sem, and indigenous development Perspectives on changing times

213 213 219 227

Appendix A. The research community Appendix B. The "accounts sample" and some comments on research methodology Notes Glossary References Index

238

200

243 255 273 276 283

Tables, figures, and maps

Tables 1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 vii

Mendi District census divisions, land and population (1976) Clan organization in the Senkere community Never-married men: access to valuables and labor Contexts of first transactions among 43 Senkere men and women Reasons for terminating exchange partnerships among 43 Senkere men and women "Active" exchange partners and agnatic supporters of 43 men and women Total exchange networks of 43 men and women "Active" partnerships in relation to total exchange networks of 43 men and women Structure of the networks of 23 men Structure of the networks of 20 women Structure of terminated partnerships of 23 men Structure of terminated partnerships of 20 women Terminated partnerships in relation to total networks of 23 men Terminated partnerships in relation to total networks of 20 women Overlap in the exchange networks of husbands and wives ("active" partnerships) Frequency of marriages in Senkere Frequency of major deaths in Senkere Redistribution of Ol Egar ol ombu\ group gift

page 10 24 72 73 97 106 107 108 110 111 113 114 115 116 127 155 155 166

viii 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 A.I A.2 B.I B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.7 B.8 B.9 B.10

Tables, figures, and maps Lengths of time sai le pigs were held before the December 1979 pig kill Sai le pigs: sources and repayments Comparison of pig herds: 1978, 1979, 1983 Sources of 1978 pigs Sources of 1983 pigs Village census information: Waparaga, 1979 Waparaga households, January-March 1978 Characteristics of the "accounts sample": 23 men Characteristics of the "accounts sample": 20 women Households included in "accounts sample" Details of active exchange partnerships and total networks of 23 men Details of active exchange partnerships and total networks of 20 women Details of the structure of the networks: 23 men Details of the structure of the networks: 20 women Details of the structure of terminated partnerships: 23 men Details of the structure of terminated partnerships: 20 women Comparison of survey households: 1978

204 210 221 222 223 239 240 244 244 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 253

Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3

Genealogical sketch of the Senkere community Pulumsem genealogies: Tonkpisem Pulumsem genealogies: Punginsem, Pulumsem, and Tonkpisem Alcome's pearl shell Paki's pig Direction of nopae payments The accumulation of gift-debts and gift-credits 01 Egar ol ombul, April 1978

42 49 51 133 133 152 159 168

Maps 1.1 1.2 2.1

Southern Highlands Province The Mendi Valley The Senkere community

6 8 38

Preface

This book, a description and argument concerning social relations and politics in Mendi, is meant as a contribution to the comparative ethnography of Highland Papua New Guinea. In it, I attempt to demonstrate that Mendi culture and history are structured in terms of two principles of relationship: twem and sem. Whereas sem relations create bounded groups ("clans") with an existence independent of particular individuals, twem relations generate egocentered, unbounded networks. Clans regulate access to land and are the primary organizational basis for male cooperation in ceremonial exchanges, whereas networks regulate access to fluid resources such as pigs, pearl shells, and money. While clan prestations require that the flow of wealth be dammed periodically, twem etiquette encourages the constant circulation of wealth. While clans are implicitly hierarchical, being exclusively male, twem networks are egalitarian and broadly inclusive, men and women, unmarried people, and old widows and widowers all participating in them. On the basis of these and other contrasts developed in the chapters to follow, I will argue against the common assumption that network relationships are simply a means by which individuals accumulate valuables for display during clan festivals. I will argue instead that twem relations constitute a kind of sociality distinct from clanship; moreover, they involve an ethic of exchange contradictory to the ethic of clan solidarity. Although network and clan obligations may be fulfilled simultaneously (and are, in a sense, necessary to one another), they also sometimes conflict. This structural problematic is realized in the tensions one may observe between men and women, on the one hand, and between leaders (big-men) and ordinary men, on the other. It is also expressed in a political rhetoric of gender meanings, so much a part of both everyday and public discourse. That is, the contradictory implications of twem and sem relations make certain important aspects of Mendi politics intelligible, ix

x

Preface

The general purpose of the analysis presented here is to make Mendi history - by which I mean the insider's sense of the significance of events accessible to outsiders; at least, I hope to have made an initial stab at that. The historical focus is on one Upper Mendi political community's Pig Festival (mok ink), a sequence of events similar in some respects to ceremonies that are well known in the anthropological literature on the Highlands. That literature has emphasized male leaders and formal ceremonial prestations of wealth. This study rights the balance by paying attention to ordinary men and women, as well as to the wealth transactions that take place in everyday settings, the frame of reference within which the structurally significant character of twem relations becomes visible. As the foregoing implies, I hope this study will contribute to Highland ethnography and to anthropology generally in a number of ways. It has something to say relevant to an anthropology of gender (as a study of male-female relationships and of gender ideology in a Highland society that is somewhat atypical in those respects) and to an anthropology of power and politics (as a study of the articulation of hierarchizing and equalizing structures, and of the social force both of words and of culturally constituted things). It also has something to say relevant both to an anthropology of history and, within that, to what might be termed a political economy of the "gift." By this I mean that gift exchange in Mendi and elsewhere engenders a type of sociality with differentiated forms of its own and a distinctive historical dynamic, and with particular implications for the structuring of people's understandings of, and practical action in, their world. Studies of gift relations, therefore, are not an antiquarian concern but have a direct bearing on our understanding of local resistance, both explicit and tacit, to the world of the market. In other words, and as the concluding chapter of this work suggests, a study of gift exchange in Mendi illuminates not only the shape of a given world but also the outlines of a world being made.

Acknowledgments

I write the following words knowing that as the names and thanks march by, they diminish one another by their weight of numbers. The fact is that each mention is remembered freshly, even if listing them all here cannot convey that. This is more a personal litany than an adequate appreciation, and for that I am sorry. The research on which this book is based was undertaken from September 1977 until April 1979 and again for three months in 1983. I was financially supported during the longer period, in part, by a National Institute of Mental Health predoctoral research fellowship and a National Science Foundation predoctoral research grant. In 1983, I was supported by the American Philosophical Association and by a Princeton University faculty grant. I thank all these institutions for their aid. I owe Andrew Strathern a large debt for steering me to Mendi. Both Marilyn Strathern and Andrew Strathern have encouraged and helped me frequently over the past decade; I am grateful to them both. In Papua New Guinea, thanks go to the staff of the Department of Anthropology / Sociology, University of Papua New Guinea, and particularly to Mary Jane Mountain, who chaired the department when my husband, Michael Merrill, and I arrived for the first time in Port Moresby and who was so friendly and helpful to us. Thanks also go to Marc Schiltz and Lisette Josephides and to James and Acsha Carrier for their hospitality during my stay in Port Moresby in 1983. In 1977, Gary Simpson (then of the National Planning Office in Port Moresby) was able to orient me concerning development issues in the Southern Highlands and was instrumental in putting me in touch with Dr. John Millar, Superintendent of the Provincial Hospital in Mendi town. Together with Dr. Eilene Sowerby, John provided my husband and me with aid and with hospitality throughout our first stay in Mendi. We also appreciated getting to xi

xii

Acknowledgments

know several other doctors and teachers in Mendi town, and we thank them for welcoming us into their homes. Various government officials helped us when we first arrived in town. Among these, thanks to Francis Pusal for encouraging us to settle in Wepra and to Lyn Clarke for keeping in touch with me long after I left Mendi. During my solo return voyage in 1983, the genprous help of Rob Crittenden (lately, team leader of the agricultural research wing of the Southern Highlands Rural Development Project) and Jim Dees (concerned with project financial records) was deeply appreciated. The people in Mendi to whom I owe the greatest debt are my neighbors in the Wepra community where Mike and I spent most of our time. We are still in awe of the ease with which they incorporated us into their lives. The debt I owe them can be repaid only by commitment to ongoing friendship and reciprocity, a promise provisionally fulfilled by my return visit in 1983. Both Mike and I look forward to the next time. Some people became especially good friends of ours: I am thinking of Nare and Nande and their children, of Mel and his brother Tolap, of Wange and Aku, of old Wendo (who died a week before we left Wepra), of Orpeyap, Alcome, Onge (my first twemol), Tekopiri, Andrew Ipopi, Alin, and Namba. Nare and Nande - our hosts in Wepra - and Mel, Tolap, and Wange - who helped us as field assistants - were all daily companions of ours. Once I had returned from Mendi to New York, I depended on the help and patience of my teachers at Columbia University, particularly Alexander Alland, Clive Kessler, Abraham Rosman (my doctoral thesis adviser), and Paula Rubel. Thanks also to Paula Brown Glick of SUNY-Stonybrook, who served pn my thesis committee. I cannot begin to thank the friends with whom I spent time while writing the thesis upon which this book is based. I will single out four: Nancy Lutkehaus, who shared the experience of doingfieldwork in Papua New Guinea with Mike and me (working on Manam Island); Lina Brock, who ran around the Columbia gym track with me, animatedly discussing kinship theory; and Alan Steinberg and Susan Schecter, with whom Mike and I shared a house in the mountains during the summer of 1981, where we all wrote together. My husband, Michael Merrill, is in another category. Any thanks I offer cannot repay all the practical and metaphysical help he has given me before, during, and after fieldwork in Mendi. On the other hand, he got to travel and see the world, an agreeable exchange. This book is dedicated to two families. First, it is dedicated to my host family in Wepra: to Nare, Nande, Paki, Papuan, Lonis, Wembe, and Rina. I miss them deeply. This book is also dedicated with love to my own father and mother, and to my brother and sister.

1

Mendi coming into view

. . . quite suddenly, at a spot where a large tree had recently fallen, we came to a break in the forest. And as we looked excitedly northwards, O'Malley and myself stood spellbound gazing at the scene of wild and lonely splendor. Below us, on the opposite side of the Ryan [River], a large lake lay on a platform of the divide, while about two miles to the northwards; and beyond the gorge, gold and green, reaching as far as the eye could see, lay the rolling timbered slopes and grasslands of a huge valley system. On every slope were cultivated squares while little columns of smoke rising in the still air revealed to us the homes of the people of this land. . . . Beyond all stood the heights of some mighty mountain chain that sparkled in places with the colors of the setting sun. As I looked on those green cultivated squares of such mathematical exactness, I thought of wheatfields, or the industrious areas of a colony of Chinese. . . . "My mother!," said Sergeant Orai. "People like the sand. They have plantations. What people are they?" [Hides 1936: 77-8]

Introduction In April 1935, after more than three months of marching across sparsely populated country, and after scaling the massive limestone barrier of the Karius Range, an exhausted troop of Australian government officers and coastal Papuan policemen and carriers marveled at their first sight of the land of the Huli, in the Papuan Highlands. The Hides and O'Malley patrol never entered the valley of the Mendi River, whose people - Ip Mend Ol - are the subjects of this study. The first patrol through Mendi, led by Ivan Champion, who described his experiences less poetically than did Jack Hides, occurred in November 1936. But Hides's impressions of their neighbors ring true for the Mendi as well. Champion reported that his party was met all along the way by large groups of men, who provided them with food and guided them on their way. Like Hides, Champion was impressed with the intensity of cultivation, the density of the human population, and the beauty of the casuarina pine-lined, parklike clearings at the centers of settlements. 1

2

What gifts engender

Plate 1. The Mendi Valley, looking southward along the government road to Mendi town (the airstrip is visible in the distance). Grassland, gardens, and stands of casuarina pines in the foreground. As a result of Champion's patrol, a government station was set up soon afterward (with Champion in charge), far to the south at Lake Kutubu. Most of the Mendi, however, saw white people for the first time only after the Australians moved their administrative headquarters for the Southern Highlands District (now Province) to the Mendi Valley in 1950, establishing it at a place the people call Murump. Western travelers' accounts, such as those of Hides and of Champion, remark on the unlikely familiarity of Highlanders' style of life. Hides (1936:88) exclaimed, "I thought of pretty little farming areas of Australia, scores of them, in a setting of great rolling timbered plains." Instead of sparse populations of slash-and-burn cultivators (more common in the tropics), here were large, settled populations "like the sand," which achieved densities of more than four hundred persons per square mile in places. Highlanders appeared to be masters of a sophisticated farming system; based overwhelmingly on the intensive cultivation of sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), this system involved techniques of drainage, mulching, and soil conservation, required little or no fallowing, and supported large herds of domesticated pigs as well as large numbers of people. The people Hides and O'Malley met appeared to them to be well off: "We were in a land of plenty," Hides declared. This was a reference perhaps as

3

Mendi coming into view

much to the attitude of the people as to their objective circumstances. He could not get his hosts to accept the steel tools, cloth, and beads he offered in recompense for the food they had given him and his troop. Instead, they showed him their own green stone axes and their necklaces of Job's tear seeds, which they preferred. Dismayed, he learned that had he brought along cowries and mother-of-pearl shells, these would have been accepted eagerly; the Huli, like the Mendi and other Highland peoples, had a complex system of exchange in which shells, pigs, and other valuables - some produced locally and others obtained through trade - were given as gifts at marriages and funerals and on other occasions, ceremonial and mundane. Their involvement in exchange and their concern with shell wealth led some subsequent anthropological observers to call Highlanders (and other New Guineans who share these interests) "primitive capitalists" (Pospisil 1963; Epstein 1968; Finney 1973). This characterization was bolstered indirectly by anthropological studies, beginning in earnest during the 1950s and 1960s, on leadership and politics (e.g., Read 1959; P. Brown 1963; Strathern 1966; Meggitt 1967; Berndt and Lawrence 1971). These studies presented Highland societies as egalitarian, and leadership as achieved rather than as inherited. Highland leaders ("big-men") are self-made men, entrepreneurs with a flair for oratory and for political organizing, whose ambition for prestige obtainable through success at competitive ceremonial wealth distributions motivates their productive efforts. Yet, as we might suppose, the political economy of the region is quite different from that of Europe and North America. Production and the circulation of wealth are organized without the benefit of a market economy; ceremonial gift exchanges constitute one component of a decentralized system capable (at least in the central Highlands) of linking together thousands of people living in several high valleys, speaking different languages, and belonging to many tribal groups, through a largely egalitarian political process quite different from that of Western states. This economic and political structuring constitutes a challenge to the persistent assumption that the development of social scale and complexity of organization involves major concessions to hierarchy and to centralization, particularly to stratification and state forms of organization (see, for anthropological examples, Sahlins 1963; Spooner 1972; S. Polgar 1975; Cohen and Service 1978). For reasons relevant to a changing Papua New Guinea, and arguably beyond its borders as well, we may wish to understand indigenous egalitarian institutions better: how decisions are made and disputes resolved; how increasing scale is managed without fundamental transformations of structure; and how individual differences in energy, commitment, and skill are accommodated. Our empirical understanding of relatively egalitarian polities comes mostly from the study of extremely small-scale and economically unproductive for-

4

What gifts engender

aging societies (see Lee 1979; Leacock 1981; Woodburn 1982; see also Sahlins 1972, Chapter I). 1 What one might venture to call "democracy" among foragers like the Kalahari !Kung San is often said to be the outcome of the naturalistic ecological constraints of a mobile existence: an existence that is antimaterialist, underproductive, and communal by reason of necessity. Whatever the value of the conventional views about egalitarianism derived from the study of foragers (which both Lee and Sahlins criticize), Highlanders do not fit this model. Their decentralized and predominantly egalitarian political relationships are reproduced on an impressive demographic and economic scale. Moreover, there does not appear to be any simple correlation between economic intensification and the development of political centralization or inequality in the Highlands. In fact, both regional comparisons (Modjeska 1982) and archaeologically and ethnographically informed speculations concerning long-term change (Golson 1982) point in the opposite direction, as do some analyses of more recent transformations (see Strathern 1971 for comments on the "democratization" of ceremonial exchange in colonial Papua New Guinea). The experience of the Mendi and their neighbors provides us with a demonstration that a radical kind of democracy is possible on a scale not commonly found in Western experiments with political anarchism. Highlanders' life-style presents other analytical anomalies. In contrast to some other egalitarian peoples, Highlanders are not communal in spirit; their manner of organizing work and their way of motivating material transactions appear to be individualistic. Personal ambition and a competitive logic characterize wealth exchange and social relations generally. Nor do Highlanders follow what Sahlins (1972) called the "Zen road to affluence." Their intensive and pervasive involvement in gift exchange ensures a high demand for pearl shells, pigs, and other valuables. What is more, central Highland exchange systems are "competitive" (see Strathern 1971): One gift engenders a return, each creating new social obligations, which must be acquitted in order that balance - a critical objective - be achieved over the long term. The expandable demand for wealth generated by competitive gift exchanges may help account for the productivity of the economy of the region.2 It may also account for the observation that the economy of the Mendi, like that of other Highland peoples, appears to have been stimulated and not simply inflated by the influx of pearl shells and other exchange wealth accompanying the arrival of Westerners (Strathern 1971; Gregory 1982b; Lederman 1982). The recent efflorescence of ceremonial exchange may also have been attributable to the abolition of tribal warfare undertaken by the Australian administration in its effort to establish political control of the Highlands region. But the imposed peace does not entirely account for it. The response of Highland political economies to alien influences reflected a long-term indigenous trend toward expansion and intensification. At the least, garden production had been expanding and intensifying during the few centuries before

5

Mendi coming into view

contact (Golson 1977, 1981, 1982; Watson 1977; see also Lacey 1981; Modjeska 1982; Lederman 1986). Any presumptions we might have about this as a static "land that time forgot" ought to be buried. In subsequent chapters, I will consider the social contexts of having and exchanging wealth that give Mendi "materialism," "individualism," and competitiveness their particular cultural meaning. An understanding of the ways in which the Mendi structure their social relationships, and of their conception of social accountability and social value, is central to an appreciation of the dynamism of Mendi history. The region and the population: background There are many answers to Sergeant Orai's question "What people are they?" We can answer it by means of sympathetic projections like those of Hides or by means of surveys, population statistics, and other descriptive techniques designed to facilitate cross-cultural comparison. The question can also be answered by the people in question themselves, whose stories describe how their forebears discovered and settled the land, explain the reasons for present-day alliances and hostilities between clans and tribes, and account for the recent appearance of the "red-skinned" people among them. No single sort of answer yields the whole truth. As much as one's sense of space and time differs when traveling by plane moving rapidly and viewing the ground from a distance - from when walking along a mountain trail, so much the understanding afforded by a scientific survey differs from that of the people being surveyed. Demography and geography reveal the manner and dimensions of the Western discovery and use of the place, as well as a global frame of reference. From this perspective, the Southern Highlands Province, at the center of Papua New Guinea, is the least accessible and least economically developed Highland province. It was the last major populated region to be brought under Australian administrative control: Administrative headquarters for the province were set up in the southern part of the Mendi Valley only during 1950-1, and the region was classified "restricted" (meaning that only government officers with armed police could travel there) until 1965, and at least one part of the province was not derestricted until 1977. The Australian administration began at once to improve the business climate by banning tribal fighting and by organizing local labor for road work, but the Southern Highlands remained relatively inaccessible for a long time. Only a fair-weather road connection to Mount Hagen, the nearest marketing center, was available until 1976, when the all-weather Highlands Highway (the only land route linking the Highlands with coastal towns and ports) was extended through Mendi town. As a result, the region became a significant site neither of expatriate plantations nor of locally run cash-cropping enter-

EAST SEPIK PROV. SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS ETHNIC GROUPS

WEST SEPIK PROV.

WESTERN HIGHLANDS PROVINCE MENDI/WOLA WESTERN PROV.

Ethnic/language boundary District and subdistrict centers Provincial government center

ETORO m' ONABASULO

CHIMBU PROV. Erave^----

POLE *% {KWARE SA U

irigV.'Mt. \ Murra

GULF PROVINCE Map 1.1. Southern Highlands Province (after Eastburn 1978). Scale: 1 inch = approximately 50 km.

7

Mendi coming into view

prises. The colonial history of the Southern Highlands was dominated instead by government administrators and missionaries (Ballard 1978). The result was a relatively equitable but exceedingly limited distribution of services and infrastructure to the various districts and subdistricts. That situation may soon change, however (see Simpson 1976, 1978): Soon after independence in 1975, the Southern Highlands Province applied directly to the World Bank for a grant to fund agronomic and public health research and commercial development. Awarded well over $20 million, and starting up slowly during 1978 and 1979, the Southern Highlands Project will probably have profound effects on the regional political economy. Most of the province's 237,000 inhabitants live in the high montane valleys between 1,400 and 2,400 meters above sea level, whereas approximately 8 percent live in lowland regions like the territory around Lake Kutubu, which was the first site of the old Southern Highlands District headquarters briefly during the late 1930s before World War II interrupted Australian involvement there (see Map 1.1). The highland valleys are separated by limestone ridges and by five volcanic cones. The largest of these mountains, Mount Giluwe (4,368 meters), forms a part of the eastern boundary of the Mendi Valley, separating it from Ialibu. The Mendi Valley itself is about 25 miles long and wedge shaped (see Map 1.2). It expands as one moves northward toward the hills of the Kandep area in Enga Province, where the northern Mendi have relatives and, in precontact times, used to travel to exchange southern products (such as tree oil from the Lake Kutubu people and pearl shells) for indigenous salt and renowned Kandep pigs. In addition to their Kandep connections to the northwest, the northern Mendi have kinship and trading relationships with people living in the northern part of the Lai Valley to their west and with Tambul residents living to their northeast. Although Mount Giluwe appears to present an insurmountable barrier between Mendi and Ialibu, inhabitants of these two Southern Highlands districts have a long history of contact via the walking tracks that mark that mountain's slopes. Today the Highlands Highway, which goes around the south side of Mount Giluwe, greatly facilitates such contacts. The valley contracts as one moves southward past Mendi town, which is located at a place called Murump on land ceded to the Australian authorities by clans living at Umbim and nearby localities. Residents of the lower Mendi Valley have kinship and trading relationships with people living even farther to the south, east, and west, in Kagua and Nembi, and southern Ialibu and Lai valleys. Linguistic relationships between Mendi and other parts of the province are complex. Perhaps two-thirds of the people living in the Mendi Valley speak a language that has been called Wola or Angal Heneng (referred to as ngail enenk in upper Mendi, the latter dialectical variant translating as "true [real] speech"). Some linguistic work has been carried out in Nipa, two valleys to

8

What gifts engender to KANDEP (ENGA PROVINCE)

to TAMBUL and MOUNT HAGEN (WESTERN HIGHLANDS

MOUNT GILUWE

Key: Area of high relief : Government road

LAI VALLEY

heedeiload ~—* Rivei Waparaga Local place name ~r-r~^f7-f[~ Boggy land

Map 1.2. The Mendi Valley. Scale: 1 inch = approximately 6 km.

the west of Mendi, by members of the United Church (Methodist) mission (see also Sillitoe 1979) and in the lower part of the Mendi Valley south of Mendi town. At least three dialects of the language exist; the variant spoken in the northeastern part of the valley (the Upper Mendi census division, where the present study was undertaken) differs in phonology and in some grammatical features from the variants found around Nipa and south of Mendi town. Although the area including Nipa, the Lai Valley, Mendi, and probably also the Nembi Plateau constitutes a linguistic unit, it does not follow that it is a cultural or political unit too.3 Speakers of Wola/Angal Heneng do not invariably have more to do with each other than they have to do with speakers of other languages. In fact, the residents of the western part of this language area in the Nipa district (those whom Sillitoe 1979 calls the Wola) appear to have as much in common with the Huli, their neighbors to the west in the Tari Basin (see Glasse 1968), as they do with eastern members of their own language group in the Mendi Valley,4 although they also have culturally distinctive practices. Conversely, the linguistic boundary in Upper Mendi be-

9

Mendi coming into view

tween Mendi speakers and those speaking Imbonggu (the Ialibu language) appears to have little meaning, at least in relationship to socioeconomic life. Imbonggu speakers in Upper Mendi follow Mendi social rules and differ from Imbonggu speakers in Ialibu (see Wormsley 1978). Therefore, when I refer to "the Mendi" in this study, I mean residents of the Mendi Valley regardless of their linguistic preferences (and especially people living to the northwest and northeast of Mendi town, where D'Arcy Ryan and I each conducted research). I will not be referring to the whole language community; indeed, to do so would be to gloss over significant differences. Waparaga (called "Wepra" by local residents), the community in which this study was conducted, is adjacent to the language boundary between Angal Heneng and Imbonggu speakers. The Suolol tribal territory, of which the Waparaga community is a part, straddles this boundary (as do other upper Mendi tribal territories) and is made up of localities both in the Imbongguspeaking northeast and in the Angal Heneng-speaking southwest. People in Waparaga speak one or the other language, often being at least passively competent in the language with which they do not primarily identify. Members of this tribe function as a social and political unit despite their linguistic diversity. The Mendi are aware of certain cultural differences between their own customary social relationships and those of their neighbors. For example, they distinguish their exchange system from that of the Enga, and their marriage customs from those of their Ialibu relatives and Huli acquaintances. We might bear in mind that in the New Guinea Highlands, as elsewhere, language differences do not always suggest social or cultural distance, nor do language similarities necessarily imply similar social structures. Differences in mode of life (whether or not differences in language are involved) do not imply any lack of contact either; both in the precolonial past and in the postcolonial present, the Mendi have interacted with foreigners while maintaining a sense of themselves. In 1979, approximately 40,000 people lived in the Mendi and Lai Valleys, a geographical region called the Mendi Subprovince (or District) and divided into five "census divisions" (CD): Karint, Upper Mendi (both located north of Mendi town), Kambiri, Undiri (both in the lower Mendi Valley) and the Lai Valley (west of the Mendi Valley), all of which are part of one Local Government Council. Land and population figures for Mendi District and for census division appear in Table 1.1. A look at the table indicates that the district as a whole, and northern Mendi (Karint and Upper Mendi CDs) in particular, is moderately densely populated by Highland standards.5 Government analysts do not consider the area to be land short, unlike the Chimbu and Enga Provinces. However, both expatriate and indigenous observers in the Province are worried. Since the population is increasing at an annual rate

10

What gifts engender

Table 1.1. Mendi district census divisions: land and population (1976)

Census division Lai Valley CD Karint CD Upper Mendi CD Kambiri CD Undid CD Total (Mendi District)

Population 8,842 8,505 9,170 5,629 5,126 37,272

Gross area (km2) 238 146 536 363 186 [l,469f

Est. arable land (km2)

Est. population density (persons per km2 arable)

152 124 186 290 126

58 69 49 19 41

878*

42

a

This figure was obtained by totaling up the individual Census Division figures. The Village Directorate (from which all the other figures were obtained) claims that the gross area for Mendi District equals 1,374 km2. b Lower land availability estimates for Mendi District were obtained by Simpson (1976), who reported the total District area as 1,258 km2. From this figure he deducted 500 km2 (land over 2,400 m in altitude above sea level unfit for cultivation for climatic reasons) and another 300 km2 (land unfit for cultivation for topographic reasons). Thus, total arable land = 458 km2. Using these figures and the Village Directorate population figures, we would conclude that District population density (1976) = 81 people per km2, or about 1.2 hectares per capita. Source: Village Directorate, 1976.

of two percent and commercial coffee and cattle projects (which use land extensively) are ongoing or planned, the land situation is changing for the worse (Simpson 1976, 1978). The region and the population: the social dynamics of land use Population density figures are notoriously hard to interpret. Various methods of measuring population density are used by researchers working in different places. No clear standards may be possible because of the varied uses people may make of the land and the diverse methods of cultivation people may employ. A change in techniques can make certain land arable that previously was not. A change in people's notion of what they want to produce can have the same effect. The adoption of sweet potato into the Highlands about four hundred years ago appears to have had the effect of opening up land at higher altitudes than people had previously cultivated. The introduction of commercial cattle projects into the Mendi Valley during the last decade or so has taken some of the best land out of food production. The remaining gardens may eventually become overtaxed; cattle is not a substitute for older products but rather constitutes an addition, with uses that

11

Mendi coming into view

often fall into the category of social investment or luxury rather than of subsistence. Land pressure may be created or alleviated without altering the quantitative ratio of man to land, but by changing the structure of demand or of production. Looking at Table 1.1, it might be noted that, although much of Upper Mendi CD land is classified as "unarable" because of rugged topography, altitude, or boggy conditions, this does not mean that the land is unusable or unused. It is important to know what standards of usage are being employed. Upper Mendi CD (in the northeast) is different from Karint CD (in the northwest) for its forested hills and for the boggy Egari Lake/Tonk River area. From an indigenous viewpoint, the bog is excellent pig-grazing land. It meant that residents of Upper Mendi (especially those of the localities in the northeastern corner of the valley), hard hit by the devastating frost of 1972, did not have to sacrifice their pig herds even though they had accepted rations of rice from the government during that crisis. From the same point of view, the forests are a source of firewood, housebuilding, and fencing materials, as well as other things to which people living in Karint do not have as ready access. On the other hand, because of the high altitude of their gardens, inhabitants of Upper Mendi are more in danger of losing their crop of tubers during a frost, a problem that people living in Karint do not appear to have as frequently. Such differences may become a reason for social interaction. For example, in 1978 many persons in Waparaga complained of local shortfalls in sweet potato production. Quite apart from the weekly market in Mendi town, the result was an acceleration in the trade of sweet potatoes for Papua New Guinea kina notes in the northern part of the valley. In order to appreciate the dynamics of Mendi land use, it is useful to understand something of the range of environmental resources available. The choices people make as to what resources they will emphasize and how they will exploit them result in a particular pattern of land use, a social structuring of their material world. Together with rainfall, altitude creates conditions that Southern Highlanders have used in shaping a particular way of life. Differences in altitude define the three land systems, or broad ecological zones, represented in the Southern Highlands Province: the lowlands (to 1,400 meters), the highlands (1,400 to 1,800 meters), and the high-altitude (1,800 to 2,400 meters) ecosystems (as defined in the Southern Highlands Province Integrated Rural Development Project report, Appendix Three). Less than 10 percent of the province's population, or about 20,000 people, live in the lowlands. The area is characterized by heavy rainfall and high temperatures the year round, as well as by extremely forbidding limestone country. Malaria and various other diseases are endemic. Lowlanders practice shifting cultivation on a long forest-fallow cycle, moving their settlements

12

What gifts engender

every five to fifteen years. From the point of view of the Highlanders, loweraltitude regions like Erave and Lake Kutubu are sources of valued forest products as well as dangerous poisons used by sorcerers. The highland area is the most densely populated of the three zones. About 75 percent of the population of the province lives there, with a gross population density of fifty-two persons per square kilometer (about one hundred forty-four per square mile). The climate in this zone is wet (although less so than in the lowlands) and does not display marked seasonal contrasts. The Mendi Valley receives about 112 inches of rain per year, less than the 120 to 130 inches average for this zone in the province as a whole. The highlands are above the altitude at which malaria is endemic; daily temperatures are lower than in the lowlands, and malaria-carrying mosquitoes do not thrive there. Highland agriculture is based on the sweet potato cultivated on a short, grass-fallow system (and often interplanted with sugar cane and greens, and nowadays also with European vegetables, such as cabbages, pumpkins, seallions, and tomatoes). Settlements are not relocated in response to the need to shift garden sites (although populations were occasionally displaced in the context of local warfare and intragroup disputes). In contrast to the lowlands, intensive agricultural practices (including mulched mounds, drainage ditches, and short fallow cycles) have eliminated the original forest vegetation everywhere in this area except on ridge crests and in protected groves. Grasslands predominate wherever sweet potato gardens are not actively cultivated. The high-altitude zone, a subdivision of the highland zone above 1,800 meters, is the zone in which most of the Upper Mendi CD is located. The high-altitude human population is restricted to the area below 2,400 meters (i.e., 8,000 feet). This altitude marks a practical limit to habitation because above it the maturation time of sweet potato is more than twelve months long (as opposed to five to seven months at lower altitudes), and cultivation is impractical also because of a high susceptibility to frost damage. The area above 2,400 meters is used for its forest resources. The Suolol tribal territory, where this study was mostly conducted, extends from the Mendi River at 1,950 to 2,000 meters (or about 7,000 feet) in the southwest up to the forested crests of two ridges at above 2,400 meters and then down again about 200 meters to the flat, boggy pig-grazing country through which a river called Tonk meanders at the foot of Mount Giluwe in the far northeast. Most of the Suolol's gardens are located between 2,000 and 2,200 meters. About 15 percent of the province's population, or about 35,000 persons, live in this high-altitude zone. Overall, about 200,000 persons live in similar environments - mostly in the Enga and Western Highlands Provinces. Eric Waddell has described the agricultural practices of Enga high-altitude culti-

13

Mendi coming into view

Plate 2. Sweet potato garden surrounded by grass fallow. In Upper Mendi, sweet potatoes are planted in large, mulched mounds. Gardens contain mounds with sweet potatoes in various stages of growth. vators (Waddell 1972); his detailed description is relevant to the Upper Mendi. Because the area is subject to periodic frosts and droughts, the intensive cultivation techniques found in the Upper Mendi and places like it have been explained as means of buffering the sweet potato crop against frost damage. The large composted mounds in which members of Suolol and other Upper Mendi tribes plant their sweet potato vines raise the soil temperature by a few potentially critical degrees, as well as improving the quality of nutrients available to the crop. A reference to environmental exigencies, however, only partially explains such intensive cultivation practices. The ancestors of modern Highlanders probably did not occupy high-altitude zones. The environmental conditions under which Highlanders live, and with which they must deal in one way or another, are not abstract necessities but an historical consequence of choices their forebears made. Asking why some people now live under these conditions ought to lead us to wonder about the reasons for population growth and movement in the highland and high-altitude regions over the past few hundred years. It leads us to wonder about the reasons for the relatively recent (400year-old) adoption into Highland farming systems of the sweet potato - a tuber that, compared with others that were available for centuries before it

14

What gifts engender

arrived, is known to produce well at higher altitudes and to be particularly good pig fodder, making high-altitude habitation and pig raising possible (although not necessary). In fact, Highlanders have considerably altered the ecosystems in which they have lived. Their intensive methods of cultivation transformed the original montane forests into grasslands (Bowers 1968). Needless to say, the effects of their movements and productive interventions in their physical environment have been neither entirely intentional nor foreseeable. Some of their choices and behavior resulted in misfortune. Whereas high-altitude habitation was favored by some people for the access it gave them to pig-grazing land, forest resources, and trade routes, the frosts to which this geographical zone is subject are capable of destroying the crop and of causing famine and social disruption (Waddell 1975). Such facts imply that population density and other aspects of land-population relationships can be evaluated only in relation to what particular groups of people wish to produce, the patterning of their demand for the products of the land, and the choices they make about how they will use the land to meet their requirements. Like production systems elsewhere in the world, the intensive production systems of the Highlands reflect socially determined needs. With such needs shaping the goals of production, the land is a means that is sometimes used sensitively but that is frequently transformed in the course of its use, and often with unpredictable long-term effects. The "subsistence bias" and another approach to Highland political economies Although we cannot account for intensive agriculture in the Highlands in terms of environmental exigencies, we must recognize that the inhabitants have impressed a particular structure of demand upon those environments. We will not be able to say what that structure is as long as our understanding is impeded by the "subsistence bias" evident in much of the current literature on Highland economies. Studies of agricultural production have generally been conducted independently of studies of ceremonial (or gift) exchange by different types of researchers. Consequently, it has been possible for agricultural economists, ecological researchers, and agronomists to write about Highland political economies as "subsistence systems" and to ignore the crucial link between garden production and gift exchange most concretely embodied in Highland pig herds (Colwell 1982; Fisk 1962, 1964, 1971; Fisk and Shand 1969; see also Crittenden 1983 and Simpson 1980, who comment critically on the assumptions of the Southern Highlands Rural Development Project).6 This study began as an anthropological investigation of the relationship between production and exchange. When I first planned the research on which this book is based, I accepted as given that there would be a systemic rela-

15

Mendi coming into view

tionship between production and indigenous forms of exchange, and I planned to take as my subject the sociocultural contexts of production. I assumed that tacit and explicit conventions concerning proper behavior between categories of kin would more or less define the mode of "distribution," that is, the ways in which access to culturally valued resources and products for consumption and exchange are controlled (see, e.g., Gudeman 1978). Expectations concerning proper behavior among kin and other significant categories of person would also have an effect on the kind and quantity of goods required at different social occasions - weddings, funerals, and the like - and on the frequency and organization of those events. That is, I assumed that in the New Guinea Highlands, an understanding of the social relations through which production and distribution are organized would require study of exchange and social structures (Bloch 1975; Godelier 1972; Sahlins 1972).7 Once thefieldwork was under way, these assumptions focused my attention on Mendi exchange practices. To understand the system of conventions, tacit and explicit, pertaining to the ways access to culturally valued resources and products are controlled required that I supplement the existing anthropological emphasis on ' 'ceremonial" exchange - which generally refers to periodic public events sponsored by social groups and organized by leaders - with an analysis of informal exchanges of pigs, pearl shells and money that take place everyday between kin and friends. As it turned out, this shift in emphasis was productive and helped shape a framework for understanding Mendi society that I had not expected when initially planning the research. The rest of this book is devoted to demonstrating the significance, in Mendi, of two distinct structural principles8 or forms of sociality: exchange partnership relations (the twem principle) and clanship (the principle of sem relations), the first being most clearly revealed in everyday contexts of exchange and the second especially evident during large-scale ceremonial presentations. These two forms of sociality are densely articulated in the social experience of the Mendi. Their articulation, however, is not smooth; a tension between them underlies political process in Mendi, and is also central to an understanding of the structure of production. That is, first, a dual perspective on ceremonial and everyday exchanges sheds light on Mendi politics by revealing the structural basis of social inequality. Anthropologists have given Highlanders a reputation for egalitarianism, which by and large they deserve.9 But inequality between men and women has long been recognized as a theme of Highland social life (Read 1952; Meggitt 1964). The meaning and value of distinctions made in a gender idiom, and the differential powers ascribed to men and women, are tacitly and explicitly contested within Highland societies, among Highlanders themselves (M. Strathern 1972; see also Meigs 1983). Anthropological discussions of male-female antagonism and of male dominance have proliferated (for recent examples, see Herdt 1982, and especially Keesing's overview in that

16

What gifts engender

volume), but their implications are hard to evaluate, given the predominant emphasis in Highland research on big-men and large-scale ceremonial prestations. This emphasis, though important for other reasons, has produced a partial picture both of the gender system and of social inequality and political relations among men. The nature of male leadership and the significance of formal public events themselves will not be understood as long as they are inadequately contextualized with information about ordinary people and the interactions and transactions taking place in everyday settings. Second, a dual focus on ceremonial prestations and on everyday exchange also contributes to a comparative understanding of the structure and goals of production in Mendi by clarifying its particular cultural character. On the one hand, Highlanders have been called "primitive capitalists" because of their concern with wealth and apparent individualism (Pospisil 1963; Finney 1973). On the other hand, Highlanders are considered subsistence farmers. Ethnographic descriptions of redistributive exchange in Highland societies, such as Andrew Strathern's (1971) account of the moka system, or Mervyn Meggitt (1974) on the Te (or tee; see also Feil 1984), ought to have been significant counterweights to both a market interpretation and a subsistence interpretation of Highland economies. But they have not proved sufficient. Perhaps the subjects of these ethnographic accounts were too easily brushed aside as exotic ritual events by researchers concerned with quotidian economic realities. Everyday exchange behavior and other mundane details could themselves be treated as transparent - as unproblematic for cross-cultural analysis - as long as their specific cultural structuring was inadequately described. A more comprehensive picture of indigenous socioeconomic relations requires that one be able to encompass everyday practices and ceremonial events within one frame and that the culturally constituted character of each be delineated. This picture demonstrates the specificity of local notions about individual interests and their social contexts and clarifies how they differ from analogous notions in market societies. If a dual emphasis on everyday exchanges and public ceremonies highlights the fact that intensive production in Mendi can be accounted for neither by reference to subsistence needs alone, nor to capitalist market mechanisms, what can be said, in a positive way, about the social goals of production in Mendi? Only a framework for understanding can be suggested here, by way of introduction. The key to understanding the structure of demand, and consequently the level of production, is to know something about the relationship among production, pigs, and exchange. Sweet potatoes are the main agricultural product produced by the Mendi, but only about half the crop can be considered strictly as food for human consumption. The other half is fodder for herds of domesticated pigs.10 Pigs are also eaten, and most people look forward to pork meals, which occur for one reason or another throughout the year.11 But pigs are not simply good to

17

Mendi coming into view

eat; they are also a form of wealth and have value insofar as they are made to stand for social relationships. Eating together generally, but especially sharing and exchanging pork and pigs, demonstrates and constitutes social connectedness. Large pig herds are an artifact of sociopolitical relations that create a high demand for pigs.12 A number of researchers (e.g., Brookfield 1971, 1973; Watson 1977; Rubel and Rosman 1978) have noted the capacity of Highland exchange systems to create an expandable or escalating demand for pigs as wealth (if not as food). These systems are not all alike. The nature, timing, and organization of exchange ceremonies vary from society to society in the Highlands. Such facts as whether people exchange live pigs or pork, whether they have a system of credit or one that emphasizes "home production" (Strathern 1969a), and whether they organize most of their ceremonies as large, corporate clan affairs under the direction of a big-man or as smaller affairs are relevant to an analysis of the organization and level of production in particular places. These variations affect the structure of the pig herd (the numbers of pigs per capita, as well as each herd's age, sex, and size distribution), and with it the level of sweet potato production. The connection among garden production, pigs, and exchange is central to an understanding not only of contemporary variation in Highland political economies but also of long-term historical processes. These have included precolonial population movements and population growth, the dynamics of clan structure, the expansion of anthropogenic grasslands and other indications of the geographical spread of intensive production systems in the Highlands, and evidence for the recent, rapid adoption of the sweet potato. Highland production systems had been intensive for thousands of years before the introduction of sweet potatoes; throughout this period, pigs had been a factor. As Watson and others have pointed out, however, sweet potatoes are ideal pig fodder (Brookfield 1973; Watson 1977). The adoption of sweet potatoes into Highland production systems beginning about four hundred years ago most likely facilitated increased pig production, just as it made possible an expansion of populations into high-altitude zones. It did not actually necessitate such changes, however. There would likely have been nothing particularly significant about the introduction of the sweet potato had there not been a high and expandable demand for pigs as valuables in systems of exchange.13 Thus, in order better to understand variations in Highland political economies and the dynamic social processes that produced them, we must learn more about the kinds of demands that exchange systems place on production. Paula Rubel and Abraham Rosman (1978) organized information on contemporary variations in Highland and Lowland New Guinea exchange systems by means of a transformational model that also has implications for attempts to understand Highlands history. Different structures of exchange are character-

18

What gifts engender

ized by different degrees of regional integration and are found in societies that vary in terms of population density, agricultural intensity, and pigs per capita. Rubel and Rosman explicitly relate their transformational model to hypotheses concerning agricultural evolution. In particular, they recognize that exchange systems make demands on systems of production and that the elaboration of exchange systems is limited in turn by the ability of their environments to produce what they demand. The present account differs from that of Rubel and Rosman in avoiding the idiom of evolution and qualifying that of structure. That is, I do not consider social transformations a matter of "evolution" (i.e., a matter of natural or structural law), nor do I think that analyses phrased solely in terms of social "structures" are helpful in an effort to understand the transformational possibilities of particular culturally and historically bounded societies. In my view, the point of a structural analysis of social rules is to enable us better to understand people's social experience. Analytically identified structural transformations become culturally and politically significant when they correspond to a felt change in the meaning and morality of human action - to a change in what is "thinkable." In the final analysis, transformations are (whether more or less deliberately) the outcome of human agency, and not of structural necessity (Thompson 1978). They are the product of struggles over the control of the meaning of human action, and to take account of them means writing historically no less than structurally.14 It is toward a deeper understanding of these sorts of struggles that this analysis of social relations and local-level political history is offered. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 explore the character and problematic articulation of sent and twem relations. The structural contradiction between corporate clan and network relations provides a framework for understanding the organizational limits and the dynamism of the Mendi political economy. For the Mendi case, the discussion in Chapter 5 and 6 is meant to show how the articulation of network and group relations is actualized and negotiated in the practical historical experience of Mendi men and women. In Chapter 7, the relevance of this analysis for an understanding of contemporary social change is suggested.

2 Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

"In those days, no one slept well at night. Now those times are over. That's good; I am pleased," Kundapen told me. The old man had just concluded an account of the reasons for the age-old antagonism between his own tribe and their neighbors. Not everyone agreed with his sentiments, however. Mel [my thoughtful field assistant, who had been a youngster during the 1950s when the Australians imposed peace on Mendi tribes, and who had spent his early twenties in Port Moresby working in the Papua New Guinea army mess] shook his head and asserted that for his part, he wished that he still lived in the days of those "cowboys"! l

Introduction The social geography of the Highlands is a patchwork of clans - landholding groups of kin - linked to one another in political alliances or separated by enmity. In precolonial times, enduring antagonisms between particular groups, erupting into violence on occasion, were dominant facts of life (see, e.g., Meggitt 1977). Warfare inhibited travel, restricting the geographical elaboration of both personal and clan relationships and wealth exchanges. The endemic state of war - more accurately "Warre" in Sahlins's (1968, 1972: Chapter 4) sense - might have been both a means and a result of a political system in which access to force was decentralized. Still, if it was the reflection of a self-help attitude critical to the reproduction of egalitarian social relations, the readiness of tribesmen to take up arms in defense of their interests was not the only means of sustaining such a social order, nor were its modalities entirely egalitarian, as we shall see. The suppression of tribal fighting, undertaken during the 1950s and 1960s by the Australian colonial authorities, transformed the social landscape in Mendi, as it did elsewhere in the Highlands. But despite the loss of political autonomy implied by pacification and the national state, even during the early 1980s the Mendi displayed an active attitude to their rights and interests ap19

20

What gifts engender

propriate to an independent people. They accepted joint responsibility as members of clans (sent onda) for contemporary "sorcery" deaths (see the section on "Individual Action, Collective Responsibility" later in this chapter, and note 5), as well as for those that occurred years ago during the times of tribal wars. Large festivals and wealth exchanges were still organized on behalf of allies killed in battle during the 1930s and 1940s, or in order to gain back land that had been abandoned as a result of the fighting. Therefore, to the extent that the John Wayne movies Mel had seen in Port Moresby (without the benefit of dubbing into any of the many languages he speaks) conveyed to him a sense of autonomy and power, the regret he expressed in his commentary, in the epigraph above, aptly reflected an era in which young people of an age to begin taking over from Kundapen's generation are becoming aware of what they all may have lost.2 With the curtailment of tribal war-making powers during the past twenty years, the rationale for coordinated group action has been changing. Pacification and a system of roads have made large-scale organization easier but less pressing militarily. At the same time, it is unclear how an introduced social order expressed in wage work, commercial projects, provincial government, and the missions will articulate with indigenous structures of social relationship. The possibilities will be poorly understood without a sense of the organizational complexity of the indigenous society. No meaningful comparisons between John Wayne's cowboys and Kundapen's warriors can be made - much less any evaluation of the two - until one understands the Mendi social categories twem and sent. This chapter focuses on the meaning and organization of relationships between people as members of sent, a term that can be glossed as "family": sem kank ("small family": lineage and subclan) or sem onda ("large family": clan and tribe, or "clan cluster" in D'Arcy Ryan's (1961) apt but idiosyncratic terminology). The analysis of social structure in the Highlands of New Guinea has generated a large and contentious literature that has by now gone beyond the questions of the 1960s concerning the inappropriateness of patrilineal descent models (see, e.g., Glasse 1959; Barnes 1962; Brown 1962; Meggitt 1965; Strathern 1969b) to questions concerning the very existence of corporate groups there and the substitution of models of sociality based on exchange and other factors (Strathern 1973; Wagner 1974; Feil 1984; Sillitoe 1979; Leroy 1979a, b) during the 1970s. The application of classic African descent models has largely failed in Highlands research; societies like that of the Mendi wind up in a residual category labeled "loosely structured." But as Roger Keesing wrote, A society might qualify as ''loosely structured" if people went around surprising one another. When they go around surprising the ethnographer but not one another, the ethnographer must be looking for the wrong kind of structure in the wrong way. [1971:24]

21

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

Keesing, Raymond Kelly (1977), Roy Wagner (1967, 1974, 1981), and others (Bourdieu 1978, Kuper 1983) have argued cogently that adequate analytical models are likely to involve a complex articulation of structural principles. In the following discussion I shall argue that the notion of corporateness does account for important social and cultural facts about sem: members of one sem onda constitute themselves as an enduring social group with a name, an estate, and an existence independent of its current membership. But I shall also argue that, in Mendi, clan relationships cannot be fully understood without an account of personal exchange partnerships (twem), a social category with which sem onda contrasts. Several solutions to the loose structures impasse have been proposed to account for data concerning the societies of the Highland fringe south of Mendi (e.g., Etoro, Kaluli). They identify kinds of complexity different from what I describe here (see, e.g., Wagner 1967; Kelly 1977). Whereas a synthesis of these approaches with analyses of central Highland societies (e.g., Huli, Mendi, Enga, Melpa, Chimbu) ought to be attempted, each was designed to account for specific ethnographic facts. Even central Highland social structures do not necessarily lend themselves to a unitary solution: In Mendi and other parts of the Southern Highlands, where there are many contexts in which obligations to personal networks of exchange partners have priority and where there are fewer contexts in which obligations to fellow clan members are invoked, the analytical challenge to incorporate networks into a general account of social relationships is great. In Mae Enga society, Mount Hagen, and other parts of the northern Highlands, where the corporate obligations of clan members are more frequently stressed, this analytical problem may not exist. In other words, I do not expect my analysis of Mendi social relations to apply to other Highland societies in any simple way. Different analytical emphases in the existing ethnographic literature appear to reflect empirical differences in Highland societies, and not simply a theoretical disagreement to be resolved. Nevertheless, neither the theoretical nor the empirical distinctions have been adequately drawn so far; this analysis of the Mendi case aims to inch us closer to a truly comparative understanding of the region. To present Mendi sociality as the product of a complex system of relations, I will initially foreground each of its significant parts in turn before examining their articulation. This chapter is concerned primarily with clan relations and specifies the kinds of collectivities they create. Individual action, collective responsibility As an outsider, one first encounters sem as names like "Kurelka" and "Yansup" in the context of conversations about events (deaths, disputes and festivals) and about individual affiliation and participation in events. The way in which these names are used in Mendi poses some problems of interpretation.

22

What gifts engender

It seems clear at first that "Kurelka" and other sent names refer to collectivities of people. The question is, what sort of collectivities? Sent names signify social relationships projected backward in time (see the section "Names, Categories, and the Reality of Groups" later in this chapter). By means of clan names, individuals assert an identity or equivalence with some of those people who have preceded them. People living today conceive themselves to be jointly accountable for the past actions of others (some of whom no longer alive) by virtue of their common sent onda identification.3 Moreover, at the same time as sent onda membership puts one in a structured relationship with members of one's own clan, it distinguishes one from people identified with other such groups. Relationships of another sort pertain between people belonging to different sent; however, the relationship is analogous to that which former members of different sent had with each other in the past. There are two points here. First, the rationale for coordinated action by the contemporary members of a sem onda is often represented by the Mendi as an historical product, the result of past actions by people of the "same" clan. Clans constitute objective groups, which the Mendi believe to persist despite a changing membership. Second, members of a clan have a joint responsibility not simply for the past actions of contemporary members but also for the actions of their long-dead fellow clan members: people they might never have known and actions in which they might never themselves have taken part. Being a group member means being accountable for actions by other people in the past taken (or construed to have been taken) in the group's name. Similarly, actions in the group's name today constrain the choices of future members. Because the Mendi talk about clans as if they are historically continuous despite a changing membership, and because they recognize the joint responsibility of current members for the past actions of previous members, I interpret Mendi sem onda as "corporate" groups.4 (There are other reasons as well, to which I will turn shortly.) That is not to say that the boundaries of corporate responsibility are always obvious. The Mendi debate among themselves how one determines whether someone in the past did in fact belong to the "same" sem onda as oneself, what in fact that person did, and where responsibility may rest. Arguments about present-day responsibilities and the meaning and moral value of conflicting courses of action turn on alternative interpretations of local history. But while people may disagree as to their accountability for particular acts by members of the same sem onda in the past, by and large they do not question the legitimacy of the general principle of corporate responsibility and continuity. Death is an important context for the active reproduction of corporate groups. Most deaths - all except those of infants and very old people - are attributed to human agency: sorcery (torn) or face-to-face combat. Thus deaths demand

23

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

Plate 3. Pearl shells displayed before a war-death compensation ceremony (ol tenga). The shells, set up on banana leaves and ferns, rest against one of the long Pig Festival houses (sai anda).

the discovery of a responsible social agent, and to that end, divination rituals, dream interpretation, and extensive discussion and debate may occupy a community long after a burial. In the end, a clan or subclan (and not an individual) will admit that evidence points to someone among them and will accept collective responsibility for making a ceremonial prestation to the group of the person who died. Such corporate gifts - called ol tenga - do not exactly constitute admissions of guilt, but they do repair breaches between the groups by helping replace the loss of a member. Organizing ol tenga demonstrates a clan's corporate identity in relation to other groups and reinforces or alters intergroup alignments. In 1979 two members of Pulumsem, a subclan affiliated with the Kurelka clan (one of the two local clans in the Senkere community) made an ol tenga to members of Mesa, another Kurelka affiliate (refer to Table 2.1). The death in question had occurred a few years before. No member of Pulumsem was accused of killing the Mesa man. Rather, a member of Molsem (the other local clan) was said to have killed him. Why, then, was Pulumsem compensating Mesa for the death? Tasupae, an old Pulumsem man, explained with this interpretation of community history (what follows being a slightly condensed paraphrase of his words):

24

What gifts engender

Table 2.1. Clan organization in the Senkere community Sem onda name

Sem kank name

Kurelka (sometimes called Mesa-Kurelka)

Olsem Ipulpirisema Keyosem* Pulumsem Tonkpisem Pulumsem Punginsem Mesa Mesa Tonkpisem Kalap-Kurelka (one representative in Senkere area, others living in the northern part of Suolol territory) Toleke Anksuolc Keyosem Taikpilsem" Senkere-Molsem Pesal-Molsem Ombisem^ Saolsem* Molmanda-Molsem Molmanda-Molsem Temsem^ Kombal-Molsem Pombresem Napsem Koenpisem

Molsem

Major affiliated sem kank

Olsem

Note: Only groups in the Senkere community are included; other parts of Kurelka and Molsem live in the Kuma area, in the northern Suolol territory, along with other affiliated groups. Keyosem of Olsem and of Anksuol are two different groups of people who intermarry. Tonkpisem of Pulumsem and of Mesa appear to be the same group. "This group will not have heirs in the next generation. This group immigrated to Senkere in the present generation. This group immigrated to Senkere several generations ago.

Wane, the son of Wia [of Pulumsem], was working in a garden on the outskirts of the settlement when he heard the sounds of fighting. He picked up his bow and arrows and ran down the Pual road towards the noise. Men of Surup [a neighboring allied group] and of Kurelka were fighting one another. Wane joined in the fight to help his Kurelka brothers, and was speared by Yabi of Kalap-Kurelka, who was helping the Surup men. Yabi told his Surup friends to call out that they had killed Wane, which they did. Later on, men of Pulumsem found out that they had been deceived - that a fellow Kurelka and not a Surup had killed their brother. Wia was angry, and it is said that he obtained poison in order to avenge his dead son, convincing a Mesa man named Takamu to help him. Some time after this, a clansman of Yabi, named Puyu, died. People concluded that Mesa Takamu had killed Puyu with the poison provided by Wia. Now, both Pulumsem and Kalap had suffered a loss. All of this took place sometime before the white people came to Mendi [about forty years ago].

25

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

Much later, only a few years ago, a leader of Mesa died. Other Mesa leaders accused the Kalap man Nande [who lives on Mesa land], thinking that he had been motivated to the deed by the desire to avenge the death of his clan father, Puyu. As a result of a divination ritual [suko], Mesa men also suspected that Nande had been helped by a Molsem man named Tumnaik. Nande's and Tumnaik's involvement and responsibility remained to be determined, and mutual accusations by members of Kalap-Kurelka, Molsem, and Mesa were unresolved even in 1979. But while they were arguing with Kalap-Kurelka and Molsem, Mesa also asked Pulumsem to make them an ol

tenga because, as Tasupae noted, "all of this trouble had started with Pulumsem, on account of Wane and Wia." Members of Pulumsem agreed that they had been responsible, and wanting to set things right between themselves and their Mesa clan brothers, they made the ol tenga payment. They were still on good terms when I visited Mendi again in 1983. As Tasupae said, "We sit and laugh and eat together." Ol tenga payments are made to compensate allies for losses they suffer helping the "root men" of a fight (ol sont te). If deaths are not compensated with wealth, the Mendi say that bad feelings will lead to further killings, and the groups involved will find it increasingly difficult to cooperate on joint projects (like pig kills - see Chapter 6) or to stand against external dangers (including both occasional disputes with allies like the Surup, and the ever present threat of war with their major enemies). A prestation breaks the cycle of deaths, in the Mendi view, by calming the angry feelings of members of the bereaved group (see Lederman 1981 and Chapter 5). The limits of this process - the limits of the Mendi political system - occur where one finds groups that do not compensate each other for deaths for which they admit responsibility. Major enemies each compensate their own allies for the deaths and injuries the latter suffer while aiding them in their battles. In Tasupae's history, there was never a suggestion that a Pulumsem man had been directly responsible for the Mesa leader's recent death, which had occasioned the ol tenga request. Rather, the alliance between Wia and Takamu, contracted more than a generation ago, was at issue. The men of Pulumsem agreed to the Mesa interpretation of local history, implicating individuals associated with Pulumsem in a chain of events leading to the recent Mesa death, and therefore they agreed to make an ol tenga in the name of Pulumsem. Although Pulumsem Wia and Mesa Takamu were represented as having acted as individuals, members of Pulumsem accepted joint responsibility to make the payment to Mesa. Two of them (one being a lineal descendant of Wia, the other being from another Pulumsem lineage) actively organized the payment and other Pulumsem members helped the two informally. The Pulumsem/Mesa ol tenga was characteristic of death-compensation prestations in Mendi. In this case and others, certain individual actions are accorded a group significance in political discourse, and those interpretations

26

What gifts engender

are legitimized by means of public prestations of wealth. Mesa Takamu might have acted to help Pulumsem Wia for personal reasons, but his actions came to have a meaning for his sent as a whole. Similarly, whereas Wia was said to have individually and secretly obtained poison, the people of Mesa deemed Pulumsem accountable for his actions.5 Conversely, Kalap Yabi was said to have been helping his Surup affines and tried with their cooperation to subsume his own act to Surup group responsibility. Other Kurelka did not agree, however; instead they held him and his subclan brothers responsible, interpreting Kalap Puyu's death as a repayment for Yabi's act. This way of thinking, wherein individual actions may come to represent those of a group (and sometimes contrary to the intentions of the actor), contrasts with everyday Mendi expressions of individual autonomy and freedom of action. Mendi social morality is very similar to that of the Mount Hagen people described by A. Strathern (1979a). If one inquires after the motivation of another person's actions, the Mendi (like the Hageners) typically answer that one cannot know what another person is thinking, or see another person's thoughts. As in Mount Hagen and elsewhere in the Highlands, the Mendi believe that thoughts or intentions (kone) are invisible things perceptible only to invisible beings. As Strathern wrote with reference to the Hageners, The ghosts see intentions, but the living do not, until overt actions are performed or until the ghosts make the living sick so as to reveal an uncompleted intention or a completed wrongdoing. Just as the ghosts themselves are unseen, so they are able to see the unseen; they belong to the element of thought and apprehension which is kept private from others in life. [1979a: 103] Another person's actions are simply ''what pleases him or her" (ipun turiom), and nobody else's business. Although much motivation is understood to be personal, private, and autonomous, the effects of an individual's actions may be construed as social, public, and interdependent to the extent that each person stands for his clan. Any member may be taken as representing his sem, despite himself, from the point of view of members of other groups.6

Individual autonomy, political participation, and leadership The internal politics of Mendi clans are organized in what we might term a "participatory" style, meshing individual and collective purposes without a mediating central authority. In contrast, Western political theory takes the State by and large as a given. Our models of democracy were developed during the period of the birth of capitalism in Europe by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the theorists of the American Revolution (among others). They presume an adversarial political process in which one elects representatives and in which, in order to make decisions for action, votes are taken,

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Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

with the majority ruling. This process rests on the assumption that "the citizen's interests are in constant conflict" (Mansbridge 1980: 3). Therefore, ideally, the political institutions of the democratic state are designed for the equal protection of individual interests. Jane Mansbridge, a political theorist who studied participatory organizations and cooperatives in the United States, argues that another form of democracy, which she terms "unitary," also exists. This form is based on faceto-face discussion that proceeds until a consensus is reached (not a secret ballot vote), and on community participation (rather than representation in a central government) as the means of political interaction. The central assumption of a "unitary democracy," according to Mansbridge, is that the citizens have interests in common. Mansbridge claims that these two forms of democracy are not generally distinguished in the literature on political types. As a result, our understanding of cooperatives has suffered. Finally, she argues that we need to learn how the two might be knit together. On the one hand, interests do not always conflict and adversary procedures are not always necessary. On the other hand, conflicting interests exist even in cooperatives, whose members ought not to expect to achieve consensus on all issues. Political action in Mendi and other Highland societies (where villages retain a greater degree of economic and political autonomy than do the cooperatives Mansbridge studied) provides an example of how these kinds of democratic process might be combined. In Mendi the interests of members of village communities are understood by them to diverge; individual differences attributable to each person's obligations to his or her own affines and other exchange partners are expressed in the ethic of individual autonomy. Factional cleavages are expressed in subclan distinctions.7 Despite these diverging interests, the Mendi come together around sem onda projects conceived of by them as in the common interest. Ideally, during meetings held to discuss large-scale clan and tribal affairs - festival plans, or an appropriate collective response to threats by other sem onda - diverging individual and factional interests are accommodated but not submerged by a common group policy. In Mansbridge's terms, both "adversary" and "unitary" political processes coexist. People come together constantly - both in formally called meetings and in informal gatherings - to plan and discuss group projects. Whether they meet in small groups in particular men's clubhouses or in larger numbers in open public spaces (koma, or ceremonial grounds), the goal is to achieve a consensus, or "one talk" (ngail pombor). Discussion is directed toward common corporate interests and away from potentially conflicting or divergent obligations of individuals to their particular exchange partners. Leaders ("big-men"; ol koma) - who are generally concerned with (he solidarity of sem onda - have a crucial role in this process. They take every opportunity, even informal gatherings when clan affairs are not the main topic

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What gifts engender

of discussion, to emphasize the importance of group projects, to downplay the significance of individual disagreements and problems, and to condemn intraclan divisiveness. For example, during 1978 and 1979, the two years before the community's Pig Festival, many village courts were held in Senkere. The purpose of these events usually was to settle grievances between individuals. Nevertheless, during these events, Senkere's most influential big-man regularly made speeches about the importance of sent onda unity and about the perils of divisiveness, referring to the particular events at issue in the court as examples of behavior to be avoided. This is even more characteristic of formal meetings of clans, when clan affairs are the main topic (see Lederman 1980). If a consensus is to be achieved, members of the group have to agree about their common interest in a group project; they then expect to fulfill their individual obligations to exchange partners as best they can within the constraints imposed by group events. As in the model of a "unitary democracy," formal votes are not taken, and explicit group decisions are not announced definitively. Members simply demonstrate their common purpose by acting it out - by contributing to a wealth display or coordinating their efforts so as to participate in a festival on the specified day. But consensual procedures are not effective in Mendi when alternative and conflicting agendas for clan action each have stubborn advocates or when there are disagreements concerning whether there should be any sent onda action at all in particular situations. Some members may remain unconvinced of the value of particular proposals for group action, being less concerned about their standing vis-a-vis their brothers and more concerned at the time with their obligations to their own affines and other exchange partners. Each person has a limited amount of wealth at any time and may choose to withhold a pig or a pearl shell from a clan prestation so as to make other use of it. It follows from the ethic of individual autonomy that people have the right to make up their own minds about such matters. In the limiting case, some do not participate in clan events because they are simply not interested. Such people are held in low esteem and are sometimes referred to as "rubbish" men (ol ter). Nevertheless, in Mendi such men have gardens and a pig or two, and may even marry.8 But as long as they do not actively diminish their group (i.e., by killing a brother), they are not ostracized for their uncooperative behavior. Beyond these individual differences, whole factions - sem kank and sometimes closely allied sem onda - may not see eye to eye. Still, when formal public meetings are held, no vote is taken. To do so would be to give formal expression to factional divisions and to undercut an important purpose of such meetings: the demonstration of common group identification and solidarity (see also Rappaport 1968). Formally recognizing factional divisions may mean the destruction of the group, and creation of new ones in its place; such "fis-

29

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

sioning" has been well described (Ryan 1961; Meggitt 1965; A. Strathern 1972). It is not an everyday occurrence. More often, forces external to the group mediate its internal divisions indirectly, playing a role functionally similar to (but structurally quite different from) a centralized state authority. Decisions concerning cooperative action, achieved through intensive community discussion, usually emerge as reactions to direct or indirect pressure from other clans and tribal alliances. Through their more decisive group action, other clans may pressure a divided community to act together: A Suolol group meeting was called to discuss when a display of wealth as well as its distribution should take place. It ended inconclusively with no clear sense of consensus. One minor Suolol big-man, Mol, visited his affines in the allied Surup tribe shortly thereafter and announced to them the date he had been advocating during the Suolol meeting. It is unlikely that his affines considered Mol's date to represent the sense of the meeting, since they were aware that Mol was not a particularly influential man in Suolol. Nevertheless, they had their own reasons for wanting to ensure that Suolol hold the event then. They agreed to arrive en masse on the suggested date, which Mol reported back to his group. His fellow clansmen were not pleased with this. Several of them said that if they went to the Surup to call the event off, they would reveal publicly to Surup both Suolol's lack of readiness and Mol's lack of judgment. In the end, they assembled sufficient wealth for the prestations in time for Sump's arrival - in effect implying just the opposite.

In this case, Mol's action was effective not so much because of his influence either within or outside Suolol as because he had introduced a new element into the Suolol deliberations, given a general state of rivalry between Surup and Suolol. It appeared that the Surup were unambivalent about shaming their Suolol allies. Their unanimity and decisiveness provoked a similar response in Suolol. Before that, several equally compelling but mutually incompatible arguments and plans (mostly relating to intra-Suolol concerns) had been advanced by members of different Suolol factions, and no clear plan for collective Suolol action had emerged. Big-men and others who advocate clan action engage both in vigorous politicking within their own groups and preemptive individual actions of the sort just described. They advocate particular group policies, encouraging a consensus, or they may try to shame fellow clansmen into action by putting on a public display of group-spirited hard work (like clearing grass from the ceremonial ground, where sem onda events take place). They also announce plans and dates for events before they have been agreed to by members of their groups, in an effort to draw outsiders into the discussion. Ultimately, group decisions are arrived at against a background of political competition with other clans. Although discussions concerning sem onda activities aim at consensus, individuals do not wait for unanimity before acting. With divergent extraclan involvements of clan members, a nonauthoritarian structure of power, and

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What gifts engender

decentralized political relations between groups as social givens, to require unanimity would make social projects impossible. But this Hobbesian nightmare is not reality. Despite what appears as a "state of nature," large-scale projects involving the cooperation of hundreds of people take place regularly. Skillful participants in group discussions recognize that whereas no one has the authority or power to prescribe individual action, they can shape the meanings of the actions individuals undertake by shaping one public interpretation of events. Once matters of group policy are articulated publicly in a "unitary" fashion and for outsiders to hear, individuals are free to choose what they will do, knowing how their behavior is likely to be construed by others both inside and outside their group. An individual by himself or herself cannot control these interpretations. They are public social constructions either actively and consensuaily produced (as when people announce that they will sponsor a festival in the name of their sent onda) or passively accepted as the product of other people's making (as in the Surup/Suolol case cited earlier).9 Successful cooperative action in Mendi takes a form that presupposes the existence of a particular sort of personal autonomy. At the same time, that autonomy is reproduced in a social world constituted not only of an assortment of personal histories and relationships but also of clans and their histories. Neither the group nor the individual is dissolved into the other. Rather, the tension between them generates much of the factional politics of Mendi life, and some more subtle conflicts to which we will return later on. Social relations between clan members Two aspects of the internal organization of sent will be considered more closely in this section. They concern the "property" relations - that is, social relationships mediated by valuables (pigs, pearl shells, and money) and by land by means of which the cooperative organization of clans is socially reproduced. The continuity of the land Clan members constitute a corporate group with respect to land. Clans like Kurelka and Molsem (sem onda composed of about twenty to sixty households) are the most important territorial units for gardening, house building, grazing pigs, and collecting bush resources. Each is associated with several contiguous blocks of land.10 Since allied clans (e.g., Molsem and Kurelka in Upper Mendi) are typically neighbors, they appear to hold a territory in common. But clan alliance groups (tribes or "clan clusters" like Suolol of about 150 to 300 households) do not regulate access to land as units. Thus, a member of the Suolol tribe is not permitted to clear land anywhere on Suolol lands

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Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

but only land associated with his own clan; its Kurelka members use Kurelka land, and its Molsem members use Molsem land. In the northeastern Mendi Valley, clan land often includes a variety of types: flat land along the Mendi River, land of moderate to steep slope in the main garden areas, and perhaps some steeper "bush" land along the forested ridges. The situation is different in the northwest (Karint CD), where many groups do not have forest resources on their own territories. They are given access to bush land by their exchange partners living in Upper Mendi. Gardening practices also vary. Thus, whereas in Upper Mendi, in the northeast, sweet potato mounds are often harvested three times before breaking them open and replanting them, in Karint fewer harvests are reported per mound. In contrast, the northeast, at a higher average altitude, is more susceptible to frost, and residents depend on people living at lower altitudes for runners with which to replant damaged gardens. However much their resources may differ, all clan territories have open, grassy ceremonial or parade grounds (koma) around which one or more men's clubhouses are grouped. These are places in which community meetings and both large and small public events are held. In the Senkere community, there were two active koma (in Wepra and in Senkere, on Kurelka and on Molsem territories, respectively). The Senkere koma had been enlarged during the period 1968-74 to accommodate long ceremonial houses, which were built in preparation for a large pig kill Suolol eventually sponsored in December, 1979. n Wepra koma had been expanded similarly during the early 1950s, when it was the site of a previous Suolol pig festival. Several other koma exist in the community, each associated with a particular subclan, but during 19779, all large-scale events held in the names of clans took place at the Senkere or Wepra koma. The social centers of dispersed Mendi communities, koma are concrete representations and continuous reminders of the social reality of groups, themselves only periodically realized in action. In the Senkere community, garden surveys indicated that the plots of people affiliated with Molsem and Kurelka were not intermixed. Molsem and Kurelka lands were marked off from each other in some places by natural boundaries such as water courses or ridge crests and in other places by conventional signs. The boundary running down the middle of the main garden slope at Wepra, separating Molsem and Kurelka gardens, was indicated only by planted cordyline shrubs, fences and ditches, markers indistinguishable from those separating the gardens of lineage brothers (compare Ryan 1961). Each clan's territory is divided into several named blocks. The gardens of members of the various subclans (e.g., Olsem, Pulumsem) are intermixed to some degree, although particular areas within blocks tend to be associated with particular subclans, each of which has garden areas in more than one named block within the clan territory. Each subclan has a number of "house

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What gifts engender

places" in blocks, forming neighborhoods. Generally, people from closely related lineages (e.g., two brothers and their married sons) build houses close together; their houseyard fences form a continuous barrier between the gardens located around their houses and the village paths along which pigs often browse. The coherence of clan land holdings is maintained by cultural conventions that keep intergenerational land transfers within the clan almost by definition. One has the strongest type of control over gardens that one's father or one's father's father cleared and planted: Both use rights and the right to redistribute garden plots across generations. This control is usually legitimized by reference to family history: the claim that one has seen one's father or grandfather working there or that one's father had pointed out the trees he had planted, fences he had constructed, or houses he had built on it. All are the conventional signs of one's father's long-term use of the land. Old people have an important role in validating such claims in land disputes. Besides the particular garden plots one acquires from one's father, one has the right to clear and plant on land anywhere on one's clan's territory provided a spot is not currently claimed. When a man dies without sons and without himself giving his gardens to a particular heir, anyone in his subclan, and then clan, may claim it. Just as in the case of clan members' corporate identity and responsibility for each other's actions then, clan members have a corporate identity with respect to clan land. In Mendi land is not yet short, and no clansman - no matter what the nature of his participation (or lack thereof) in clan affairs - is denied access to it. For example, one member of the Senkere community was a recluse who had neither engaged in transactions with exchange partners nor participated in clan affairs for many years. During the early 1950s, he had been jailed by provincial authorities for having participated in a tribal fight. The experience of incarceration had apparently been traumatic. After he was released, he avoided public places, not even coming into society to mourn the death of his first wife. His second wife and his children participated in a normal way in the life of the community, but the man confined his activities to working in gardens at the outskirts of the settlement and to maintaining fences for the gardens that his wife planted near their house (where he returned at night to sleep). Because of his utter lack of involvement in community affairs, he was considered crazy but his garden rights were never questioned. All of this seems like a straightforward case of the patrilineal inheritance of garden plots, but things are not quite so simple. Female agnates have very strong claims on gardens, with which men sympathize saying that their sisters (daughters) would control gardens if only they did not move away from their natal place when they married. Indeed, married female agnates resident in the Senkere community controlled as many gardens, on the average, as resident married male agnates did. What is more, they could transfer those gardens to

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Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

their children so long as the children became permanent residents there as well. The land tenure rights of the children of a clan sister's son were not distinguishable from those of people with longer "agnatic" pedigrees. The distinctive feature of those people who can transfer land across generations thus appears to be residence in the place of a parent, and not gender or agnatic descent. (Clan members may also give use rights in specific garden plots to outsiders, but these are in most instances temporary.) It would be inaccurate, however, to leave the matter there. Although its influence is subtle, gender is a critical factor in land inheritance. One has to ask why women tend to move to the homes of their husbands upon marrying, giving up their residential claims to garden land in their father's place. The matter cannot be dealt with in detail here, but certain features of the division of labor - particularly its symbolic ordering - suggest an answer. As I noted above, a man legitimizes his rights to the land his father and agnatic ancestors used by pointing out evidence of that use - particularly trees, or cordyline shrub boundary markers that those men planted or the remnants of fences they constructed and houses they built. All are culturally recognized as relatively permanent transformations of the land. And all are specifically male production responsibilities. Women's daily work in the gardens - composting, planting, weeding, harvesting, and rebuilding sweet potato mounds - is important for maintaining human life and energy, producing wealth (pigs), and creating and strengthening social relationships (by means of the generous sharing of food with guests). Whereas these achievements (and others, such as the manufacture of netbags) are recognized, nevertheless, women's work is not culturally understood to transform the land in a permanent way, whatever the "objective" facts may be. The necessary quotidian repetitiveness itself confirms the conventional judgment concerning its ephemeral character; what must be redone every day is quickly undone, leaving little trace. Women's work, as such, is not inscribed in enduring structures, material or social, in the way in which men's work is thought to be in Mendi. Not objectified in this way by convention, it is a source of transcendent power only exceptionally, through active individual effort. Normally, a women's labor entitles her to control the disposition of that which she herself has actively planted or made. In contrast, the products of men's labor endure, becoming the legitimizing signs of men's right to control the redistribution of land, the society's most important productive resource. This fact may make post-marital residence practices in Mendi intelligible. If so, one cannot take at face value the solidarity brothers feel for their sisters vis-a-vis land rights. Although it is significant in ways that will be explored later (Chapter 4), in the present context the sentiment obscures the structural role of a gender asymmetry, making the asymmetry out to be an accidental concomitant of postmarital residence instead of a central organizing relation. More can be said about the role of

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What gifts engender

asymmetrical gender constructions in the making of sent; I will return to this theme again most explicitly in the last section of this chapter. Male labor is memorialized in its enduring products and is a part of the land as a persisting clan resource. In turn, ideas about the land are an important part of a larger conceptual system concerning how people come to be related as clan members and how clans are socially reproduced. In common with other Highlanders, the Mendi believe that the shared substance of kinship can be actively acquired and that it is not passively inherited simply by virtue of birth, "blood" or "semen." Whereas important substantive connections are acknowledged between parents and children, kinship connection to people with whom one has no such tie can be achieved by eating, living, and cooperating together. As the clan composition of the Senkere community and other facts I have related imply, the Mendi adopt individual affinal and cognatic kin into their clans (not to mention whole groups of nonagnatic kin) relatively easily, giving them blocks of land on which to plant and build houses - and otherwise to establish their children as full members - as long as they demonstrate their commitment to their new clan by participating in clan projects. Eating together is particularly significant. Food itself can be understood as another symbol of shared substance. The land and the food grown there may mediate the relationship between present and past generations of clan members. The Mendi believe that the spirits of clan ancestors (su temo) exert control over living people. They pervade the food one eats, as it was grown on clan land, where they were buried. For this reason, many believe that cases of fratricide need not be punished directly. In fact, to do so would risk escalating the conflict by drawing a wider circle of relatives into it. Instead, the angry spirit of the dead man itself is supposed to poison every mouthful of food the murderer eats from his home gardens. The only safe route for him is exile.12 Apart from the power of its products, garden work itself (like exchange) demonstrates the pervasive duality in Mendi of the autonomy of individual action and the cooperation and solidarity of the clan. On the one hand, gardening is not typically a communal activity, nor are gardens collective products. Men and women generally do not form work parties when they clear, fence and tend their plots. These tasks can be achieved by means of household labor alone since gardens in Upper Mendi are permanently cultivated or under very short-term grass fallow and the preparations for planting usually involve only clearing grass and rebuilding portions of old fences rather than felling trees and other heavy clearing. Individualized production applies even to fence construction. Fences appear to be joint endeavors, running continuously along village paths and enclosing large areas including the gardens of many people. But in fact, each man maintains those portions that abut on garden plots that he claims. Fences are, it will be recalled, important signs of land rights; there-

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Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

fore, to let someone help build a fence on a plot one wishes to retain or to give to one's children may compromise one's claims. On the other hand, gardens in Mendi are not individually owned. The sem onda retains final rights in clan territories as a whole; if a sem kank has no heirs to inherit its gardens, other members of the same clan may claim them.13 Nor does the level of production respond merely to the subsistence requirements of households, however much the Mendi assertively insist that their garden work is their own business. The intensity of garden work, however individually accomplished, reflects a person's commitment to the demands of exchange partners and fellow clan members. Sharing and pooling wealth The ways Mendi clan members help one another in wealth exchanges also demonstrate their participatory corporate relationship. As events, many prestations appear to be individual affairs until one discovers the forms of cooperation that made them possible. Mortuary ceremonies (kowar) - gifts given publicly some time after a death to the deceased's maternal relatives - are often sponsored by individuals in their own names. Inquiry into the sources of pearl shells, money, and other items included in such prestations reveals two kinds of aid. First, kowar sponsors request valuables from their twem partners. This wealth will have to be replaced with items of equal or slightly greater value. Typically the terms of repayment are discussed explicitly by the sponsors and their partners at the time of the request. Second, sponsors of a kowar expect to receive wealth from fellow clan members without asking. Wealth received this way from fellow clan members is "free" (paeme); it is unsolicited and given <4for nothing" or "for no reason." These gifts are reciprocated but never explicitly so. No terms and conditions for the replacement of the things are discussed. That is, gifts between clan members are not specific debts to be repaid. Rather, they acquit a generalized obligation to support one another's projects. Whereas "generalized reciprocity" (Sahlins 1972) between clan members is evident in many contexts (e.g., in the help the two Pulumsem men received when they made their ol tenga to Mesa), it is especially clear in the informal prestations that make marriage possible. Unmarried men expect unsolicited (paeme) aid from members of their own subclan and often get it from other members of their clan as well. When it becomes known that a young man's family has invited his prospective bride's family to view the bride wealth, members of the man's group contribute pearl shells, money, and pigs either privately before the actual display of wealth or else publicly (but generally without fanfare) after the woman's family has arrived. Among the donors will likely be married men to whom the bridegroom has never given anything but who were themselves aided by other older men in a similar manner when they

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What gifts engender

married. Young unmarried men contribute wealth to bride wealth displays; rather than holding on to wealth in preparation for their own future marriages, most of them donate it on the occasion of a comrade's wedding, confident that they will be helped in turn. Tit-for-tat accounting is not properly a part of these interactions. Reciprocity between clan brothers does not depend on a formal equivalent return to the particular person from whom one has received help. That sent members are expected to hear of one another's kowar or marriage plans, and to offer wealth without being asked, is only partially explained by the fact that they generally live close to one another. Affines, or maternal kin, are invariably also neighbors but typically have no such expectations of one another. This means not that fellow clan members always live up to the ethical standard but merely that deviations are interpreted from the perspective of this norm.14 Generalized reciprocity, as well as the presumptions I have outlined concerning how information will circulate, mark clan relationships as different from the specific and explicitly negotiated exchange obligations recognized in twem relationships. This is illustrated by the unsuccessful efforts of one young man to demand the repayment of several pearl shells owed by men of other clans to his father (the man, referred to earlier, who had become reclusive and had lost interest in exchange after a term in the provincial jail). The young man's father's exchange partners all refused to give him anything, arguing that their obligation was with the father only, and not the son. (In Mendi, exchange partnerships are not inherited but must be created anew by each individual.) In sharp contrast, the young man's father's brothers and his clansmen helped him when he married in 1981, whether or not he or his father had helped them before. That is, unlike twem gifts, gifts between clan members demonstrate their identity or substitutability. Transactions between them are only superficially dyadic; on a deeper level, they demonstrate the corporateness of sent relationships. Generalized reciprocity between clan members planning individual marriage or funeral prestations to people outside the group is one aspect of sent relationships. Coordination in the timing and organization of sem onda events is another aspect. When members of a group agree to sponsor a prestation in the group's name, they go about their garden work and other activities on their own. Few group work parties are organized, and no communal garden plots are planted. Nevertheless, each individual's garden production and dealings with exchange partners presuppose the overarching sem project. Each person is expected to coordinate his own exchange obligations and garden production so as to be able to contribute at some agreed-upon future date. At events like Pulumsem's ol tenga, pearl shells, pigs, and money are displayed in long rows, even though the items were obtained individually by clan members from twem partners and are eventually redistributed to individ-

37

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

uals. At the largest prestations, clansmen are not always able to help one another directly by providing one another with unsolicited gifts, because they are all simultaneously accumulating wealth for the prestation. But they support one another indirectly by coordinating their individual production and exchange work to achieve a common goal. Exogamy, antigamy, and the sem-twem distinction Who cooperates together in this way? How are the social boundaries of "clan" solidarity determined? One answer is suggested by the rules of marriage. Groups referred to as sem kank (subclans, lineages) are invariably exogamous; people say, "We are one sem kank; we do not marry one another," all in the same breath. Members of several sem kank affiliating with one clan like Kurelka also do not intermarry and often call each other "brother" and "sister," even though no explicit genealogical connection between them is known. For the present discussion, the significance of sem exogamy in Mendi is not so much that it specifies the social boundaries between clans but, rather, that it defines the social categorical distinction between sem and twem relations. The social boundaries that exogamy defines between distinct clans have little practical importance for relations between groups as such; neighboring subclans of different clans and even of different tribes act together from time to time (see the section "The Structure of Intergroup Relations" later in this chapter; see also Chapter 6). Nor do the other Mendi marriage rules structure exchange relationships between groups. D'Arcy Ryan (1969:163) called these rules "antigamous." That is, relative and lineage centered rather than "prescriptive," objective, and group centered, these rules amount to a list of prohibitions that have the effect of encouraging people to develop affinal relationships different from those of other members of their own lineage. Each person knows, more or less, which specific families are off limits to him or her. According to Ryan, these prohibitions may be generalized as follows: Marriage is forbidden with members of (1) any lineage "into which a member of one's own lineage has married within the previous five or six generations" and (2) any lineage "into which one's mother's lineage cannot marry" following the preceding rule and the rule of exogamy. The Mendi explain their marriage rules by asserting the value of diverse affinal connections and the dangers of competition between brothers sharing the same affines.15 But if antigamy prevents direct competition between brothers over exchange partners, it does not unify them. If exogamy hints at the common identity of clansmen, antigamy helps give each clan member a distinct social identity; even lineage brothers have different affinal exchange obligations. Both Ryan and I found that since the Mendi do not usually keep track of genealogical connections farther back than two generations, the practical application of marriage prohibitions is not as wide as the antigamous rules im-

YANSUP

SURUP

SUOLOL TRIBAL LANDS

to 01 Egar and other northern Yansup communities

Miribip and other northern Surup places Key: SUOLOL Wepra \\\\\\\\\\V

Map 2.1. The Senkere community. Not drawn to scale.

Group names Place names Forested ridges Tribal boundaries Clan boundaries

39

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

ply. Therefore, despite these rules, marriages are not random or maximally dispersed in Mendi. The Mendi tend to marry members of allied sem onda. Friendly or hostile relationships between clans and tribes limit the marriage choices of their members. Within the Suolol tribe, members of the Kurelka and the Molsem clans frequently marry one another, and members of these two clans also often marry members of Suolol's two major allies: the neighboring Surup and Yansup tribes (see Map 2.1; see also Table 5.1 in Chapter 5). Thus, although marriages are occasionally contracted between people belonging to enemy or distant groups, the preference for marrying into allied groups means that affines often have common interests with regard to warfare and major tribal festivals. This fact in turn has implications for an understanding of the distinction between sem and twem, as I will show. Exogamy is not significant for the establishment of specific, positive relations between groups. But the differentiated social universe which the rule of exogamy creates is a model for the conceptual distinction people make between sem and twem relations. As a category of social relationship, clanship (archetypically a relationship between those who do not intermarry but who cooperate to amass a bridewealth or share in it) contrasts with the exchange partnership, of which the affinal relationship (linking those who may intermarry and exchange wealth) is the exemplar. It is important to note that this distinction is not strictly between two sets of people (e.g., ''fellow clan members" and "affines") isolable "on the ground" since, as the preceding discussion implied, idioms of corporate solidarity are sometimes extended to include intermarrying groups. That is, affines from Molsem and Kurelka (both of the Suolol alliance) or from Suolol and Surup sometimes call one another "brother" to encourage corporatelike solidarity in certain contexts.16 Similarly, individuals may have twem relationships with other members of their sem onda. The distinction refers instead to two culturally recognized categories of sociality, of which the ranges of application may overlap in practice. Expectations and demands concerning corporate solidarity are extended more or less widely, depending on context. At marriages people assume that the boundaries of corporate responsibility will encompass their own lineage (i.e., the parental lineage with whom they live - usually their patrilineage). In addition, several members of their subclan and a few members of other subclans within their clan will also help by providing unsolicited gifts. Similarly, these people expect to receive a share in the wealth their lineage sisters receive when the latter marry. In the context of warfare compensation payments, Pig Festivals, and other large-scale events, the boundaries of brotherly solidarity are explicitly extended and widened to encompass sem onda - clans such as Kurelka and tribal alliances of clans such as Suolol. Big-men strive to widen them further.17 When members agree to cosponsor an event, each requests wealth from a unique array of personal exchange partners - tapping produc-

40

What gifts engender

tive resources outside the group - in support of the collective effort. But however much they may shift about in different practical contexts of action, the boundaries of corporateness are always delineated by implicit contrast with twem relationships. The structure of intergroup relations With the preceding as background, what can be said about the relationship between Mendi clans? The ways in which the Mendi refer to group names and ''genealogical" relationships provide some initial clues. The significance of genealogies It will be helpful to approach this question as Roy Wagner (1974) did, by paying attention to discrepancies between what informants say and the models anthropologists have created to account for what they are told.18 When I entered the Senkere community for the first time and spoke with Nare, asking him for the name of his sem, he said, "Kurelka Suolol," and added that his place (su) is called "Wepra." When I inquired more closely, he told me that his father was of Kibu sem from the place Limbial (perhaps a day's walk to the southeast of Wepra), but was killed long ago in a tribal fight. Nare's father's two brothers, Tal and Ipuko, escaped with Koyma (Nare's mother), her children, and their own families, finding refuge at Wakwak (just south of Mendi town, a three-hour walk south of Wepra), where their mother's people lived. Later on, Koyma married a Wepra man named Lun and went with her children to his house. Nare said that his sem is that of Lun, his adoptive father: the sem onda "Kurelka" or ''Suolol," and the sem kank "Olsem." He insisted that he "never goes" to Limbial, knows no one there, and has nothing to do with his original father's people. After a while, I learned that Nare was somewhat atypical. Other residents of Wepra, also calling their sem onda "Kurelka" and their sem kank "Olsem" or alternatively "Pulumsem," asserted that their father and their father's father had been residents of Wepra, members of the same sem as themselves. They identified Nare as either "Olsem" or "Keyosem" (the Mendi language translation of "Kibu," an Ialibu place name). When I later asked where other "Kurelka" and "Suolol" people live, I was told that a few live at Wakwak or Sekip or other places associated with other sem onda but that many live in the Kuma community, in Ponea (where they are called "Mesa"), and in Kombal (where they are called "Molsem"). Many "Kurelka" also live at Kaupena: in Ialibu, on the far side of Mount Giluwe. But there they are called "Narelke." From these sorts of responses, anthropologists with some training in social structural analysis might conclude that "Kurelka" is a social group made up

41

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

of the subgroups "Olsem" and "Pulumsem." "Olsem" itself appears to include members whose fathers and father's fathers were also "Olsem," as well as other members, belonging to a subgroup named Keyosem, whose forebears came from a locality in Ialibu. We might guess that "Kurelka" living at Kuma, Kaupena, and elsewhere are similarly divided and subdivided and that a few "Kurelka" people living at Wakwak and other places were, like Nare's family had been, refugees staying with maternal relatives. We might be tempted to arrange these names diagrammatically as a series of progressively more inclusive groups, following the segmentary lineage model. Wagner, in the paper referred to previously, did not draw such a conclusion with respect to apparently similar field observations among the Daribi (an argument to which we shall return in the section ''Names, Categories, and the Reality of Groups," after considering the Mendi case in some detail). But for the Mendi this interpretation is supported - or so it seems - by stories such as the following one told to me by a Mesa man in response to my questions about his personal genealogy: A Mesa named Pepa and his wife Tepa looked after a red-skinned pig at their place in Ponea. One day, they let the pig out to forage in the bush as usual. That night, however, the pig did not return home as it was accustomed to do. The couple went out to look for it. The man found the pig near the Ponea koma, where he discovered that it had farrowed. When he looked closer he saw that it had given birth to a human child: not to piglets. It had built a nest for itself and its child, a boy. The man was very surprised, and he went to get his wife to show her the pig's child. He said to the woman, ''Let us build a fence around the two of them, so that we can look after them together." But the woman objected, saying that she had breasts and so could look after the boy herself. She took him to their house and raised him. The boy grew up and was called Ras-ol ["pig-man"]. He went to live in Kombal where he married. His son was Kupuol, who had many children himself, and who started up Molsem - a line of people who live in Kombal, in Senkere, and in Kuma, as well as the people who call themselves Anksuol. Tepa and Pepa had a child of their own, too. His name was Kurelka, and he went to Wepra to live. He had children named Pulumsem and Olsem, who gave rise to the sem kank of those names living in Wepra now. Tepa and Pepa also had a son named Kalap-Kurelka, who went to Kalap [part of the Kuma community]; however, some people calling themselves Kalap live in Ponea today, and others in the locality called Komlom [also at Kuma]. Tepa and Pepa had another son called Semera-Kurelka, whose children gave rise to the sem kank of that name living in the localities of Mundip and Kuma. This is why Mesa and Kurelka are "one line" and cannot marry one another. The people of Mesa and Kurelka both marry those of Molsem. But we are all Suolol - Kurelka and Molsem together.

In this story, what appears as a "history" of the formation of present-day groups and a rationale for their mutual relationships is presented in the form of a genealogy (as diagrammed in Figure 2.1). The fact that these groups may be arranged hierarchically as a series of progressively more inclusive groups, based on a genealogical ranking, could be taken as evidence of a segmentary lineage system: "Pulumsem" and "Olsem" being subclans of the clan "Ku-

Key:

JT

Mesa Pepa A = 0 Tep Kurelka A

KalapKurelka *

T Olsem

Pulumsem

KURELKA (living at Wepra)

f

//\

/ \ Ras-ol /

SemeraKurelka

Molsem Kupuol

I f

KALAPKURELKA (living at Ponea)

MESA (living at Ponea)

MOLMANDA MOLSEM (living at Molmanda)

Figure 2.1. Genealogical sketch of the Senkere community.

SENKERE MOLSEM (living at Senkere)

KOMBAL MOLSEM (living at Kombal)

"1

Nonagnatic

/ \ connection

43

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

relka," "Keyosem" being a subsubclan of "Kurelka" associated with " 0 1 sem," and so on. Many anthropologists have noted that Highlanders use names like "Kurelka" to refer to social groups of varying sizes and including varying numbers of subdivisions. They have also noted that groups of different sizes appear to be associated with characteristic functions or activities. That is, men may expect to inherit land from a narrow set of relatives (their father and perhaps their father's brothers); they may expect help from a wider circle of "brothers" when they get married; and they may expect the cooperative action of an even wider circle when they plan exchange ceremonies. Concerned with developing a group structure terminology useful for comparative investigations, anthropologists have used such terms as "lineage," "subclan," and "clan" to refer to these circles of social responsibility. They have arranged them into segmentary hierarchies in which narrower or wider circles of descendants are traced to nearer or more remote ancestors, by means of some descent rule: in this case a patrilineal rule. They have attempted to match particular terms (like "clan") with particular functions (like organizing Pig Festivals). This interpretation was most clearly elaborated in the New Guinea Highlands by Mervyn Meggitt for the Mendi's northern neighbors, the Mae Enga (among whom it appears to be culturally applicable). Meggitt not only developed a terminology for Mae segmentary levels and associated functions with each of them; he went farther: The structural hierarchy of descent groups among the Mae is paralleled by a ranking both of the kinds of public prestations in which the social units should participate and of the valuables appropriate to each occasion. . . . Not only does this gradation govern the magnitude of the distributions . . . , it also defines their order of precedence. . . . The way the notion of precedence diverts theflowof valuables from one set of intended recipients to another deserves comment. The basic assumption is that normally the commitments of higher-order units over-ride those of their constituent elements. [1966: 121-2] This style of analysis was carried as far as it could be taken for the Mendi by D'Arcy Ryan. Ryan argued that Mendi sent, which he understood to mean patrilineal "descent group" (1961: 13, 52), had many of the characteristics of classic African lineages: They are unilineal and exogamous; they form a basis for grouping of kin; they are reflected in the grouping of ancestor fertility-stones; they recognize a discrete unity as opposed to other groups at the same level;rightsand obligations of sub-clan membership are in some measure distinct from those of kinship; they endure beyond the death of their founders; they group to form higher segments (clans), and are divided internally into lower segments (families); they are usually eponymous with their founder. [1961:54]

44

What gifts engender

Ryan organized his analysis of Mendi social structure by starting with the '"family" and proceeding to "progressively wider groups" - the subclan, the clan, the clan cluster.19 Most anthropologists working in the Highlands recognize the dynamic character of groups there and have described processes of "fission" and "fusion" which may account for the proliferation of group segments. They recognize that groups may expand or contract depending on their demographic, political, or military fortunes. Groups may expand to the point where they become short of land, and they may contract to a size at which they can no longer fulfill essential functions on their own. Groups may wither to extinction, and they may grow so large that members are moved to divide themselves into smaller parts. Small groups, like Keyosem referred to above, may fuse with larger ones. In sum, groups are not fixed in their mutual relationships. During a typical period of field research, one may observe some of these processes of group formation; certainly Highlanders observe them during their lifetimes. Ryan found subclans a convenient unit for studying change, arguing that the composition of larger groups "depends on the same principles which may be more easily analyzed in simpler units" (1961: 15; see also Ryan 1959 for an account of group formation in Mendi). Anthropologists have assumed that as groups expand and undergo fissioning or contract and fuse with larger groups, these processes are recorded in "revised" genealogies that then present a kind of official account of contemporary group relationships. At any time, genealogies appear to present existing groups as an enduring structure of social relationships - as static and predominantly patrilineal. The evidence for reorganization at the "higher levels" of group structure may be lost from view because of this process of revision, whereas "lower level" groups are known through experience to be labile and flexible organizations open to nonagnatic immigrants, subject to demographic shifts, and so on. That is, genealogies often do not record the actual events by means of which particular groups were formed and change. Rather, in Mendi and elsewhere in the Highlands, they are a vivid and immediate representation of the continuity of groups over time. They also provide a rationale for the solidarity of clan members and their mutual responsibilities with respect to outsiders. We shall return to consider the significance of these ideas in the final section of this chapter. Segmentary hierarchy or equivalence? Despite his willingness to present Mendi sent as a series of increasingly inclusive groups, Ryan did not claim that the Mendi have a segmentary "lineage system" (1961: 54-5), nor did he claim that they recognize a hierarchy of obligations corresponding to different levels of group structure, as Meggitt

45

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

(quoted above) did. Mendi genealogies convey solidarity and continuity through time but not much more. That the Mendi do not share with the Mae Enga an ideology of structural hierarchy concerning groups and group functions may account for certain otherwise perplexing details in their genealogies. For example, consistent with the Tepa and Pepa story, Mesa is called the motia - the founding "line" and original owners of Suolol land, or what we might be tempted to call the ' 'agnatic core'' of the Suolol tribe (refer to Figure 2.1). Members of all the local groups agree with this regardless of their currently hostile or friendly relations with Mesa. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the original "Kurelka" was the son of a Mesa man, the contemporary groups Mesa and Kurelka are considered coequal. They are sometimes referred to collectively as "Mesa-Kurelka," a formula that may imply either an alliance of equals or the inclusion of the first mentioned name (Mesa) within the range of reference of the second. The father-son idiom used in the Tepa and Pepa story to talk about the relationship between Mesa and Kurelka, respectively, signifies neither two levels of group structure nor a part-whole relationship between the two groups. The genealogy need not be revised to reflect the two groups' currently equal status, because genealogical depth implies nothing about the structural precedence of one group over the other. It merely provides a rationale for the mutual aid that Mesa and Kurelka members frequently give each other when one or the other group is planning a festival or is involved in a dispute. Other observations bear out Ryan's caution concerning the application of models of segmentary hierarchy to Mendi social groups. Group names and relationships are frequently referred to in conversational and narrative accounts of recent or long past events. These accounts are incomprehensible if one presumes that relationships between groups are hierarchic; they suggest instead relations of equivalence and contextually specific pairing and opposition. In Mendi the enemy of one's brother is not necessarily one's own enemy, and so group names and relationships appear inconsistent if one expects them to fit into a hierarchic structure involving a ranking of group levels and functions determined by genealogy. For example, during 1978-9 members of Mesa and their immediate neighbors in the Kombal community, the Molsem, were involved in a dispute concerning death compensation payments. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a major Kurelka big-man in Wepra, an Olsem man named Olonda, persuaded other members of Olsem to support the Molsem against the Mesa in the dispute; he had had a grievance against a Mesa big-man and a favor to repay to certain Molsem men for support they had given him earlier. Members of Pulumsem supported the Mesa. This despite the facts that Olsem, Pulumsem, and Mesa are all called "Kurelka" and that Olsem and Pulumsem are members of the same locality (Wepra), whereas Mesa and Molsem live side by side in another "neighborhood" (about fifteen minutes' walk downslope from

46

What gifts engender

Wepra koma, and across a major stream). This situation did not however presage the ''fissioning" of Kurelka; Olsem, Pulumsem and Mesa continued to coordinate their preparations for Kurelka-sponsored affairs throughout the 1970s and early 1980s despite their diverging interests vis-a-vis the Molsem (see Chapter 6; also Lederman 1981). In other narratives, sem kank may even have relationships with groups outside of their own tribal alliance, which other affiliated subclans do not share. A hint of this was given in Tasupae's historical explanation for the Pulumsem ol tenga, when he referred to the repercussions of an association between the Kalap-Kurelka man, Yabi, and his Surup affines. As in the Mesa-Molsem dispute just referred to, this alignment of sem originated in the personal loyalty and antipathy that particular members of these groups had to members of other clans and tribes. In accounts of recent and past events, a sem onda's name may be used when only one of its affiliated sem kank participated. Similarly, and as Tasupae's story shows, sem names may be used when only one or two individuals of the group are being referred to (particularly when the speaker is an outsider). People may say that Kalap-Kurelka participated in a battle initiated by the sem onda Surup when only one Kalap man participated. This may simply be an example of "hidden" or indirect speech; but it can also come to have wider implications for the group of the participating individual, as we saw in examples concerning the Pulumsem ol tenga and the Suolol meeting. Such indirect speech acknowledges at least implicitly the potential' 'corporate" meaning of individual action, whatever its motivation. Simultaneously, it acknowledges that sem potentially have multiple loyalties for the very reason that sem are actualized in historical circumstances by persons with diverse interests. According to still other accounts, social alignments dramatically at odds with the segmentary hierarchy model were produced by a number of "fertility" cults, performed by Upper Mendi men from at least the turn of the century until the late 1960s. Occurring every eight years or so, these cults operated in structural counterpoint to sem alignments. Participation in performances of the major cults (all currently quiescent) apparently cross-cut sem onda alliances: During performances, the participants were divided into moieties without regard to their clan or tribal affiliations, mixing allied and enemy subclans and individuals together on each side. Thus, oral histories and everyday discourse both suggest that segmentary relationships are not hierarchical. These relationships also leave their traces in another kind of source. Testimony to the occurrence of the cults and of other episodes of nonhierarchically structured joint action is found in the names by which contemporary groups are known. This was evident in the following exchange, the transcript of part of an interview with an Olsem man concerning a cult performance in which he had participated:

47 Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits Who else participated? . . . and some parts of Yakump [a large sem onda like Suolol]. Yakump? Of what places? Yakump? Of Birop! [tone implying "where else? There's only one!"] Yes, Birop. Yakump doesn't come from any other, smaller places? Or you say just "Birop"? Birop only. Small parts of that line came. Most of them did not come. What parts of Yakump came? Taiksem, Taiksunda: Yansup, that's Yansupsem. Write that. "Yansup" is okay, or Yansup-Yakump. [in a bewildered tone] Oh, there is Yansup of Yakumpll I thought those two were major enemies! They are but only some of them.

Taiksem has a formal, "genealogical" association with Yakump (just as 01sem has with Kurelka) and is generally considered a part of that group in the sense that its members live on Yakump territory. Nevertheless, despite the ancient enmity between the sem onda Yansup and Yakump, Taiksem is also sometimes referred to as if they were affiliated with (or incorporated into) Yansup, alluding to those situations in which they have acted with them. Some members of Taiksem have personal exchange relationships with Yansup members despite the general state of war between their groups and may be drawn into their affairs because of this. The fertility cults almost ensured such cross-cutting subgroup associations. (This interview also shows how sem onda names are used when talking with an outsider.) That clan names may be used relativistically at the same time as they refer to objective groups was illustrated for me by Mel (the man referred to at the beginning of this chapter). The first time I met him, he told me that his sem onda was "Kurelka." After I had been living in Wepra for a while, he mentioned that Molsem was his "father's line" (aptia) during an informal discussion. When I asked him about the discrepancy, Mel said that his sem was really " Anksuol" and proceeded to recount the following story: Long ago, a man of Toleke lived in a place called "Navila" [probably referring to the Nebilyer Valley], near the current border between Ialibu and the Western Highlands Province. After a dispute concerning a distribution of cassowari meat, the man left his place, finally settling in Kombal, with Napsem - a subclan of the Molsem clan, amongst whom the Toleke had maternal relatives. There he married and had a son, whose grandsons are the senior men of Anksuol today. Mel said that to outsiders from distant communities he may be known as "Kurelka M e l " because of where he lives. He explained that he had first introduced himself to me as "Kurelka" because most Anksuol men now live not in Kombal but in Pual, a "house place" and garden locality in Wepra, a Kurelka locality. Pual, located on the border between Wepra and Kombal, the Molsem place, had been given to the Anksuol by Sapo, the last living

48

What gifts engender

member of Ipulpirisem (a group genealogically associated with the Kurelka subclan, Olsem) and a bachelor with no children to whom to distribute his land. By reason of this association, when an Olsem man died in Wepra in 1978, Mel called the dead man his "brother" (aeme), saying that Anksuol and Olsem were "one line" (sent pombor). Nevertheless, he said, everyone in neighboring communities knows that he is called Molsem - Molsem or Napsem, that is. He added that Anksuol and Molsem people do not marry one another since they are one sent. (Anksuol and Kurelka people do intermarry.) As if this were not complicated enough, later on in the year, Mel began consistently to refer to his group as Anksuol. Early in the year, he made a trip to Tambul, in the Western Highlands Province, to pick up a pig that his wife's father had been looking after for him there. Curious about the "Navila" story, and knowing that the Nebilyer Valley was not too far from Tambul, he decided to visit the place to learn whether the story was true. When he told his tale there, people confirmed the genealogy and the account. He discovered that "Anksuol" was a large group there; what is more they apparently had a lot of land and a desire for more members. They seemed pleased to find a lost branch of their group, and showed him land that he could have if he resettled there. Their hospitality impressed him. After Mel returned to Wepra, a man from the Nebilyer community Mel had visited repaid his visit. Subsequently, Mel pondered whether he should make the move back to his ancestral home. (In fact he did, soon after the Suolol held their Pig Festival.) None of the various names Mel used to refer to his group was wrong. Each referred to specific past or present-day factional alignments and each was valid in a particular rhetorical context. These usages revealed that intergroup associations were not based on descent and genealogically based segmentary relationships. Even though they were often justified with some kind of kinship connection, these associations were based on histories of common residence and cooperation. I will offer a final example of how models of segmentary hierarchy account inadequately for the way in which the Mendi use sem names and think about sem structure. When I first asked Yagala, an old man living in Wepra, about his genealogy, he told me that his father's father, Nonga, and his father's father's brother, Mubi, were of the sem "Ape-Kurelka." Another time, he told me that his sem kank was "Tonkpisem" or "Anksuol." For a long time I was utterly confused about how to reconcile this apparently chaotic information especially since he and his son were generally referred to within the Senkere community as "Pulumsem." Both lived near and gardened in the same areas as other Pulumsem members. Furthermore, as Yagala also told me in our first discussion, the men's clubhouse located within his houseyard (which opened out onto the main Wepra ceremonial ground) was built by the men of "Apesem" and "Pulumsem" together. Neither "Ape" nor "Pulum" appeared in his or anyone else's personal genealogy, so this source provided

49

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits FromYagala:

"APE-KURELKA"

I

f

1

I

Nonga /A

A

Som Yagala

Ipin

A

Pos

C

A y\ Sakma

Pospeya

Z^ Kink //S / \ Sap Q Engana

l£\

4& Tenda ZA Kowil

Tone

From Temp: "WAPUNDA-KURELKA" ^

Nonga

K Sap

Tenda A XTemp Kompeyaep

(J) Engana

A

A

Kowil

Pintpia

Figure 2.2. Pulumsem genealogies: Tonkpisem. (Note: Only adults are included.) no clues as to the relationship between these two groups. The word "Tonkpisem" has a place meaning and was in itself of no help. It will be recalled that Anksuol's genealogical connections are, if anything, with Molsem and with non-Mendi groups; therefore, Yagala's reference to it seemed to be at variance with Pulumsem's affiliation with Kurelka (members of which intermarry with the Molsem). Finally, "Tonkpisem" (what some people referred to as "Yagala's sem") is also the name of a sem kank affiliated with Mesa (refer back to Table 2.1). A similar discussion with a very old man named Temp revealed what at first appeared to be further inconsistencies. Even though Temp's and Yagala's personal genealogies link up with each other, Temp called his own group "Kurelka Wapunda." He claimed that he did not know the descendants of his father's brother Nonga, even though Nonga is Yagala's grandfather, and Temp and Yagala live within ten minutes' walk of each other (see Figure 2.2). As in the Anksuol case, Yagala's and Temp's use of these names became

50

What gifts engender

comprehensible only to the extent that the history of this group became known to me. The genealogical connection between the "mythic" ancestor named Pulumsem and present day Tonkpisem members is only one part of that history. Other parts include the following: • In the last generation (perhaps during the 1950s) Yagala's sem shared a men's clubhouse near the Wepra ceremonial ground with Mesa. Disputes between some of the Mesa and Tonkpisem men who shared the house led to a separation; when it came time to rebuild the house, the Mesa built their own at Ponea (see Map 2.1). Subsequently, Yagala's group and other members of Pulumsem rebuilt the Wepra men's house together. Nevertheless Yagala's sem and the Mesa remain on especially good terms within Kurelka,20 and the Mesa still cite "Tonkpisem" as a sem kank name affiliated with them. • The relationship between Apesem (or Tonkpisem) and Anksuol also derives from the close association between particular members of these two groups, the relevant ones having died only during the past ten years. Contrary to convention, these men had gardened together, had planted trees on each other's land, and had supported each other in land disputes. Temp, who had no male offspring, had also bequeathed his gardens to the sons of an Anksuol friend and to another Molsem man. For this reason, when asked for the name of his sem onda, Temp answered "Kurelka" and then said that his sem kank was "Molsem or Wapunda." / / w e were to view these responses from the perspective of hierarchically arranged social segments, we might be forced to conclude that the Molsem are a subgroup of the Kurelka even though we would also know that Molsem and Kurelka intermarry and do not generally consider themselves "one line." • The contemporary offspring of three brothers - Os, Mubi, and Nonga (see Figure 2.3) - are generally known as "Tonkpisem" to distinguish them from "Pulumsem" (the offspring of Ponenk and others) and from "Punginsem" (offspring of Ulap). Although Tonkpisem and Pulumsem share a men's house now, Tonkpisem and Punginsem are estranged. Several years ago these distinctions were not deemed important, I was told. But then Kink, a major big-man, died. Sorcery divination rituals pointed to Punginsem, and the matter remained unresolved in 1983. As a result of this estrangement, while Pulumsem members helped Punginsem when one of them married during 1978, members of Tonkpisem did not.21 Nevertheless, at all the parades held in preparation for the Suolol pig kill, members of the three subgroups appeared together as "Pulumsem" to receive and give valuables. They also continue to share the same forest areas as sources of firewood, their garden plots are intermixed, and so on. • Yagala refers to his group as "Tonkpisem" or "Apesem," while Temp apparently refers to the same group of people as "Tonkpisem" or "Wapunda." "Apesem" appears to refer to all of "Tonkpisem" except Temp;

Mesa Pepa Kurelka Pulumsem

4

f

I

Ulap

ATombant

1

A A

Tasupae

Temp

Kowil Pumas Manalom

A Panga Pos

Pospeya

Apesem

Tone

Nos

Sagump

rin

Wagip

j Telekam

•—•i

Ipin Mbolpae Onge Pombe Poya Pora Kiluwa Wange

Koank

Nopas

Pelep

Wapunda TONKPISEM

PULUMSEM

PUNGINSEM

PULUMSEM

Figure 2.3. Pulumsem genealogies: Punginsem, Pulumsem, and Tonkpisem. (Note: Only adults are included.) * There is at least one more brother here, not included in this diagram; his branch of Pulsumsem now lives in Kaupena, Ialibu District, having moved there around 1970.

52

What gifts engender

indeed, if Yagala were to sponsor an event, Temp probably would not help. Similarly, "Wapunda" appears to refer to all of "Tonkpisem" except Nonga's lineage (the one including Yagala). The reason why Yagala and Temp each eliminate the other from their respective genealogies is not entirely clear to me, but may be related to the circumstances of Kink's death. The discrepancies between Yagala's and Temp's testimonies do suggest how present-day alignments motivate the revision of genealogies in Mendi (e.g., the selective "forgetting" of ancestors) and how group names have specific "political" referents and uses. They also suggest that one is unlikely to uncover an "official" subclan genealogy or a consistent system of group names. Mutually inconsistent "actors' models," corresponding to diverse points of view on events and on the corporate responsibility people must accept for the actions of others, may be another concomitant of the nonhierarchical group structure. The apparently inconsistent use of names to refer to parts or all of Pulumsem can be thought of as a kind of synchronic record of a series of past events; with small-scale alliances and separations made for particular purposes. It is rather as if a series of illustrations of the episodes of a story were drawn superimposed on each other instead of in a linear sequence. For new social relationships to be possible, older ones are not necessarily obliterated from memory. Once forgotten, they are remade only with great creative effort; remembered, they constitute a fund of possibilities - legitimized by precedent - to be drawn upon again when they seem relevant. Thus the retention of these names implies a tacit historical continuity in change. In like fashion, genealogical connections may also be either retained or lost; but despite revision and telescoping, they contribute explicitly to the sense of continuity. These examples suggest that the alliances and oppositions between sem are not strictly predictable on the basis of genealogical information and assumptions concerning a hierarchy of social "levels" and functions. In Mendi, the parts of a sem onda are not conceived to be subordinate to the whole any more than group members are thought to be subordinate to a leader. Rather than being a hierarchically organized structure, a Mendi sem onda is an affiliation of equivalent segments, each with strong (and diverging) loyalties and interests outside the group. Nor do the functions (or interests) of sem onda necessarily override those of its components as they do among the Mae Enga (see the section "The Significance of Genealogies," earlier in this chapter); as we will see in Chapter 6, sem onda unity is an achievement hard won.

Names, categories, and the reality of groups We can go a step farther in our attempt to characterize sem. In a paper referred to earlier, Roy Wagner (1974) questioned anthropologists' need to talk in

53

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

terms of groups at all with reference to the New Guinea Highlands. Whereas empirical objectively defined collectivities are part of the Western notion of sociality, they need not be so elsewhere. But since anthropologists are first of all members of Western cultures, they tend to assume that " g r o u p s " of one sort or another are human essentials: We live in a culture in which founding, joining, participating in, and integrating groups is a deliberate and important matter. The constitutional charters of our nations are founded on a notion of a ''social contract," a conscious act or event of some kind which initiated the existence of society. Citizens are members of colossal "descent groups." . . . By making belonging to and participating in society conscious, this particular social form also makes it problematic. The problems of recruitment, participation, and corporateness (economics) are our problems, but we take them with us when we visit other cultures, along with our toothbrushes and favorite novels. [Wagner 1974: 103] Wagner's aim in challenging the assumption "that the natives are like u s " in our concern for "order, organization, and consistency" was more fully to appreciate native modes of creativity and of "making society": "It is the native mode of making society, rather than its curious similarities to our notions of groups, economics or consistency, that compels our interest h e r e . " He continues, " I n asking whether there are social groups in the New Guinea Highlands, I am concerned not with what kinds of 'groups' best describe the local communal arrangements, but rather with the way in which the people there create themselves socially" (Wagner 1974: 104). Wagner suggested that the Daribi (a people living on the "fringe" of the Highlands, in Simbu Province, to the east of the Mendi) use what appear to be collective names merely to distinguish themselves from other people, and not to create and refer to objective groups (even though their use of these names could be interpreted in that way): The hierarchical order necessary for such a model [a segmentary lineage system] is certainly there, implicit in the fact that the terms can be seen to include, exclude, or contrast with one another. Yet, we would be well advised to take the distinctions at face value, as distinctions only and not as groups. They only group people in the way that they separate or distinguish them on the basis of some criterion, and we cannot deduce from the conceptual distinctions an actual correspondence of the terms with discrete and consciously perceived groups of people. [Wagner 1974: 106-7] As in Mendi, these names have a range of usage: As names, used to draw distinctions, these terms are very flexible. "Para" . . . became associated with a man alleged to be the originator of a great many lines of paternal substance. . . . The name may be used to distinguish all of these lines from other complexes like Noru or Di'be, to distinguish some of them from parts of the latter (at Waramaru, Weriai called the Sogo people "Noru"), or to distinguish some of the Para lines from others. Those who call themselves Sizi, Warai, Ogwanoma, or Siabe are often referred to as "Para" in contradistinction to Weriai, for instance, . . . although the latter are otherwise just as much Para as they are. [Wagner 1974: 107]

54

What gifts engender

Wagner argued that there are "good reasons behind these seeming irregularities in the uses of names like 'Para.' " The reasons (in this case, a series of changes in residence) appear to be similar to the kind of events I cited to explain apparent inconsistencies in the use of names like "Anksuol" and "Pulumsem" in Mendi. The kinds of inconsistencies he relates are similar to those cited: for example, "Pulumsem" is the alleged originator of what might be understood to be several lines of paternal substance, like Para. "Pulumsem" may be used to distinguish all of those lines (i.e., "Tonkpisem," "Punginsem," and Ponenk's descendants) from other complexes like " 0 1 sem" or "Anksuol." It may also be used to distinguish some of them from parts of other complexes (e.g., when members of "Punginsem" helped the Mesa, they were referred to as "Pulumsem"). "Pulumsem" may be used to distinguish some of the lines from the others too, as in cases in which Ponenk's line - and specifically not "Tonkpisem" or "Punginsem" - is being referred to. Despite these correspondences, Wagner's conclusion is not appropriate for the Mendi case (although it appears right for the Daribi): Para can scarcely be said to represent a group, for it is impossible, given the range of usage, to determine which of the applications is the "correct" one. Para is a name, not a group; it is a means of distinguishing, of including and excluding, and thus merely a device for setting up boundaries. [Wagner 1974: 107] I have argued that sent are corporate groups, my translation for part of what the Mendi I know have told or shown me about the way in which they conceptualize relationships between clan members. It seems to me that the existing information concerning Mendi and other people living to their north does demonstrate that they have a "problem of society" solved in a systemic fashion, and at least in part by descent constructs. Big-men in Mendi are particularly important in articulating this and in organizing or " m a k i n g " groups. The Mendi, along with the Mae Enga and the people of the Mt. Hagen area all appear themselves to "reify" their collectivities, using group names in active contexts just as they would refer to people. For example, Meggitt wrote: Throughout this analysis I may appear to personify clans, saying that a clan does this, or decides that, and so on. I write thus not merely for the sake of brevity, but also to stress the corporate nature of the agnatic groups. The Mae also talk in this way. In disputes over land, pigs and women, in ceremonial distributions of wealth, in large-scale ritual activities and the like, they constantly speak of clans and subclans as active units - "our clan defeated Kiya [clan]"; "Meraini [clan] killed our brother." . . . They are justified in this usage. Lineage, sub-clan, and clan do not refer simply to categories. They are most emphatically corporate, social groups with demarcated areas of activity. [Meggitt 1965: 26-7] Or, as Strathern wrote more recently: At the group level a further political value is created out of the mass of individual actions. If this were not so, indeed, one might ask why there would be any coordi-

55

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

nated, public, group action at all, and certainly why it would be so elaborate, dramatic and climactic as moka festivals are in Hagen. The whole process of leading up to a moka shows the gradual funnelling of individual decisions into a set of forms which are expressive of social relations, and hence of the people's own idea of their groups. This was made clear to me in 1964, when, having early on gathered a statement of an overarching name linking two sets of paired clans together within a tribe, I later saw this alliance in action at a dance when a group, massed together, presented themselves at the entrance to a ceremonial ground, decorated as recipients at a moka, and I was told "That is Anmbilika" (the name in question). The absurdity of supposing either that Anmbilika "existed" only for that brief hour, as it magically seemed to do at the time, or of supposing that even then it did not "exist" since only some 60% of the men in it actually came for the dance, should be apparent here. The point is, these men presented themselves as the Anmbilika, and were so recognized by the donors and other spectators. [Strathern 1979a: 104-5] These names are used in the context of the arguments people make about the need for joint action and in the context of descriptions of such actions. That the Daribi have no such "corporate" concept of their collectivities

distinguishes them from central Highland people like the Mendi, the Hageners and the Mae. However, that their names have "a range of usage and no correct usage," as Wagner argued, does not necessarily make the point. As we saw in the Mendi cases cited above, factional splits within an egalitarian community result in similar observations even when the people do "make groups." In an affiliation of equivalent segments such as that of the Mendi, there is no "official" or correct sem genealogy or name, as individual group members are both equal and different in their responsibilities and commitments. To discover how the people construct themselves socially in such a system requires recognizing that they may differ with one another and may even make their groups against one another at times. In Mendi, the range of usage signifies a range of possibilities for cooperative action "in the name of sem" and the equal status of diverse native perspectives - that is, the range of usage and lack of a "correct" usage may be an index of egalitarianism. In any case, these usages are part of what people argue about when they attempt to create a consensus for joint sem onda action in Mendi. Drawing social boundaries here or there by means of group names is important in Mendi because it adds or subtracts a particular significance - a "political value" in Strathern's phrase - to individual action there.

Clan membership and the exclusion of women In the previous sections of this chapter, I argued that Mendi clans are egalitarian organizations. Among sem members, there is equal access to information and to resources. For all members, participation is open; no one has to participate, but all members may take part and have a say in shaping group policy. Any number of members may distinguish themselves and become

56

What gifts engender

leaders by organizing clan wealth exchanges, since this does not depend on a zero-sum process of accumulating a fixed amount of clan wealth, but rather on developing external networks.22 There are neither fixed offices for individuals to attain nor formal councils controlled by a subset of group members. Moreover, relationships between groups mirror their internally egalitarian character. At the same time, the Mendi are not simply egalitarian. But a lens with a wider angle than we have been using is required to place sem in their proper perspective within Mendi society. The question is, Who may belong to sem? While the answer to this question is perhaps already evident, it deserves highlighting. In the preceding section of this chapter, I noted that Ryan translated sem as "patrilineal descent group"; there is a truth to this, but before considering in what that truth consists, I wish to consider the situation of "nonagnates." As both Ryan and I have indicated, the ability to trace patrilineal descent to a founding ancestor is not the only legitimate qualification for group membership. Nonagnates are admitted under many conditions. Moreover, as we have seen here, nonagnatic connections are not necessarily masked in personal and "mythic" genealogies in Mendi. Ryan has written extensively on the role of nonagnates in Mendi society (see Ryan 1959, 1961, 1969). I will confine myself to a brief summary and clarification of the points Ryan raised. The Mendi emphasize that they have access to the group of their mothers and, as Ryan noted, most nonagnatic residents live with what are understood to be matrilateral kin. In Senkere people asserted that all incorporated groups were "sister's sons." Men who live in their wives' places may be addressed by the name of their original group even when it is clear that they are not temporary visitors; for example, a Yansup husband of one resident female agnate was often addressed "Yansup-o." 23 On the other hand, the children of such men will be living in their mother's place (amtion su) and, just as with agnates, are thought to have strong claims on membership, with secure land rights and so on. Put another way, one's father's group does not necessarily have uncontested or automatic claims on a person. For example, in the late 1940s, an Anksuol man of Kombal died, and his wife returned to her natal place with her children. Some thirty years later, when one of her sons decided that he wanted to be part of his father's group, he began to participate with other Anksuol men in wealth displays. At a parade held in Senkere during 1978, Anksuol members gave the man a token payment of four pearl shells for him to pass along to his maternal relatives, with whom he still lived. The latter had to agree to his move, according to Senkere informants. When they did so, Anksuol members made an ol tenga to compensate them more fully for the loss of their "sister's son." This payment signified their recognition that his right to join his agnates was balanced by his accumulated obligations to

57

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

his maternal kin, deepened by virtue of his long-standing association with them. Young unmarried men living with their mother's people may join their father's people simply by transferring their residence and contributing to their agnatic group's ceremonial prestations. Although exclusive membership is not explicitly required in Mendi, in practice it is hard for a married adult to maintain more than one group identification. Nevertheless, a few manage to do so; for example, the man Temp, mentioned earlier, who calls himself "Kurelka Wapunda," is sometimes referred to, and addressed as, "Saol-o" because of his residential association with one small Molsem subclan. Since clan members depend on each other in the context of group exchange ceremonies and for paeme gifts, a person with two clan affiliations could easily become overcommitted. Therefore, while many households retain gardens in both the wife's and the husband's places, and while some men retain active gardens in their mother's place, this is not necessarily a sign of a dual group identification (compare Glasse 1968). Land may not be transferred by a sister's son to his children unless the latter actually live with their father's mother's people and have thus shown that they aim to act as members of that group. Ryan argued that although the Mendi explicitly deny it, nonagnates can be shown to suffer disabilities that derive from the disruption and dispersal that caused them to leave their agnatic territory in the first place. He measured their disability on several dimensions: the number of marriages they contract, the degree to which they may contract several simultaneous marriages, the size of their bride wealth distributions, the availability of sources of aid in amassing their bride wealth, and their general ability to contribute to exchanges. Ryan gives us an accounting of the circumstances of a number of nonagnates' moves and documents their preference for migrating to the places of their mothers. My observations some twenty years after Ryan's, and during a period of tribal peace, bear out Andrew Strathern's comment that "the closer in time to the precolonial period that the anthropologist works, the more he is likely to find immigrants heavily dependent on hosts and perhaps inferior in status to other ordinary men in their clans of residence" (1972: 192). Mendi in the late 1970s was much more comparable to Mount Hagen in the mid-1960s (when Strathern was there) than it was to Mendi during Ryan's stay there in the 1950s. During the late 1970s, nonagnates contracted polygamous marriages, made large bride wealth payments, and were leaders, judging from the Suolol evidence. The disabilities suffered by nonagnates in Mendi during the 1950s appear to have been circumstantial. They were not evidence of a cultural emphasis on patrilineal descent as a mode of recruitment. This conclusion is reinforced by the lack of "masking" of nonagnatic connections in many Mendi genealogies. For example, even though Anksuol members retain their identity as agnatic affiliates of Molsem, they have been central (along

58

What gifts engender

with the agnatic Molsem) to one of the two major fertility cults in northern Mendi; its members have been polygamists consistently, and they have contributed both big-men and fight leaders to their tribe. By not having an agnatic descent rule of recruitment, Mendi is similar to a number of other Highland societies (see, e.g., Brown 1962; Langness 1964; de Lepervanche 1967). Most observers have noted the relevance of relations with the mother's group, of cooperation in exchanges, or of co-residence in determining membership. Very early in the history of research in the Highlands, John Barnes (1962) suggested that descent was not really a criterion for group affiliation there at all but, rather, an idiom of group unity (see also Barnes 1967). L. Langness in particular has argued for the primacy of locality as the basis of group membership. Reinforcing this point, Andrew Strathern (1972: 19) reported idioms for common ancestry "derived from the model of vegetable growth of trees and plants in general, and which reflect the empirical importance of residing continuously and working in an area for making good one's claims to membership." He stressed the importance of food and feeding in the achievement of kinship among the Melpa. And as we have seen, the Mendi situation is similar. Nevertheless, the Bena Bena (with whom Langness worked) and other central Highland peoples including the Mendi assert that they are descendants of a founding ancestor and talk about group members in terms of kinship (i.e., "we are all brothers," and similar phrases). If group membership is achieved in such diverse ways, why do Highlanders use "descent constructs" at all? Strathern offered an answer to this question that has important implications: The Bena need not have developed a descent-based ideology for their local groups; but they have done so. Surely this is because kin and descent relationships provide an excellent model for relations of inclusion and opposition, and agnatic relationships especially fit the emphasis in the Highlands on male strength, co-operations, and superiority over women? [1969b: 39] Descent dogmas are not principles of recruitment to groups but are ways of asserting not only group solidarity and continuity but also male power. There are several points to note here. First, the notion of a common male ancestor is a compelling concrete representation of the corporate unity of a group of people. Second, sent are "enduring structures"; they represent Mendi notions about social continuity beyond the lifetime of individuals and the ephemera of daily interaction. Patrilineal descent, then, conveys the sense that social continuity is male. Despite the occasional appearance of individual female filiative links in personal genealogies, the long-term existence of the group is thought to be "reproduced" by men. As I have noted, the transfer of land between generations is conceived of as between men. Until recently, men controlled the major fertility cults, concerned with the continued reproduction of people and the land in Mendi. Female participation in these cults, even as spectators, was severely limited. Participation cut across clan lines

59

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

(grouping members of major enemies together and separating clansmen); they emphasized the importance of a general male solidarity over even the solidarity of sem (which, after all, creates divisions between men of different clans). Within the context of the cults, the gender distinction was raised to the level of society as a whole; even boys participated occasionally, but women were adamantly excluded. Finally, the idiom for clan unity, "we are brothers," is likely not a general assertion of kinship. It is simpler than that. Although it does express relationship, it also delimits that relationship. While patrilineality is not a positive principle of group membership and does not specify who may become a "brother" in Mendi, it does imply who may not become one. Nonagnates may become "brothers," but women may not. When we step back to view sem from the perspective of Mendi society as a whole, we find a gender hierarchy. The incorporation of women into Mendi groups cannot be discussed in the same terms as those used in the anthropological literature to analyze the incorporation of nonagnates. Consider the issue of a "concern for group boundaries," for example. Both in societies like that of the Mae or the Bena Bena (where group boundaries are guarded vigorously and where nonagnates as such are not admitted easily) and in societies like that of the Mendi (where nonagnatic links are not systematically masked in genealogies and where there is no antipathy to admitting nonagnates), women are arguably not full members of any group. Ryan translated sem as "patrilineal descent group"; perhaps it might now be instructive to list his reasons for doing so: 1. The Mendi descent-group (shem) [applies] to a man and his children but never to a woman and her children. By the same mode of thought, in the higher levels of segmentation, no shem is ever referred to or named after an ancestress. 2. Women do not own land; although land rights can t>e acquired through a woman, the land itself can be granted only by her male kin. 3. No individual genealogy includes two successive female ancestors. While it is possible for a man to own land in his mother's mother's clan-territory, he could only get it from his mother's brother, who had in turn got it from his mother's brother; he could never make a direct claim on his mother's mother's land. . . . 4. Women tend to be forgotten in genealogies far more quickly than men. It is rare that a man can name even the clan of his mother's mother. . . . 5. There is a marked difference in roles between patrikin and maternal kin. . . . 6. In nearly all the cases, changes in the normal patrilineal/patrilocal pattern are caused by warfare, widowhood, or some other form of disruption of an individual's relations with patrikin. . . . That is why, as I have pointed out, nonagnates suffer certain economic disabilities. [1961: 52-4]

These reasons are all stated from the perspective of Mendi men, but most of them (except the last one) hold for women as well. Women do not remember their mother's mother's clan any more readily than do men, nor do they retain

60

What gifts engender

rights to land in their mother's mother's place. The sixth point Ryan made needs to be changed if it is to reflect a female perspective: It is actually an aspect of Mendi women's strong relationship with their natal families that they are welcomed back by their fathers and brothers when their husbands die or when they quarrel with their husbands and need a place of refuge. That is, from the perspective of a Mendi woman her relationship with her patrikin was disrupted during the "normal" course of events by her postmarital change of residence (which weakened her ability to participate in the affairs of her natal group); when she returns home, these relationships are restored. In any case, despite these strong ties, Ryan's list of characteristics of sent tell much about the peripheral status of women within them. The "femaleness" of some ancestors itself disqualifies them as symbols of social solidarity and continuity; a similar gender asymmetry in the symbolic construction of labor and its enduring products appears to underly women's postmarital change in residence as well (see the earlier section "Social Relations between Clan Members"). Women's lives are affected by sem affairs, but women are not members of sem in the same way men are. If one asks Mendi women for the name of their group, they sometimes give the name of their husband's group and other times give that of their natal group. Both answers are, in a sense, correct. When I asked two young married women about this once, they answered that they belonged both to their natal and to their husband's groups. One of them added that it depended on a woman's personal relationship with members of her husband's family; her own being poor, she said she thinks she is a member of her father's and brother's sem. Mendi women live with their husband's group but rarely cut themselves off completely from their brothers, since the latter are to be counted on for support in disputes (compare M. Strathern 1972). While some men maintain dual group affiliations as well, the character of a woman's participation in each group is different from a man's. It is individual and ego centered, not corporate. Women tend to develop mutually supportive relationships with particular patrikin (contributing to this or that brother's bride wealth, for example), rather than relations of diffuse and generalized reciprocity within the clan. Women do not participate in the public discussions held to plan corporate group affairs. In fact, they are not permitted to participate. On these occasions, a female "voice" is ruled offstage; only male "voices" are appropriate at clan events. Many women express a lack of interest in participating in clan discussions, a fact that raises the question of whether female exclusion from the male sem onda domain "matters" to them, even if this exclusion does point to a gender hierarchy. Viewed from the center, sem onda meetings, parades, and wealth exchanges are serious and spectacular. Viewed from the periphery, they are another thing again. Although some women may enjoy watching such things, others do not bother to attend, or else comment disparagingly about this dancer's

61

Sem relations: solidarity and its limits

face paint, or the way in which that man makes a speech or gives a gift. Men may notice these remarks or ignore them. There is, in any case, a social rift. This rift poses analytical problems for the anthropologist (as well as practical problems of organization for Mendi men). We cannot simply conclude that the male world of sem and the female world of not-sem are parallel universes, because they affect one another both on the level of meaning and of organization. For one thing, men make their groups at least implicitly against women; the same gender symbolism that associates men with sem onda affairs gives both men and sem onda a positive valuation and encourages men to participate by giving what is not-sem a negative cast. For another thing, we need to understand the character of social relations outside the context of sem. Just because women are not members of clans, in the male sense, does not mean that they are restricted to a ' 'domestic" domain or that they have no other structured role in society. Action outside the context of the corporate clan is culturally organized and hardly ad hoc. Nor is it entirely devalued. Unlike the Mae Enga, the Mendi do not accord sem functions a priority in all contexts. Clan events are actively negotiated and organized against a background of other sorts of claims on people's energies.

3 Twem: personal exchange partnerships

4

'If I depended on my own hand alone, I would be nothing; I would have no name." [Mendi big-man] Strictly speaking, twem is not a kinship term.1 One may call "twemol" a person whom one has met while traveling far from home, and with whom one has shared a smoke: One need only request a pearl shell or some other valuable from the other, and the other need only agree to give it. One may also refer to or address as "twemol" one's mother's or spouse's relatives and one's siblings' or children's in-laws, although there are also more specific terms of address for all these people. But one does not call a clansman ' 'twemol.'' As part of a compound verb, twem is used with (for example) the conjugated stem verb for "to speak" (twem kopu) meaning "to request" an item or generally "to talk twem." People said that twem itself refers to exchange, to the circulation or the giving, receiving, and replacing of things (samting ikam igo in Melanesian pidgin). Ryan (1961: 66) defined twem adequately as a "delayed gift-exchange between individuals, signifying a more or less permanent socio-economic relationship."2 The significance of the Southern Highlands Through the work of Mervyn Meggitt (1974), Andrew Strathern (1971), and others (e.g., Bulmer 1960, Rappaport 1968), Highland ceremonial exchange systems are almost as well known as the Trobriand kula and Northwest Coast potlatch exchanges with which they are sometimes compared. Based on research undertaken during the 1950s and 1960s, this ethnographic literature emphasized clan festivals and prestations, and not individual exchange partnerships. Addressing problems that had emerged from research in Africa and elsewhere, the initial phase of research in the Highlands was in any case at 62

63

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

Plate 4. Kelom gives her exchange partner some one-kina coins during a mortuary ceremony, as her young daughter watches. least as concerned with group structure, leadership, and human ecology as it was with exchange per se. For the most part, large-scale clan prestations were studied as a means by which men became leaders and groups demonstrated their political viability. Some ethnographers studied exchange festivals as control mechanisms in ecological systems (Rappaport 1968; Meggitt 1973). Much of this early research was carried out in the northern part of the central Highlands, from east of the Chimbu (now Simbu Province) to the vast Enga region in the west. This area includes some of the densest Highland populations.3 Throughout this region, ceremonial exchange is predominantly the business of clans (although recent research has raised questions about this picture; see Feil 1984). In Mae Enga and Melpa (Mount Hagen) societies to the west, clans coordinate or sequence their prestations into "chains" - spectacularly long ones in the Mae tee system - such that pigs and other wealth are passed from group to group over the course of several months in a pattern that recurs frequently during individual lifetimes. In the societies to the east, such as Chimbu (Brown 1972) and Kuma (Reay 1959), clan festivals take the form of periodic distributions of pork or vegetables and items of value. Each group plans its own festival individually, and although food and wealth are redistributed widely, no enchained sequences of distributions are formed. In all these societies, clansmen often act as "supporters" of big-men. At ceremonial exchanges, big-men count wealth assembled for a distribution and

64

What gifts engender

make speeches in which they present an account of the historical background of the prestation and an interpretation of its significance for the political relationship between clans and tribes. Big-men from donor groups formally give the wealth to the recipient group's big-men who may redistribute it to their clansmen or else organize its further movement to other groups. During the 1970s, the empirical focus of Highlands research changed. Research was conducted in the Southern Highlands, long neglected owing to its inaccessibility, with a few exceptions (Glasse 1968; Ryan 1961). Whereas some of this work has now been published (see, for example, Josephides 1983; Leroy 1979a,b; Sillitoe 1979; A. Strathern 1979a, 1980),4 much of it is unpublished (e.g., Langlass 1974; Wormsley 1978) or is currently in progress. This geographical change of focus occurred at a time when, after a decade of discomfiture with "African"-style social structural models, analyses of Highland sociality began to reflect a widespread anthropological shift of confidence from descent theory to theories of exchange (e.g., Rubel and Rosman 1978; see also Befu 1977; Kuper 1982; Schneider 1965 - all of whom survey the literature). As it happens, societies in the southern part of the Highlands are different from those in the north, and particularly suited to this shift in analytical perspective. Robert Glasse's work on the Huli (1968), delineating their "cognatic" kinship system, was an early hint of the difference. Paul Sillitoe's ethnography of the Wola (1979) is perhaps the most extreme statement of the analytical shift. Whereas the study of exchange in the northern Highlands was primarily part of the study of collective group action, Sillitoe's approach to exchange among the Wola is explicitly individualistic.5 We appear to have to choose between two anthropological models: a structural model in which exchanges are carried out by people in the names of groups and serve collective ends (themselves constituted in other ways as well) and a market-style model of social behavior or action in which exchanges are undertaken by people in their own names as they pursue their individual "self-interest" (constituting a social order by the by). But Andrew and Marilyn Strathern's extremely useful controlled comparison of the Melpa (in the Mount Hagen area, in the northern Highlands) and the Wiru (in Pangia, in the Southern Highlands Province east of Mendi) shows explicitly that the emerging regional contrast is not simply a function of theoretical bias (see A. Strathern 1978a, 1979a, 1980; M. Strathern 1980). Andrew Strathern (1978a: 80) has described the Wiru pig kill and contrasted it to Hagen moka proceedings in the following way: Individual donors from all over the village now converge one after the other on the recipients. Carrying legs of pork on their heads the donors rush forward and slap the legs down in front of a particular recipient, either chanting a stylized cry or . . . in silence. . . . Each donor shouts to his own individual recipient, and the resulting clamour makes it very difficult to pick out individual words. The effect is very far removed from that of the public speech-making at the conclusion of the moka, when all the emphasis is on corporate statements about relations between groups and there

65

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

is much stress on people forming an audience and listening properly. At Wiru pigkills no audience or set of spectators as such gathers at all. In Wiru, Wola, and other Southern Highland societies, dyadic relationships between individual affines and exchange partners sometimes appear to be more important, within the context of ceremonial exchange, than corporate groups. In fact, a number of these societies are not organized into centralized, bigman—dominated clans but, rather, appear radically decentralized relative to the societies of the northern Highlands (Kelly 1977; Schieffelin 1976). Even relationships between "brothers" appear to be primarily dyadic in Wola society according to Sillitoe's account (rather like relations between brothers and sisters in Mendi). Nevertheless, the Mendi and at least some of their neighbors are comparable to the northerners in terms of the intensity of garden production, population density, and degree of interest in exchange. These facts complicate the already exceedingly intricate task of Highland ethnographic comparison at the same time as they suggest certain transformational patterns. For the present argument a choice between individual-centered and social structural models of analysis is beside the point because the Mendi culturally mark both groups and personal networks. For this reason, Mendi society is an important variant in the "family" of Highland political economies. In Mendi both individual exchange partnerships and corporate clan relations express structural principles that shape the political economy and account for some of the moral tone of social life. This duality makes itself felt concretely during formal prestations: Valuables may be displayed in a long line and counted by prominant leaders, as in Mount Hagen, and then, a few hours later, they are publicly distributed by individual donors to individual recipients with all the "clamor" of a Wiru prestation. An analysis of Mendi sociality that explores the articulation of personal network and corporate relations may facilitate the development of a more inclusive comparative understanding of Highland societies because here it is almost as if counterpoised anthropological models appear together in the actors' reality.

The articulation of twem and sent In Chapter 2, I discussed aspects of the relationship the Mendi have with one another as members of one sem or clan. Among others of its characteristics, sem is a "property" relation: that is, it defines relationships between people in terms of conventions concerning their rights in and control over resources, products and wealth. Generalized reciprocity within the group expresses the solidarity of clan members. As a rubric within which ceremonial prestations are organized, clans arguably both constrain and depend on the tempo of garden work; similarly, they both affect and are affected by the regional distribution and flow of wealth.

66

What gifts engender

Discovering network relationships An analysis of intra- and intergroup relationships is necessary for an understanding of production and exchange in Mendi, as it is in many other Highland societies. But in Mendi (and probably at least a few other Highland societies: see, in particular, A. Strathern 1969a, 1978a) it is not sufficient. In their preparations for clan festivals and prestations, the Mendi do not depend on local productive efforts - ''their own hands" - alone. A man cannot fully meet his obligations to his own clan brothers simply by tending gardens and looking after a herd of pigs. Some of the items he needs - most especially pearl shells and nowadays money - can only be obtained through exchange. When a clan is preparing for a festival, members of the same subclan do help each other if they can. But because they are each expected to contribute valuables to a joint display, these items are not obtained predominantly from within the group. Many valuables are obtained by clan members individually from their affines and other personal exchange partners - twem partners belonging to other clans within and outside of their tribe. The success of large-scale clan prestations presupposes that clan members will be able to draw in this way on the resources and the productive capacities of members of other groups. However, to view the articulation of network and group simply as a meansend relationship will not do. Such a perspective would indicate little about the cultural character of either, and would even misconstrue their functional relationship. An alternative picture is made possible by paying special attention to a different source of data than we have studied in the past. As empirical background for the present work, detailed consideration was given to the ways in which relationships with exchange partners manifest themselves not only in the context of formally organized (mostly clan-sponsored) events but also in informal, everyday settings in which their particular structure is more visible. This required keeping track of some number of people's daily exchanges: activities that take place in people's houses and houseyards and that are not dramatic or marked by fanfare. While neither big-men nor other participants make clarifying speeches about these things, nevertheless quotidian discourse and action manifests the expectations and responsibilities of exchange partners. A study of such sources suggests that the twem relationship expresses a social ethic and a pattern of exchange distinct from (and not just in the service of) those of clanship. Twem and the circulation of wealth My analytical approach to the question of the relationship between sent and twem may best be demonstrated by contrasting it with that of D'Arcy Ryan (1961), whose early study of "gift exchange" in Mendi provided a basis for

67

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

my own. In his study, Ryan did not pay special attention to Mendi twem partnerships. In keeping with the then contemporary anthropological emphasis on corporate groups, Ryan's focus was on marriage, death payments, and other ceremonial exchange events as expressions of the political relationship between clans. But twem partners are referred to throughout his doctoral dissertation, and in a brief section on twem, he says, "It permeates every aspect of Mendi life" (1961: 66). In this section, he relates twem perceptively to the circulation of wealth: It is a feature of the Mendi economy . . . that goods used in exchanges (with the exception of pigs) are never hoarded. Pearlshells, for example, may remain in the possession of one man for a week or two at a time while he is amassing them for an important payment; but with this and one or two other exceptions, . . . exchange goods are in a state of constant and rapid circulation. The rate of turnover of valuables is not quite as rapid as Ryan suggested; people may hold on to shells for months and even years. But he was right to point out the importance of the rapid circulation of wealth in Mendi. Ryan (1961: 65-6) implied that a functional, or causal, relation holds between circulation and twem transactions: It follows [from the fact of the rapid circulation of wealth] that when a subclan requires contributions for an intergroup payment, its members seldom have the goods to hand, so that they must be acquired from outside the group. The principal means of doing this is through the institution of individual exchanges known as twem. In other words, Ryan argued that twem is occasioned by intergroup events, and is necessitated by the (preexisting) pattern of wealth circulation. Ryan did not explain the pattern of circulation itself, however. In contrast with Ryan's approach, I will argue that although networks are a functional means of obtaining wealth for clan displays, they cannot be reduced to this. Networks do not simply serve exogenous ends; rather, they have a social logic of their own. Indeed, the pattern of circulation, which for Ryan was a given, is itself at least a partial function of their social logic. Like those of the clan, twem relationships are mediated in part by the products of labor. The process of maintaining these relationships affects the intensity of exchange (and at least indirectly, of garden production). Specifically, it is likely that the reproduction of partnerships and the development of personal networks creates a relatively high and steady demand for wealth (despite regional fluctuations in the scheduling of formal ceremonial prestations). That is, although one may need twem partners because of the rapid circulation of wealth, that pattern of circulation is also a defining characteristic of twem relationships, just as the short-term accumulation of wealth, in preparation for collective clan prestations, is an expression (and not just of function) of clan solidarity. Rapid circulation is one of the central values in terms of which twem relationships are created and reproduced. Twem partners have, in effect,

68

What gifts engender

joint rights to one another's wealth except those items already "spoken for": promised privately to a particular person or for a specific public prestation. Formal contrasts and practical ambiguities Besides their distinctive patterns of circulation, sem and twem contrast in other ways. Sem relationships imply a centralized organization even in Mendi where big-men are not always center stage. But a person's twem relationships are organized as an ego-centered network; looked at from the perspective of the society as a whole, in which each person is the center of his or her own network, this structure is radically decentralized. Each person's array of twem partnerships is unique, only partially overlapping with that of his or her fellow clan members or spouse. Then again, despite the empirical fact that twem relations are continually and systematically reproduced as an element of social structure by means of marriage, they are culturally conceived of as ephemeral because they are ego-centered and not inheritable. They therefore contrast with clan relations. While clans are observed to wither away or to be created anew, they are nevertheless culturally understood to endure as corporate entities. Access to the two relationships is governed by different rules. Whereas clan membership is in part inherited from one's father or mother, exchange partnerships are not thought of in this way (in contrast with exchange partnerships elsewhere in New Guinea - see Rubel and Rosman 1978). Instead, exchange networks are often based around (but not limited to) a core of affines - relationships one creates rather than inherits. While clans, as exogamous groups, are based on relationships between people who cannot intermarry, exchange networks are based on relationships created through marriage. Whereas the sem relationship is exclusive, twem is broadly inclusive: clans are basically male institutions but even unmarried girls may have twem partners. Wealth mediates both sem and twem relationships, but it does so differently in each case. Twem partners circulate wealth (rather than accumulating it in preparation for prestations). That is, exchange partnerships are sustained by the differential need partners have for valuables, whereas the relationship between clansmen is reinforced by joint projects, by common need. Sem and twem relationships also contrast in terms of conventions concerning how they are each maintained in the absence of material wealth exchanges (as we shall see). Despite these contrasts, clan and network relations do not always manifest themselves in distinct contexts. They are not neatly separated as in "spheres of exchange" but are usually conjoined. Indeed it may be for this reason that Ryan interpreted twem as a functional means for staging clan events, rather than as expressing a distinct structural principle. As I have noted, the same exchange valuables (e.g., pigs, pearl shells, and money) mediate each of

69

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

these relationships; sometimes in the same social situations and acts of exchange. Whereas particular kinds of formal events highlight one or the other structural principle (marriage ceremonializing twem; ol tenga foregrounding sem), all are the practical product and expression of both of them to some extent. Equally, the informal events of daily life - as when twem partners sit together in private discussion while they share a meal - produce personal partnerships at the same time as they make clan events possible. Finally, as I discussed in Chapter 2, one's twem partners and those one calls "brother" or "sister" are not necessarily mutually exclusive groups of people. Since tribes are composed of a number of neighboring, intermarrying clans, some fellow tribe members (who occasionally act together in a solidary fashion) may also be affines and twem partners. This fact is not only a problem for analysis, but also for everyday social interaction. People sometimes become embroiled in disputes due to misunderstandings and disagreements concerning one another's intentions and the appropriateness of the roles each has adopted in particular contexts. The ambiguities are compounded in relationships between men and women because of the peripheral role of women in clan affairs. Husbands and wives act very much like twemol; in contrast, clan sisters may act like "brothers" - as when the latter support one another privately with gifts given paeme - but their relations of solidary identification with fellow clan members are idiosyncratic and do not generally extend to people outside their subclan or to all occasions of "brotherly" support. The relationship between twem and sem How then are twem and sem related? As I have stated, twem is not simply a technical means by which goods are assembled for clan prestations, nor is making solidary groups the privileged finality of social action. As we shall see, the ideology of clan solidarity is not so obviously "hegemonic" in Mendi as it is in Mae Enga, Melpa, and other northern Highland societies. Neither are twem and sem simply complementary (although they can be). They are also structurally contradictory. The need to satisfy ones obligations to fellow agnates by accumulating valuables is not always easily reconciled with the demands of exchange partners for the same items. Any understanding of exchange and production in this society must take into account the problematical way in which these two relationships articulate. Such an understanding requires more than a sociological analysis of exchange. The contradictions I am referring to are not simply a technical function of, say, the supply of wealth, but are the expression of a cultural system. Although the present discussion situates sem and twem in practical contexts of social action, and explores their sociopolitical implications, it depends on an understanding of their cultural and moral construction. Just as a fully adequate understanding of clanship requires learning about Mendi notions of shared

70

What gifts engender

substance and of time, an understanding of twem requires learning about indigenous concepts of the "person"; these sets of ideas form a system in which the meaning of each is defined in relationship to the others. Highlands anthropologists have long been concerned with the ways in which Highlanders conceptualize the social character of individual behavior, and particularly the tension between individual autonomy and ambition on the one hand and social solidarity and continuity on the other (e.g., Read 1955, 1959; M. Strathern 1981). In Mendi (as elsewhere; see Brown and Buchbinder 1976; Strathern 1982), this tension is culturally constructed in terms of gender distinctions, "maleness" and "femaleness" providing multiple and ambiguous interpretive possibilities to be read - variously by different social agents - against their social experience in a political field of play. The complex articulation of twem and sent will be considered in Chapters 5 and 6 in an extended discussion of the major practical contexts of gift exchange. For the moment, however, let us suspend consideration of many complexities and focus on the twem relationships themselves, as we focused on clan organization in Chapter 2. Exchange partnerships will be described from the perspective of the individual's life cycle in the following three sections. After that and a brief discussion of some cultural aspects of twem, the etiquette of twem relationships will be outlined - that is, the social rules, tacit and explicit, by means of which people construct and reproduce partnerships. The last section of this chapter presents some details concerning the structure of networks themselves. Twem and the life cycle In Mendi, unmarried people may develop exchange networks. To some extent (more so for women) their early exchange relationships explicitly anticipate their active roles in their own marriage gift distributions. But their involvement in exchange before marriage also demonstrates that exchange networks are not simply a function of marriage. Personal networks before marriage Throughout their childhood, girls mostly receive gifts, notably from their agnates.6 They are favored with choice cuts of pork at pig kills. Senior women in their own subclan may give them small gifts (often money these days) and show concern for their welfare. When their clan sisters marry, they receive pigs as part of the marriage payment which they may themselves look after. People say that it is not right for a woman to have nothing and to therefore be of no account. A woman ought to have pigs of her own to look after before she marries, they say, and she ought to bring these pigs with her when she moves to her husband's place after her wedding. Some big-men systemati-

71

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

cally cultivate father-daughter relationships with girls in their clan - speaking on their side in disputes and courts, giving them pork when pigs are killed and piglets from litters when a sow farrows, renting headdresses for them during parades so that they may participate, and so on. Such gift giving and attention is undertaken with an expectation of an ongoing gift relationship with the young woman after she marries. Chapter 4 will discuss the implications of women's involvement in gift exchange for the understanding of gender constructions and male-female roles. In the present discussion, expectations concerning young women are significant for what they imply about the status of young people generally. They may embark on autonomous exchange careers outside of marriage, using valuables given to them without explicit solicitation by fellow clan members of both sexes - notably, bride wealth gifts from clan sisters (especially a category of gift called nopae, which will be discussed). Table 3.1 summarizes information concerning a number of unmarried men. It indicates the numbers and caretakers of pigs that fourteen men owned at the time of questioning. It also indicates the source of the first shell and first pig each man received. It supports these men's general assertions concerning the importance of the marriages of their subclan sisters as a source of wealth. Informal inquiries among unmarried women yielded similar results: They commonly received their first pigs from female agnates, as well as from parents and others in their group. Unmarried men receive shells and pigs as nopae, or paeme (unsolicited), from their sisters. They receive matrilateral funeral payments (kowar) when their sisters' children die. Occasionally they may receive a shell when a corporate prestation is made to their group; sometimes they receive a pearl shell directly from someone in the other clan during a public ceremony, but more frequently their clansmen redistribute a shell to them afterward. They receive informal gifts, also unsolicited and that they do not have to repay directly, from their parents, from their mother's relatives, and from neighbors who are members of other clans in their tribe. For example, one boy helped his mother look after her brother's sow. Later, when the sow farrowed, its owner gave him one of the piglets. Generally, young people's "first transactions" tend to be dyadic gift-debts or gift-credits contracted when they planned to contribute to marriages and kowar, or in the course of establishing partnerships (see Table 3.2). Young men generally do not themselves sponsor public prestations. They receive items when the main recipients redistribute wealth to members of their group. Usually the first prestation a man sponsors is his marriage payment to the family of his prospective bride.7 Before that, young men help their fathers when the latter sponsor a prestation, and they help other young men in their clan when the latter prepare to get married. In order to contribute, they obtain wealth by requesting it explicitly from fellow clan members or their siblings'

Table 3.1. Never-married men: access to valuables and labor Pigs on

16 to 20 years old

20 to 30 years old

30 to 40 years old

First pearl shell

First pig

Men

6/7/78

Pig caretakers

M21 M22* M23 A Bb C M15* M20c D* E Fd M18* G H

4 7 6 6 4 6 4 3 4 3 6 2 3 3

M M M(5); MZ(1) M BW M(4); FM(2) BWM; Z(2); MZ M BW M FW BW M FW; FBSW(2)

IlallU

Source

Context

Source

Context

FB Z Z market B FM Z MB Z Z M FB F FZH

Ol tenga Giver's sow farrowed Marriage Payday Paeme Paeme Marriage Paeme Marriage Marriage Remarriage Gift repayment Paeme Paeme

FBD Z Z Z group FZ Z ZHB Z Z (?) Group MZD FZSW

Marriage Marriage (?) Marriage Ol tenga Marriage Marriage Repayment for labor Marriage Marriage (?) Ol tenga Marriage Marriage

Note: The men included in this survey represent one-third of the under-forty , never-married men currently resident in the Senkere community. Those who aprx^ar in otheM tables in this chapter and Appendix B are indicated as M # . The rest are referred to as follows- A, B , C , . . . "This young man's father is extremely inactive. ft His mother died when he was small. c He is living with his mother's people. d His mother returned to her natal place after she and his father divorced.

73

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

Table 3.2. Contexts of first transactions among 43 Senkere men and women0

Saon^

No. f

23 Senkere men 20 Senkere women*" 43 Men and women

%

Marriage prestation

Mortuary prestation (kowar)

Clan prestationc

No.

No.

No.

%

No.

12 72 8 13 10 85

5 2 4

1348 100 762 100 2110 100

683 51 433 376 49 315 1059 50 748

%

32 160 41 58 35 218

%

Total reported'*

%

a

The contexts in which partnerships were initiated are reported. All those informants whose exchange partnerships are described in Tables 3.4 ff. are included, but only those partnerships for which data on first transactions were recalled by informants (see note d). b Saon is a personal, dyadic gift obligation (see text). c Clan prestations include ol tenga, ol ombul, and other events sponsored in the names of clans. ''The total number of partnerships reported here is less than that reported on Table 3.7 and omits partners for whom the contexts of first transactions had been forgotten. On average, male informants forgot this detail for 11% of their partnerships and female informants forgot it for 10% of theirs. e These persons appear in Tables 3.4 through 3.12 as well. See Appendix B for details.

affines (thereby contracting a gift-debt), or they offer shells and pigs previously obtained unsolicited from their married sisters and others. But one does not have to be married in order to be able to sponsor a public prestation; unmarried men do act as sponsors occasionally. Anga, the young man referred to as M20 on the tables in this chapter, cosponsored a kowar in 1979 in honor of his father's father's death. His mother and father also collected shells and money for the kowar, but Anga claimed that his "name" was on it too, that he was not just helping them. Because of his preparations for the kowar, he had a greater than average number of active exchange relationships for a man his age (see Table B.4 in Appendix B). These were mostly with people in his mother's brothers' clan (in whose place he lived, along with his mother and her husband) and in his father's clan. Most of the personal gift-debts for which Anga claimed responsibility were his alone, and did not coincide with those of his parents. According to him, a total of twentyeight pearl shells had passed through his hands during the previous two years, of which he had been able to save ten for the prestation. When he was asked whether this kowar was not actually his father's affair, since it honored his father's father (a man he himself had never known), Anga said no. He explained that he wanted people to know that he had also been responsible for making the payment because he was concerned about his rep-

74

What gifts engender

utation (or "name": imbi). He said that he often plays cards for money and that he has had nothing to say when, during arguments, someone has insulted him with the accusation that he "eats" all his card winnings himself. Whereas previously he had only given private gifts to his friends, now he wanted to be able to say that he had sponsored a public prestation. As he explained, this would wipe out the insults he had suffered by demonstrating to everyone who heard tell of it that he was not a child who simply consumes things, but a man with the ability to distribute wealth in his own name (see the coming section "Persons and Things"). The preceding example suggests that marriage itself is a necessary indication neither of a man's level of exchange activity and number of exchange partners nor of his social status. Among the Mendi (as among the nearby Enga and the Huli), bachelorhood is not an entirely negative status; it can even be a positive choice for reasons entirely apart from exchange. Sapo, an old man who lived in the men's clubhouse of the most prominent big-man of the community, claimed that when he was young he had been too busy fighting in tribal wars to marry.8 Many men pointed to Sapo as an example of the Mendi adage that if a man wishes to live a long life, he should avoid close contact with women. While Sapo and the younger bachelors around Senkere were not prominent in the community, their bachelorhood was not specifically to blame. At Kuma, in the northern part of the Suolol tribal territory, there lived a bachelor, about fifty years old, with a regional reputation as a big-man. He drew on the affines of his brothers as well as on his mother's relatives and on the affines of sisters for exchange partners. Like other adult bachelors (see Table 3.1), his pigs were looked after by his brother's wives and other related women. He explained that he had remained unmarried all his life because of a dream he had had long ago in which his father's ghost had told him that bachelorhood would be the key to his success at exchange and to his reknown as a leader. The significance of marriage Although a person may acquire new twem partners for many reasons, typically the most important single context for building up an exchange network is marriage.9 Before marriage, a person's twem exchanges are mostly with affines of members of his or her own subclan and with members of other local clans within his tribal alliance or neighborhood. Upon marrying, people acquire affines of their own, a fact of significance both to individuals and to their group. A young man's father and subclan brothers encourage him to select a bride when they know he has received wealth he can himself contribute to the wedding prestation. Once a man agrees that he will get married, he tries to accumulate the shells he receives subsequently from weddings of clan sisters,

75

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

kowar, clan distributions and so on, rather than giving them away as gifts. His brothers avoid borrowing valuables from him, knowing that he is trying to save them. He also actively solicits gifts from his existing exchange partners or tries to convince others to replace wealth he had earlier given them. He may also initiate new partnerships in his search for wealth. In most of the cases on which I have information, the grooms contributed at least as much to their own marriage wealth exchange as their fathers or other main supporters contributed. Grooms expect their agnates to support them with pearl shells, pigs and money given paeme. Their parents and siblings, and other members of their own subclan, are their most important supporters, although their sisters' husbands are occasionally also significant. Typically, members of other local subclans and clans whom the young man considers friends or exchange partners also help out. Each of these people may tell him that they have something for him when they first hear that he plans to get married, but sometimes they unveil their gifts only when the young man finally invites a woman's family to his place to inspect the bride wealth he will offer them. Marriage wealth prestations begin with an initial display in the groom's houseyard, to which members of a woman's family are invited. The latter discuss their needs: how much wealth they require to satisfy all the people who consider themselves close to the prospective bride or otherwise deserving of some of the bride wealth. This reflects something of the extent of the bride's relationships with members of her family, the kinds of obligations she has accumulated and the interest of members of her family in establishing ongoing exchange relationships with her and her new in-laws after she is married. In addition, marriage is an exchange in Mendi, involving a substantial return payment from the bride's people to the groom's. Some contributors on the groom's side, especially his parents and lineage brothers and sisters, give pigs with the understanding that they will be reciprocated. Therefore, part of the prenuptial negotiations concerns the size and number of return pigs (mok moke) to be given by the bride's family to that of the groom. If the wealth on both sides is found acceptable, the man's people bring their pigs, pearl shells, and money to the woman's place the next day. She formally distributes the gifts to her family in the ceremonial ground. This formal, public distribution (koma tumawe) marks the beginning of the trial period during which the woman lives in the man's place, often in his mother's house. However, it is only the first part of the marriage exchanges (collectively known as inikap). Subsequently, over a two- to four-month period, the groom and his family give the bride money, shells and occasionally more pigs in a steady stream, all part of a payment called ank kos. The term means to retrace (or cover up) one's steps, referring to the fact that the woman, prohibited from engaging in garden work during this period, spends much of her time traveling between her new and old communities conveying additional wealth to

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What gifts engender

members of her family. Ank kos wealth is generally at least equivalent in value to the wealth distributed formally in the public distribution.10 Finally, a last payment called kirop is made to the parents of the bride. In one case, a Pulumsem man of twenty-three or so (Ml5 in the tables in Appendix B; these tables contain information concerning all persons referred to in the text by means of code names: M # , F#) was encouraged by his older brother and his elderly father, Tasupae (Ml9), to think of marriage after he was given two pearl shells as part of a distribution that Suolol as a whole received.11 All told, his inikap amounted to fifty pearl shells, nine pigs and K382 (IK = $1.47). Of this the groom himself contributed five pigs (56%), thirteen shells (26%), and K60 (16%). Nine of the twenty-three people who helped him (or 39%) were members of his subclan. They contributed the rest of the pigs (44%, or four out of the nine pigs), nineteen pearl shells (or 36%), and K12 (3% of the money), all paeme. His two sisters and one sister's husband's brother contributed another six pearl shells (12%), also paeme. The remaining contributions were from ten members of other Suolol clans - people the young man considered twem partners and whose contributions he figured he would have to repay later on. Five of the twenty-three contributors (or 22%) were young unmarried men. This young man was fairly typical. He had no great access to modern wealth, since he had never worked extensively for wages. As his father was quite old, his older brother - who was not a big-man, but simply a respected ordinary man - acted as his main supporter. In another case, Kone (Ml2 in tables in Appendix B) married after returning from a stint of wage work on the coast of Papua New Guinea. His total inikap payment included five pigs and four cassowaries, fifty-five pearl shells, and Kl,046. Of this, he himself contributed three cassowaries (purchased with his wages), five pearl shells (9%), and K700 (or 67% of the money). Thirteen members of his subclan, including his mother and one father's brother's wife, contributed twenty-three pearl shells (42%), the rest of the money (K346), all the pigs, and one cassowary. Of this, his mother contributed K100, one pig, and two shells of her own. His father was the other major contributor, giving K200, four pigs, and five pearl shells. Two pearl shells were contributed by a sister and her husband; three more shells from three members of the same clan; and the rest (eleven pearl shells, or 20% of the shells) were from eight twem partners of the young man: members of other clans within Suolol whom he would repay subsequently. Finally, of his twenty-six contributors, five (19%) were unmarried men. Information concerning young men's pig holdings (see Table 3.1) and concerning their exchange partnerships (see M20-M23 in Table B.4 in Appendix B) and examples of particular marriages support qualitative statements the Mendi make about young men's ability to contribute to their own inikap. Other observations that I shall describe in Chapter 4 similarly confirm local

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assertions about the control brides have over the distribution of parts of the marriage payment. What is the character of the parties to an inikap distribution, and of the relationships and obligations resulting from it? In Chapter 2,1 discussed how contributions by clansmen were an exemplification of solidary intragroup relations. Here, we see that this solidary support is but one factor making a man's marriage possible, as he also depends on his twem relationships for wealth. The people who come together briefly to contribute to a man's bride wealth display, and who are the recipients of a woman's wealth distribution, are subsets of the kin of the woman and the man; they include both some of the agnates of each and also people who belong to a number of other clans. Briefly crystallizing parts of the bride's and the groom's networks, the marriage ceremony initiates formally the possibility of the interpenetration and interconnection of the participants' networks. The marriage prestations do not move between clans or groups. Moreover, these prestations themselves do not join the groom's supporters and the bride's recipients together - not even as individuals. The participants may know who among a young man's agnates and friends contributed which pig or pearl shell and who among the bride's relatives received those gifts. These particular people do not, however, become exchange partners as a result of the distribution. The exchanges are simply between the bride and groom, and between each and his or her own network. They do not represent an exchange between their respective clans, and certainly not one between their networks (which have no collective existence). Thus, Nopas gave his subclan brother Wange a shell when Wange married Aku; when, in the formal wedding wealth distribution, Aku gave that shell to her brother Toli, no relationship was established between Nopas and Toli. Rather, Nopas had fulfilled Wange's expectations about brotherly behavior, and Wange subsequently contributed a shell when Nopas married. The pearl shell helped initiate Wange's marital relationship with Aku (which may, from one point of view, be considered an exchange partnership). Finally, with the shell, Aku was able to repay her brother Toli for gifts he had given her in the past; she was also able to express her desire for his support in the future, as well as her interest in helping him with his own exchange projects. Exchange relationships were created between Wange and Aku, and were reinforced between each of them and their respective networks of kin and exchange partners. Nothing more was established by the wedding distribution itself, however much more was made possible as a result of it. Subsequently, the husband and wife each became a link for the establishment of more widely ramifying exchange connections between each of them and the other's kin and even between particular relatives on each side. Husbands have no part in the decisions that determine who in the woman's group will receive parts of the marriage payment. Therefore, if a woman and

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her parents (and whoever else in her family participates with them in deciding who will receive parts of her bride wealth) slight one of her relatives, that person may thereafter decline to exchange with her. No grudge is held against her husband as long as it is felt that he had given her sufficient wealth to distribute. In the case of Aku, for example, she alienated some of her kin during her bride wealth distribution. Subsequently, her husband established exchange relationships with these people with no problems, even though the latter were not reconciled with Aku herself.

Affinal transactions and the development of networks Although exchange relationships are not established directly between the husband (or his network of kin and exchange partners) and his wife's relatives as a result of the formal marriage transactions, they are quickly established afterward. Especially if a major event is being planned by the newly married man's clan, he is expected to contribute on a scale he was not expected to match prior to his marriage. He is considered to have an untapped pool of gift-credit available in his new affines, and is expected to make use of it: Wange commented that ever since his recent marriage to Aku, he has had a lot on his mind. He has many new twem partners now, and many new gift obligations. He pointed out that, because he is married, he has had to rent parade headresses for two of his brothers' children as well as for himself, and he has had to buy sweet potatoes in order to feed his wife's relatives when they come to visit (since his wife had only just begun to do garden work, and his brothers' wives were not being as generous to him as they had prior to his marriage). Before, he said, all he really had to think about was getting fed and finding headresses and paint for himself at parade times. He compared his married state to being "jailed." Once married, men establish exchange relationships with their wives' relatives by requesting items from them directly (i.e., without using their wives as intermediaries); and women may request valuables from their fathers or brothers. A man's brothers may, similarly, ask for things from his wife's family or from the woman herself. When they repay the gift, they try to do so with an increment over the value of the items they received, such as by returning a shell of better quality than that borrowed, a pig that is larger than the original pig, or, for example, K46 for a K40 gift. The increment is considered nopae: "for the body" of the bride. Nopae is expected whenever the husband or his brothers transact for the first time with anyone among the wife's relatives who has not, up until then, received part of the inikap. People cite postmarital nopae gifts - which may be given even decades after the wedding ceremony - as among the most common ways of initiating twem relationships. Like those of the Melpa moka system of ceremonial exchange, nopae gifts embody a "principle of increment" (Strathern 1971). Together with other

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categories of incremental return gift, they occur in marriage exchanges, in exchanges associated with death (e.g., individually or group-sponsored kowar and group-sponsored ol tenga), and in the Pig Festival (mok ink). Prestations associated with death (kowar being the most common; also ol tenga, ol ombut) are even referred to as ' 'moka'' in the Melanesian pidgin spoken in Mendi.12 Whereas kowar and ol tenga have competitive aspects, they differ from moka in other respects (see Chapter 5); the nopae gifts of marriage are different from moka exchanges because they do not involve an alternating disequilibrium and long-term dyadic symmetry. They are systematically asymmetrical: from a male perspective, the rules of affinal exchange distinguish between partnerships with "wife-givers" and with "wife-takers." That is, in the marriage context, nopae is given only to the bride's people, and not to those of the groom. From a female perspective, one gives nopae to one's agnates and their spouses. A similar pattern of nopae gifts is also observed in the mok ink. Nopae gifts may be related to marriage gifts in other parts of the Southern Highlands (e.g., A. Strathern 1980). Although incremental gift repayments are not a necessary part of all twem exchanges (compare Ryan 1961: 67 where he provides a secondary definition of twem as "borrowing at interest"), they do structure and motivate the flow of wealth in networks. We shall consider the meaning of this incremental gift further in subsequent chapters. Some men marry and subsequently have little or nothing to do with their wife's relatives. One member of the Senkere community had married two women during the early 1960s, both of whom had eloped with him. An inikap payment was made afterward to each of their families (mostly by members of his subclan), but the man apparently never had much interest in traditional exchange activities and consequently had hardly any contact with either of his wives' people. He has worked occasionally as an interpreter in Mendi town and has picked tea in the Western Highlands Province; when in the village, he spends his time playing cards, discussing community affairs, and helping with local preparations for festivals and displays. His transactions are mostly with fellow clansmen and with a few maternal and unrelated twem partners. Just as it is possible in Mendi to become a big-man while remaining a bachelor, it is also possible to be married and engage in exchanges without tapping one's wife's relatives for wealth. Two minor big-men in the Senkere community had not transacted with their wives' relatives for years because of disputes of one sort or another. They compensated by emphasizing other parts of their networks, such as their maternal and sister's husband's kin. In another case, the death of a wife and the move of her closest clansmen to a distant locality after a dispute in their place caused relations between Konduko (Ml7 in tables in Appendix B) and his twem partners to end. While his performance at exchanges had suffered, it was still respectable, and during 1979 he was in the process of extending his twem relationships among unrelated people he had met during a stint of work in Mendi town.13

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The size and structure of networks are determined in a general way by gross facts of the life cycle and are qualified by a person's particular involvement. An exchange network waxes and wanes over the course of a lifetime, depending on how active a person is in organizing and participating in ceremonial prestations and how conscientious that person is in maintaining relationships through visits and food sharing during periods when no debts are outstanding between partners. When a man grows old, his exchange partners tend to put off his requests for gifts and for repayments. He is less vigorous and cannot maintain relationships with partners in distant communities. His mother's relatives and many of his older partners among his wife's people will have died. Old men may have fewer exchange partners than they had before their marriages, whether or not they are still married. For example, Tasupae (M19 in tables in Appendix B), an old widower whose monthly transactions were followed during 1978-9, lived with a married son of about forty. When he was younger he had had two wives and a reputation for making kowar. Now, his twemol in his mother's clan were all dead, and his mother's sister's people (with whom he had transacted after making a kowar to them in honor of his mother's death many years ago) live in Tambul (in the Western Highlands Province), too far away for him to visit. He told me that many of his twemol in his second wife's group had died, and when his first wife (the mother of the son with whom he now lives) died, her relatives began to exchange only with her son. Duirng 1978-9, all his requests for the repayment of gifts - two of which were more than five years outstanding - were unsuccessful. Likewise, he was unable to satisfy most of the partners who came to him for gifts. He was not able to contribute wealth when his youngest son (Ml5) got married in 1978 (see above), nor did he kill any pigs in his own name at the Senkere mok ink in 1979. Old men who are not widowed appear to fare somewhat better. For example, Wendo (Ml6), another old man married to a woman (F13) of similar age, was still spry and had contracted a number of gift-credits and gift-debts during the past three years, all with the mok ink in mind. Like Tasupae, Wendo's visits to exchange partners during the study period yielded no returns, and no one made any requests for wealth from him. Instead, he cultivated a garden of market vegetables that his wife or his clansmen's wives sold for him in Mendi town. With nopae pearl shells his daughter gave him and his market earnings, he acquired a pig in 1979 which, with four others his wife looked after, he planned to kill during the mok ink. Old women, even when widowed, seem to maintain independent exchange careers at least as well as old men. For example, the widow Koyma (F14) derived an income by performing ritual cures on men suffering from menstrual pollution, and also both on men who had bad luck attracting wealth in twem exchanges and women who had failed to attract suitors. In addition, her

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sons' wives sold vegetables for her in town. She took pride in being able to live on her own and relied for firewood and for garden fence mending on boys from the neighborhood, whom she rewarded with gifts of money and pearl shells. She was still able to look after a few pigs, and made gifts of the rest: five of them were due to be repayed just before the mok ink. She contributed two pigs, a pearl shell, and K40 when her son's son married in 1979. Peren (F9), another old widow, had had a reputation for being a ''bigwoman" (ten koma) when her husband was alive. During 1977-79, she lived with one of her married sons and appeared to direct much of his exchange work. She no longer traveled far to visit her twemol, but transacted in pigs, pearl shells, and money, mostly with people who came to visit her and her son. Her main concern appeared to be to amplify her son's reputation, although she contributed to the marriage wealth of her former husband's agnates in her own name and insisted that she herself was responsible for making good her own gift-debts. The contraction that takes place in the networks of elderly people presages their eventual dissolution at death. It expresses tangibly the loss of autonomy experienced in old age. Kowar (mortuary prestations) repair only indirectly the disconnections created by death; ultimately each person makes his or her own network anew, and that achievement of social connectedness is lost when he or she dies. Persons and things I have been discussing the "developmental cycle" of exchange networks emphasizing, with important qualifications, the centrality of marriage. I shall turn shortly to a more detailed consideration of the development of individual partnerships - how they are created, maintained, and terminated - in the section "Twem Etiquette". But first, a discussion of more basic issues is necessary. In preceding sections, I have referred to wealth and to exchange without addressing directly how either is understood in Mendi. More particularly, I have not discussed what twem gifts themselves engender and reproduce. While such questions concerning culturally constituted relations between persons and things are addressed concretely throughout this work, they are complex and deserve special attention. D'Arcy Ryan wrote that the "sole function" of wealth in Mendi "is the establishment of economic credits which enable [a person] to contribute to his clan's ceremonial payments" (1961: 69). I will argue that this is not the case. Wealth and its exchange have social determinations and effects other than those associated with corporate events: "credits" - saon, or twem gifts - are also social ends in their own right, constituting a nexus of obligation and feeling distinct from that of clanship. As the next sections will show, wealth circulates as much to enable a person to expand and maintain a network of

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partners as it does to strengthen clans, many transactions taking place simply to maintain good relations with a partner. And the functional complexity of wealth parallels its cultural complexity. The various kinds of wealth employed by the Mendi (primarily pigs, pearl shells, and money) are not clearly differentiated contextually; they are not distinguishable as mediators of different types of social relationships, nor do they circulate in separate spheres of exchange, nor is each associated with a different type of social actor. Wealth objects themselves are therefore symbolically ambiguous. Indeed, each particular item stands primarily for its own history of social linkages, and only occasionally for a transcendent social meaning. Consequently, it makes more sense to approach the meaning of wealth through an analysis of the social relations it articulates than it does to proceed the other way around. Twem as a wealth-mediated social relation Twem can be thought of as an exchange relationship, or (like sent) as part of a system of distribution (see, e.g., Gudeman 1978) and a kind of "property" relation: in any case it defines relations between people in terms of rules about their rights in and control over resources, the products of labor, and other items of value in the culture - rules about their culturally specific "needs" and "wants." In a general way, then, twem (and sem) relations are like market relations in a commodity economy (in the sense of Marx 1967 [1867]): both are social relations mediated by items of value. But whereas market relations are ideologically represented as relations between persons and things ("private" property) or simply between things (price), the material and social dimensions of twem relations are inseparable in Mendi consciousness: twem is more than its material transactions. From a cross-cultural vantage, twem is most clearly viewed as a social relationship. Twem gifts create long-term friendships that are maintained even in the absence of transactions; and when a gift is outstanding between partners, the quality of their social contact affects the recipient's obligation to repay (as will be described in the next section, "Twem Etiquette"). By highlighting the social relational character of twem, my intention is to avoid a reductive analysis framed abstractly in terms of "material" constraints and "utilitarian" ends. It is also to obviate the analytical opposition between "exchange" and "production" already called into question by formulations like Maurice Godelier's (1972, 1977) in which kinship is a "relation of production," like Annette Weiner's (1980) in which a focus on "reproduction" has subsumed that of "reciprocity"; or like those of neo-Ricardians (Gregory 1982; Gudeman 1978), who emphasize the systemic relativity of production, distribution, and consumption. My intention is to ask questions about structures of power, a focus associated with production-centered analyses and basic to an understanding of the reproduction and transformation of social rela-

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tions, while at the same time to listen for culturally real, local social categories that exchange-centered analyses make audible (at least for the New Guinea Highlands). This strategy is also applicable to the study of social relations constituted in market exchange (which, however, are not my concern here; besides Marx 1967 [1867] see, e.g., Polanyi et al. 1957; Baudrillard 1975, 1981; Dumont 1976; Sahlins 1972, 1976; Douglas 1979). Generally, "economic" facts are everywhere culturally constituted and historically specific. People do not confront the intrinsic character of objects (nor even of their own "objective" needs as physical beings). Instead, they experience objects and needs in terms of rules and meanings which their own actions in social situations may reinforce or modify (see, e.g., Sahlins 1981; Wagner 1981). My goal here is to understand the specific cultural character of Mendi social relationships and of the things given value in them. Twem exchanges engender social relations of a particular sort: a matrix of social obligation distinct from sent relations on the one hand and (in present-day Mendi) commodity relations on the other. The challenge is to describe their distinctive characteristics and to understand their articulation in a meaningful totality, in lived experience.14

Twem gifts (saon) Material exchanges between twemol are not culturally construed simply as utilitarian ends. The twem gift stands actively and tangibly for a multistranded social relationship; it is a necessary - but insufficient - condition of sociality outside of sem. The Mendi interpret twem gifts as signs of active social commitment. One requests wealth from people - assuming the responsibility to replace the object at a later date - in order to establish a relationship that one expects will persist, or else to meet an obligation to a partner with whom one has a history. Giving gifts in response to requests for wealth initiates or maintains a relationship meant to endure. Whether from the giver's or the recipient's perspective, particular exchanges are conventionally understood not as isolated, temporally bounded acts - not as "transactions" in the narrow sense - but as moments in an ongoing, reciprocal relationship, a pact concerning the sharing of risks and resources.15 Shortly we shall come to a detailed description of the social conventions or etiquette of twem relationships. The focus on conventional rules is appropriate in that while twem relationships have tacit constraints and possibilities, they are also explicitly negotiated and created anew by individuals during their own lifetimes. The conventions of twem are a topic of everyday conversation and conscious strategizing. In these respects, relative to twem, sem relationships are "givens" in everyday individual experience, the rules whereby they are reproduced being comparatively tacit (but see Chapters 4 and 6).

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With respect to wealth exchanges in particular, twem relationships involve specific requests (twem kopu, to' 'talk twem,'' meaning to' 'request [wealth]"), and direct repayments of gifts on specific dates. They therefore differ from the relatively diffuse and generalized reciprocal obligations clan members observe with respect to wealth exchange. This contrast is encapsulated in a distinction between categories of gift associated with "brothers" and with twemol. Whereas the characteristic form of gift exchange between clan members is the valuable given "paeme" (unsolicited, for no specific repayment) as a kind of generalized reciprocity (Sahlins 1972: Chapter 5), the characteristic twem gift, saon, is given according to rules of balanced or direct (if delayed) reciprocity. Saon is the closest Mendi term for "gift" in Marcel Mauss's (1925) sense. One's saon is a social "credit" - something one has given that the recipient has an obligation (under conditions I will describe in the following section) to reciprocate later on. Repaying a gift (saon lupu; the verb stem lupu [literally "to hit"] being used in diverse compound verbs of action) entails replacing it with an item of a type and value deemed by the parties to be at least equivalent to the original gift. It does not necessarily involve replacing like with like (e.g., a shell for a shell; compare, e.g., Ernst 1978; Gregory 1982b; Kelly 1977). Chris Gregory (1982b: 19) notes that gifts create "debt." Although his terminology - "gift-credit," "gift-debt" - is a useful shorthand for indicating the "direction" of gift transactions, I have avoided debt/credit language as much as possible in my analysis of Mendi exchanges. This decision derives from substantive characteristics of the exchange system itself. First, as the foregoing references to saony nopae, and unsolicited (paeme) gifts imply, there are many kinds of gifts in Mendi, each entailing a different sort of social obligation between giver and receiver. Debt/credit language tends to cover over these differences. Second, debt/credit language implies that the donor - the "creditor" in a particular transaction - has privileged control over the object given relative to the recipient. Questions of control allude to the structure of power implicit in particular relations of exchange, a concern in studies of gift exchange since Mauss's classic work (see Sahlins 1972: Chapter 4; recently there has been some discussion about whether labor power is alienated in the gift economies of Papua New Guinea, see Damon 1980, 1982; Feil 1982; Gregory 1980, 1982a, 1982b; Modjeska 1982; Strathern 1982c; for relevant cautionary comments concerning the analysis of the allocation or "distribution" of social wealth, see Gudeman 1978). In some gift systems, donors may, indeed, have privileged control or special rights of access over special categories of objects; for example, in the case of individually owned kula valuables in Milne Bay (kitoum; see Damon 1983) or home-produced pigs in some parts of the Highlands (Feil 1984). But this is not so in other systems. In the Mendi case, the objects circulating in twem networks are a kind of

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joint property. Whereas control over wealth exercised in systems of "private" property is exclusive (i.e., ownership specifies as much who does not control the disposition of a thing as who does; see, for historical examples, Thompson 1976), control over twem gifts is inclusive - that is, a matter of "if I have, you all do," (or perhaps: "what's yours is mine"). Acceding to a request for wealth from someone with whom one has not yet transacted amounts effectively to expanding the number of people having rights to valuables any of them may come to hold.16 This expansion is, moreover, an explicit cultural value, a corollary to the value placed on generous and rapid giving (what Gregory calls "maximizing outgoings"). The rapid circulation of wealth, as I noted at the beginning of the chapter, is the sine qua non of twem relationships, and an important dimension of contrast with sem. The more widely wealth circulates, the more people are included in a network, the more wealth is in turn available to each and the "richer" - the more socially empowered to give - any one person is. Therefore, with respect to twem gifts, debt/credit language would obscure the fact that the rights in, or control over, valuables exercized by the parties to a transaction arc formally equivalent.11 The meaning of wealth In Mendi, the meaning of exchange objects such as pigs and pearl shells derives from their contexts of use. Unlike in societies in which particular categories of valuable are associated with particular sorts of transactions, as in spheres of exchange (see e.g., Ernst 1978), or with particular sorts of social actors, as in men's and women's wealth in the Trobriand Islands (see Weiner 1976), the meaning of categories of wealth is ambiguous in Mendi, since the same items are used by all categories of social actors - men and women, ordinary men and big-men - to articulate distinctively different kinds of social relationships (see also Godelier 1971). Thus, while pearl shells have a "male" connotation, women transact with them: in fact, one intrafemale exchange (kaolo) specifically involves pearl shells (see Chapter 4). They are, moreover, thought of as "productive" - as having the reproductive capacity to "beget" (ingiyupu; karim in Melanesian pidgin) other shells in exchange and mediate both sem and twem relationships. Although there is some association between women and pigs by virtue of the division of labor, women in Mendi do not have the overarching rights to the pigs they care for that, for example, Tombema women do (Feil 1978). In some instances (and perhaps more commonly in the past), particular pearl shells acquired an objective social status as symbols. Here and there, men own valuable pearl shells that they now treat as heirlooms. These shells have become mnemonic records of historical events involving the past alliances of clans. Whereas the stories associated with each of them involve the

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actions of named individuals, the significance of those actions for the fortunes of groups is emphasized. Indeed, the shells are now mostly held out of circulation because the purpose with which they were most clearly associated that of sealing warfare alliances between clans - was subverted with colonial rule and the subsequent creation of the Papua New Guinea nation. More usually these days, pearl shells and pigs have a predominantly circumstantial meaning as signs of their particular histories of exchange. In this regard, their characteristics as objects serve well. Unlike paper money or coins, particular pearl shells and pigs are unique and recognizable. It is possible for an attentive observer at a prestation to recognize individual pigs and even shells he or she has seen before and therefore to know some portion of their exchange history. As a result, these things become identified with the contexts in which they are given and received. The following example will clarify this point; it also has a bearing on preceding references to the value the Mendi accord the circulation of wealth: Nare requested a pearl shell from his twem partner Wai Paki. He needed a pearl shell of a particular value: the sort that might exchange for K40 in Papua New Guinea currency. But not any K40 shell would do. Wai Paki showed him one K40 pearl shell, but he was unable to accept it because it had been part of a recent marriage payment to which he had contributed. A young man from Nare's place, Wange, had married Aku, a woman from Wai Paki's place. Nare had been one of a score of men and women who had given Wange pigs or pearl shells to give to his bride and her family. Paki had received the K40 shell when Aku redistributed the marriage wealth. Even though Nare had not contributed the particular pearl shell Paki showed him (it had been Wange's), Nare said that is might as well have been his since it was part of a payment to which he had contributed. He said, "I would be ashamed to take back a shell that I had given this way." If he took it, people would talk and he would get a bad reputation. Paki had not realized that Nare had been among those who had helped Wange. After Nare refused the shell in question and explained why, Paki brought out another shell of equivalent quality which he had received in another context. This one, Nare accepted. In this case, a pearl shell had been given in a marriage exchange, the purpose of which is to ramify and expand exchange relationships. If a marriage lasts, then the bride's family typically uses the marriage wealth in funeral payments, other marriages, and in transactions with their personal exchange partners in other clans. If Nare had taken the pearl shell that Paki had first offered him, he would have closed a social circle. Nare called such behavior incestuous, comparing it to marrying a woman from one's own clan. To act in this way rather than to extend social connections outward would have been of as little use to Nare as it would have been to Paki. It would have diminished Nare's reputation, making him "small." In the proper course of events, wealth is redistributed. The Mendi believe that the social reinvestment of wealth produces, or "begets," more wealth and that a reinvestment bene-

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fits all parties to the transaction. Situations similar to the one described above were observed involving pigs and even money, particular bills of which, while individually not distinctive, are still redistributed (socially invested) rather than hoarded or returned to their source. Twem and the social "person" There remains, however, the question of what twem relations "are," or what it means when people engage (or not) in them. Why one bothers to transact with twem partners at all strikes to the core of Mendi cultural constructions in a way few other things do. A provisional answer has already been suggested in the preceding discussion of circulation and in the situation just described. It can best be developed by contrasting twem with sem. If sem principles constitute social relationships projected backward in time, twem principles constitute relationships projected outward spatially. If sem constitutes a kind of sociality understood to transcend the personal, a relation of identity (between fellow clansmen) by means of which the individual comes to represent something larger than himself, twem constitutes a kind of sociality through which a culturally specific sort of "person" is itself constructed. Twem is a relationship of difference (in practical terms, the differential need for wealth among twemol) by means of which the individual himself or herself is enlarged, embodying and empowered by a unique network of social linkages he or she creates. In other words, whereas twem and sem relationships together have to do with the construction of sociality in Mendi, twem itself has to do with adult personhood. It is the cultural basis of a Mendi's sense of personal autonomy (whatever its functional contexts). (For a related discussion pertaining to a somewhat different ethnographic case, see the excellent paper by Marilyn Strathern [1981] on the Melpa distinction between "self-interest" and "social good"; see also Andrew Strathern 1979a.) How people talk about personal performance during public exchange ceremonies demonstrates this most clearly. Personal ambition is expressed in the desire to "make one's name big" (imbi ondasen ko). It is a pervasive concern, especially of men, and it is accomplished either by sponsoring a ceremonial distribution (as in the case of Anga [M20] ) or by contributing in one's own name to corporate prestations. Kowar and marriages are typically sponsored by one or more individuals in their own names (i.e., these events are spoken about, e.g., as "Nare's" or "Kiluwa's and Onge's" and not "[the sem onda] Suolol's"). Other death compensation prestations (ol tenga, ol ombul) and the mok ink are generally sponsored in the names of groups, even though individual reputations are also made in them. Unlike the more politically centralized Highland societies to the north - in which ordinary men act as supporters of big-men, who make prestations in their own names and in

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What gifts engender

the names of their groups - in Mendi, fellow clansmen act as one another's supporters reciprocally during small-scale events; during large corporate prestations each displays wealth in his own name. Therefore, in Mendi when bigmen sponsor prestations, or when they contribute to clan displays, they do not necessarily have any more access to the wealth controlled by their fellow clansmen than do any of the latter. How then does anyone make a name for himself in Mendi? As Nare told me (see this chapter's epigraph), mobilizing wealth and becoming a big-man are only partially matters of what Andrew Strathern called ''home production" and are at least as much matters of "finance" (Strathern 1969a): "If I depended on my own 'hand' alone, I would be nothing; I would have no 'name'." Specifically, one is able to give wealth "in one's own name" in Mendi by virtue of one's twem relationships. In his account of his interaction with Wai Paki, Nare suggested that short circuits in one's twem network transactions are not simply foolish in a practical sense but are actually shameful and damaging to a person's reputation. That is, while personal reputations are explicitly made by using exchange networks as a means for mobilizing wealth for prestations, they rely implicitly on the elaboration of networks and the wide circulation of wealth in them. That personal status and autonomy are functions of twem relationships is also reflected in the following interpretation of community history. This account, presented by Eko, a forty-year-old Mesa big-man, at his house in Ponea (a Kurelka locality near the Molsem place, Kombal; see Map 2.1), concerns the origins of a decade-old intratribal conflict between himself and another prominant man from Kombal, Uan. Eko's comments appear to contradict those of Nare, cited above, but in fact are quite consistent with them: "I secured forty-eight pigs and displayed them tied to stakes in Ponea koma. . . . 'You repay these pigs and you are a real man [i.e., a leader],' I said to him. I wasn't helped by my brothers or fathers or sisters or mother's people. I displayed only my own pigs. I showed them to him and said 'you reciprocate those and you are a real man.' I said 'you mustn't ask around to others for pigs. You must secure them from your own house.' But this man had no pigs; I think he's a 'rubbish man' or something. He requested pigs from the Kombal leader Aepe and others [similarly] in his own clan, and secured the pigs that way. He got forty-eight like that. . . . Then I got up and went with the man from up there [Wepra], Sakma [a Pulumsem leader], and the Wepra line [Kurelka]. We all got together and decorated ourselves and went to look the pigs over at Kombal. We went to Kombal and I said [to Uan and his clansmen] 'you are our women [or wives]!' I said 'the pigs I displayed, I didn't obtain by calling out to my brothers or to my mother's people or to my sisters. I got them from my own house. But you: you called out and obtained other men's pigs, so I think you are my woman.' I spoke to him like that. The others said 'you bested him! Uan obtained pigs from other men. He is your woman,' they said." In this comment, Eko apparently states clearly that he achieved his victory by virtue of home production, acquiring forty-eight pigs by dint of household labor - "by his own hand," to use Nare's phrase. Now, in Mendi anyway,

89

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

this is an extraordinary number of pigs for any individual to mobilize; certainly, no one (including Eko himself) came anywhere near that during the Suolol mok ink of 1979, when the demand for pigs and wealth generally was great throughout Suolol. Whereas more pigs may well have been available for competitive individual displays within Suolol during the late 1960s, to have produced forty-eight pigs at home would, in any case, have required quite a bit of female labor. The most pigs I saw one woman caring for at a time in Mendi (this, with the help of an energetic nine-year-old daughter) was about fifteen. All the more extraordinary, Eko was not yet married at the time of his competition with Uan. However, when I inquired more closely about the particular pigs he had mobilized for the display, it turned out that many of them had in fact been acquired from twem partners outside of his own subclan. In fact, when he said that he had not asked for help from his brothers and other relatives, what he meant was that no one had cosponsored the prestation with him. That is, he himself had been responsible for repaying the pigs he had displayed or, in the case of pigs that his mother and other female relatives had looked after for him for some time, he himself was responsible for compensating these women for their labor with pearl shells (a kind of gift called mok yari). Uan, on the other hand, had accepted active help from, in particular, his clansmen, whom he was under no conventional obligation to repay. As Eko told it, and as others recalled the event, Uan's clansmen had, in effect, cosponsored the display with him, assuming some of the responsibility for repaying the pigs. In summary, the account illustrates a mode of evaluating individual performance in terms of its autonomy, where autonomy means being personally responsible for giving and repaying wealth (transacting in the twem style). What one acquires from one's twemol represents, vis-a-vis one's clan, a creative effort all one's own. It should be clear that this sort of personal autonomy is quite unlike the abstract concept of "individualism" or "self-interest" on which, for example, Western neoclassic economic theory is based (Dumont 1976). Personal autonomy takes its meaning in Mendi from a specific system of meaningful distinctions and relations: those associated with social network and corporate group. That is, personal autonomy is a function of involvement in twem relationships and is defined in opposition to clanship. What differentiates a man from his "brothers" is his unique network. This source of social support enables a man to act apart from his clansmen, and even to compete with them in the accumulation of wealth for group ceremonies. Twem etiquette In this discussion of the "etiquette" of twem relations I shall outline the conventional expectations in terms of which individuals create, maintain, and dissolve their personal exchange partnerships in practical situations. This dis-

90

What gifts engender

cussion takes as given that people never act in terms of the conventions of twem sociality alone; those conventions always exist in relation to the conventions of clanship. In any case, the application of social conventions to concrete situations of action is probably never straightforward. It involves creative and interested interpretations of the appropriateness of particular rules to particular situations. With their interpretations, people make and remake the very situations in which they find themselves together, repositioning themselves relative to others. Because the application of conventions may reflect divergent individual interests within a sociopolitical order, it may entail negotiation and conflict. Bearing in mind these cautions, a focus on the details of twem is nevertheless in order, for while much has been written about the sociality created by means of corporate groups in the Highlands, network relationships there are as yet poorly understood.18 Initiating and maintaining relationships Although the primary sense of twem partner is a spouse's relative or affine, the relationship does not require a marriage connection. As I have already demonstrated, affinity creates the possibility but not the necessity of twem relations. One does not make exchange partners of all of one's affines and kin. Regardless of their kin connection, any two people who have occasion to share food or a smoke - meeting at the house of a mutual friend or relative, or meeting on the government roads or in town - may become exchange partners. All that is necessary is that one person request an item and that the other agree to give it. The repayment of an initial gift between new exchange partners should be quick (within a month or so) and generous. If there happens to be a marriage connection between the two, then the incremental value of the repayment over the original gift is considered nopae (no matter how long after the wedding it is given). If the original gift was a particularly good pearl shell, then the increment may be a way of expressing appreciation for this, and is called poralu. One may give incremental repayments simply to encourage one's new twem partners to give future gifts as readily as they did the first one. One attempts to build a reputation for generosity since this is one way of attracting wealth and exchange partners. When one repays what one owes and thereby completes a transaction, one's relationship to one's exchange partner is not over. People keep at least some of their partnerships for a lifetime, although partnerships vary in their frequency of activity. For average partnerships, years may elapse between gifts. During periods of transactional inactivity, other kinds of interactions may take place. Depending on where partners live in relationship to each other, they may visit each other when they are traveling to other friends, to the market, or elsewhere. They may occasionally help one another with housebuilding,

91

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

collecting firewood, or garden clearing, or they may simply eat together and share information periodically, especially if they are neighbors. This sort of interaction communicates the desire of both parties not to forget each other. It has substantive value itself as a source of information and also of other social connections. It may even lead indirectly to a transaction. For example, a Senkere man received a large pig from a twem partner of his because, he said, he had slept the night at the man's house and the latter's wife was moved by this act of closeness and trust. Since the two live relatively close by, neither had had occasion to spend a night at the other's house (as partners visiting distant friends might). The pig was given both in appreciation of a new closeness and because the donor knew his friend wanted one (even though he had had no intention of making a direct request). Another Senkere man, Nare, undertook a four-hour walk to the place of one of his twem partners, in order to rent a feather headdress for his son from one of his partner's fellow clansmen who had several beautiful ones. When he arrived, he stopped to rest and to visit with his partner, who, knowing that the Senkere community was preparing to stage its pig kill soon, told Nare that another of his fellow clansmen had a large pig he wished to sell for K480. Nare asked his partner for a loan of K200 right then, and sent word back to Senkere (via a young man who had accompanied him on his trip) to two of his own fellow clansmen, who put up most of the rest of the money. In many cases partnerships currently inactive in terms of wealth exchange are kept up by means of reciprocal gifts of pork. Even active partnerships can be damaged if one partner forgets to give the other pork on the occasion of his group's Pig Festival. The special importance of pork gifts in maintaining twem partnerships is reflected in the tension and anxiety, and very careful planning and butchering, associated with the distribution of meat from even a single pig.19 Just as in the cases described above, pork gifts can also become occasions for wealth transactions: Alcome and Kongume were active twem partners when they both were young. When they each married, their partnership became inactive. For more than twenty years (from about 1956 until 1978), their only transactions consisted in pork gifts on the occasions of major and minor pig kills in their respective communities. In 1978, Kongume's group held a major pig kill and as usual he invited Alcome to come and to share pork with him. On that occasion however Kongume asked Alcome for K20. Kongume's wife had unexpectedly received a pig that morning from one of her relatives which she said that Kongume could kill if he could reciprocate with a ceremonial payment [mok ya ri: see Chapter 6] first. He was short by K20 but wanted to kill the pig and thereby augment his distribution of meat. Thus his request to Alcome. Requesting, giving, and repaying gifts While a substantial number of any person's exchange partnerships may for long periods be inactive with regard to wealth exchange but maintained by

92

What gifts engender

other means, active partnerships involve mutual giving of valuables and a filigree of corequisite actions. The Maussian triad of obligations - to give, to receive, and to repay - obscures another conventional difference among the various forms of gift exchange in Mendi: twem relationships are characteristically initiated and maintained by requests, whereas sem relationship are reproduced by means of unsolicited giving. Requesting wealth. No matter if two partners take turns at requesting wealth or if requests come more frequently from one of them, in either case, recipients and donors recognize a series of obligations to each other, not all of which are directly related to the transaction itself. When making a request, each partner has an obligation to communicate information concerning his or her requirements. Potential recipients are expected to tell their partners why they need the item they are requesting. They may be indirect concerning what exactly they want, discussing their needs and projects more generally first in hopes that their partner will offer them what they want without their having to ask for it straight out. In any event, donors have the right to know how an item they give will be used, and they often ask if they are not told first. One man explained this practice to me by saying that a donor may be held responsible for any deaths that resulted if his partner uses his gift to obtain the services of a sorcerer. Indeed, episodes in the oral history of the Senkere area support this judgment (see Tasupae's story in the section "Individual Action, Collective Responsibility" in Chapter 2). An aspect of their culturally constituted "inalienability" (Mauss 1925; Gregory 1982) - or their situational character as common property - gifts appear to link donor and recipient together temporarily in mutual identification. Another explicit reason offered for this practice was that one should not ask for wealth unless one has a specific use for it, such as a gift to repay or a mortuary payment to make. But although starting a twem relationship is not itself usually acceptable as an explicit reason for requesting wealth, one can always come up with some reason for making a request if one wants badly enough to initiate a partnership with a person. Requests are often made in the presence of observers. Transactions between twem partners are personal and basically dyadic in terms of the decision to give an item and the responsibility to repay it, but they are not secret or private. In fact, there are systematic reasons why gift transactions may be made known to people other than the direct participants. As one man said to explain his own actions, it is acceptable to ask one's wife's father for a pearl shell or other thing in his men's clubhouse where several men may be sitting, as the observers are likely to be affines who received something from one's marriage payment and who have an interest in one's well-being. If one's wife's father cannot meet the request, the others might well offer to help. If the others present happen not to be relatives, they are not expected to respond, although one of them might, taking this opportunity to expand his network. On the other hand, if one goes to a twem partner's house to ask for a gift

93

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

or the repayment of wealth one previously gave, one might also choose to wait until others leave before making a request. This is not because of a feeling of shame with respect to giving or requesting things per se, but is due to the tacit practice of discriminating among exchange partners in a system that recognizes no such discrimination explicitly. People appear not to rank different types of requests for wealth: Gifts that will be used in clan prestations are not given priority over those that will be used to meet personal exchange obligations. But people do make choices about which partners they will give their wealth to. Even though it is not quite proper, people may refuse a request for pearl shells they have on hand and grant it when a favored partner asks. Nor is it right to grant a request to one person when others, to whom one already has obligations, are present. Thus when a Mendi waits to speak with a partner privately about a loan or a repayment, it is in recognition of the ethics of preferential treatment for special friends. One is concerned to avoid provoking jealousy, an emotion the Mendi believe to be a major cause of sickness and death, and a motivation for sorcery. Preferential treatment of some exchange partners is a common fact of life, but since it is contrary to the explicit conventions of exchange, it tends to be a private matter.20 Giving wealth. For their part, donors have an explicit obligation to give valuables they have on hand when their exchange partners ask. The obligation to give wealth on hand reflects the sense that partners have joint rights to the valuables any of them has received. A donor cannot legitimately hold on to wealth for no particular reason any more than a recipient can reasonably request an item without a specific purpose in mind. Conventionally, one can refuse a request if the valuables one is holding have already been spoken for that is, promised to another partner, a son's wedding, a kowar (mortuary payment), or a clan display. In practical situations, people revise their promises as their interests (in all personal and political senses) change. They sometimes give away valuables they were saving for a group prestation to a twem partner with an urgent request, and they sometimes renege on personal obligations in favor of a pressing clan event. Donors are not expected to reveal where they got the item they are giving, and it is impolite to ask. Donors may or may not offer the information, but recipients frequently learn something of the source of an item in the course of the transaction. For example, partners may have to consult with their spouses if the transaction concerns pigs the latter had acquired earlier: Onge received a pig from Tekopiri as an initiatory payment for an ol tenga (warrelated death compensation payment) which Onge's group would be giving to Tekopiri's. Onge learned that the source of Tekopiri's pig was the latter's wife. He had accompanied Tekopiri to the latter's wife's house to get the pig, and had been present during the couple's discussion.

Sometimes partners respond to a request by saying that while they do not have the desired item on hand, they think that they can get it in a day or so from another of their twemol. Even in such a case, one does not necessarily learn

94

What gifts engender

the source of the item. One does not typically go with one's twem partners in search of valuables for oneself or for them. People are not expected to have extensive knowledge of their own exchange partners' twemol. There are some exceptions to this generalization. In former times, when traveling was more dangerous, people occasionally accompanied their partners when the latter had to go a long distance. Also, when a person is expecting to receive a large ceremonial payment, his exchange partners sometimes go with him to ensure he uses the wealth to repay them (or else, to receive some of the wealth as a gift). While twem partners do not usually go together in search of valuables, they do at times link some of their partners up with others. This practice has important implications, and I shall return to it. Repaying wealth. When a transaction takes place, the donor may or may not specify how and when he or she wishes to be repaid. The donor might specify that a repayment is expected just before a major prestation for which his group is preparing or when her son is preparing to get married. In other cases, no context for repayment is set until sometime after the transaction has been completed. Repayments themselves depend on social conventions concerning the ongoing interdependence - and the basic equality - of the donor and the recipient during the period when a gift is yet unreciprocated. Most important among these conventions, partners are expected to stay in touch with one another. Recipients ought to visit to eat and talk with their donors from time to time, and if they both live in the same community, they ought occasionally to chop firewood or do other favors for them. Donors are also expected to visit the people to whom they gave valuables. They are also expected to help their recipients; failure to do so has a bearing on the latter's obligation to repay the debt, as the next example shows: Kone gave Wer K200 in 1976, to be repaid as part of a kowar from Wer and others to Kone and his brother. During the period when the obligation was still outstanding, Wer became sick and was unable to repair his fences or do other work. Later Wer complained that Kone had neither visited him during the time he was sick nor offered to help Wer's wife by mending her garden fences. As a result of this poor behavior, Wer said he was not sure that he would make the kowar after all. [The issue was finally resolved late in 1979.] Such situations did not often develop during the period of fieldwork, but people commonly alluded to them in our discussions about exchange practices. These heightened expectations concerning mutual social involvement specifically during times when wealth is outstanding between two twemol are significant. They reveal a concern with maintaining a certain balance between the social or moral aspect of twem relationships and their material aspect. Visiting and respecting general social obligations to one's partners are necessary to ensure the meeting of gift-exchange obligations. A woman may use her donor's visit as an opportunity to repay a gift earlier than had been agreed

95

Twem: personal exchange partnerships

to, or she may send the donor back after reassuring him that his obligation is remembered. A visit is always an occasion for the exchange of information about each other and about events in the partners' respective communities. Either partner's avoidance of the other may be taken as a sign of an intention to default or more generally of not thinking of the other. The relationship is equal in this sense. Even more so; their mutual visits enable each to borrow still other items from the other. Thus, if Tuant borrowed a pig from Nondis on one occasion, Nondis may borrow a shell from Tuant before the original gift is replaced. In such an instance, the pig and the shell do not cancel each other out even if they have the same exchange value since each was borrowed in a particular context, and must be repaid in the manner agreed upon in that context. Such reciprocal saon are ubiquitous between exchange partners. They are another aspect of the structural equality of twemol, and another reason why our (almost inevitable) use of terms like "debt' and "credit" is misleading. Although people should visit twemol to whom they have given valuables, they should not request repayment before the date agreed upon; even after that date, they should not press their recipient too hard or too frequently for repayment. One woman claimed that if her twem partners do not repay her quickly, she visits them frequently to ask them about their intentions. She reported that she tries not to express anger or impatience but explains her own current need for the items she previously gave and asks her partner to treat her well. Requesting repayment from a partner too insistently may cause the latter to avoid one in the future. In that event, one will not receive anything from the person, nor will the person make any further requests. In fact, if an item is pursued too forcefully, its recipient may even threaten not to repay it. Failure to repay a twem partner's saon, and lackadaisical or inadequate repayments, are generally considered shameful. How well one meets one's gift obligations is central to one's reputation in exchange and to one's ability to accumulate and hold on to exchange partners. Ideally, one ought to repay saon before one is asked explicitly to do so, and one ought to be prepared to repay quickly once a request is made. Certainly one ought to meet any deadlines for repayment to which one has previously committed oneself. Many people have rather conscious strategies for the deployment of valuables, enabling them to prepare for requests for the repayment of things they owe and to keep track of their exchange "accounts" - all without the benefit of written bookkeeping procedures. One common strategy is to organize short "chains." For example, if Kelom receives an item from Yal, which she gives to Walipa, she prefers to wait until Walipa repays her before herself repaying Yal. If, however, Yal requires a repayment at a time when Walipa cannot repay Kelom, then Kelom must be prepared to request an appropriate item for Yal from some other of her exchange partners; she might even have to contract a new exchange obligation.

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What gifts engender

Several persons questioned about these matters noted that if one develops a reputation for quick repayment, others will want to give one things. If one is lax, people will say that they have no pearl shells or pigs when one asks for them. I was told that to become a big-man, one must always have valuables on hand to give and one must always try to repay bad pearl shells with good ones. Dissolving partnerships Of course, people often fall far short of one another's expectations, big-men included. Young people are more explicit about their ploys for delaying the repayment of gifts: Two teen-aged men told me about their tactics for handling exchange partners. They admitted that they often borrowed from "old women" in the community and then worked hard to avoid them: running off in the opposite direction whenever they heard one of the women coming towards them on village paths. One of the youths reported that he owes K20 to his brother's wife. When he cannot avoid her, he says he purposely talks too much and too fast to prevent her from asking him about the money! Adults may also become overwhelmed by the requests of their twemol for the repayment of valuables, and may treat them in ways that do not conform to the ideals outlined above. Table 3.3 indicates some of the reasons why informants no longer transact with people whom they used to count as twem partners. The reasons differ somewhat for male and female informants. Men tend to terminate partnerships for reasons having to do with clan events and clan relationships a bit more frequently than women do. Both men and women tend to stop interacting with their partners predominantly for reasons having to do with personal exchanges. This is not surprising, as twem exchanges are generally more frequent occurrences than clan events and disputes are.21 Men and women terminate partnerships at about the same rate, although women have fewer exchange partners than men do overall. While it is unclear from these data whether big-men tend to drop a smaller or greater proportion of their partnerships relative to the proportion dropped by ordinary men, one leader asserted that he followed a deliberate policy of trying to stay on good terms with all persons with whom he had transacted. Maintaining partnerships when one lives more than a couple of hours' walk away from one's partner is a problem, especially for old people and for women. More will be said about the nature of dropped partnerships in the last part of this chapter. Terminating partnerships is not necessarily a definitive or irreversible process.22 If one or the other party is dissatisfied with the adequacy of a repayment, for example, he or she may simply stop responding to the other person's requests for valuables and not make any requests back. The two may drift apart without formally announcing that they will not see each other again.

Table 3.3. Reasons for terminating exchange partnerships among 43 Senkere men and women Saona

23 Senkere men'' 20 Senkere women" 43 Men and women

Public Ceremonies^

Failure to repay

Inadequate repayment

Breach of etiquette

Marriages, kowar

Clan prestations

Dispute between clansf

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

44 19 63

18 15 17

33 28 61

14 22 17

80 35 115

33 27 31

44 31 75

18 24 20

27 7 34

11 5 9

12 8 20

5 6 5

240 128 368

100 100 100

Total terminated^

"Those reasons for terminating exchange partnerships which relate directly to informants' personal exchange obligations (saon). A breach of etiquette here specifically refers to aspects of exchange relationships not strictly related to the material transactions themselves (e.g., failing to visit and stay in touch; see text). b Those reasons for terminating partnerships which relate directly to public prestations. Marriages and kowar are usually sponsored by individuals; clan prestations (e.g., ol tenga) are sponsored in the names of clans. 'Disputes between partners' respective clans mostly concern sorcery accusations and death compensation gifts. d Women terminated about 15 percent of their partnerships, and men terminated about 16 percent of theirs. This table does not take account of partnerships that ended passively because of the death of one partner. For more information concerning terminated partnerships, see Tables 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11. e These people appear in Tables 3.4 through 3.12 as well. See Appendix B for details.

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What gifts engender

But they may take up their partnership again if one of them makes an effort to set things straight: A widower in his late forties, Konduko (Ml7) was once married to a woman of Keperop (a subclan associated with Yansup in the Upper Mendi community of Angamanda). Sometime around 1970, the leader of another Yansup subclan in Angamanda died and people accused the Keperop of being responsible for killing him by means of sorcery. As a result of these accusations,fiveof Konduko's wife's brothers left Angamanda and moved to Kaupena, in Ialibu, about three hours by car from Senkere in the next Provincial district. Subsequently, Konduko's wife died. Her brothers were too far away to come mourn her death with him and so Kondukofiguredthat this meant that his exchange relationships with them were over. In 1978, however, a relative of Konduko's wife died in Kaupena, and her brothers sent word to Konduko to come to the funeral. As a result of this, Konduko thought that perhaps the relationship might rekindle. [See also the section "Affinal Transactions and the Development of Networks," earlier in this chapter, and note 14.] When one's exchange partners refuse to repay a gift or repay it inadequately, one may tell them that one is displeased and warn them that one will not transact with them again. Apart from this personal dyadic sanction, there are more powerful and more public ways to express one's displeasure (and perhaps to affect a partner's behavior). First, people may let others know how their exchange partners behave. People's own experiences in exchange and other people's reputations as twem partners are topics of gossip both for men and for women. As I have described, requests for shells, pigs, and other items are not generally hidden. Observers may be present when two people sit down together to discuss a transaction. People know in a general way who has given what to whom, and they follow the details of activities and plans of those agnates and neighbors to whom they are close. Agnates and neighbors may occasionally put one another in touch with one another's afflnes and other partners. Therefore, members of a community have numbers of exchange partners in common. If a partner treats one of them poorly, others in the community may learn about it. As a result, inadequate repayments occasionally cost a person more than a single partnership. The second way in which errant exchange partners are brought into line is through joint action on the part of those who gave them valuables. I was told that in former times a man's donors would occasionally attempt to prevent him from killing his pigs at clan prestations, seizing the opportunity afforded by these public contexts to confront him with their personal dissatisfactions and demand payment. Even today, part of the special tension associated with pig kills comes from the thought that some of one's exchange partners will show up disgruntled and create a scene. Nowadays too, people may take their complaints concerning unreciprocated gifts to the district court:

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Twem: personal exchange partnerships

In one case, a woman had a disagreement with her husband and subsequently came to her brother's house in the Senkere community to live until the dispute was resolved. If the dispute could not be resolved, the woman and her brother asserted, no divorce would be possible until her husband repaid the saon of members of her clan. She and her brother knew who had given him wealth, since she had been present during some of the transactions and her brother had been responsible for putting his agnates in touch with his sister's husband (as well as some of that man's brothers). This discussion of the knowledge that the Mendi often have of each other's exchanges is not meant to suggest that everyone seeks to know everything about everyone else in Mendi communities. As I described them earlier, the Mendi explicitly value minding one's own business and believe that even one's own brothers' foibles are "their own affair." Nevertheless, the workings of the exchange system, and in particular the methods by which people attempt to control one another's behavior, depend on the tacit fact of the generalized knowledge I have been describing. One learns of the significance of such knowledge in contexts when it is deliberately restricted (e.g., the practice of disguising preferential treatment of some partners). One also learns about such knowledge when it is called out of hiding - that is, when exchange etiquette has been breached and this knowledge is used in ways that encourage people to the respectable standard.

"Roads," "searches," and the logic o/twem relationships The last case, cited above, leads us into a final set of points concerning the social character of twem relationships. These have to do once again with the way in which wealth mediates social relationships and with the rationale of personal transactions between exchange partners. They most clearly demonstrate that network relationships cannot be understood only as a functional means of facilitating clan festivals, but must be interpreted instead as a form of sociality in their own right. The mutual obligation twemol recognize goes beyond giving one another any wealth on hand and not already promised for some specific purpose; it is more active than that. When a person does not have an appropriate pig, pearl shell or other item for his twemol, he does not always simply send the person away. If he wants to hold onto the partner, then he will find ways of drawing on his network in order to find the requested item. One way or the other, he strives to give his partners access to valuables. Roads and searches. When one has no appropriate valuables on hand, two common alternatives exist that have important implications for our understanding of exchange in Mendi. First, as the preceding case implied, one can introduce one's exchange partners to one's neighbors and agnates who may have the item being sought and may wish to establish an exchange relationship

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What gifts engender

with the person themselves. Like marriage, this action extends exchange connections by creating new "roads" on which valuables may travel: it expands the networks of fellow clan members and of twem partners alike. Such connections may be made in an indirect way, as well: Enk gave Alcome K300, for which he required a pig of equal value in repayment. Alcome obtained a pig from one of his other exchange partners to repay the debt but Enk did not like the animal. Alcome found another pig worth K260 which Enk accepted, but then Alcome had to collect K40 to make up the difference between the value of the money he had originally received and that of the pig Enk had accepted. He asked his clan brother Nare for the money. Nare did not have K40 on hand but obtained it from his twem partner Karia, and gave it to Alcome on the condition that the latter be responsible for repaying Karia himself. As a result, Alcome and Karia became twem partners themselves even though they had never interacted before Nare brought them together. Second, exchange partners may tell each other that although they do not have a requested item on hand, they will be able to obtain it shortly from a third partner. I call this behavior a "search" (I do not know a specific Mendi term for it). That is, not having the money on hand, Nare could have told Alcome that he would find K40 for him, which Alcome would have then owed to Nare. Nare could have himself obtained the money from Karia, and assumed the responsibility for repaying him himself. Unlike the creation of new "roads" of exchange, "searches" do not expand anyone's network. Nevertheless, "searches" are interesting. Nare would have accepted the responsibility for repaying a gift in order to give a gift. He would not have invested wealth he had on hand, nor would he have created a saon, a giftcredit on which he could later draw. The point of this common practice appears to be internal to the social logic of exchange network relationships themselves, which demands that wealth circulate rapidly. The motivation, on an individual level, is to be a good exchange partner: to satisfy and even to outdo the expectations of one's partners as to one's ability to provide them with valuables. The practical effect of this motivation, and of the internal logic of network exchanges, is that people are not satisfied merely with generously giving valuables they have on hand that they have not already allocated. What they do not themselves have, they try to find elsewhere, incurring gift-debts along the way. Although, as I noted earlier, people like to construct small chains of exchange, they often act as if it is more important to respond quickly to a request than to keep their "accounts" in order. They request gifts in order to give or to reciprocate gifts. They comb their networks for idle wealth and direct it to where it is currently needed. In the event that one's exchange partners do not have a requested item on hand, a search precipitates searches on the part of some of these people, thereby affecting the distribution of wealth in their networks. Ultimately an

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Twem: personal exchange partnerships

appropriate item will be found and directed, link by link, to the person who made the "initial" request (although there is no real end to the process). Thus, wealth is kept in circulation; it is channeled to where it is needed along overlapping networks in an utterly decentralized, but systematic, fashion. In circulation the dialectical character of wealth is manifest - a polysemy the Mendi themselves recognize, and sometimes overtly exploit in political discourse. Pigs, money, and pearl shells pass through innumerable hands, now satisfying personal obligations between twem partners, now demonstrating brotherly solidarity, and periodically playing a role at public ceremonies as well. None of these ends is final, and thus all acts of exchange are basically ambiguous. In this sense, "searches" and other aspects of twem action are not accurately viewed as means of preparing for group events. The Mendi do not give gifts just to have credits to draw on when it becomes necessary for them to contribute to their clans' ceremonies. Ceremonial prestations may well be the "pivot of all interclan relations," as Ryan (1961: 69) wrote, but they do not account for the sort of relations with which I have been concerned here. In fact, an accumulation of personal gift obligations, as a result of network exchanges, may even inhibit as easily as it may facilitate participation in clan prestations. Giving gifts implies trust but entails risk. The people to whom one has given wealth may not be able to reciprocate when one has need for the items again. And, especially in the case of prestations involving the killing of pigs (before which one is expected to repay affinal debts), a surfeit of such obligations may interfere with one's contribution in clan events. The logic o/twem relations. Classical political economists such as Adam Smith, whose way of thinking still informs Western presuppositions about these things,23 assumed that social wealth varies with the development of the division of labor, itself entailed in an original human propensity to exchange. Smith (1937 [1776]: 22) elaborated: When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. Everyman thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society. By this logic, the rationale for exchange in Mendi is opaque. How are we to understand Nare's assertion (in the chapter epigraph) that he cannot depend on his own "hand" alone in an agrarian system in which everyone has access to land and produces the same products (that is, a system in which the division of labor is not elaborated beyond the household)? Exchange in Mendi is not necessitated by the specialization of production. Culturally constituted and explained in terms of intergroup politics and per-

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What gifts engender

sonal reputation and now ''thoroughly established" as a social given, exchange is necessitated by a regionally and individually differentiated demand for things that everyone produces (or alternatively, for things like pearl shells and money, which most people do not really produce, but which everyone has). The differential need for wealth from individual to individual is the result of a unique covergence of demands on each of them coming from their clansmen and exchange partners. In any case, things resting idly in a person's house are of no value. They acquire their value when they are used to articulate and express different kinds of social relationships, whether that involves the repayment of a personal gift or a contribution to a formal clan prestation. Both searches and roads make sense in a system in which wealth has social value in circulation. Searches, in particular, redistribute wealth more rationally within and between exchange networks. A search communicates the demand for wealth widely; the point of this practice is to move or transport wealth to where it is needed for transactional or display purposes (where it makes an individual or group "name," or mediates a social relationship). As a complement to searches, the point of creating new exchange roads is to expand other people's networks and to articulate them more closely to one's own. This articulation ensures that searches will be successful, and that wealth will ultimately be found so long as enough people repay the gifts they are given and give away valuables that they will themselves need at a later date. Insofar as they create value, it may be useful to treat searches and other network practices as a kind of work.24 The net effect of exchange work - this wide communication of the demand for valuables - may be to keep the level of demand relatively high and constant: not what one would expect if one attended only to the temporal patterning of clan ceremonial exchange (which is characterized, in Mendi, by occasional large-scale events and long periods of relative inactivity). Finally, the logic of twem exchange has implications for the kind of control individuals exercise over things. People do not own things in Mendi culture in the way "private" property is owned in a commodity economy, that is, as an exclusive "holding" and with a goal of productive accumulation. Access to things is not exclusive as it is in systems of "private" property: When an individual has something in Mendi, this does not imply that others do not have it, so much as it specifies an open-ended set of people who share a claim on it. What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours; from an ego-centered viewpoint, you have a claim on the valuables held by any of your twemol and they have a claim on valuables you are holding. Moreover, wealth is not held or accumulated as such in Mendi. Since people have an obligation to exchange - whether jointly with their agnates during clan festivals or reciprocally with people in their networks all the time - no one holds wealth for very

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Twem: personal exchange partnerships

long. People control the allocation of the valuables they are given, but they must pass them on if they are to realize their value. The right to control the disposition of wealth is widely distributed in Mendi. Almost anyone - male or female, young or old - may assume the responsibility for repaying an item obtained from an exchange partner or agnate. Everyone is "in between," to pirate Marilyn Strathern's (1972) phrase. Everyone conveys valuables between exchange partners or between an exchange partner and a fellow clan member. Men introduce their clan brothers to their sisters' husbands or wife's father, and they obtain items from the one in order to give to the other. Men obtain items from their sisters in order to give to their wives, and women obtain items from their husband's sisters to give to their own male and female agnates, and so on. We will return to this point in the next chapter, for it has a bearing on our understanding of the social position of Mendi women. The structure of exchange networks From one perspective, networks are ephemeral because they are ego centered. Each person builds up a roster of partnerships over his or her lifetime, but these partnerships are not bequeathed to members of the next generation. Networks are dissolved upon the death of their creators, their potential for wealth mobilization dissipated. The development of social inequality may thereby be dampened; while individuals can build up large networks and thereby gain access to much wealth, they do not establish wealthy "dynasties." From another perspective, networks are not ephemeral but are systematically reproduced (particularly in the context of marriage) and are part of the social structure. As such, their equalizing character qualifies the implicit hierarchy of clan organization. This section outlines some regularities concerning twem networks, as social structures.25 The expansion of networks We have seen how the social logic of network relationships demands the continual circulation of valuables. The Mendi attempt to accommodate their exchange partners' and fellow clan members' requests for items by giving them things they have on hand. But, as a result, people often do not have many unallocated valuables in their possession when their partners visit them. When, as is common, it is not possible simply to give what is in one's house, one requests things from another exchange partner, from a member of one's clan or from an acquaintance with whom one has not previously transacted. Alternatively, one may put individual partners in touch with others in one's network who have what they want.

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What gifts engender

That is, maintaining existing partnerships depends, at least partly, on the expansion of exchange networks. As was noted in the preceding section, creating new exchange linkages (roads) expands networks. And a search of one's network for wealth may precipitate new linkages. In the course of a search, a man's twemol may introduce him to one of his or her other partners. A man might also request wealth from his affines and others whom he has met before but with whom he has never actually transacted. New partnerships often begin with personal transactions, the purpose of which (from the perspective of the recipient) might be to maintain an older partnership by giving or repaying a gift, and (from the viewpoint of the donor) might be to begin a new partnership. So, the expansion of networks is itself not strictly the result of moka-style ''competitive" exchanges, wherein repayment necessarily involves a "principle of increment" (Strathern 1971). The Mendi begin new partnerships just to repay one valuable with its equivalent. Personal networks in Mendi may have a tendency to expand throughout a person's vigorous adulthood even in the absence of any need to repay a gift with an increment. It is not a matter of contracting two new debts in order to repay an old one "with interest" (compare Ryan 1961: 66; I will have more to say about incremental repayments in Chapters 5 and 6). Networks also expand in response to the need to contribute to public events and to formal clan prestations. These are important motives for the expansion of networks (see the case of Anga in the section "Personal Networks Before Marriage," earlier in this chapter). But both participation in and sponsorship of kowar and clan prestations like ol tenga depend on a preexisting and wellmaintained network and not on the ability to initiate new partnerships before and during those events. New partnerships are begun simply to keep up with the demands of existing partners. Partners' needs are never so predictable, nor is their ability to give (or to make repayments on time) so perfect, that one can neatly match up all one's existing gift-debts and gift-credits. Only rarely does B request a pig from A to give to C, repaying A only when C repays. More often A requests a repayment from B before C repays B, and the latter requests an appropriate valuable from D in order to meet A's demand. Occasionally, this requires initiating a new partnership. The process of acquiring new partners in order to satisfy older ones proceeds until a balance is achieved between the desire people have to participate in personal and group exchanges and their ability to handle the demands made on them by increasing numbers of partners. According to their own personal exchange histories,26 big-men consciously and systematically expand their networks throughout the period during which they are building and trying to maintain their reputations as organizers of clan displays. During this period, big-men tend to initiate new relationships when they need valuables rather than simply requesting them from existing part-

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ners. They also spend much of their time doing exchange work and simply visiting their partners (although, as I noted earlier, they are not necessarily better than other people at holding onto particular partners). Ordinary people do not expand their networks quite as systematically as big-men do. They appear to prefer to transact with people with whom they already have exchange relationships. Nevertheless, they too expand their networks, in spite of themselves, for the reasons given above. As a result of this process of expansion, people typically have networks that exceed their immediate needs for wealth. That is, a list of the people with whom any person has outstanding saon constitutes only a subset of their total exchange network (a subset I will refer to as an "active" network). At any one time, a large proportion of a person's network is "inactive" with respect to wealth exchange. The inactive portion constitutes a kind of insurance protecting against shortfalls of wealth that occur from time to time within the active portion of the network, accommodating the loss of active partnerships due to death or disputes, and making it possible for one to respond to an occasional extraordinary need for large amounts of wealth. Tables 3.4 and 3.5 summarize information concerning the sizes of the individual exchange networks of twenty-three men and twenty women in the Senkere community (see Tables B.4 and B.5 in Appendix B for more detailed information). These tables describe informants' active networks and total networks (distinguishing numbers of male and female exchange partners in each) and indicate the percentage of the total network active during 1978-9. Table 3.6 compares active and total networks. By "total networks" I mean all those clan members, affines, other kin, and unrelated people with whom informants have transacted in the past and reported as still part of their network.27 "Active" partnerships are a subset of total networks including all those agnates, affines, other kin, and unrelated people with whom informants had gift obligations outstanding as of May 1978, as well as all those with whom informants transacted during the study period (May 1978 to February 1979).28 Frequently, the people with whom informants had unreciprocated gift obligations in May were the same people who had given or received short-term gifts during the ten-month study period. That is, information concerning people's active networks indicated who were informants' most important clan supporters and exchange partners, with whom they transacted most frequently. Whereas a person may transact two or more times a year with his or her most important partners, many partnerships remain inactive for long periods of time, with transactions occurring only once every five or ten years.29 Active partnerships constitute about 57 percent of total networks overall: 61 percent for men and 51 percent for women.30 The range in both cases is wide (see Tables B.4 and B.5 in Appendix B). For men, between 42 and 82 percent of their networks were active; for women, between 16 and 91 percent

Table 3.4. "Active" exchange partners and agnatic supporters of 43 men and women Female partners and supporters

Male partners and supporters Informants

Total

Percentage

Average

Total

Percentage

Average

Total

Average partners per person

Men(n = 23) Women (n = 20) Total (n = 43)

753 292 1,045

82 67 77

33 15 24

164 143 307

18 33 23

7 7 7

917 435 1,352

40 22 31

Note: "Active" means all those people with whom informants had outstanding gift-debts or gift-credits during May 1978-February 1979 and any other people with whom they transacted during that period.

Table 3.5. Total exchange networks (including "active," inactive, and "terminated" partners and agnates) of 43 men and women Male partners and supporters

Female partners and supporters

Informants

Total

Percentage

Average

Total

Percentage

Average

Total network

Average partners per person

Men(n = 23) Women (n = 20) Total (n = 43)

1,237 564 1,801

82 66 76

54 28 42

273 285 558

18 34 24

12 14 13

1,510 849 2,359

66 42 55

Note: "Total" networks include all currently active, inactive, and terminated partners. All three types were mentioned by informants during interviews concerning their networks.

Table 3.6. "Active" partnerships in relation to total exchange networks of 43 men and women Female partners and supporters

Male partners and supporters Informants

Active ntwks.

Total ntwks.

Percentage

Active ntwks.

Total ntwks.

Percentage

Total male and female "active"

Men(n = 23) Women (n = 20) Total (n = 43)

753 292 1,045

1,237 564 1,801

61 52 58

164 143 307

273 285 558

60 50 55

917 435 1,352

Note: See explanatory footnotes in Tables 3.4 and 3.5.

Total ntwks

Percentage

1,510 849 2,359

61 51 57

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Twem: personal exchange partnerships

were active. These figures are not necessarily positively correlated with the general level of exchange activity in which a person engages. The big-men in the sample - that is, those major leaders with regional reputations as ol koma (see especially M1, and then M2) and outspoken men who were well respected locally (M3, M5-9) - did not activate a larger proportion of their total networks than did ordinary men.31 In fact, they appeared to activate a smaller proportion. The same is true of the most active women. These facts do not tell us about the quality of particular partnerships, that is, the ease with which each partner makes valuables accessible to the other and the content of the personal friendship. The big-man Pua (M2), whose active network constitutes only 50 percent of his total network, has a large number of big-men among his active partners who can provide him with pigs, pearl shells, or money just about whenever he asks for them. Just as important, he has a large number of people in his active network with whom he is very close. Even though they are not big-men, they make special efforts to accommodate his needs, making them reliable sources of valuables. But Kone (Ml2), an ordinary man, activates more than 80 percent of his network in order to get the things he needs; he has a smaller proportion of exchange partners who are regularly able to respond to his requests for valuables. Conversely, Kone himself is not always a reliable exchange partner, whereas Pua seems always to be able to make available the valuables his partners are seeking. It may be less common for ordinary men to activate a small proportion of their networks and still maintain adequate participation in the life of the community. For example, Ipa (Ml3), who keeps only 47 percent of his network active, is quite inactive in exchanges. Some big-men keep a relatively large proportion of their networks active perhaps because they have fewer partners who are big-men or who are otherwise reliable sources of goods. Big-men and ordinary men may be different in terms of the quality of their partnerships. They are also quite different in terms of the absolute numbers of both their active and total exchange partnerships. Olonda and Pua, the two main big-men in the Senkere community, had more than 50 percent more partners in their total networks (and in their active networks as well) than did the next closest man. Tenpuri and Epopil (Fl and F2), the two women most active in exchanges (and among the most prominent in the community) had well over two times more partnerships in their total networks than did the next closest woman in the sample and more than 60 percent more partners in their active networks. The absolute size of networks appears to have a lot to do with the quantity of wealth a person can amass at any particular time.32 The composition of networks The foregoing tables give some indication of the expandable character of exchange networks, but they do not indicate how networks are structured in terms of various types of relatives. Table 3.7 and 3.8 summarize the structure

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What gifts engender Table 3.7. Structure of the networks of 23 men

Exchange partners Nopae-xtczWmg partners Maternal Total Percentage Average Affinal (own; clansmen's) Total Percentage Average Nopae-giving partners Clans women; related through clans women Total Percentage Average Clansmen-partners* Total Percentage Average Unrelated partners Total Percentage Average Total network Grand total Average

Male informants (n = 23)

251 17

10.9 408 27

17.7 269 18

11.7 456 30

19.8 126 8 5.5

1,510 65.7

Note: See Table B.6 for further information. "Nopae gifts are reciprocal and optional with this category of partner. of the total networks of the same forty-three people (see also Tables B.6 and B.7 in Appendix B). The rationale for grouping relationships as they are in this and the following two tables will be further clarified in Chapters 5 and 6. Briefly, as I have already noted, the rules of gift exchange (particularly those pertaining to nopae gifts associated with marriage and with the Pig Festival) apply differently to different kinds of affines. From a male Ego's perspective, a significant distinction is made between, on the one hand, in-married women (own and brothers' wives, clan "mothers") and anyone related to him through inmarried women and, on the other, female agnates (clan "sisters" and "daughters") and anyone related to him through them. In certain contexts, he is expected to give incremental gifts (e.g., nopae) to the former, and he expects to receive them from the latter. From a female Ego's perspective, a distinction

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partnerships

Table 3.8. Structure of the networks of 20 women

Exchange partners Nopae-receiving partners Maternal Total Percentage Average Clansmen; clansmen's affines Total Percentage Average Nopae-giving partners Affinal (H and his clan, including S, D) Total Percentage Average Clanswomen; related through clans women" Total Percentage Average Unrelated partners Total Percentage Average Total network Grand total Average

Female informants (n = 20)

127 15 6.3 229 27 11.4 289 34 14.4 155 18 7.7 49 6 2.4 849 42.4

Note: See Table B.7 for further information. a Nopae gifts are reciprocal and optional with this category of partner.

is also made between those to whom she gives nopae (and other kinds of incremental gifts) and those from whom she receives it - respectively her clansmen (and all those related to her through those men, including their wives and her own mother) and her husband and son (and all those related to her through them, including their wives). Thus, both men and women distinguish their spouse's fellow clan members (and their affines) from their own fellow clan members (and theirs), but the distinction has a different significance in each case with respect to exchange of wealth. (Exchanges between same-sex fellow clan members may take the form of reciprocal nopae gifts: I will have more to say about these sorts of gift relations in the following chapters.) To tabulate this information is misleading insofar as it encourages one to think of relationships as static and mutually exclusive. Particularly with re-

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What gifts engender

gard to affines who are members of one's own tribe and clan members who are also twemol, an individual may be considered either a fellow group member or part of one's network, in different contexts. Moreover, the contexts themselves are ambiguous: Different people sometimes interpret the same context in contradictory ways. The tables, with their putatively exclusive categories of person, summarize information obtained by means of a formal interview (itself a highly ambiguous social context) in which informants were asked to list all their exchange partners, even those with whom they did not currently have a saon outstanding. The first seven informants interviewed (M2, 3, 5, 12, 15, and 18; see Appendix B) grouped their lists spontaneously and explicitly in terms of the categories distinguished in the tables; for example, "Pipna amtiapolowa" (first I will do [my] mother's line), followed by a list of names of people related to the speaker through his mother (including the mother's sister and her affines). Thereafter, other informants were prompted to do the same.33 Questions concerning why particular exchange partners were included in one category when they could have been included in another were not pursued within the context of this interview. With these serious cautions in mind, the information summarized in Tables 3.7 and 3.8 is in accord with informants' qualitative statements concerning how networks are constructed. For both men and women, their spouse's relatives and their own fellow clansmen are quantitatively their most important kinds of partners. But whereas for men their spouse's relatives (to whom men give incremental gifts) constitute a smaller proportion of their networks than do their fellow clansmen, for women the emphasis was reversed: their clansmen (to whom women give incremental gifts) constitute a smaller proportion of their networks than do their spouse's relatives. Most of the cases that appear far off the average can be explained with reference to personal history (again, refer to Tables B.6 and B.7). For example, Anga (M20), to whom I referred earlier as a young man bent on improving his reputation by means of a kowar (funeral) payment, has an inordinate number of mother's relatives in his exchange network. This is largely explained by the fact that he lives with his mother's people, who are to him what their father's relatives are to the other young men in the sample: M21, M22, and M23. Whereas 67 percent of Anga's network is made up of his mother's people, between 21 and 26 percent of the networks of the other young men were matrilateral. While about 10 percent of Anga's network are male agnates, the figure is between 32 and 39 percent for the other three youths. Second, partly because he was planning to sponsor a kowar, Anga had expanded his network rapidly during the previous couple of years, whereas the other young men had not. He expanded his network to include people closest at hand. Therefore, his number of matrilateral exchange partners is large even compared with the usual number of agnatic supporters cited by people living agnatically. The low proportion of partners related through his

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partnerships

Table 3.9. Structure of terminated partnerships of 23 men

Exchange partners /Vopa^-receiving partners Maternal Total Percentage Average Affinal (own; clansmen's) Total Percentage Average Nopae-giving partners Clanswomen; related through clanswomen Total Percentage Average Clansmen-partners" Total Percentage Average Unrelated partners Total Percentage Average Total terminated Grand total Average

Male informants (n = 23)

59 25 2.6 95 40 4.1 35 15 1.5 31 13 1.3 20 8 .9 240 10.4

Note: See Table B.7 for further information. a Nopae gifts are reciprocal and optional with this category of partner.

female agnates can also be explained with reference to his atypical residence. Anga had not kept in touch with his clan sisters as he might have done had he been living with his father's people. Tupal (Ml8), a bachelor in his thirties, has a relatively large number of 4 'unrelated" exchange partners because he has worked extensively and traveled outside the Mendi Valley and because he has made an effort to compensate for a lack of affines. Needless to say, the five men with the smallest proportions of wives' relatives in their networks (Ml8, M20-23) were all unmarried during the study period. It might be noted that the two widowed men included in the sample Tasupae (Ml9), who was quite old, and Konduko (Ml7), who was in his forties - both had a respectable proportion of wives' relatives in their networks. As I noted earlier in the discussion of Konduko's situation, widowers

114

What gifts engender Table 3.10. Structure of terminated partnerships of 20 women

Exchange partners Nopae-receiving partners Maternal Total Percentage Average Clansmen; clansmen's affines Total Percentage Average Nopae-giving partners Affinal (H and his clan, including S, D) Total Percentage Average Clans women; related through clans women" Total Percentage Average Unrelated partners Total Percentage Average Total terminated Grand total Average

Female informants (n = 20)

49 38 2.4 32 25 1.6 15 12 .7 28 22 1.4 4 3 .2 128 6.4

Note: See Table B.9 for further information. a Nopae gifts are reciprocal and optional with this category of partner.

are not dependent on their wives as active intermediaries to maintain their affinal relationships. Terminated partnerships Tables 3.9 and 3.10 describe those partnerships that were terminated by the people included in the sample (see also Tables B.8 and B.9 in Appendix B). These partnerships were not passively inactive but had been disrupted in a number of ways (see the earlier section ''Dissolving Partnerships"). This does not mean, however, that they could never become active again. These tables qualify the information presented in Tables 3.7 and 3.8 by indicating the outer limits of people's networks. They indicate the relative fragility of

115

Twem: personal exchange

partnerships

Table 3.11. Terminated partnerships in relation to total networks of 23 men

Exchange partners Maternal Terminated Total Percentage Affinal (own; clansmen's) Terminated Total Percentage Clanswomen; related through clanswomen Terminated Total Percentage Clansmen-partners Terminated Total Percentage Unrelated partners Terminated Total Percentage Total terminated Total network Percentage

Male informants (n = 23) 59 251 24 95 408 23 35 269 13 31 456 7 20 126 16 240 1,510 16

the different categories of exchange relationship. It appears that maternal relatives are the most problematic category of exchange partner - while they are more plentiful than ''unrelated" partnerships, they are still not numerous themselves and are dropped relatively frequently. This may be an indirect reflection of the fact that the inheritance of exchange partnerships is relatively unimportant in Mendi. Here too, men and women differ in emphasis. Of all their twemol, men are most likely to drop their wives' relatives. These relationships are difficult because they are governed by complex rules for the repayment of gifts by the husband. For men, matrilateral death payments are a frequent context for alienating their mother's relatives. Of all their exchange partners, women are most likely to drop their mother's relatives and often for logistical reasons. Whereas the preceding two tables showed the relative proportion of terminated partnerships in each relationship category, Tables 3.11 and 3.12 compare terminated partnerships with total networks. They show that men and

116

What gifts engender Table 3.12. Terminated partnerships in relation to total networks of 20 women

Exchange partners Maternal Terminated Total Percentage Clansmen; clansmen's affines Terminated Total Percentage Affinal (H and his clan, including S, D) Terminated Total Percentage Clanswomen; related through clanswomen Terminated Total Percentage Unrelated partners Terminated Total Percentage Total terminated Total network Percentage

Female informants (n = 20) 49 127 39 32 229 14 15 289 5 28 155 18 4 49 8 128 849 15

women terminate partnerships at an equal rate (15 to 16 percent of their total networks). Combining figures from male and female informants, 29 percent of matrilateral partnerships were terminated, whereas for other categories, the combined percentage terminated was between 9 and 16 percent. The tables detail some differences between men's and women's networks. Throughout this discussion, we have been treating women as active parties in exchange along with men. It is to a more detailed consideration of some of the differences between men's and women's participation that we now turn.

4 Gender ideology and the politics of exchange

While we were talking with a Senkere big-man, Walipa, in our house about details of the community's history, Walo (one of his wives) and Nande (a good friend of ours, on whose husband's land our house was built) arrived. The women called out to us, so we opened our door. "Why are you letting them in?" Walipa asked, as the women entered the house. "Women aren't allowed here!" he asserted (ignoring the sex of the anthropologist). Walo and Nande seated themselves just inside the door, smiling all the while, and Walo asked her husband, "What is it you want to say now, that we cannot hear? Something about sorcery, perhaps?"

Introduction Antagonism between the sexes, and a separation of their respective domains of activity, are pervasive facts of life in Highland societies. Many ethnographers have noted the importance of gender symbolism in Highland ideology; as I indicated in Chapter 2, Mendi idioms concerning social solidarity and continuity emphasize the male role. Men are the predominant actors in rituals and public political meetings in Mendi, as elsewhere in the Highlands. According to available accounts, Highland men are predominant in exchange as well. In the most thorough analysis of Highland women's social role, Marilyn Strathern (1972) argued that women in the Hagen area are primarily producers and that men are transactors in a system in which men devalue production in relation to exchange. Women argue that their work raising pigs ought to give them the right to a say in the disposition of the animals. But men deny that women's work gives them this right. Even though women's participation in the vaunted sphere of exchange is active and committed - unlike for women referred to by anthropologists working elsewhere in the Highlands - it is not independent or autonomous. This follows from the fact that women have no legitimate means of enforc117

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What gifts engender

ing their claim to a right in the control of wealth. A woman's marriage creates exchange links between her husband and her natal kin, for whom she can act as an active intermediary. Women's desires are often congruent with those of the men they link. But, if a woman should attempt to be an independent agent in exchange - a transactor in her own right with priorities differing from those of her husband or brother, for example - then the brothers-in-law can carry on their exchanges "over her head." They are not dependent on the woman's interstitial or mediating activity. From a male point of view, according to Strathern, men exchange with their sisters as a courtesy, and only metaphorically (1972: 139). Exchange actually goes on between men, who have control over the valuables transferred. Furthermore, women have a peripheral role in the major ceremonial exchange festivals which, in Hagen, are politically charged gatherings of patrician members at which speechmaking by male leaders is highlighted. Strathern gives an account of Hagen women's arguments about their right to control certain exchange wealth or to hold it out of exchange. She describes women's ability to sabotage men's exchange relationships on occasion through divorce. She reports statements made by men about female powers, showing that men do not believe women to be unequivocally weak and unimportant. But Hagen society is not sexually egalitarian, nor do Hagen women constitute a solidary female subculture in a male world. Strathern concludes that Hagen women have a secondary status and "accept . . . their political inferiority" (1972: 309). Nevertheless, by conveying the complex and contradictory values Hagen women and men articulate about one another, Strathern shows that the dominant male view of Hagen society is not the only possible perspective. It exists in relationship - in opposition - to that of women (1972: 314). Women are not passive recipients of male interpretations of the moral order. They resist those interpretations and propose their own. I have implied, in the tables and throughout the discussion in Chapter 3, that Mendi women are and have exchange partners - that they are "transactors," in Hagen terms. Given previous ethnographic descriptions of the economic and political relationship of Highland men and women (besides Strathern's work, see, e.g., Glasse and Meggitt 1969; Meggitt 1974; Feil 1978), readers might assume that the figures cited for women reflect their actions as agents of their husbands and their brothers. Indeed, Mendi men occasionally assert that their wives have no exchange projects of their own, have no valuables to give anyone, and simply tend gardens, pigs and children. Earlier ethnographic descriptions of Mendi society (e.g., Ryan 1961: 167) reflect this view. However, just as in Hagen, Mendi women have other ideas, and do not simply concur with their husbands' statements concerning their rights, obligations, and powers. Statements about the attributes of "men" and "women" have a political

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content throughout the Highlands. Moreover, just as in Mount Hagen, in Mendi men and women use social conventions concerning gender categories against each other, as Walo and Walipa did.1 These facts make analysis problematic. Contradictory statements about maleness and femaleness may each be "true" with qualifications; they may also each be "false" for being systematically incomplete, reflecting historically constituted interests rather than a total system. The solution to this problem is not to abandon the effort to understand cultural constructions. Rather, the anthropologist's task is to try to piece together the whole picture, at least in its broad outlines, and not to legitimate one or another part of a contradictory social reality. It is in the uneasy relationship between the parts, in any case, that the dynamic nature of a society is to be discovered. This chapter moves from a consideration of women's participation in exchange to more general questions about the meaning of gender constructions, and in particular their political content (a fact of significance for relations between men, as well as for those between women and men). Women and exchange The social position of Mendi women is different from that of Hagen women. Mendi women have significantly more autonomy, at least in exchange. Here I shall suggest the structural bases - or given conditions - of their autonomy, as well as some of the ways in which women actively defend or reproduce their position in practical situations. The structural bases of female autonomy As we saw in Chapter 3, Mendi women have an active role in allocating a portion of their inikap (marriage) payment. Because of this they receive things from their agnatic and matrilateral relatives before they are married. Ryan (1961: 166) made reference to the fact that Mendi women have actual, socially recognized control over who they will marry, and over the distribution of their bride wealth. A woman may be held responsible for the distribution, as she may be directly involved in deciding to whom the inikap will be given. Therefore, disappointed relatives of the bride's do not blame the groom for the distribution but may refuse to transact with the bride later on. In one case, two matrilateral relatives and one clan brother of a bride felt they had been slighted by her distribution and told her they would not give her anything if she requested wealth of them later. They did establish twem relationships with her husband, however. There is a certain ambiguity in the marriage distribution, which Ryan's analysis (1961: 75-129; 1969) does not clarify. Weddings are among the few occasions in Mendi at which women have a formal ceremonial role to play.

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Plate 5. Wedding pigs. The row in the foreground are those the bride's people plan to give in exchange for those of the groom's people (pigs in the background). Setting: houseyard in the bride's community.

Plate 6. Wedding pearl shells. Men crowd around to evaluate the pearl shells, and women sit to the side, socializing. Setting: same as in Plate 5.

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Plate 7. Alin's wedding. She gives one of the best pearl shells to her brother. Two clan sisters of her husband's stand with her in her natal community's koma. At the formal wedding wealth distribution (koma tumawe), grooms remain on the sidelines (even in the case of older men, marrying for a second or third time). In contrast, brides are dressed in new reed skirts and netbags and are decorated with pearl shells, oil, and paint. They stand, center stage, formally receiving wealth from the groom's side (usually handed to them by the groom's father or brother) and passing it on to their father or brothers. Conventionally, two women from her husband's group stand with the bride when she does this, to prevent her from being shy. Currently, there is no other occasion at which women in Mendi have a similarly ceremonialized role. Young, unmarried women and girls dress up and march along with men at parade festivals, and married women may participate in one type of parade festival (mol), but only at weddings are women the ceremonial focal point. The ambiguity is this: The valuables that women formally hand over in the ceremonial ground are not the wealth over which they have conventional control in distributing. Rather, women are expected to have control over the ank kos wealth - that is, pigs, pearl shells, and money given during the first months when women live in their husband's mother's house. The quantity of wealth given as ank kos is frequently as great as that displayed and exchanged in the ceremonial ground during the formal wedding. It is given in a completely different manner from the koma tumawe wealth, however. Whereas the koma tumawe wealth is given formally and publicly, the ank kos wealth is given by

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the bride privately to particular people (although it is generally known to whom she gives it). An explanation of this arrangement is suggested at the end of this chapter. Mendi women are expected to be active in exchanges after they are married, as well as during the distribution of the marriage payment. This is one of the reasons Mendi men cite for preferring Mendi women as brides over women from other Highland areas: Pua's son, a mature young man of about 16 finishing his sixth year of primary school in Ialibu, had indicated his romantic interest in a girl from a community near Senkere. The girl, Walin, began to help Pua's wife, Epopil, in her gardens. Both Pua and Epopil were pleased with Walin's industriousness and also knew her brothers, some of whom were already their twem partners. They looked forward to the time when their son would graduate from school and a wedding could take place. But the son subsequently met another young woman in Ialibu. The two exchanged letters (she had also been to primary school, and both could write in English), which her brothers found. The latter accused her of having intercourse with Pua's son, which she denied. Nevertheless, she was so mortified that she stole away from home and, accompanied by two of her clan sisters, traveled to Pua and Epopil's house. She argued that they had to accept her as a daughter-in-law, or else she would kill herself. Pua and Epopil were in a quandary. Furious at their son for becoming involved with a second young woman, they were worried about the repercussions if she were to carry out her threat. Therefore, they organized a spectacular double wedding. During their deliberations, they commented many times on the differences between Mendi and Ialibu women, and their preference for the former. Ialibu women are not able to get valuables from their relatives after they are married, they said. They would receive many return-payment pigs at the wedding, but afterward - nothing. The Ialibu woman would come and simply tend gardens, whereas the Mendi woman would find pigs and pearl shells for them. Whether or not Pua's and Epopil's assessment of Ialibu custom was accurate is less important than what it revealed about the distinctive features of their own practices: They believe that Mendi women transact on their own while women elsewhere do not. Whereas Mendi women's formal role in the wedding ceremony, as well as their generally acknowledged postmarital role in the everyday business of obtaining wealth, gives us some indication of their autonomy in exchange, these facts alone do not definitively set the Mendi apart from women in the Highland societies to the north. But their typically strong lifelong relationship with their natal group does. In Mendi, women are supported by their natal kin in disputes with their husbands. The bond between brother and sister is particularly strong (a fact also noted by Ryan; see Ryan 1969: 171, 173). An alliance between brothers-in-law against a linking woman is not characteristic of Mendi social relationships. For example, during 1983 an incident occurred that, though not typical, was nevertheless completely consistent with the structure of male-female relationships in Mendi.

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A Kuma man was admitted to the Mendi Provincial Hospital with head wounds that would have caused an outbreak of inter-group violence, had it not been for the intervention of members of allied clans. The man's wife had been spending a lot of time at her brother's place; too much for his taste. The man had been worried that his wife and her brother were hatching a plot to get him to give them more inikap wealth (although the marriage was a year or two old). In any case, he had been complaining that she had not been acting like a proper wife and had gotten into a fight with her brother after accusing the pair of sleeping together. The brother hit him on the side of the head with the blunt end of an axe. [The disgruntled husband emerged from the hospital after a few days only slightly bruised, and violence between the clans of the two men never materialized.] A close relationship between brother and sister is not anomalous in the Southern Highlands. For example, Josephides (1983) reports that the Kewaspeaking peoples of Kagua, to the southeast of Mendi, also stress the brothersister bond. Men reported that they identify with their sisters. This identification sometimes extends to exchanges in ways one would expect (given the ethnographic literature on Highland societies) between brothers: Eple and his son Sulu made a matrilateral funeral payment in honor of the death of one of Eple's sisters. Eple died before the recipient of the funeral payment had a chance to make the last "return pig" payment. When the man did make this payment, he gave one pig to Sulu, and a second pig (originally intended for Eple) to Libem, another sister of Eple's (who, it might be noted, also had living lineage brothers). In another case, Konduko's clan sister got married, and Konduko decided to establish a twem relationship with the sister's husband. He visited the couple to request an axe and a pearl shell, as a delayed inikap payment, but the husband refused. Moreover (as Konduko told the story), his brother-in-law hit his sister in front of him. Konduko interpreted this act as an attack on himself; he said he thought this meant the man wanted to hit him. So he decided never to request wealth from the man again. In a similar vein, Mel told me that he felt sorry that his two sisters had to move away from their own land when they married; he said that had they all been men, they would have shared their father's land. Now, he lets his sisters stay with him whenever they want to, and gives them plots to garden, which their children will also be able to use. In fact, one of Mel's sisters was currently living in his own house compound, having had an argument with her husband, and his other sister lived only ten minutes' walk away, in Molmanda (Molsem territory). Therefore, it is unlikely that his statement had to do with a sentimental regret at not being able to see his sisters so much as it alluded to the structural distance that the gender distinction creates. I was also told on a number of occasions by various people that brothers and sisters "sit together" at pork distributions; together they give shells to the brother's wife's people and to their mother's people. This statement may be more metaphoric

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than descriptive; nevertheless, it also demonstrates a pervasive cultural emphasis and alludes to structural facts. Women derive a considerable amount of power from this bond.2 This power has a number of components. Men are concerned about their clans women's reputations in exchange. Therefore, when a sister requests a pearl shell or pig from her natal fellow clan members, they have a strong interest in complying with her demand. This even extends to cases in which the sister may be in the wrong: A Kurelka woman was accused by her husband of killing their newborn child. She returned to her father's brother's house, saying that her husband's people treated her poorly. Her father's brother gave her a shell to take with her when she returned to her husband's place so that the people there could not insult her by saying that she was a good-for-nothing who never "held" anything of value. There is a structural incentive to give wealth to one's sister, which has already been mentioned and will be described in more detail in subsequent chapters. Under certain circumstances things given to a sister and her husband (or his clansmen) ought to be repaid by them with an increment over the original gift (e.g., nopae). Therefore, people tend to give readily to their sisters and the latter's affines. By the same logic, men receive wealth more easily from their wives and wives' relatives, who expect an incremental repayment. When women quarrel with their husbands - whether the topic be the disposition of pigs and other wealth, the man's neglect of fencing and other garden work (a frequent complaint), or personal neglect or mistreatment they know that their brothers will take them in if they feel they must leave their husband's house. For many women, such a move does not mean a terrible disruption; they often do not have to travel far to get to their brother's place since most women marry into neighboring clans. Furthermore, women usually have gardens in their natal clan territory, which they visit frequently to plant, weed, or harvest. Therefore, if they return to their brother's place to stay, they are able to continue their own productive work and are not a drain on their brother's wife's labor or on the household's food supply. At the same time, they may leave pigs behind, penned in their house at their husband's place, for their husbands to worry about. If a woman's complaints against her husband have any legitimacy, the husband must go to his wife's place to get her, bringing shells for her and her brother (or whoever gave her shelter). Some disputes may take a long time to resolve and a few sisters living in Senkere appeared to be effectively incorporated into their brother's and brother's wives' households. If a dispute is serious (e.g., a man kills his wife's pig without her permission) a woman may threaten to call in the gift-debts her husband owes to her agnates. If divorce is contemplated, the husband must repay these debts be-

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fore he can receive back any of his bride wealth. A woman and her brother may conspire to force her husband's hand: Kusi had been living with her brother Kone for some time, following an argument between herself and her husband, Nande, concerning her relationship with his mother and mother's sister. Kusi really did not want to return to her husband's place, nor apparently did her husband want her back, although his clansmen reportedly thought she ought to return. One day an old woman came bearing the news that Kusi's daughter, whom Nande was caring for, had died. Kone and Kusi went to Nande's place, along with four fellow clan members, to find out if the story was true and, if so, to mourn the death. It turned out that the story was false. What is more, when the party stopped at one of Kusi's husband's gardens to harvest some sweet potatoes she had previously planted to eat before walking back to Kone's place, they were accused of stealing by four women from Nande's place (including the two women Kusi had quarreled with originally). This insult was too much for Kone and Kusi. The two decided that they would force the issue. Kone gave Kusi two pearl shells to give to Nande's mother and mother's sister. Giving them the shells would demonstrate Kusi's desire to return to Nande's house. If the women accepted them, Nande would have to compensate Kone and Kusi for the insults they had suffered. If Nande did not accept Kusi back, then Kone would assume he wanted to divorce her and therefore to break off the exchange relations that existed between himself and her relatives. They would, in that case, bring Nande to court and insist on repayment of all of their gifts to him. The gifts were not only from Kone and Kusi but also from seven of Kusi's fellow clansmen and (according to these people) totaled three large pigs, one large cassowari, four pearl shells, and K180. Mendi women's strong relationship with members of their natal groups, and their formal exchange role during the wedding ceremony, are the bases for their given, culturally recognized status as autonomous "transactors" there; that is, it makes explicable men's and women's assertions that some of their exchange partners are female. The practical reproduction of female autonomy Women do not all take the same responsibility for repaying the valuables they receive. Some women claim that they serve predominantly as go-betweens for their husbands and brothers. For example, they claim that they usually go to request pigs or other items from their brothers for their husbands, which the latter then have the responsibility to repay. They say that they do not usually acquire gift obligations of their own. More frequently, however, women assert their control over the wealth that they handle. For example, Saporpi claimed that even when she requests a pearl shell from her father to give to her husband Onge, she subsequently repays her father herself. Furthermore, she claimed that when she gives her husband a shell, he is to repay her, and not the person from whom she obtained the shell. In fact, and consistent with the conventions of exchange

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outlined in Chapter 3, Onge did not always in fact know who gave his wife the shells which she gave him. He acknowledged that "her 'business' is her own." Moreover, women defend their autonomous twem relationships; it makes a difference to them that their control be recognized. For example, Angana dropped one of her exchange partners for giving her husband Moko a shell as repayment for a gift that she (not Moko) had given him. She had been absent when her partner had come looking for her, and he had apparently wanted to avoid making the long trip to her place a second time. She said she would not transact with the man again until he repaid his gift-debt to her, which he eventually did. To the extent that women act as autonomous agents in exchange, they may disappoint their exchange partners, who may terminate the relationship (or bring them to court) just as they would in the case of a male partner. Because women in Mendi may choose to act as autonomous transactors and are recognized as such by men when they do so, the marital relationship has the air of an exchange partnership, rather than of a small "corporate" unit. The degree to which husbands and wives coordinate their transactions and exchange projects varies greatly. Some indication of this is found in a comparison of the exchange networks of husbands and wives. Table 4.1 compares the size of the networks of nine households, and also indicates the number and percentage of partners in the networks of both the husband and wife or wives. On the average, wives have smaller networks than their husbands, although this is not always true: In one of the households included in the table, the wife had twice as many active exchange partners as her husband. For the present, the important thing to note is that even when women's networks were smaller than their husbands', they were not subsets of the latter. The proportion of partnerships held in common with their wives varied in men's networks between 9 percent (in the case of the community's major big-man)3 and 71 percent (in the case of Sume, the husband of Tenpuri, who is an extremely active woman). In the networks of female informants, the proportion of partnerships that overlapped with those of their husbands varied between 10 and 66 percent. In fourteen of the twenty cases presented, the proportion of overlapping partnerships was under 50 percent; this was true of seven of the eleven women and seven of the nine men.4 That is, wives had their own exchange partners in all cases investigated. Even when a husband and a wife claim the same person in each of their exchange networks, this does not necessarily mean that they have a joint relationship with the person. They may each visit the partner for different reasons, and they may each keep a separate accounting of what they have given to and received from the person. Some husbands and wives insist that they know nothing of particular transactions in which their spouse may be involved; they insist that they repay only their own gifts. With respect to exchange, then, husbands and wives cannot automatically

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Table 4.1. Overlap in the exchange networks of husbands and wives (' 'active'' partnerships) Informants (grouped by household)

Number of "active" partnerships

Number of overlapping partners between husbands and wives

Ml F7 F8

96 21 21

9 2 7

9 10 33

M2 F2

86 66

35

41 53

M4 F4

46 38

13

28 34

M8 F5 F6

27 33 13

7 4 4

26 12 31

M9 Fll

37 23

11

30 48

Mil Fl

31 62

22

71 35

M12 F10

51 32

21

41 66

M14 F3

31 32

16

52 50

M15 F18

54 17

11

20 65

Percentage overlap

be considered a solidary unit in Mendi. Husbands and wives may go about their own business, maintaining their own partnerships and helping their respective agnates with gifts, or else they may coordinate their activities closely. The degree of coordination varies widely (though close coordination is generally accorded a positive value). From a wife's perspective, coordination means her husband will pay attention to her own and her fellow clan members' wealth needs. From a husband's perspective, coordination means that his wife will get valuables from her relatives and exchange partners for his projects. Some husbands and wives take care to inform one another of their exchange obligations. They may each have their own exchange partners but may nevertheless plan many of their transactions together, each collecting wealth for prestations to which they both agree, and which they both claim are theirs. There are practical reasons for husbands and wives to coordinate their transactions. In effect they may become one another's best exchange partner.

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In the cases of the two most active women in the sample, both coordinated closely with their husbands. Epopil (F2) helped her husband with projects he initiated more often than the other way around, whereas Tenpuri (Fl) was more often the initiator in her household. Men seem to talk about coordination and consultation with their wives as a practical strategy more often than as a value. When asked about their relationship with their wives, they assert that women ought simply to follow their husbands' wishes. Husbands do not always acknowledge their own wives' autonomy. They sometimes refer to their wives as "of my house" (and, therefore, an extension of the man's will). In contrast, women often assert that coordination with their husbands is a value and not a prescription or a strategy. Women think of themselves as autonomous people with wills of their own and with the capacity for judging in which transactions to participate. When men affect to give their wives an order, the women typically scoff or simply persist in their own activities without comment; alternatively they claim that their husband's order had actually been their own intention all along. In extreme situations, a woman's response may be to leave her husband's place, going to stay with her natal kin. For example, a newly married young husband ordered his wife to feed his guests, giving her instructions publicly in a manner that denied her the ability to give the food as a gift (i.e., of her own will, as her own person); something she had fully intended to do (as most women would, since it is a female means for achieving prestige). His actions were insulting and inappropriate. In response, she deposited the food in the women's sitting area - thereby "polluting" it and making it inedible to all except the visiting women. A related case involved a pork distribution, the sort of occasion when women expect their husbands to distribute pork to them publicly (i.e., to acknowledge their affinal exchange relationship). At one distribution, when the big-man officiating appeared to have entirely overlooked his wives in his desire to give large chunks of pork to his clan supporters and other relatives, his wives kept up a steady stream of invective until he was shamed into giving them what they insisted was their due. Women and men sometimes come to blows over the issue of female autonomy, although a husband is somewhat restrained by the knowledge that his wife is likely to be welcomed home by her brothers, and a heavy fine is likely to be exacted for her return, should she be injured. Frequently, women's response to the high-handed treatment accorded them by their husbands is ironic humor - like Walo's response to Walipa in the epigraph to this chapter. Comparing women and men Women are autonomous transactors, but their exchange participation is not the same as men's. A closer comparison of men's and women's involvement

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in exchange is necessary in order to understand what kind of a difference gender makes. In Chapter 3 we saw how wealth objects are ambiguous in Mendi. Similarly, there is considerable overlap in female and male exchange practices; women and men do not operate in separate "spheres of exchange." They transact using the same valuables, by and large: pigs, pearl shells, money. Their centers or foci are different, however, and so are the compasses of their respective spheres of control. Thus, the Mendi generally agree that whereas men own and control the transfer of land across generations (within the constraints of clan territories; see Chapter 2), women control the harvest, the products of their own garden work. Women know, more or less, which sweet potato mounds in each of their gardens are ready to be harvested, and they plan their days in terms of a circuit of gardens in various parts of the community: going here to plant for an hour or so, there to weed, and ending up where the day's harvest will be done. Women become angry when they discover that someone has harvested from their plantings without consulting them first; they may even bring court charges against close family members discovered to have stolen (paik mupu) from their gardens. Their anger is not simply a practical frustration over the disruption such covert harvesting engenders in their own harvesting plans.5 Rather, their anger reflects a deeper concern with their personal autonomy: their creative control over gardening, and the personal status that accrues to a skillful gardener who is able to provide food generously to guests. Women control the harvest as an aspect of their control over their daily labor process; most men and women acknowledge that women's decisions about where to work, what and how much to plant, how much to harvest, and so on all involve active intelligence and planning (indeed, women can achieve a "name" if they excel at this). As part of their control over the harvest, they control the daily household food supply, and determine its allocation to pigs and to people.6 When guests arrive, women are the ones who offer sweet potatoes to them, while men offer sugarcane. While women appear to consider sweet potatoes explicitly as something to give and to receive as a gift (i.e., as a socially significant act of generosity, for which one can be credited) men tend to discount everyday food sharing. They do not discount food gifts generally, however; they accord value to those which they control, which take place during public ceremonies (when men also do the cooking and distributing). Both men and women transact with pigs. Women control the pigs they themselves obtain from their own relatives and exchange partners. They may share control over other pigs, regardless of their provenance, in which they have invested labor although a man may retain exclusive control over pigs he obtained by making a ceremonial payment to his wife (mok ya ri) when he gives the pig away or kills it.

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Pearl shells are, by most accounts, particularly "male" exchange valuables. Older women report that they did not "hold" pearl shells in the days before the white people came to Mendi, but only shell wealth of lesser value: ropes of cowries and headbands of nassa shells that used to be part of marriage payments. This may be only partially true, however. In at least two formal contexts, women may have engaged in exchanges that involved pearl shells even in precontact times. The first is marriage, which, according to presentday recollections and to Ryan's observations during the 1950s, has long included pearl shells. The second, mentioned earlier, is an exchange called kaolo, after the Job's Tear beads women wear when they are in mourning. Close female relatives of a deceased man wear the beads for a year or more after the death. When they remove their beads, they make a pearl shell payment to another female relative of the deceased. The wife may make the payment to her dead husband's sister, and the payment may be reciprocal. In each case, a woman obtains a shell from her own group or from an exchange partner to give to another woman.7 In any case, nowadays women transact in pearl shells, obtaining them as gifts at marriages, at mortuary distributions, and from their exchange partners. Finally, everyone now has access to Papua New Guinea currency (kinaltoea), whether or not they have ever been involved directly in the market economy. Money is given and received in the same contexts as are pearl shells (and most especially during marriages). Money is also obtained through the rural sale of pigs. While women obtain money more frequently from marketing vegetables in Mendi town, men have more opportunities for wage employment and the establishment of commercial projects there and elsewhere. Men and women transact in the same sorts of valuables; they also transact with one another. When I asked them about their exchange networks, male informants reported that they had female partners. Whenever men said that they had transacted with a woman, they were questioned more closely; they rarely claimed they meant that their "real" exchange partner was the woman's husband or clansman or that the woman was acting as a go-between. Three male informants offered that they had chosen specifically to transact with certain women in their networks rather than with these women's husbands because the women were more reliable partners then their husbands were. In those cases where informants counted both a woman and her husband as exchange partners, the informant often had an independent relationship with each of them. Women also claimed to have female partners. When I questioned women about particular transactions, most of them insisted sometimes with indignation at having even been asked such a question (which, after all, I had not asked men) - that the saon they reported were their own. They insisted that they had given and received gifts in their own names: that their actions were their own responsibility and to their own credit. Nevertheless, the tables in Chapter 3 clearly show that male informants

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have a greater absolute number of exchange partners than do female informants. Men, on the average, have sixty-six partnerships in their total networks whereas women have forty-two (64 percent of the male figure). The difference is greater in men's and women's "active" networks: Each man has about forty active partnerships and each woman, twenty-two. Men actively use 61 percent of their total networks whereas women use 51 percent of theirs. While women have a greater proportion of women in their networks (34 percent) than men have in theirs (18 percent), they do not create separate, predominantly female networks. Both men and women have a smaller proportion of female partners than male partners in their networks. What do these facts mean? In order to answer this question, we must compare men's and women's work in more detail. Also, an understanding of the kind and degree of control women have over the wealth they handle is necessary for an interpretation of the evident (and important) differences between men's and women's involvement in exchange. But this requires a separate discussion, and it will be dealt with in the next section. Women and men concern themselves with different aspects of the "exchange work" involved in maintaining exchange relationships through periods of apparent inactivity (i.e., inactivity from the point of view of the exchange of material valuables). In their month-to-month transactions, women give and receive gifts of food (and nowadays small quantities of money) far more frequently than men do. Food gifts open up avenues for other kinds of exchanges, and the lack of food sharing (most especially in the case of pork) is grounds for breaking off existing exchange relationships. Although men acknowledge the importance of food gifts in maintaining twem relationships, they denigrate consumption per se, and they value ceremonial food gifts (which they give) over everyday hospitality (which women control). In contrast, women conceive food sharing to be an act with social value in all contexts. Women may be quantitatively less involved than men in the exchange of valuables like pigs and pearl shells while being more involved than men in other culturally unmarked and contested aspects of the exchange process.8 The quantitative differences between men's and women's exchange activities are also at least partially the result of systematic differences between men's and women's garden work. Most women are involved in a continuous round of planting, weeding, and harvesting that takes up a considerable amount of their time every day (up to seven hours at a stretch). On the one hand, this labor restricts the time they have to spend at exchange-related work. On the other, women view it as similar to exchange insofar as they derive a "name" from their ability to provide ready hospitality even for unexpected guests. In contrast, men work primarily in concentrated bursts: building fences, ditches and houses and doing heavy garden clearing. While some men spend a significant amount of time planting sweet potatoes, they are not generally expected to do so. 9

13 2

What gifts engender

Differences in men's and women's level of participation in exchanges may also derive from their differential involvement in dyadic network exchanges and large-scale clan festivals. Women's transactions are strictly dyadic and are encompassed entirely by their personal network relationships (including individual relationships with agnates). Men are involved both in relationships with personal exchange partners and in corporate relationships with their agnates in the context of prestations they make jointly to other clans. Despite their legitimate and valued involvement in the daily give-and-take of pearl shells, pigs, and money, and despite their ceremonial role at marriage, women (even married female agnates resident in their natal communities) remain on the sidelines at large-scale clan festivals. Twemy female participation, and its limits I shall return to the matter of exclusion in the next section, after considering the relevance of the network ethic for a general understanding of Mendi property relations. That is, the value that the Mendi accord to the circulation of wealth and the mediating position in which every transactor is thereby placed have implications for the sort of control both men and women exercise. Without an understanding of these general facts, it is easy to misconstrue women's role in exchange. If for the moment we consider men's and women's participation in twem exchanges only, it becomes clear that although men are more heavily involved (with more partners and transactions) than women, the character of male and female participation is the same. Being "in between" is not a special characteristic of women. Both men and women are constantly involved in conveying wealth between their relatives and other exchange partners. Most often, both do so in their own names taking personal responsibility for the repayment. But, both men and women also do so on behalf of others by making new roads of exchange for one another, and searching their networks for wealth in response to the requests of their affines and other partners. As I indicated at the conclusion of Chapter 3, men link women together in chains of transactions just as women mediate male transactions: Alcome obtained a pearl shell for his wife, Saporpi, who requested it in order to repay one of her exchange partners (with whom Alcome did not himself transact). Alcome went in search of a shell, which hefinallyobtained from his half brother Alump's father's wife, Tumnonk. [Refer to Figure 4.1.] Alcome said he now owes Tumnonk a shell. In a separate discussion, Saporpi said she owes her husband Alcome.10 In another case, Paki's wife's mother gave Paki a pig for which he owed her a pig of equivalent size or else the money value of the animal (K100). Paki kept the pig for some time and then gave it to his clan brother, Wange, in response to a request. Wange gave it to

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Tumnonk

I

I

A

1=•

Alump

Alcome

Saporpi

» Direction of wealth

Key: 0

Active in the transaction

Figure 4.1. Alcome's pearl shell.

money Key:

— • Direction of wealth 0

Active in the transaction

———— Same clan Figure 4.2. Paki's pig. his sister who requested it for her husband, (whose clan was preparing to make a large pig distribution to another clan). Wange's sister promised to repay him with a larger pig just before the Senkere pig kill, following the rules of brother-sister transactions in pig-kill times. Now, Paki's wife's mother demanded to be repaid. Paki had neither an appropriate pig to give her nor sufficient money, so he asked Wange to repay him. Paki accompanied Wange when the latter went to ask his sister to return the pig. As it happened, this was impossible. Wange's sister did give him K30, as a partial payment for the pig which, with Paki's consent, Wange gave directly to Paki's wife's mother. Wange then owed the latter another K70 which she said he could pay her later, during the Pig Festival. [Refer to Figure 4.2.] Some of the problems that can arise in interpreting the structural implications of twem rules are evident in the way that D'Arcy Ryan wrote about them. Discussing Mendi marriage customs, Ryan asserted (1961:100):

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Mendi women do not themselves retain or use any of the forms of exchange wealth; and even when, as in marriage payments, they are the recipients, they must immediately redistribute the goods among their male kin. But because, however temporarily, a woman is the actual owner of these goods, she has, in theory at least, the right to say who will ultimately receive them. In isolation, this statement appears to be about the limits of women's autonomous participation in exchange. But, it might be recalled (see Chapter 2) that Ryan made a similar point about Mendi men. In the light of general facts about how valuables mediate social relationships in Mendi, it is clear from the second half of this passage that Mendi women "own" exchange wealth as much (or as little) as Mendi men do. As Ryan's statement rightly implies, control over the disposition of valuables is the criterion of "ownership," if the term can be meaningfully applied at all: The ability of both sexes to accumulate wealth is limited in Mendi. Ryan wrote that a woman normally "distributes her brideprice to her father and brothers, to her mother (who gives it to her own brothers), and to her married sisters (who pass it on to their husbands and sons)" (1961: 101). Elsewhere (1961: 167), in a comment on a similar theme, he explains his reasoning: It should be noted that women can be "channels" for the transfer of goods, but do not actually own them. Mendi women have, in theory at least, the right of disposal of goods passing through their hands: that is, they can nominate the men to whom they will redistribute the goods. But women must redistribute any goods they receive, and they cannot use them for their own purposes; indeed, as women neither make twem nor kill pigs, there are no purposes for which they could use the goods. But as we have already seen, women do have twem partners. They do not simply "redistribute the goods among their male kin," as Ryan thought but exchange valuables with other women, as well as with men. When a women receives part of another woman's bride wealth, she does not necessarily turn the items over to her male relatives, as she also has female exchange partners to whom she is obliged. That is, more generally, women do have purposes of their own for which they need and use valuables. It is true, however, that women generally do not "retain" valuables. This is because they engage almost exclusively in informal twem exchange relationships. No one in Mendi retains valuables unless she or he is preparing for public prestations. As to formal, public prestations, while women occasionally accumuate valuables to contribute to (or to sponsor) small-scale funeral payments or to help with a marriage payment, they do not participate directly in clan events. They therefore have fewer reasons than men do to hold onto or accumulate wealth. Therefore, Mendi women and men are not, respectively, "producers" and "transactors" (as Hageners call themselves). Rather, women and men are differentially involved in two kinds of social relations, each with its own

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characteristic form of exchange. Their different levels of exchange activity may be at least partially accounted for by this fact. While women are involved in network relationships and exchanges, men engage both in network and in group transactions. Men spend a lot of time maintaining their personal twem partnerships. They also work individually to accumulate valuables for sent events and, in those contexts, devote much attention to the discussions and meetings held to ensure the coordination of many people. Both men and women value their involvement in twem activities, which are not in themselves a sign of subordination. Still, might not women's exclusive involvement in personal network exchanges mean that although they are not simply agents of particular men, nevertheless their actions merely facilitate the staging of clan prestations which men as a whole organize the control? If twem exchanges could be viewed simply as a means for the production of clan festivals and distributions, then we might legitimately conclude that Mendi women's autonomy is superficial. The situation is more complex than that, however. As I argued in Chapter 3, such a view of network exchanges would be inadequate. Personal network relationships have a cultural value and a logic of their own. Much of the time, they are a primary focus of interest for men as well as for women. In fact, observing the preparations men make before clan ceremonies, one gets the impression that many men prefer concentrating their energies on their twem relationships over the rigors of organizing clan festivals. There are times when men's commitments are realigned, and women's exclusion from sem onda affairs appears to demonstrate a hierarchical ordering of the society at large. But to understand women's commitment to a social arrangement that does not favor them requires that we recognize that there is more than one culturally legitimate way of understanding how the system works. The recognition of contradiction is essential for understanding political action and discourse. Sem, gender hierarchy, and its limits As we saw in Chapter 2, women are not full participants in any corporate group. The strong identification between brother and sister described above is different from the identification between fellow clansmen described earlier for being dyadic and personal, and has no corporate meaning in itself.11 Women rarely are formal participants in sem festivals. But when a man does not participate in all of his clan's events, his lack of participation is a choice; in contrast, women are specifically excluded from them. Many discussions to plan sem events are held in men's clubhouses, which women may not enter. Other meetings are public, and men from other communities may be invited. While women may sit outside the men's clubhouses to listen to the proceedings; while numbers of them attend the large public meetings that precede clan events, sitting to the side of the central group of men, whom orators

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address; while they may comment on men's discussions in audible tones they are in all of these cases peripheral. Their active participation - when it occurs - is not generally acknowledged as their own. Women may stand in for men, but they may not participate in their own names as autonomous persons. As I argued in Chapter 2, sent has a male value as the corporate relationship of patrician members. When men get together to discuss, argue about, and plan clan events, their rhetoric employs gender idioms in a particular manner. In relation to sent, and to distinguish the two, twem becomes a "female" preoccupation (despite the heavier involvement of men than women in twem transactions, in absolute quantitative terms). In such male discussions, a hierarchy of gender meanings - a use of "maleness" to signify certain positive values and "femaleness" to signify certain negative values - is used by leaders and other men to assert the priority of sent relationships over twem relationships.12 This language provides an implicit rationale for arguing that obligations between clansmen, as members of corporate clans jointly sponsoring festivals and ceremonial prestations, are more important than obligations between exchange partners engaged in personal transactions. These arguments are not primarily addressed to women but go on mostly between men. They are used by big-men and other advocates of clan action to persuade and to shame other men into acting in a "brotherly" fashion. When such persuasions are effective, they are significant for men, each of whom has a choice between emphasizing their personal obligations to exchange partners or their corporate obligations to clansmen. (Women have no choice, and perhaps as a result they do not pay much attention to the rhetoric.) Twem transactions may be a necessary means to the accumulation of valuables for sem prestations, but they may also impede and inhibit it. Given this fact, to the extent that men agree to act in the name of clans and tribes, they assert the priority of the mutual obligations of "brothers" over the ego-centered obligations of each clansman, and they demand that personal networks be organized so as to facilitate sem events. References to "maleness" and "femaleness" are used as concrete metaphors with a range of connotations; advocates of clan action refer to the relationship between male and female to stand for the relationship between sem and twem, with potent effect in rhetorical contexts. What does this relative ordering mean for the status of women? Women do not question the legitimate existence of clans and tribes in Mendi, and for the most part, they do not challenge their exclusion from full clan membership by attempting to participate in sem events in ways that men deem inappropriate.13 But one need not conclude from this that women therefore concur in the denigration of themselves as persons; rather, they appear simply to accept what appears to them as an occasional reordering of male priorities with respect to their sem and twem obligations. The reason why women apparently do not experience this

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reordering as significant is that they may reasonably interpret sem events as serving twem ends (see Chapters 5 and 6), their arguments paralleling those of men who often interpret twem transactions as means to the end of clan events. After all, clan prestations are usually made to allies, the natal sem onda of in-married wives among which these women have many of their own exchange partners (see also Modjeska 1982). Women's and men's divergent contemporary perspectives on the significance of clan relations may be viewed in light of the political changes that have occurred since the establishment of Australian colonial rule; particularly, limitations on tribal war-making powers. But while it is tempting to assume that there was more of a societywide consensus about the relative importance of clan solidarity in the days of tribal warfare, I believe that such an assumption is weak, since it is not clear that clan solidarity is any less important nowadays than it was in precolonial times. Both men and women in Mendi still conceptualize a significant number of present-day illnesses and deaths as the products of intergroup antagonisms, even though covert methods of attack (sorcery; torn) have now become more important than the direct use of axes and arrows. Changes have surely occurred in the roles of clans in Mendi political life, but the changes are not simple and linear. The recent resurgence of tribal violence in many parts of the Highlands (Gordon 1983), the building of larger alliances in Mendi, and multifaceted pressures coming from the market economy, which sometimes strengthen clans as "corporations," do not lend themselves so easily to an analysis about future trends. In any case, however much its structural bases may have changed in the last generation, during the late 1970s gender hierarchy in Mendi appeared not to be the central contradiction of Mendi social structure but, rather, an outgrowth of the symbolic means by which Mendi men mediate the more centrally problematic relationship between their sem and twem obligations.14 But even if it is arguably not central, male-female inequality is nevertheless real and significant. The use of gender symbols in the hierarchic ordering of network and group obligations affects women's relationships with men, as it affects their economic and political status in Mendi society. First, the denigration of female qualities carries over into daily life; politically charged gender meanings are applied by men to contexts not systematically polarized this way. In daily contexts of interaction between men and women, women vigorously counter expressions of male prerogative, insisting on their inappropriateness. They rarely sit silently when their husbands insult them as persons. Their very vocal response contrasts strikingly with their silence during clan events, when similar sentiments are sometimes expressed. Their protests are heard regularly in everyday settings and derive legitimacy and force from their recognized autonomy in network relationships. But they are ineffective structurally because they do not address the source of the problem; women silently consent to the principle of hierarchy (and may be seen

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as accepting implicitly the priority of exclusively male institutions over those in which everyone participates) when they avoid criticizing the use of hierarchical gender idioms as a rhetorical means of valuing sem concerns over those of twem. The hierarchic ordering of network and group obligations affects women strongly in a second way. When men meet together to decide about the form and political content of sem festivals, their decisions may have a bearing - if indirect and long-term, then so much the harder to perceive - on the level of garden production the community must sustain. If pigs are to be accumulated for a pig kill, this has implications for women's work (as Rappaport [1968] pointed out years ago). By controlling the scheduling of clan prestations, men control the demand for valuables these events create, affecting the intensity of women's labor and their exchanges as well. Recognized social power derives partly from access to the clan forum. Clan participation is an important means by which men control the meaning and value of action (if not really the action itself). Therefore, an understanding of the bases of sexual inequality in Mendi is to be found not in the analysis of differential involvement in, and control over, exchange relations generally, but specifically in the study of how access to corporate clan relationships is controlled, and of the ways in which the valuation of clan relations relative to network relations may be manipulated by social actors. Women may give pearl shells, money, and pigs to their husbands and brothers to help them participate in sem events. However, unlike men they may play no direct role in shaping the political significance of those events. In a sense then, they have less control over the products of their labor than men have. Moreover, they lose some control over their "names" - their social identities - that being as much an extension of themselves as is their labor.15 Many women express no great interest in retaining such control; they assert that they have other things to do, and they occasionally make fun of men's concern with sem formalities.16 But this assertion cannot simply be taken at face value because it is clear that women have no culturally legitimate choice in the matter. Even women who want to become involved in clan prestations and the deliberations concerning clan policy cannot do so. Tenpuri (Fl) is a striking case in point. During 1977-9, this woman was clearly dominant within her household - more active than her husband in cultivating exchange partnerships and in making preparations for prestations in which they would participate. She had a strong interest in organizing distributions and was central in the negotiations concerning her sister's daughter's marriage and in organizing a large public mortuary prestation during the time I lived in the community. Nevertheless, she was limited by the conventions of female behavior: Tenpuri and her husband, Sume (Mil), sponsored a pearl shell kowar in honor of the death of a Senkere big-man, which they intended to give to Pua's subclan. The gift

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was timed to coincide with similar prestations that two other Senkere men were making, so that the event would be larger and more impressive. It took place in the main Senkere ceremonial ground and an audience of over 100 people, not counting donors and recipients, were in attendance. The three men involved in the distributions displayed their pearl shells in one long row. In addition to their individual purposes, the event had a corporate clan significance; it demonstrated that members of the Senkere community were acquitting their debts to matrilateral kin and affines in preparation for the Suolol pig kill. When Sume's turn came to make his distribution, Tenpuri positioned herself near the line of pearl shells and money. She was the only woman seated so close to the valuables; other women sat off to the side of the central group of men, who sat or stood directly in front of the shells. While Sume stood and formally handed out the pearl shells, Tenpuri kept up a steady stream of instructions, explaining what each shell was meant to repay. She herself handed out small denominations of currency two-kina notes and change - to the female recipients in Pua's subclan. Afterward she commented to me that she behaved as she had to ensure that Sume did not make any last minute changes in their joint decisions as to who exactly would receive which shells. Her behavior was considered highly inappropriate by the men I spoke with, though they admitted that it was typical for her and that it was her husband's business if he allowed himself to be ordered about by her. Tenpuri and women like her probe the rules of proper female behavior; her situation demonstrates that the limits on female participation are real and repercussions of exclusion from sent are significant. But, to understand the situation politically, it is necessary also to remember that, like Nande and Walo in the epigraph to this chapter, Mendi women are actively (if not always effectively or farsightedly) engaged with men in defining the situations in which they act. While the discourse of sem action excludes their voices, they are not entirely bereft of rhetorical and other resources. They do not simply live in a man's world. More generally, twem relationships are not simply a tacit background defined in terms of ceremonially foregrounded clan relationships. Women's sense of themselves as autonomous persons is a reasonable interpretation in a social order in which men and women both agree that a hierarchical ranking of social relationships has only a qualified legitimacy, and in which both women and the forms of sociality in which they are characteristically involved are also ceremonially marked from time to time. Let us return briefly to consider the marriage ceremony in this light. Recall that brides have a formal role in the public bridewealth distribution (koma tumawe). Women say, however, that despite this formal, public role, the valuables they really allocated themselves were those which were given privately, during the second stage of the marriage payments (ank kos). Now, it is true that the bride's formal role during the public wedding ceremony enables them to make decisions concerning the bridewealth distribution. As Ryan (1961: 101) noted, while many girls simply listen to their parents' advice concerning who ought to receive things, " I am aware, however,

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of several cases in which the girl's discretion was decidedly and pointedly exercised, to the chagrin of several close kinsmen with whom they had recently quarrelled." In any event, it is understandable that by convention women are expected to control the private ank kos wealth, and not the public koma tumawe distribution; this emphasis is consistent with women's normal involvement in personal dyadic exchange relationships articulated in private settings, as opposed to public distributions. Why then do women alone have a formal role in the marriage ceremony, a public affair? Why are the bride and groom not both the center of attention? One answer might be suggested. Marriage is the only ceremonial event specifically ' 'about" twem. As I noted earlier, parts of two personal networks are crystallized during marriage proceedings. Weddings are the primary social context in which the structure of twem relationships are reproduced. It may be that women have a formal role during weddings partly because of the association between twem and "femaleness." But the evaluation of the association is different in this ceremonial context from other such contexts. Although twem and "femaleness" both have a negative value in the rhetoric of clan meetings, in the context of marriage - when new twem linkages are being created - the association is formally and publicly given a positive meaning.

5

Twem and sem in context

Thus far, I have given a general discription of sem relationships - culturally conceived of as creating an "enduring" structure of social groups - and twem relationships - constituting a reticulum of ego-centered exchange partnerships. The preceding chapters have presented the structural framework within which the relationship between them is negotiated in practical situations. It is to such practical situations that this and the next chapter turn, returning in fact to questions about the organization and politics of "ceremonial" exchange in which this study originated (see Chapter 1). All types of public prestations depend on both sem and twem relationships, but each articulates them in a particular way and poses a characteristic organizational challenge. As we saw in Chapter 4, the marriage exchange (inikap) ceremonializes and reproduces network relationships. At the same time (and as outlined in Chapter 2), it is an important context in which clansmen support one another's projects by means of unsolicited gifts. Funeral prestations (kowar) are usually sponsored by individuals too; they are made to particular matrilateral kin, but they may be made to agnates of the deceased as well. Just as in the case of marriages, their sponsors depend on the support of fellow clan members. Large-scale death compensation payments (ol tenga, ol ombul) are sponsored by groups. These events occur less frequently than marriages and kowar but involve more people and more wealth than the latter. They center attention upon the relationship between groups and require the coordinated action of sem members, each of whom has organized his twem obligations as much as possible to complement clan ceremonial requirements. The Pig Festival (mok ink or sai le) is also sponsored by groups and depends both on the coordination of clansmen and on each clansman's twem network. Unlike other massive, group-sponsored ceremonies, however, it formally recognizes both twem and sem relationships. This chapter will provide an overview of these contexts of exchange.1 The 141

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Pig Festival will be examined more closely in Chapter 6, as it is a particularly important example of how the relationship between twem and sem structures practical politics in Mendi communities, and has also been a central theme in the recent history of Upper Mendi. Before discussing the various contexts of ceremonial exchange, a number of general issues bearing on the politics of these occasions need to be surveyed. Inequality, reciprocity, and incremental gifts One dimension of the practical articulation of twem and sem was mentioned in the last section of the preceding chapter. There I noted that in the context of meetings held to discuss clan projects, twem and sem relationships are conceptually ordered with respect to one another by means of a rhetoric of gender idioms that play on the differential involvement of men and women in clan affairs. Mendi gender idioms devalue twem relative to sem as "female" to "male," marking clan relations and giving them a social priority at least for men. This hierarchical public ordering of significant social relationships has political implications apart from the questions it raises about the status of women. Although it does not determine the actions of particular men - who may still act on their own, outside of or in conflict with a corporate consensus, and persist in putting their network relationships before clan projects - it has an effect on the decisions they make by investing their actions with a public meaning that they cannot control simply as individuals (see Lederman 1980 and Chapter 2). Big-manship and the practical articulation of network and group relationships Big-men (ol koma) have a central role in the rhetorical ordering of twem and sem relationships. In Chapter 2, I noted the identification of big-men with the clan ethic, asserting that they were the most consistent advocates of coordinated clan action. Big-men (along with other promoters of particular clan projects) make skillful use of gender idioms, historical precedent and other kinds of arguments to persuade other men to coordinate their twem network obligations with a clan ceremonial timetable. Their role in organizing clan action, and in effecting from time to time a public consensus concerning the practical articulation between network and clan obligations in particular contexts, raises questions about the structural and processual character of Mendi politics. To what extent is big-manship a function of network or group relations? What kinds of power and inequality are reproduced within this system? How do individuals achieve and maintain ol koma status in Mendi? As in the case of gender inequality, these are complex questions that cannot be penetrated simply from the outside in terms of a priori - more precisely,

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Plate 8. Meeting held to discuss the parade plans for Suolol. A leader (Walipa) stands to address the meeting. culturally alien - criteria of equity or exploitation. We need first to gain an understanding of indigenous theories of value (so to speak): of equivalence, difference, and inequality. Nor can these questions be approached as if they had a unitary answer (as if the members of society would reply with one voice). We need to learn the indigenous terms for a critique of the practices we observe, if they exist. Some sense of the last has already been given in the preceding chapter. The Mendi are neither as committed to a gender hierarchy nor to corporate action as are the Hageners and the Mae Enga to their north. The Mendi are unlike the Mae, who (as I noted in Chapter 2) systematically give priority to corporate clan affairs. They are also unlike the Melpa of Mount Hagen. Andrew Strathern (1982b: 49) recently argued that Melpa men's involvement in ceremonial exchange, which they exclusively control, is a function of their commitment to an ideology of male superiority over women. Melpa men tolerate a degree of inequality among themselves - in particular, the preeminence of their leaders in moka - in the interest of their collective status vis-a-vis women. But in Mendi, men's potential common interest is eroded to a degree (at least, these days) by cross-sexual linkages with agnatic women. The same structure of feeling that works against the formation of female solidary groups, then, weakens male solidarity. All in all, Mendi men are not of one voice concerning the priority of clan projects, and this diversity is often articulated at Mendi

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political meetings - be they small gatherings in men's houses or larger discussions held on the occasion of a pearl shell display in the ceremonial ground. Whether voiced by women in some contexts or by men in others, the critique of clan involvements is to an important degree couched in terms of twem values and concerns, that is, in terms of personal autonomy and its infrastructure of obligations to exchange partners. What then is big-manship about in Mendi?2 The status of ol koma is similar to that of big-men in the northern Highlands, although it is weaker - a function of the Mendi's lesser respect for corporate solidarity. In common with other central Highlanders, big-manship is an achieved status in Mendi, not an inherited position (although, as elsewhere, the sons of big-men appear to have some advantage in achieving a similar status). Sometimes the term ol koma is used loosely (especially when speaking with outsiders) to refer to all the men of ones own group (or one's favorite exchange partners), much as one might speak highly of ones friends, and not describe them as simply "average" {ol epe, or "a good man"). More often, koma is a description applied to only a small number of men in the speaker's community, and about these men there is a general consensus. Ol koma are organizers. The term generally refers to those men who have achieved a reputation as public orators and who also have on one or more occasions organized clan events (including attacks against enemy groups in precolonial times, as well as prestations and rituals) and performed notably during public wealth distributions. The strength of a man's reputation depends on the consistency with which he successfully orchestrates a consensus concerning the staging of clan events (a process requiring private discussion as well as public speech making) and the regularity with which he puts on exemplary personal performances during public prestations of wealth. Some men achieve a reputation as koma locally for having been key organizers of, and performers in, a notable event in that community's history. Others develop wider regional reputations, and even a degree of immortality if their organizational exploits are memorialized in the oral history of their tribe (as was the case of a Yansup big-man who organized a large-scale warfare alliance a couple of generations ago, for which that group was still compensating its allies during the late 1970s). Mervyn Meggitt (1967) noted that becoming a big-man is associated with the elaboration and maintenance of a large exchange network. A comparison of the networks of Olonda (Ml) and Pua (M2) with those of other men (see Table B.4) demonstrates the point. But it does not establish the precise connection between having a large network and achieving leadership status. A large network does not in itself make a person big or give him a "name." Two of the women in the sample had networks larger than those of most of the locally respected men, but because they were female and consequently

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barred from a direct role in clan events, they could not achieve ol koma status.3 Apart from the size of their networks, Olonda and Pua were significantly different from each other as leaders. At least until the Pig Festival held at Senkere at the end of 1979 Olonda (the older of the two) had by far the preeminant reputation. He was a theatrical orator at clan meetings and had since the 1960s organized a number of major Kurelka parades and prestations. Pua was not an orator, though he did speak out forcefully during public meetings. He had achieved his reputation by staging many individually sponsored kowar, by putting on consistently impressive personal performances during clan wealth distributions, and also by effectively mobilizing public opinion in private, face-to-face contexts. That is, although both men were considered by others to be wealthy (in the sense that each seemed always to redistribute large amounts of high quality pearl shells and pigs at prestations), Olonda's name was more consistently associated with corporate events. We shall come back to the contrast between Pua and Olonda in Chapter 6, with regard to the role of each in organizing the Suolol mok ink. Occasional anomalies also demonstrate the association that the Mendi make between big-men and clan events. A third man known as a leader outside of the Senkere community was thought of simply as a "good" man within Senkere. While he had no special reputation for oratory, nor for the mobilization of wealth, an action of his was widely credited with having initiated the current Pig Festival during the late 1960s. While he tried to fill the role History subsequently handed him by playing a prominent part in parades and clan meetings, members of the community were generally skeptical, as he had no prior reputation for advocating corporate events and, at least during 1977-9, consistently argued that the Festival should be postponed. They commented that everyone would finally and truly know what was what once the Festival was held, and his performance could be observed. They questioned not simply his access to wealth but more generally his commitment to corporate action. In a word, major Mendi big-men achieve their status through a skillful meshing of their twem and sem obligations. They demonstrate a strong commitment to organizing their fellow clansmen for corporate action - to intensifying their own and their agnates' clan obligations. They also create and maintain extremely large networks of twem partners, which they succeed consistently in mobilizing as a source of wealth for the clan prestations they and others organize. The extent to which their role is valued is a measure of the significance of the clan principle within the Mendi social structure as a whole. That ol koma is a positive reference, by and large, implies that the particular meshing of twem and sem relationships they achieve is a social ideal. Beyond that, their active part in creating consensuses for clan action constitutes a form

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What gifts engender

of power in that they thereby invest the individual actions of others with meanings the actors cannot control without themselves also becoming involved in the clan forum. For men to be in full possession of their "names," they must participate in clan meetings, either working for or against decisions for corporate action. It is important to recognize, however, that while bigmen have a kind of power over others because of their active involvement in clan affairs, it is a power that all men share by virtue of their access to the clan forum. As I showed in Chapter 3, a man does not necessarily need to be married (or, if married, he does not have to depend on his wives' productive efforts) in order to achieve big-man status. He does need to find a functional alternative to household production. Big-men have the same use rights to clan land enjoyed by other men and do not appear to have received either more cleared land or securer tenure from their fathers than ordinary men have. A big-man may help establish his sons by helping them to marry young, but sons do not inherit exchange partners from their fathers - they must build up their networks on their own. Big-men initiate their careers by building a twem network and by sponsoring and participating well in clan prestations. The activity of big-men is underwritten by domestic labor (see also Strathern 1978b), but it depends on both the level of production in their own and their exchange partners' households. As was indicated in Chapter 3, home production is a basis for participation in exchange, but it is not the key to big-manship. Ol koma gain access to the large amounts of wealth they characteristically distribute during clan events through their twem networks. Some items of wealth cannot be produced as such within the household: pearl shells and money. In order to get these things, one must become involved in twem relationships. Furthermore, one cannot simply accumulate wealth within the household; ol koma are expected to give especially generously in both private and public situations. Indeed, generosity in twem relationships is an explicit tactic employed by bigmen to ensure that they will receive aid in turn from their partners when they participate in clan prestations. The extent to which Mendi big-men depend on exchange networks may set them apart from big-men in northern Highland societies like that of the Mae Enga or the Melpa. Although Mendi leaders act as spokesmen for their clans, they do not depend as much as Melpa and Mae leaders do on factions of clan supporters for the wealth they give to others during these events. As I noted in Chapter 3, on the occasion of large-scale clan events, clansmen are all simultaneously concerned to accumulate wealth for display and cannot help one another very much. Big-men in Mendi act jointly with their fellow clansmen when they make prestations, and all men, big and small, depend on their twem partners for the wealth they display. This mode of organization constrains the personal performances of Mendi big-men relative to the perfor-

147

Twem and sem in context

mances of leaders among the Melpa and the Enga. Whereas a typical Mendi leader may expect to kill between 12 and 24 pigs at a Pig Festival (a figure similar to that of Wiru leaders and prominent men in some other Southern Highlands societies), Hagen big-men may be observed passing four times that number of pigs to his opposite number in a recipient group. At least one question remains: In earlier chapters, I mentioned the existence of categories of incremental gift (e.g., nopae), and one might wonder whether big-men are in a structurally privileged position to manipulate these in order to gain access to large amounts of wealth. These categories of gift are especially important in the context of public prestations, the very sort of events that big-men work hard to organize. Who receives nopae and other kinds of incremental gift? Are they given reciprocally or in a one-way flow? Might they establish relations of inequality among types of exchange partners? These questions lead to others concerning Mendi criteria for "good" and "bad" exchange behavior, the answers to which trace the outline of an indigenous theory of value. The significance of incremental gifts In Mendi, everyone has access to land and everyone plants the same array of vegetables. Everyone raises pigs. Although there is no specialization of production in the valley and no prohibition on the consumption of one's own products, things constantly change hands.4 In Chapter 3, I suggested that one rationale for this exchange was a differential need over time for the things that everyone produces. What differentiates people is the scheduling of their needs. The ethic of twem exchange encourages people to give away any unallocated valuables they have on hand and assures them that they will be able to obtain valuables from other people when they need them later. Trade has also always been a factor in the Highlands. While it is most obviously characterized by the movement of ubiquitous products, ceremonial exchange also facilitates the wide distribution of more specialized products or resources available only in certain areas (see Rappaport 1968, for example). Ubiquitous products like pigs are exchanged for trade goods - salt, plumes, axe blades, decorating oil, pearl shells - on (or before) ceremonial occasions. Ryan has suggested that the mok ink might have had such a function with respect to pearl shells. This seems reasonable since Mendi is one of the routes by which pearl shells entered the Highlands in precolonial times. The mok ink creates a high demand for shells, since affinal debts must be repaid in shells before a person may slaughter his pigs. But while these functional values of ceremonial exchange hold, they do not account for the particular structure of exchange in Mendi and elsewhere. In order to understand exchange in its particularity, we have to look at the cultural determinants of the demand for products and resources. A particular

148

What gifts engender

pattern of trade is in just as much need of explanation (in the Highlands and elsewhere) as is ceremonial exchange itself, in this regard. Just because plumes and tree oil were only available in certain places does not explain why anyone anywhere would want them; nor does it explain why they exchange at particular rates. We still must account for the specific character of the demand itself. As we have already seen, the Mendi do not conceptualize their productive efforts simply in terms of their yield for personal "consumption." Shells (obtained through trade) may be worn and are prized for their beauty, and pork (produced locally) is eaten; still, shells and pigs both acquire social value by virtue of their meaning, in this cultural system, as concrete expressions of social relationships realized as gifts. One's own productive work and being embedded in a social network of one's own - having exchange partners and therefore being able to accumulate, display, and redistribute valuables autonomously from one's fellow clansmen - bring respect and influence within one's group. This is a key to understanding the demand for wealth - the particular structure of exchange - in Mendi. The structure of exchange and the forms of reciprocity that hold between different categories of exchange partner will be clearer after we look again at nopae, perhaps the most important category of incremental gift in Mendi. Andrew Starthern (1971) introduced the notion of a "principle of increment" in the context of explaining the rules of the Melpa moka ceremonial exchange. In moka, the recipient of a gift (or "initiatory" payment) has to repay more than he received. Moka is referred to as "competitive" because of the possibility that the cycle of exchanges will repeat itself, each party alternating as the initial donor, in an escalating fashion until one or the other party can no longer repay the other with an increment. In practice, many moka cycles between individual partners or between groups begin with the same baselinesized initiatory payments, and so each successive gift and repayment does not necessarily exceed the previous one in value. Moka-making may be conceived of as "competitive" also because it is optional. It is not an obligatory payment, like bride wealth, but has more of the character of a political contest (or game). Big-men excel in making moka. As A. Strathern (1978b) wrote, they . . . claim prestige, and [are] accorded it, either because they have given away a large number of pigs and/or shells by themselves in a moka, or because they have given a private moka and do not claim back a return sequence from their partner. The first is a prime way of achieving prestige. In Mendi, when a person gives a repayment that exceeds the initial gift's value, the increment is also often optional; it is obligatory only in the repayment of certain affinal gifts. For example, in Chapter 3, reference was made to the fact that the Mendi tend to repay more than they receive in the context of first transactions with new twem partners. Such increments can be of two sorts. First, if one is given a particularly fine pearl shell (or if one's new

149

Twem and sem in context

partner makes a gift in an otherwise particularly generous manner) one may repay him or her with an item worth more than the original gift by way of showing one's appreciation. The increment is called poralu (a term that applies especially to shells, though nowadays it is also used in relation to gifts of money), and is optional. The second sort of increment applies when, for example, a man receives a pig, pearl shell, or other valuable from one of his wife's relatives who have not previously received part of the bride wealth. In such a case nopae, an increment above the value of the gift (saon), is expected on repayment of the gift. In the bridewealth exchange itself, while some wealth given by the groom's side is matched, tit-for-tat, by return gifts from the bride's side, a substantial part of the groom's payment is nopae; it is given "for the woman's body (skin)," with no expectation of any repayment.5 How is this apparent imbalance between gift and return gift conceptualized? That nopae is "for the body" of a woman in this context might lead one to conclude that it is a payment for the woman's sexual and productive labor.6 This interpretation is weakened, however, by the fact that the term is also used in other contexts to refer to incremental repayments for initiatory gifts (topowe) in mortuary ceremonies (kowar) made for all people - men, women, and children. Kowar payments are obligatorily made in honor of deceased clansmen and in-married women to their matrilateral kin. Maternal relatives of the deceased make a private intiatory payment, which may be quite large (e.g., K200) or just a token (e.g., K10, or gifts of food - called keyent - like bags of sweet potatoes or bunches of bananas). A public event, the kowar itself formally repays the topowe initiatory payment, but must also include a substantial increment, called nopae, in honor of the dead person. Similarly, in the context of large-scale death compensation payments (ol tenga) during which scores of valuables change hands between members of allied clans, nopae refers to pigs (or other wealth) given above the repayment of initiatory gifts in honor of men and women who died as a result of intergroup hostilities. In all these cases, nopae compensates in some way for the loss of a person. It implies an equivalence between a person and the wealth given in the latter's place. One is led to suspect that material wealth exchanges express something basic about the way the Mendi think about the value of a person and about sociality; the Mendi use wealth to represent the social character of persons and not simply their parts or functions, like their labor or sexual services. Another clue about the connection between wealth and persons comes from consideration of Mendi beliefs about sorcery (torn), which shed light in particular on their notions about appropriate exchange behavior ("good" and "bad" gifts).7 Thus, the quality of social relationships generally can be expressed in terms of gift exchange. There is social value in having many outstanding exchange obligations. Simply repaying one's gift-debts and settling

150

What gifts engender

one's accounts with one's partners is not desirable and may be interpreted as a hostile act by the Mendi, signifying one's desire to cut off social contact generally. A degree of ''indebtedness" is preferred over the settling of accounts; as long as gifts of wealth are either reciprocal over the long term, or else as long as particular repayments are prompt and generous, outstanding saon signify an ongoing sense of mutual obligation and interest. Sorcery accusations often occur as a result of systematically inappropriate exchange relationships: as when an exchange partner does not repay adequately, or when he does not lend things readily and therefore appears to be hoarding wealth, or when he distributes wealth ostentatiously and boastfully. Such behavior may lead to bad feelings. The Mendi say that envy and other feelings of unfairness are best dealt with through a sustained effort to restore the relationship through generous gifts but that some men resort to other means. A "rubbish man" who has failed to establish rapport through positive exchanges of wealth (thereby revealing his inability to maintain an adequate network of social relationships) may give the negative gift of "poison" through sorcery. Sorcery (said to be performed in secrecy, in the absence of social communication) contrasts with gift giving which is social and often public. Beliefs about sorcery thus reveal something about what the Mendi consider bad exchange practices, and fear of sorcery provides one check on what the Mendi consider antisocial behavior. Individuals who wish not to be accused of employing sorcery allay suspicions concerning any grudges they might have by publicly expressing satisfaction with the gifts they receive. Similarly, people who wish to avoid being the victims of a sorcery attack compensate those they have offended and cultivate a reputation for generosity. For clan groups, too, conflict, disease, and death are forestalled by achieving balance in wealth exchanges. Clan war-death compensation payments are made explicitly to prevent sorcery feuds, to balance the loss of members with wealth. Sorcery, then, is the opposite of wealth exchange, to the extent that wealth and people are - in a sense - equivalent. This is not to reduce people to things, but to make wealth objects symbols of sociality. Wealth exchanges enable all parties to strengthen and extend their social networks. Deaths shortcircuit networks, depleting everyone both of social connectedness and of the wealth that social connectedness (and the productive work of people) makes available. Deaths may be compensated for or balanced either negatively by means of other deaths (as in a sorcery feud or a war), or else positively by means of gifts of valuables. Positive and negative exchanges - the creation and amplification of social networks through wealth exchanges and the contraction of networks by means of death - are interconvertible. While inadequate prestations may become the pretexts for sorcery accusations, kowar prestations involving nopae turn socially destructive and polarizing deaths back into constructive linkages between people.

151

Twem and sem in context

Nopae gifts may appear to be inconsistent with these ideas about proper exchange practices since they are frequently nonreciprocal. At marriage, nopae payments are given by men to their wives and wives' relatives. They are given by women in their own name to their brothers, and with their brothers to their brothers' wives. At death, nopae payments are made to acknowledge the interest maternal relatives have in the deceased. As part of kowar, nopae gifts are made by men to their wives and wives' relatives when their children die. When a parent dies, children make kowar payments to the parents' maternal kin. Finally, on all occasions of clan prestation, men receive incremental repayments from their sisters' relatives for gifts they previously gave those people, and in turn they repay with an incremental value gifts they themselves received before from their wives' relatives. In sum, nopae is given by ''wifetakers" to ''wife-givers" in the manner of "generalized exchange" marriage structures (cf. Levi-Strauss 1969; Rubel and Rosman 1978). In fact, nopae and other categories of incremental gift are consistent with Mendi notions of balance in exchanges. They are conceived of both by givers and receivers as making an adequate return for something given. This point is lost if we simply add up the material wealth given and received when nopae payments are made. What is lost from this accounting is the social value associated with the person lost by the nopae-recciving side, which the nopae gift stands for, and both symbolically and practically compensates. The asymmetrical flow of wealth set up by nopae rules does not result in relations of inequality among groups. Mendi marriage rules ensure that no systematic "wife-giver"-"wife-taker" relationship is set up between clans. For example, members of the Molsem and Kurelka clans intermarry, but Molsem and Kurelka cannot become "wife-giver" and "wife-taker" to one another as groups, since women from Molsem marry men from Kurelka as readily as Molsem men marry Kurelka women. Rather, nopae rules set up complementary relations between different categories of affinal exchange partners, structuring the flow of wealth in individual networks. For men, their female agnates, and relatives acquired through the marriages these women contract, are sources of nopae payments in appropriate contexts of exchange. Relatives acquired through marriages of male agnates are people to whom one gives nopae. Men therefore distinguish their wives and mothers (to whom they give nopae) from their sisters and daughters (from whom they receive nopae). Brothers may give nopae to one another's wives and to the latter's families. Women give nopae to their male agnates and the latter's wives' people and receive it from their husbands and their husbands' families. Consistent with this pattern, sisters give nopae to one another, and people related through sisters reciprocally give one another nopae (see Figure 5.1).8 Brothers also give one another nopae reciprocally as part of death compensation payments; such gifts mark subclan boundaries

152

What gifts engender

Figure 5.1. Direction of nopae payments. within the group and they are often justified by saying that the mothers (or mothers' mothers) of donor and recipient were sisters. Everyone has occasion to give nopae to their matrilateral relatives. The effect of incremental repayment rules is to encourage matrilateral and wives' relatives to provide ready credit, since the repayment, in certain contexts, will include an increment. In this way, these rules can be used to organize individual access to wealth in a systematic fashion in those contexts. In personal transactions between twem partners, nopae payments are optional. In clan prestations, such as ol tenga, they are expected and help to mesh twem interests with sem obligations. If a man borrows a pearl shell from his wife's father and repays him privately, he does not necessarily repay with an increment, (i.e., it is up to him). But if a man borrows a shell from his wife's father and they agree that the shell will be repaid during a Pig Festival (whether the Festival be sponsored by the man's own or his father-in-law's

153

Twem and sem in context

group), the man must repay the shell with an increment. Therefore, some planning is necessary to organize one's debts and credits advantageously. We shall return to this theme at the end of this section. Two points follow from a study of nopae rules, both having to do with their implications for the Mendi economy as a whole. First, incremental repayments (whether obligatory or optional) have a role in keeping the level of demand for wealth high, and in encouraging people to activate and expand their exchange networks. This is because the precise amount of nopae to be given, even in obligatory nopae contexts, is not clearly specified, nor are the numbers of people to whom one may make the payment. A man may make nopae payments to any one of his wives' relatives (and a woman, to any of her brothers or brothers' relatives) at any time. When a man dies, kowar payments are obligatory, but his agnates may make any number of these ceremonial funeral payments to a variety of his maternal relatives. Similarly, a group may make several warfare compensation payments for one death. The size of the nopae increment, in each case, may be anywhere from 20 percent to 300 percent (or more) of the original gift. The demand for valuables is, therefore, quite expandable. In fact, exchange systems like that of the Mendi have shown themselves capable of absorbing large increases in the supply of wealth, such as occurred during the colonial and postcolonial period when large numbers of pearl shells, new kinds of valuables (expecially Australian pounds and dollars, and Papua New Guinea kina), and European breeds of pigs and other livestock were introduced. The high demand for pigs may have been an incentive for production in Mendi, as in other Highland societies. But the availability of pigs and other things depends only partly on production; it also depends on the rapid circulation of wealth, and conventions concerning "credit" or "finance" (Strathern 1969a). As outlined in Chapter 3, the Mendi gain access to wealth by activating large numbers of exchange partnerships when they need to, and allowing them to become quiescent when their need for wealth decreases. Second, nopae rules have a bearing on an understanding of the articulation of twem and sem obligations particularly with regard to the kinds of inequality I have been discussing. By providing a rationale for the extension of giftcredit by wives' relatives for repayment specifically during corporate events, these rules are an important practical means whereby twem interests and those of women are harmoniously conjoined with those of sem and big-men. Therefore, affinal exchange rules of this sort perform two significant ideological functions beyond simply providing a practical incentive for giving gifts rather than hoarding or accumulating wealth. First, they encourage men systematically to be generous to their wives and wives' relatives on the occasion of clan events. Consequently, women have an interest in requesting valuables from their agnatic exchange partners to give to their husband's people for repayment during clan events. Second,

154

What gifts engender

exchange partners are especially willing to give gifts and to wait until clan events for their return because they receive more than they initially gave in such situations. In these ways, incremental repayment rules promote a convergence of twem and sent interests. These rules require careful application, however. Indeed, to organize ones personal network so that gifts given to increment-giving sisters' and daughters' relatives balance those received from increment-expecting wives' and mothers' people is no small achievement. The calculations and risks involved in putting the rules into practice are a cause of anxiety for men preparing to participate in clan events. Ordinary men often told me that they prefer to pursue their twem relations in an unstructured manner - not pushing for repayments, giving to whoever asked them - and disliked requesting wealth in a deliberate or calculating fashion from their wives' relatives or otherwise organizing their obligations with clan ceremonies in mind. In fact, many men hesitate to commit themselves to corporate endeavors for this reason, and once committed, they often act to delay clan events from taking place for as long as possible. In contrast, big-men take pride in, and are notable for, making many incremental gifts to their affines during public prestations. They manage this not because they are in any special structural position to manipulate nopae gifts by virtue of their given kinship relations or group membership: Men do not become leaders because they have many sisters, for example. But they do take special note of incremental gift rules when they develop their twem networks. Some big-men make a point of championing or looking after girls in their group, who become like daughters to them. They are careful to be solicitous to their clan sisters. And they tend to acquire exchange partners among their brothers' affines. In other words, big-men organize their networks and, in particular instances, their gift-credits and gift-debts, with incremental rules (that is, a schedule of clan performances) in mind all along. They most consistently treat their twem relationships as a means of participating in clan action. In contrast, ordinary men do not think systematically about clan events when they become involved in twem obligations. Ordinary men frequently start to plan their participation in clan prestations only when these events are imminent, and must then try to balance their obligations to nopae-giving and -receiving partners. In sum, big-men do not appear to be structurally placed to take advantage of nopae rules; they place themselves in advantageous positions because of their consistent commitment to the clan principle. Prestations of marriage and death I turn now to examine various contexts of wealth exchange. I discuss the more common, small-scale prestations first and move from there to consider large-

155

Twem and sem in context

Table 5.1. Frequency of marriages in Senkere (—340 people)0

Group

Number of marriages reported for 1968-78

Marriages observed during 17 mos. (1977-79)

Kurelka Molsem Anksuol 340 people (approx.)

10 15 7 32

4 2 0 6b

"Intracommunity marriages are counted once. b The number of marriages occurring during 1977-79 may be greater than average, since people were explicitly concerned that their children marry before the pig kill (held in December 1979). Table 5.2. Frequency of major deaths in Senkerea

Group

Number of major deaths reported for 1968-78

Major deaths observed during 17 mo. (1977-79)

Kurelka Molsem Anksuol 340 people (approx.)

12 4 3 19

3 0 1 4b

a

"Major deaths" are those for which public prestations were made. They do not include deaths of very old people or infants. These figures do not indicate the number of kowar originating within Senkere on behalf of people who died in other communities. b During seventeen months, thirteen deaths occurred in Senkere, only four of which were "major" in the sense given above.

scale clan-sponsored events. Each brings into play the significant social relationships I have been discussing. Marriages and kowar are the most frequently occurring of Mendi ceremonial prestations (see Tables 5.1 and 5.2 for information concerning marriages and mortuary ceremonies taking place in the Senkere community). 9 A person may be involved as a contributor of wealth to between two and six kowar a year, helping fellow clansmen and also affines in other communities to sponsor these prestations. An ordinary man may sponsor kowar himself three or four times during his lifetime in honor of his clan brothers', parents', childrens', or wives' deaths and may act as the main recipient of kowar sponsored by his sisters' children and other people. Several people may sponsor separate kowar (or, an individual may sponsor more than one kowar) in honor of one death.

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What gifts engender

An ordinary man may contribute to the marriage prestations of perhaps ten or fifteen persons during his lifetime, and receive wealth from such payments a similar number of times. Big-men contribute to bridewealth payments substantially more frequently then they receive from them. For example, Pua described his contributions to fifty-four marriage payments but claimed to have received wealth from only eighteen. Ordinary men sponsor their own marriage payment, and women redistribute a substantial portion of the wealth they receive when they marry. In addition, men and women contribute heavily to the marriage payments of their own children and to their agnates' and spouses' siblings' marriages. Although marriages and kowar are sponsored by individuals, they may be quite impressive in scale. Examples of the scale of marriage payments were given in Chapter 3. Kowar vary greatly in size. For example, one man in the Senkere community received a kowar payment from his father's sister's son, consisting of eleven pigs, three of which were worth more than K200 each (the remaining eight pigs were young, and worth between K10 and K30 each). In addition, he received two poor quality (K7-10) pearl shells, and K20 (the last being to repay his initiatory gift of K20). In another case of similar scale, a Senkere man made two kowar simultaneously, both for one death which had occurred thirteen years before. The payments consisted of a total of twelve pearl shells, two large pigs, and K240, some as nopae and some considered as repayment of initiatory gifts which had consisted in K20, one bunch of pandanus nuts and a netbag of sweet potatoes (the money value of which totaled about K80 altogether). Politically important deaths - the deaths of leaders, or deaths the circumstances of which implicate them in ongoing interclan disputes - may stimulate larger kowars. One significant death that occurred around 1974 became the pretext for at least five separate major kowar and numerous minor ones over a two-year period, involving one hundred fifty pearl shells and forty-three pigs. The larger kowar each involved between twenty-four and thirty pearl shells and three to five pigs.10 In Chapter 3, I indicated how wealth is collected by young men in preparation for their marriages. As Ryan has also provided information concerning marriage payments in Mendi (Ryan 1961: 75-120), I shall only highlight important structural features here. The groom's subclan brothers are expected to contribute valuables paeme to his marriage prestation. That is, they are expected to know he needs wealth, and to offer pearl shells and other things without being asked. In the case of wealth given paeme, a direct request for repayment cannot be made. Rather, clansmen are expected to make these sorts of gifts whenever they can at appropriate occasions. The groom (and often, his parents) also requests valuables as saon, or requests wealth he previously gave, from his exchange partners within and outside the clan. These may be his brothers' affines, his matrilateral relatives or

157

Twem and sem in context

members of other subclans within his tribal alliance (whom he might consider "brothers" in the context of large-scale group festivals, but whom he considers simply twemol in this context). In contrast to wealth obtained paeme from subclan brothers, the valuables he obtains from twemol must be repaid on request. The groom's exchange partners may choose not to specify when the repayment is to be made. If the date is left open when the wealth is given, the donor may request repayment from the groom when one of his twem partners requests a similar item from him. Or the groom may receive valuables (for example, if one of his sisters marries) and repay his donor before the latter requests repayment. If the date for repayment is not left open, this is usually because the donor expects to participate in a ceremonial prestation sponsored by his group; in this case, he is able to anticipate a future need for the item, and he tells the recipient that he will request repayment prior to the event. The timing of such events therefore affects the organization of exchange obligations in individual networks. It also affects the value of repayments, as I indicated in the previous section. (On the other hand, individual failures to repay wealth may hold up group events, as we shall see.) The fact that affines may be co-residents and members of the same tribal political group can be a source of misunderstanding and ambiguity during marriage ceremonies: A Kurelka man, Nare, officiated during the collection and display of bridewealth when his son got married. Tolap and Tompnopi, clan brother and clan father to Nare's Molsem wife, each contributed a pig to the display. Since they lived in Wepra (Nare's place), they had heard he was preparing to marry off his son, assumed that he needed pigs, and contributed their pigs without being asked. Days later, during the distribution of pigs by the bride to the groom's people, Tolap and Tompnopi complained when they received none. Nare commented that he thought they had meant to help him paeme, as "brothers" (fellow members of the Suolol tribe). When he accepted their pigs he had not expected them to ask for things in return, although he admitted that, being his affines, they were justified in doing so. Once the groom and his immediate family accumulate sufficient wealth for a marriage prestation by various means, they invite the bride and her family to their house to view it. Although the formal recipient of the wealth will be the bride, in practice her parents and siblings have an important say in the discussions concerning the quantity and quality of wealth they require, and very often the bride's father or a brother controls the redistribution of a significant amount of the initial marriage payment (koma tumawe). In attendance are not only the bride's and groom's agnates but also parts of their respective twem networks. The bride's marriage wealth is given as nopae to members of her subclan and network. It is sometimes spoken of as a repayment with an increment for gifts she previously received from them.

158

What gifts engender

Like other prestations, marriage wealth distributions involve an interplay of rules concerning simple twem reciprocity, nopae gifts to affines, and unsolicited intragroup supporting gifts, with complex implications for the exchange obligations of participants. Before we consider the organization of funeral payments and other ceremonial prestations, these implications should be outlined. A contrast in social expectations concerning reciprocity and equivalence can be made between simple twem exchanges and valuables given paeme by agnates. Given the conceptual relationship between wealth and the value of persons in Mendi, this contrast reflects two distinct ideas of sociality and of the reproduction of social connections. Whereas one expects that a valuable given to a twem partner will be repaid whenever one indicates that one needs it again, things given paeme are not repaid on request. Rather, they are reciprocated some unspecified time later on in an appropriate context (e.g., a marriage or death payment). Paeme gifts are expected in these contexts but are not specific gift-credits; they cannot be recalled in any particular context, nor can they be requested in order to repay saon to exchange partners. Although there is a diffuse expectation of reciprocity with regard to paeme gifts, there is no such expectation with regard to nopae. Because of the diffuseness of the one and the asymmetry of the other, the rules concerning paeme and nopae gifts intensify people's need to activate and expand their networks beyond the need for expansion coming from twem relationships themselves. For example, Tone gave Wange a pearl shell when Wange got married. Since Wange and Tone are both members of the Pulumsem subclan, Tone gave the shell paeme. Wange did not explicitly request the shell, and Tone did not expect him to repay it. Rather, Tone expected Wange to contribute a shell or other valuable paeme when Tone married later on, or when he sponsored a funeral payment. Tone had obtained the pearl shell from his exchange partner, Nindel, as a saon. When Nindel later requested repayment of the shell, Tone could not ask Wange to repay the shell he had given him earlier. He could request a pearl shell from Wange as a saon however, just as he could make a similar request of a new acquaintance or anyone else he knows. Or else, he could request the repayment of one of his own gift-credits. Finally, he could tell Nindel that he is expecting to receive a pearl shell as nopae from a sister's marriage, and repay Nindel with that, if Nindel agrees to wait.

One can understand how a man's gift obligations may proliferate if several marriages or death payments are sponsored by members of his subclan and he is obligated to make many unsolicited gifts. Although these gifts are thought to be balanced - on the average and over the long term - by similar gifts he receives, he must be prepared to request wealth as saon from his exchange partners which may remain unreciprocated for long periods of time. He must also make requests of still other exchange partners in order to repay people from whom he received wealth in order to make the original paeme gift to his subclan. Nopae gifts have a similar effect. They balance out - on the average and

159

Twem and sem in context

Ego's brother B-l plans to marry. As a result, Ego contracts a debt with his exchange partner X-l in order to give B-l a pearl shell: • Ego-

X-l

B-l paeme

saon

Ego's debts

credits

1 shell (X-l)

-

The pearl shell he gives to B-l results in no explicit credit for Ego. Ego is married, but he expects B-l to help him when Ego's son gets married, several years hence. Six months after B-Ts marriage, X-l requests repayment of the shell, and Ego requests a pearl shell from another exchange partner X-2 in order to repay him: X-2-

X-l

-^Egorepayment

Ego's debts

credits

1 shell (X-2)

-

At about the same time, Ego's brother B-2 is sponsoring a kowar (death payment). Ego borrows a pig from his exchange partner X-3 in order to give it to B-2: X-3-

Ego's debts

credits

1 shell (X-2) 1 pig (X-3)

—

B-2 paeme

Later on, Ego's sister Z gives Ego a very valuable pearl shell and a very small pig from her bride wealth as nopae. He uses the pearl shell to repay his long-standing debt to X-2 with an incremental value for being patient. He gives the small pig to the brother of another sister's husband ZHB when the latter requests one: nopae

repayment > Ego

Z nopae

> ZHB saon

Ego's debts

credits

1 pig (X-3)

1 pig (ZHB)

He figures that, later on, his ZHB will repay him with a larger pig, since they never transacted before and the man therefore ought to repay with nopae (in honor of Ego's sister). Perhaps he will then repay X-3. And so on. Figure 5.2. The accumulation of gift-debts and gift-credits.

over the long term - in the sense that Mendi individuals expect to give about as many as they will receive; but making them frequently entails a proliferation of twem obligations (see Figure 5.2). A person's exchange obligations also proliferate greatly if he or she acts as a sponsor of a ceremonial payment. Big-men, who contribute generously to prestations their clansmen sponsor, and who sponsor numbers of them themselves, may have many more giftdebts than gift-credits. While a man may contribute to many marriages over the years, he may act

160

What gifts engender

as a sponsor of more kowar than marriages during his lifetime. Kowar are expected for all deaths except those of extremely old people and infants. Usually, at least one subclansman of the dead person will sponsor a prestation, and occasionally a woman will sponsor one in honor of her husband or brother. Sometimes two or more men or a husband and wife will sponsor a kowar together. When a person dies, the body is displayed on a bier in his or her houseyard for several days and a call goes out, relayed from community to community, by means of yodeling cries. The relatives of the deceased assemble to keen over the body. During this period, initial arrangements for kowar are made. In precolonial times, people were expected to bring pearl shells and other wealth to give paeme to the dead person's relatives before the body was buried. Now, because some missions forbid wealth exchanges during the period of mourning, gifts are delayed until some time after the burial. The expected recipients of kowar prestations are the matrilateral relatives of the person who died (or, as one women put it, it goes from sisters to brothers, when the sister's children die). When a woman dies, payments may be made to her mother's people (if, in an unusual case, she has kept in touch with them) and to her agnates. The payment acknowledges the interest matrilateral relatives had in the person as a potential member of their group. Strictly, kowar are made to matrilateral relatives only if the latter come to mourn the death, and they must be made to any matrilateral relatives who bury the body. These relatives receive a pearl shell, called momak opin, as an initial gift. It is considered nopae and is meant as a concrete sign of the commitment of the dead person's agnates to make a kowar. The rules concerning kowar payments are very flexible, however, and during a short period of research almost as many exceptions were observed as cases in which payments are actually made to maternal relatives. When the latter do not act properly, they may lose their right to receive a kowar: Several years ago, Nare and Yagala went together to mourn the death of a Yansup man, one of Yagala's maternal relatives. When the two arrived at the Yansup homestead where the bier was, a clansman of the dead man said to Yagala, "I have never seen you before. Why have you come here to mourn?" Yagala was angry that his mother's brother claimed not to know him. He gave Nare the shell he had brought with him to give to his mother's people, and told him, "When I die, my kowar will not be made to these people. It would have been, if they had behaved properly, but they have not." Yagala told his son Panga to make his kowar to Nare instead. In 1978, Yagala died. Nare sealed the promise by building Yagala's coffin and helping to dig his grave. Since Yagala had joined the Catholic mission, Panga felt he could not give Nare a pearl shell (momak opin) at the burial to signify that he would make a kowar to him. Instead, he made a public announcement to that effect.11 If a person is living with maternal relatives, a kowar may be made to the agnates. In cases in which a person had lost touch with his or her maternal

161

Twem and sem in context

relatives before death, kowar may be made to any exchange partner of the dead person's who had maintained contact despite a wide geographical separation, or under otherwise trying circumstances. Finally, kowar (referred to as kumun wi, or something "placed on the heart," something to quiet sorrow) are frequently made by agnates of the dead person to other agnates, members of subclans other than their own. These intraclan kowar may be more important (in terms of the quantities of wealth involved and numbers of separate payments made) than matrilateral kowar in cases involving a death that has intragroup political repercussions. In this context, intricate subdivisions of the clan, not normally recognized, are acknowledged. Whether the kowar recipients are matrilateral relatives or not, they are expected to make an initiatory gift (topowe) to the dead person's agnates, to demonstrate their interest in receiving the kowar. The kowar-maker may request topowe or it may be offered, unsolicited. Topowe gifts may be mere tokens in value, or may be quite large, and are subject to negotiation, because they affect the size of the kowar. Topowe is considered a saon, entailing an obligation to repay; and it must be repaid with nopae. In addition to giving topowe, the kowar recipients are expected to provide pork for the funeral feast (ke kondisa), to feed the mourners. There is a strong tendency to accept any topowe offered. Accepting topowe and making kowar prestations may reinforce an existing exchange relationship between the donor and recipient, or they may establish a new relationship between some of the dead person's agnates and some of his maternal kin. On the other hand, not accepting topowe payments may be a way of breaking off a relationship (and similarly, not offering topowe may have the same effect). A person's agnates may not have sufficient resources with which to make kowar prestations to all the people who offer them topowe, or they may have a prior commitment to participate in an upcoming tribal ceremony. Nevertheless, they may be constrained by the personal wishes and commitments of their deceased fellow clansman: An old man of Anksuol, Wendo, died in March, 1979, following a brief respiratory illness. Prior to his death, he told his agnates that he had just recently begun to transact with one of his maternal relatives, a Mandep man named Mesa. His dying wish (kent ngail) was that a kowar be made to the man and another Mandep, Sandawe. When Wenda died, Sandawe and Mesa told Wendo's brother's son, Mel, that they intended to give him a large topowe of K280. Mel was concerned about this, since Anksuol and other subclans of the Suolol tribe were planning to hold their Pig Festival in nine months, and they all had many outstanding saon which had to be repaid in the interim, if they were going to be able to kill their pigs. He did not know if he could also accept the topowe under these circumstances. However, because Wendo had requested it, he decided he could not refuse. Mel accepted K200 of the topowe offered, and on the advice of a local big-man, he divided the money up, distributing it evenly among ten men. Five were Anksuol clansmen of Wendo, and the rest were members of the two Kurelka subclans living in the same locality as Anksuol (whom Anksuol men consider affines or twem part-

162

What gifts engender

ners). At the time of the kowar, each expected to be responsible for repaying his share of the topowe with its equivalent value (in money) plus an incremental gift in money and in pearl shells (respectively nopae and poralu). The kowar, held just before the Pig Festival, included K400 and 48 pearl shells. As in the case of marriage prestations, people who sponsor kowar obtain wealth paeme from their clan brothers and sisters, and as nopae in ceremonial contexts, as well as by soliciting it from their twem partners. They must find sufficient wealth to repay the value of the topowe and the ke kondisa, and to add nopae (which may be worth several times the value of the topowe). In two cases observed, kowar sponsors waited until they received portions of bridewealth distributions (in which they were major recipients) before making their respective kowar. In the first case, wealth obtained from twem partners was the most significant source, and in the second, proportionally more wealth was contributed paeme by fellow clansmen. One can always find a reason for sponsoring kowar, as they may be made on several occasions to any number of people in honor of a single death. For example, one Senkere big-man expected to receive a kowar in 1979 for a death which had occurred some fourteen years before, for which he had received a kowar on two other occasions from other people. The same leader planned to make two kowar in honor of a clansman who had died about four years before, and for whom he had already made two large payments. Large-scale ceremonies The same may be said for warfare death compensation payments (ol tenga, ol ombul) and other events sponsored by groups. Ol tenga and the larger, less frequent ol ombul are both prestations made to restore good feeling between allies who have suffered deaths in the course of helping one another during war times. Generally the main combatants (ol sont te, or "root" men of war) compensate their allies.12 The rationale for who gives what to whom in particular ol tenga prestations depends on the history of conflict which led to the deaths. But history is always contestable in Mendi communities since there is no official version and since the political affiliations and obligations of subclans within a community or a sem onda are not necessarily identical (see Chapter 2). For example, it is not uncommon for clans (and even subclans) within a tribe to have supported opposite sides in a dispute and therefore to be involved in separate ol tenga prestations. Ol tenga may be made between parts of one tribe and parts of another, as well as between clans of one tribe. In all cases, they are sponsored in the names of corporate groups rather than in the names of individuals. Particular deaths may, therefore, lead to both kowar and ol tenga. The form of ol tenga is similar to that of kowar\ although they differ in scale and frequency. A pearl shell is given to the agnates of the person who died before

163

Twem and sem in context

the burial (or even years later) signifying that the donor group accepts social responsibility for the death and will make an ol tenga. The recipients of the shell make a topowe payment in shells and money and sometimes in food (pandanus nuts, bananas, and so forth). After a period of time (which may stretch into years), the first main ol tenga payment is made, called mok maike. This consists of a large number of pigs, some counted as a repayment or replacement for the topowe, and the rest generally as nopae, to compensate for the death. Ke kondisa, a small return gift of pork (often one or two pigs), completes the first cycle of the ol tenga. Some ol tenga end here, but a proper ol tenga involves a second round of prestations. In return for a second topowe, the sponsors make a large pearl shell prestation called momak maike. Ol tenga may involve mok maike of twenty-four to forty-eight pigs or more, and momak maike of hundreds of pearl shells, each assembled and distributed during a two- or three-day ceremony that also involves parades and speechmaking. Ol ombul payments take place only between tribes, or alliances of clans. They traditionally do not involve ke kondisa (though recently some have), but just topowe initiatory payment, and a large main prestation involving hundreds of pearl shells, many cassowari and marsupials, and bamboo containers full of tree oil (obtained from lowland regions, like Lake Kutubu, to the south). Ol ombul are meant to compensate major allies for all the wreckage of major warfare. They acknowledge not only deaths caused by the fighting, but also destruction of houses, trees (casuarina, pandanus, and other types planted in settlements), gardens and ceremonial grounds, all of which constitute investments of human labor. As in the case of ol tenga, ol ombul are made by the "root" men of a war to those to "take up" the fight (ol sont mulae), and not to major enemies {ol sont pi). They are not made by clans to other clans of the same tribe but are said to "go far away." Because ol tenga and prestations like it are sponsored by groups rather than by individuals, the way in which sponsors raise valuables for these large-scale displays differs from the way the valuables given at marriages and kowar are raised. During kowar and marriages, the formal prestation is given predominantly to exchange partners (potential or actual), and sem solidarity is expressed informally by means of unsolicited gifts brothers offer privately to the event's sponsor. In these contexts of small-scale individual prestations, brothers act as contributors to, or "supporters" of, one another's projects. Sponsors of these events do not depend only on their brothers' contributions, but also request wealth from twem partners (that is, partners other than the people to whom they will be making the prestation). In contrast, during group distributions like ol tenga, sem solidarity is expressed formally by the joint public display of wealth by clansmen who agree to give some of the valuables in the name of the group (rather than in their individual names) to another group. Since each clansman must gather together valuables of his own in this context, they do not (by and large) contribute

164

What gifts engender

paeme to one another's display. Therefore, group prestations require that each man collect valuables informally from his twem partners.13 Before group prestations, twem reciprocity is expressed in the willingness of twem partners to respond quickly to personal requests for wealth, to repay outstanding saon, to go on "searches" and generally to make wealth available to partners who are preparing to participate in sem displays. Even though attention is centered on corporate groups and alliances during ol tenga and ol ombul, twem relationship may be formally acknowledged as well. Since these prestations are made between allies, members of the donor group invariably have many affines and other exchange partners among members of the recipient group. Most group prestations include incremental repayments of individual top owe gifts between twem partners who are members of the groups involved, as well as a group gift, formally made by prominent men of the donor group to their opposite numbers on the recipients' side. The latter then have the responsibility to divide up the wealth among the various subdivisions of their group. Case one: the Yansup ol ombul to Suolol The interplay between individual twem and group relations was evident in an ol ombul received by the Suolol from the Yansup in April 1978. The Suolol had supported the Yansup in a series of wars during the 1930s against traditional enemies of the Yansup, the northern branch of the Tukunsup (whose affiliates live at Egari in Upper Mendi, as well as at localities to the south). A charismatic Yansup leader named Waya is said to have convinced a number of clans and tribes in Upper Mendi to support Yansup in attacking Egari Tukunsup. Although his reasons are not known even to the Yansup and Suolol men who were said to know the origins of the conflict, these men speculated about his motivations by drawing analogies to present-day situations in which antagonistic affinal relations had affected intergroup affairs. The Kunda (important enemies of Suolol) aided the Egari Tukunsup people, and some of them were driven off their land. In retaliation, a few members of the Kunda and Tukunsup were said to have killed a prominent Yansup big-man, Mul, by means of sorcery, leading to another series of battles in the course of which some Suolol men were killed. In one detailed account of these events, Waya and Mul were derided for having been headstrong individuals, who involved whole groups in disputes which ought to have remained personal. As a result of these wars, Yansup had made large prestations on at least six occasions to various of their allies over the course of the past forty years. Two mok maike prestations had already been made to Suolol. Most of the prestation made in 1978 was given by the northern branch of Yansup (living at Ol Egar, Angamanda, and other places) to the northern Suolol (living at Kuma and Semera). Another, final prestation was planned for 1979 or 1980, to be

165

Twem and sem in context

given mostly by the southern Yansup living at Sol to the southern Suolol living in the Senkere area. The 1978 ceremony was held at 01 Egar, and consisted of 378 pearl shells, K398, 13 cassowari (then valued at around K100 each), and two marsupials (the total equivalent to at least K6,300, or US$9,260 at 1978 exchange rates). The 01 Egar event had been planned for more than a year, but the Yansup were unable to agree about a specific date until March 1978. At that time they publicly announced that the event would take place at the next full moon, in mid-April. They were forced to reschedule it, however, when an old big-man could not return in time from Tambul, where he had gone to collect a pearl shell he was owed by an exchange partner. He was not the group's most important leader, but he had been making preparations for emigrating to Tambul after the ol ombul, and knowing that he wanted very much to be part of the event, many of his fellow clansmen thought it important to facilitate his participation so as to encourage him to maintain contact with them after he moved. At the end of April the event took place. Many people traveled to 01 Egar on a Thursday, the day when each Yansup man displayed his own pearl shells and other valuables individually. Most had pearl shells that they intended as individual gifts for particular Suolol exchange partners, as well as shells for the group prestation. Many had already shown the individual gifts to their partners privately, for their approval; anyone who had not already done so displayed them publicly on Thursday. For example, one leader had two pearl shells for his brother's daughter's husband and one shell each for two of his exchange partners who were Suolol leaders. His remaining twenty pearl shells were intended for the Suolol as a whole. On Friday, when the main distribution (nurunt) took place, the Yansup participants arranged their pearl shells in one very long row in their ceremonial ground, placing those meant for particular Suolol twem partners at one end of the row, and those meant for the group distribution at the other end. Mundpulu, a very old Suolol man who had been involved in the conflict with Tukunsup and Kunda, and who was credited with instigating the current round of prestations, was the formal recipient of the wealth and (along with two Yansup big-men) counted the pearl shells to announce publicly how many there were. After that, about forty Yansup paraded, chanting that they were ready to make the distribution. During the formal distribution, hundreds of spectators and recipients sat or stood in the 01 Egar ceremonial ground. At one end of the area, many Yansup participants gathered. First, each one handed the pearl shells intended for his own individual Suolol twem partners to two formally dressed Yansup men, minor big-men who acted as ceremonial donors of the wealth. The two made no speeches but simply called out the names of the particular Suolol recipients as they held up each item. The pearl shells were next given to two Suolol

166

What gifts engender

Table 5.3. Redistribution of 01 Egar ol ombul group gift Subclans

Pearl shells

Cassowari

Marsupials

Pulumsem (Wepra) Pulumsem (Semera) Tonkpisem (Semera) Olsem (Wepra) Olsem (Semera) Komlum (Semera) Ku (Semera) Kalap-Kurelka (Kuma)

10 40 10 4 8 12 8 20

1 7 1 1 1 1 1

2 -

men, sons of Mundpulu, who was himself too old to perform the exhausting task of publicly receiving and redistributing the wealth. These two, also in ceremonial attire, chanted a brief formal acceptance for each gift before handing it unceremoniously to its final recipient. Occasionally, Yansup donors who had special explanations for their gifts would hand pearl shells directly to Mundpulu's sons for distribution. Two of these donors were women and a third a small boy. With this stage of the distribution complete, the valuables intended for Suolol as a whole - including one hundred twelve pearl shells and all the cassowaries and marsupials - were assembled, and Yansup leaders spent a long time dividing the shells into separate piles for separate Suolol subclans. When they were finished, they announced without ceremony which piles were to be taken by which groups and members of these groups converged on the piles to appropriate the pearl shells. The next day, parades were held and a small number of particularly fine shells were distributed to Suolol individuals and groups. With this, the ceremony was over, and the recipients and other visitors returned home. Once back at their own place, Suolol men were faced with the task of redistributing the group gifts. Nearly all of the things they received ended up in the hands of individuals, who could then allocate them as they wished as gifts to twemol or to fellow clan members or as parts of other sem prestations. For example, ten of the shells and one cassowari were given to the Pulumsen subclan of Wepra (see Table 5.3). Five Pulumsem men received pearl shells; one received four of them, two received two each, and two received one each. Three men of one Pulumsem subclan gave up their claim on the shells and shared control over the cassowari instead. One man suggested that they sell the shells for money at the Mendi market and then divide the proceeds equally, but this idea was rejected by the others. A number of Pulumsem members received no pearl shells at all. The reason for this appeared to

167

Twem and sem in context

be that they had not been present at the informal meeting held to divide them up. Attendance at the meeting itself was at least partially determined by the tense relationship which then prevailed between the three subdivisions of Pulumsem (referred to in Chapter 2). A number of points can be made about these events that highlight general characterisitics of Mendi political-economic relationships. In the Mendi Valley, there is an array of tribal alliances and enmities of long standing. The present-day generation of people know stories, some of which are set in the "mythic" past, which explain the origins of present group relationships in terms of the actions of particular ancestors (like Waya). Just as the acts of individuals may affect group relationships, long-standing relationships between groups affect individuals. Thus, since people marry members of their tribal allies, the composition of individual exchange networks reflects intergroup relationships to a degree. Similarly, group prestations like the Ol Egar pearl shell distribution affect the personal transactions of group members (see Figure 5.3). The Yansup who participated had to hold on to pearl shells they obtained during the previous months from kowar, marriage payments, and other ceremonies. They requested repayment of valuables they had previously given to their exchange partners and contracted new gift-debts. The need to accumulate wealth for a group prestation made it hard for some individuals to contribute to the kowar and other payments that their exchange partners were sponsoring. On the Suolol side, some men had to repay the saon of their Yansup relatives first in order to receive anything during the formal distribution: Mel reported that his wife, Nonge, had recently visited her father, an important Yansup leader, who had shown her the pearl shells he was holding to display during the ol ombul and then to give formally to Mel. He also requested, however, that the latter repay to him three pearl shells that he had given him as saon sometime before. While it was true that his father-in-law's saon was a personal twem obligation and entirely unrelated to the distribution the latter was planning to make to him in the name of their sem onda, still Mel conjectured that Nonge's father needed the pearl shells to augment his contribution to the Yansup corporate gift. It was his obligation, if he wished to maintain good exchange relations with his father-in-law, to respond to this legitimate request. Mel eventually found three suitable pearl shells and was able to give them to Nonge's father on Thursday, just before the ol ombul took place. But before that, he had been determined not to participate in the event at all without the pearl shells, for fear of shaming himself and his father-in-law. In order to live up to his reputation for generosity, the Yansup leader could not very well have passed over his own son-inlaw had the latter attended the ol ombul, Mel explained. On the other hand, his resources would have been strained. His showing would not have been as good as it might have been had Mel been able to help, and the latter said that he would have felt responsible. In terms of the simple management of resources, group events put a strain on individual partnerships, and men sometimes lose partners because of disap-

168

What gifts engender

-Z- YANSUP

/

/

Key: I

\ • •

Formal gifts made in the names of groups Formal gifts made in the names of individuals Informal, individual transactions between twemol

A B C

Signifies the formal "initiatory" payments Signifies the main "group" ol ombul gift Signifies individual gifts presented ceremonially as part of the ol ombul (These are all parts of the ol ombul itself.)

Figure 5.3. 01 Egar ol ombul, April 1978. pointing them during group prestations. Alternatively, men occasionally choose not to participate in a sent onda display because they recently participated lavishly in other events or otherwise exhausted their network resources. The individual gifts given ceremonially during the first half of the Ol Egar prestation reinforced individual exchange relationships at the same time they contributed to the overall effect of the joint group display. The gifts given to Suolol en masse did not have this double function, however. Many of the pearl shells that the Yansup contributed to the Suolol group gift were obtained from individual twem partners of Yansup members'. This wealth could not be reinvested in particular Yansup networks; that is, from the perspective of Yansup members, they acquired gift-debts and used up credits as a result of the ol ombul. They acquired no new credits by means of their contribution to the Suolol group gift, as the gift was considered nopae and would not be reciprocated with wealth.

169

Twem and sem in context

The 01 Egar event illustrated the effect large group events may have on personal exchange partnerships as well as the complex articulation of the two sorts of social relations necessary for staging such affairs. Even in such situations, when clan action is given priority over network concerns, corporate solidarity does not entirely efface the personal obligations clansmen have to particular exchange partners. Individual exchange relationships continue to affect the timing of group prestations even after a collective decision about specific dates has been made. Cases two and three: the Molsem and Wogia ol tenga The delay in the staging of the 01 Egar distribution, caused by the absence of one Yansup big-man, was not unusual. Two ol tenga occurred in the Senkere community during 1978-9, both of which were delayed a number of times by the inability of particular individuals to participate. In one of these cases, a pig distribution was to be made by Molsem to Anksuol. It was rescheduled numerous times over a nine-month period. On two occasions, rescheduling was necessary because bad weather made it impossible for one Molsem man to transport his pigs from Ialibu (where he lived) to Mendi. On four other occasions, Molsem participants lost part of the money they were holding for the prestation during card games or as a result of pressure for the repayment of gifts by relatives and other twem partners. During 1978, members of Kurelka expected to receive a pearl shell prestation (momak maike) from Tem-Tukunsup, a group of people who live to the west of Senkere, at Wogia.14 This event - part of an ol tenga exchange between the two groups - was rescheduled a dozen times over the course of about a year, ostensibly on account of one outstanding gift. In late 1977 Sel, a Kurelka man, received K200 from Sontpi of Wogia who wanted a pig in return, which he intended to kill and contribute to the feast that would conclude the Wogia distribution ceremony. Sel promised to give Sontpi one of the pigs he expected to receive as mok moke upon marrying a second wife. When Sel received his mok moke pigs, he considered them too good to give to Sontpi. One was so big that the wall between two of his pig stalls had to be knocked down in order to give it enough room to lie down. (People in the Senkere community valued one of them at K400 and the other at K500.) Sontpi was willing to give Sel another K200 for one of the pigs, but Sel decided he would rather save them for the upcoming Senkere pig kill. Sontpi then demanded his K200 back, and Sel claimed to have trouble finding the money. Sel's personal gift-debt to Sontpi held up their groups' exchange ceremony throughout 1978. These proceedings imply that intergroup relationships and sem onda events do not have a clear priority over the demands of individual twem partnerships. In the Molsem case, a significant number of the ol tenga sponsors apparently

170

What gifts engender

considered their twem relationships more important than the prestation to Anksuol; for example, in several Molsem meetings one leader successfully argued that they had made a gift of pigs to Anksuol once before, that relations between the groups were not troubled, and that therefore this distribution was not pressing. Consequently, the Molsem men did not save valuables in order to make the distribution but used them to fulfill personal obligations (or to play cards with) instead. When the Anksuol men began to express their frustration strongly, the Molsem finally held the ceremony. In the Wogia case, the Kurelka participants considered the missing K200 a personal matter between Sel and Sontpi and believed that the ol tenga ought to have been held without him. The Wogia people considered this personal gift-debt relevant to the group distribution and therefore held up the ol tenga for all Suolol, not just for Sel. Contrary to appearances, neither the Wogia nor the Molsem ol tenga were delayed primarily because individuals had inadequate access to wealth. Other, similar clan prestations were held despite outstanding personal obligations between the participants. Although economic (or ecological) facts concerning the physical availability of pigs, pearl shells, and money for prestations may be significant in certain cases, the Mendi do have ways of compensating for shortfalls when they.want to. For example, when they are not able to gain access to enough wealth both to repay the gifts and to give nopae simultaneously at a ceremony, it is not unusual for people to give nopae and other incremental gifts formally during public ceremonies and to repay the value of initiatory gifts informally long afterward. In addition to this mechanism, the entire system of twem exchanges might be considered a means of dealing with a limited supply of valuables. Twem (like the Melpa moka or the Enga tee) can be viewed as a "financial" system in which the total value of outstanding exchange obligations (e.g., saon) exceeds the actual quantity of wealth in circulation. There is some indication from oral accounts in Mendi that during times of relatively high local demand (e.g., just before Pig Festivals), the rate of circulation of wealth increases. People say that at these times they are able to recognize even nondescript pearl shells because the same ones turn up during public distributions again and again as hundreds of people individually repay affinal gifts. This rate of circulation can adjust more sensitively to the demand for wealth than can the intensity of garden production. Shortfalls can be treated as personal matters with no corporate implications if there is consensus about the importance of the staging of a group event, or they can be used as reasons for holding up an event, concealing (or revealing indirectly) the lack of such a consensus. That is, references to the adequacy of resources are a rhetorical device, a way of talking about the conflicting priorities of potential participants in group events. The supply of valuables is not the most important or systematic constraint on the scheduling of clan

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prestations in Mendi. Rather, the occurrence, and specific timing, of these events are the outcome of a political process involving people with different relative commitments to sem and twem relationships; a process in which the meaning of the contexts in which people transact is defined and redefined in terms of corporate groups and personal networks. Thus, whether a shortfall of wealth is treated as a personal problem to be overcome by customary credit mechanisms or as a serious issue affecting intergroup relationships is a matter for both individual and collective interpretation. As the case of Sel illustrates, the parties to a transaction may put forth conflicting interpretations of the situation. As two kinds of social obligation involving material resources, personal network and group relationships affect each other in practical ways, as I have noted throughout this chapter. A strong commitment to participation in a sem event requires that one hold on to one's valuables, which may in turn force one to delay in repaying twem partners. Conversely, a strong commitment to one's personal exchange relationships requires that one quickly respond to their requests for wealth, inducing one to give up wealth being held for a group display. In some contexts, both one's obligations to personal exchange partners and one's obligations to one's fellow clansmen can be fulfilled simultaneously. This was the case for the many personal gift-debts that were acquitted during the 01 Egar distribution. Not all of them had originated as topowe initiatory gifts by Suolol men, given specifically so as to receive wealth from Yansup men during the ol tenga. Some had originally been private gifts Yansup men had received from their Suolol exchange partners. These saon had later been "converted" by agreement between the exchange partners into topowe gifts. For the Suolol partner, this meant that he agreed to wait for repayment of the wealth until the ol tenga and to receive it in a public context. For the Yansup partner, this meant he did not have to worry about repaying his partner prior to the ol tenga. Instead he would repay the valuable during the ol tenga with nopae (in honor of war deaths), whereas under ordinary conditions he might simply have repaid the value of what he had received. Beyond these "economic" considerations, the distinction between personal obligations to exchange partners and responsibilities to clansmen is, as I have noted, the basic framework of political discussion in Mendi. The distinction encodes a central moral dilemma between the equally legitimate, but contradictory, values of individual autonomy and group unity, a common theme in Highland social thought.15 It matters to people whether an event or action is construed as corporate or personal. Still, there is much opportunity for ambiguity and room for interpretation, as diverse actions (and transactions) can be understood as one, or the other, or both. When men weigh their twem and sem obligations in particular situations, it is not merely a matter of allocating scarce resources to alternative ends. It is a matter of making moral or political judgments about the relative value and legitimacy of personal

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autonomy or corporate unity in this or that context, and attempting to shape the public understanding of events in accordance with those judgments. Individual acts may be given corporate group significance (even against the will of the individuals involved), as I illustrated in Chapter 2. This is common in the context of sorcery accusations; it is also true in the case of Waya's "headstrong" behavior, Sel's recalcitrance, and other situations in which clans assume, or are made or asked by members of other groups to assume, responsibility for the actions of their members. Conversely, the simultaneous actions of large numbers of people may be stripped of any corporate group significance. An instance of this is the extended case discussed in Lederman (1980) (see also Chapter 6). In that example, Senkere community members of the Suolol tribe publicly let it be known that they could not participate as a group in a parade sponsored by their estranged allies, the Surup, because the northern branch of Suolol (those resident in the Kuma community) would not be ready to participate on the date the Surup had set. Because the unity and viability of Suolol as a whole was at stake, Suolol people agreed not to participate as Suolol; however, since the personal relationships of many Suolol members with their Surup exchange partners were also at stake, many Suolol did participate as individuals. In this case, a group event was not just "held up" but was canceled altogether, at least from the perspective of the Suolol participants. On the other hand, as noted in the full account referenced above, the Surup viewed the parade they sponsored as "the Suolol parade." They wanted to upstage the Suolol by rushing the latter into a parade. Each group construed the event in its own way, and worked to win neighboring groups over to its own point of view. Another example of the manipulation of sem and twem meanings can be cited: In August 1978 preparations for a large parade were under way. Kurelka leaders were all advocating a date in early September, but one important Molsem big-man argued firmly that the event ought to be postponed until December. Other Molsem members disagreed; however, since opinion within their group was divided, many Molsem went about their parade preparations in a desultory fashion. Frustrated over the slow progress people were making, Nare (a Kurelka big-man) announced that he was going to collect firewood for use during the festival. He exhorted others to come with him and to carry one another's logs together (which they had all been accumulating in the forest). Such an action would demonstrate the group's readiness to hold the parade soon. Several other Kurelka men joined him, plus two Molsem leaders. The men made several trips to the forest, shouting and chanting as they carried their logs down to the main Senkere ceremonial ground, taking the Molmanda (Molsem) road. When I asked the Molsem participants whether their action meant they were abrogating the other Molsem big-man's wishes, and whether this meant the Molsem clan was going to join in the September parade, they said they knew nothing about other people's intentions. One commented, "I helped because I am mai (sister's son) of the Kurelka. I am not Molsem now!"

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In this example, no open confrontation between Molsem big-men occurred, for that might have damaged the group. Rather, an indirect statement, by means of an overtly individual act, was made in an effort to shape group policy. Acting autonomously, as a twem partner, can be just as political a statement as acting conceitedly as a member of a corporate group. Each acquires part of its political meaning at least implicitly against the other. An avowedly individual action in the context of some particular group policy may represent a criticism and denial of that policy; it is a way of commenting on group policy without a direct confrontation, since both group unity (vis-a-vis outsiders) and individual autonomy (vis-a-vis the group) are positive values and sources of social power in Mendi society. When people disagree with one another in the interpretation of events, their disagreements highlight the value and legitimacy that they accord both to twem and to sem relationships.

6 Sat le at Senkere: the politics of a Pig Festival

Several men brought their pearl shells to the Senkere ceremonial ground, one January morning in 1978, to display them against the long wall of one of the festival houses. There were one hundred and twenty pearl shells, five "twenty-fours"; their public unveiling was meant to demonstrate Suolol's readiness to hold its Pig Festival. But the sky was overcast, and it soon began to drizzle. Before the rains came and cut discussion off, the big-man who had organized the event made a short speech. He said that rain during a shell display is a bad sign. It means that we will not kill our pigs properly. Some of us will kill pigs on one day and others on another day. We will not kill pigs, all of Suolol, together, he asserted. A man from Kuma, the northern Suolol place, assured everyone that people at Senkere and at Kuma would talk tomorrow and set a date when they would all kill their pigs. He reminded them that Suolol's enemies at Egari and at Kundaga would be killing pigs together and that therefore all of Suolol had to kill pigs together as well. In the background, Kiluwa walked back and forth, his head wrapped in a bandage. "Why are we displaying our pearl shells today?" he asked the people standing nearby. "They are for our wives' families, but our wives don't want our shells. They don't heed our words; look, mine hit me this morning! I am not bringing my shells out! Introduction On the twenty-fourth day of December 1979, the Suolol held their mok ink. In the southern part of the tribal territory, on that day, 122 men - including old widowers and young bachelors - killed 672 pigs. Together, people from the south around Senkere and from the north around Kuma killed more than 1,400 pigs and distributed pork to thousands of their relatives and friends from up and down the Mendi Valley, from other parts of the Southern Highlands, and from even more distant places. This Pig Festival, like those sponsored by other Mendi sem onda, was held to demonstrate to enemy groups the size and unity of Suolol clans and their capacity for concerted action with their tribal allies. At the same time, it was 174

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Plate 9. Sai le. Pig sides slung on horizontal poles extending down the length of the ceremonial ground (in this case, Bela's). Head and backbone portions hung on forked pole in the foreground. made possible by the individual productive efforts and external exchange relationships of individual Suolol men and their wives. Indeed, the management of affinal exchange relations and the formal recognition of the value of female labor are important themes of the pig kill. The analysis of Mendi social relations developed in the preceding chapters emerged from my initial efforts to understand the politics of Pig Festivals in the Highlands. The political history of the Suolol mok ink was a story not only of the efforts big-men made to build group unity in the context of shifting alliances, rivalries and enmities between groups within and outside the tribe, but also of the insistence of leaders and ordinary people alike on individual autonomy in the context of personal exchange networks. In this chapter, the balance of which comprises a narrative account of the Suolol mok ink (a series of group-sponsored ceremonies, taking place over more than a decade and culminating in a pig kill, the sai le), the structural dialectic between twem and sem is evident. Anthropological background During the 1960s, much attention was paid to Highland Pig Festivals by anthropologists interested in understanding their latent ecological functions. The

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timing of these Festivals was a key variable to be explained. In many Highland societies, people kill their pigs individually primarily in ritual settings during times of illness, death and other misfortune. According to ecological analyses, this usage of scarce animal protein during times of stress made physiological good sense. Also implied in these analyses, the size of Highland pig herds is not under conscious human control. In good times, when people have no ritual reasons to "harvest" the herd, it may increase naturally to ecologically dangerous levels. In ecological studies, then, ceremonial pig feasts were interpreted as adaptive, homeostatic means whereby, under the guise of sacrificing "pigs for the ancestors," people in effect controlled the natural buildup of pigs on their territories, preventing the degradation of the pighuman environment by periodically consuming large amounts of pork. This model of the dynamics of "pig cycles" was first developed empirically by Roy Rappaport (1968) in his innovative study of the "ritual regulation of environmental relations" and was extended by A. P. Vayda and others to the Highlands generally (Vayda 1969; see also Vayda, Leeds, and Smith 1961; Vayda 1972; Harris 1974); largely because of Rappaport's work, it has become literally the textbook interpretation. But it has not gone unchallenged. Other observers (see, for example, Brookfield 1973; Hide 1974) have noted that "pig cycles," the periodic growth and decline of Highland pig populations, is not a "natural" phenomenon but is the result of conscious husbandry strategies aimed at the accumulation of pigs for politically motivated exchanges between social groups. In their view, the dynamics of the agrarian ecology of the central Highlands - interrelated variations in the size of a local group's pig herd and in the intensity of cultivation - reflect cyclic demands placed upon it by this regional political system. Hide's data on Sinasina pig herds supports this interpretation (Hide 1974; 1981). Hide, following Sahlins (1972), distinguished two strategies in the management and use of pigs in the Highlands which he termed "domestic" and "political." He argued that each results in a characteristic pig "population profile" (the relative proportion of different age/weight and sex classes). Based on a synchronic study of the pig herds of Sinasina social groups, each at a different stage in its ceremonial cycle, he suggested that these two management strategies are associated with distinct stages in any particular group's Festival preparations, and concluded that "the causal factors which explain the eventual domination of the [domestic] strategy by the [political one] are located in the political economy of the region, not in the local system consisting of producers, pigs and land" (Hide 1974: 3). He did not specify the nature of these factors, however. Many accounts of Highland politics have been written, but their emphasis has been on big-men and on large-scale group prestations. These accounts have contributed to our understanding of the scope and limits of achieved leadership in these societies; yet many questions remain unanswered. For ex-

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ample, the political character of what Hide called the "domestic" stage of the pig cycle remained unspecified.1 What goes on during the period between pig kills? Questions also remain concerning the political role of ordinary people, which has been given little attention: a surprising omission considering the egalitarian ethic of Highlanders, widely recognized by their ethnographers. Sahlins (1963), following Oliver (1955), suggested that the scope of the power of bigmen was limited by their relationship with their clan supporters. As Strathern (1971) noted, while Sahlins suggested that the relationship between a bigman and his clansmen might become exploitative, Meggitt (1967) pointed out that successful big-men cannot simply extract valuables from their clansmen but must redistribute wealth to them as well. Strathern has also noted that, in the Hagen case, big-men do not necessarily depend on the productive resources of their own groups, but rather maintain networks of exchange partners - people belonging to other groups - upon which they depend to "finance" their prestations. Strathern (1971: 2) has explored the "interplay between independent and concerted action" in detail for big-men only. In this context, network relationships are not distinguished as ends in themselves, since for Hagen big-men particularly, they appear to function simply as means of competing in group-sponsored moka exchanges. In most existing anthropological accounts, the politics of ceremonial prestations in central Highland societies concerns the competition of big-men for control over group policy, for control over the movement of valuables contributed by their clansmen and others, and for personal and group prestige. But to the extent that we focus simply on the competition between leaders and groups, we reduce "politics" to what we might call court revolutions, and political issues to the questions of when and where prestations will be held. In anthropological discussions of "pig cycles," central Highlanders appear not to raise the question as to whether pig kills and other group events should be held at all; we are left with an inadequate sense of contradiction or of what might be the fundamental social structural tensions.2 In fact, the wide variations in the power of big-men and in the strength of corporate groups in the Highlands should suggest that these aspects of the social structure are contestable and contested there. It has become clear that neither big-men nor corporate groups are dominant everywhere, and accounts of societies where they are not central facts of sociopolitical life hint that other social principles dominate "nongroup" societies. Anthropological accounts have now begun to treat more adequately these variations in the role of leaders and corporate groups, the pivotal role of gender symbolism and sex antagonism in reproducing the social order in many, otherwise egalitarian, Highland societies, and finally, the noncyclic development of Highland political economies over the past few centuries (see, e.g., Strathern 1982). With these issues as a backdrop, this chapter offers a case study of one

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Mendi Pig Festival, focusing on its politics, broadly construed. For events around Senkere during the 1960s and 1970s to be comprehensible, however, it will be necessary first to describe the general characteristics of Mendi mok ink. The Mendi Pig Festival The mok ink is organized on the level of the tribe (or, in Ryan's terminology, "clan cluster") and consists of a sequence of events stretching over five to ten years and culminating in a large-scale pig kill (called sai le). Ryan (1961: 207-24) outlined this sequence during the 1950s, based on inquiries he made and his account still holds. The sequence commences with discussions concerning the building of long Festival houses, called sai anda. In Senkere and elsewhere, a parade involving the beating of drums (mol) is held to ascertain the extent of support for sponsoring a mok ink. If enough support for the plan exists, one clan's ceremonial ground is selected as the site for the Festival houses. Housebuilding may proceed in fits and starts and is a test of organization in itself, as individuals take responsibility for building sections of the house.3 When the housebuilding is complete, a ceremony called ant senk is held. In recent years this has involved the killing of tens of cassowari, up to one hundred pigs and perhaps a few cows, as well as the distribution of money and pearl shells. Parades (ink tomp) are held at this time, sponsored by the mok ink clans. Parades may also be foisted upon the latter by their allies who, in the spirit of competition, may try to shame them by sponsoring a parade of their own not on their own ceremonial ground (koma) but on the mok ink group's koma. Ryan described another house, called the poranda, which used to be built next but is no longer constructed. Poranda were meant to shelter trading partners who would travel north to Mendi from their homes in the low-altitude Lake Kutubu area to bring long bamboos full of valuable tree oil, which the Mendi used as body adornment and as gifts during parades. After the completion of the houses is celebrated, a number of years may elapse before the next ceremony is held: the sai pombe. This is also a parade, though unaccompanied by any large-scale distributions of pork. Each invited clan whose members come to parade with the hosts is given a collective gift of pearl shells and money in appreciation of its participation, and as in the case of the ant senk parades, occasionally groups come to parade uninvited, on dates of their own choosing prior to the date for the sai pombe set up by the Festival sponsors, in order to speed up the progress of the mok ink. Each parade requires that individual participants from the host group contribute pearl shells and money to the corporate gifts that will be given in the name of their sem onda to invited parading clans. The hosts must also give

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money or pearl shells in order to obtain temporary use rights to whatever body decorations (e.g., bird-of-paradise and parrot plumes, bailer shell chest ornaments, oil, face paint) they do not themselves own,4 and to ensure an adequate supply of sugar cane, sweet potatoes and other food with which to feed their guests (who sometimes stay overnight during the two- or three-day event).5 The sai pombe marks the beginning of the end of a clan's mok ink. The pig kill itself may take place a year or two thereafter. During the previous several years, Pig Festival plans affect the organization of individual exchange obligations to twem partners mostly sporadically: especially during preparations immediately preceding the parades. During the early stages, people may also occasionally borrow pigs or pearl shells from, or lend them to, their exchange partners as saon, with the stipulation that the items be repaid before the pig kill. Such stipulations become increasingly common after the ant senk, and especially so after the sai pombe. Pigs are given to wives' relatives (mok we mulae) to be looked after. Gift-credit is extended to married sisters and daughters and their affines and is obtained from wives' people, with the assurance that the wealth will be repaid with an incremental value just before the pig kill. During the year or two preceding a mok ink, most twem transactions engaged in by members of the host group are organized so as to be repaid before the main event. People refrain from killing pigs on occasions of illness after the sai pombe. This is done on people's individual initiative for the most part. Big-men begin to call for a moratorium on small-scale pig kills and on allowing sows to become pregnant. The goal during this period is to produce fat pigs: pregnancy and lactation make sows thin. Long before people are ready to heed their advice, big-men may also warn them not to overextend themselves by borrowing too much from their wives' people. During the year or so before a pig kill, numbers of intragroup kowar (kumun wi) are organized, for which men may wait before repaying affinal gifts. A few months before the pig kill, men begin calling in the pigs which their wives' relatives and others have been looking after for them. Last minute requests are made of twem partners for pigs and pearl shells; and sisters, daughters, and their affinesare expected to repay saon to the mok ink hosts. When they are ready to do so (generally during the three or four months before the pig kill), men publicly display pearl shells and money that they will give to their wives in recognition for their work caring for pigs (a gift called mok ya ri). The mok ya ri payments and other wealth given to wives' relatives are made in formal distributions (ink anda momak tumawe) structured like the marriage ceremony. They include money or pearl shells to repay the value of pigs and pearl shells lent by the wives' relatives, and an expected increment (nopae in the case of pigs or poralu in the case of pearl shells). In addition to mok yari, nopae (oxporalu), and replacement or repayment of the value of items originally received (saon), a payment called nonknaik senk is

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sometimes also given to the wives' relatives. This consists of pearl shells given in honor of a couple's children. In addition to all these affinal gifts, simpler twem repayments are made during this distribution of wealth. Finally, the sai le itself is held. In contrast to the parades and shell distributions, the pig kill involves little self-decoration and less formal ceremony. Visitors arrive the day before, when live pigs are displayed in the ceremonial ground. The day of the pig kill, pigs are dispatched by their owners and butchered, and the pork sides (kelaepe or mok kumbi) are slung on several horizontal poles that extend for a few hundred feet down the length of the ceremonial ground. They are formally counted by presiding big-men, who announce the total for any who choose to listen. After this, the pork is cooked collectively in long earth ovens, a procedure that takes a few hours. Men of the host group then divide their own individual pork supply into portions of various sizes to distribute to their relatives and other twemol, who crowd around each of them in a circle several persons deep. Some large portions (mok kwin), consisting of backbones or legs are used to repay similar gifts given when the current host's exchange partners themselves killed pigs, years before. The rest of the meat is given out in chunks of at least four pounds (frequently much more) to invited guests and (if pork is left over) to uninvited spectators as well. Guests carry the pork home, recook it, and redistribute it to their own exchange partners and friends (who may also redistribute the meat) that day or the next. The following day, allied groups also often stage smaller, supporting pig kills to amplify the scale of the event. In all, anywhere from 500 to 2,000 pigs may be killed in the course of a few days, and pork may be distributed to thousands of persons in the Mendi Valley and beyond. Before the Christian missions had influence in Mendi, pig kills (both large and small) were occasions for giving gifts to ancestral ghosts (temo) as well as to living relatives. Pig killers would feed the blood of their pigs to their ancestors, represented by stones which were kept in small shelters. This was meant to forestall ghostly jealousy, which might bring misfortune on the living. This is no longer done, and the Mendi (including older, traditional men who were questioned) assert that it was never a central feature of the mok ink itself.6 When asked to explain the purpose of the mok ink, people respond in a number of ways: some emphasize the importance of the event for the standing of their sem onda, while others say that the point of the event as a whole is to give gifts to their wives and their relatives (a dichotomy illustrated in the epigraph to this chapter). One old and respected man, Ankpela, summed up all of these responses when he told me that the mok ink is "for accumulating pearl shells and pigs, for giving food [i.e., pork] to twem partners, and for renown" (that is, for making one's name "big": imbi ondasen ko). He said that big-men prove their status during mok ink but that all group members

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benefit by it because people from all over Mendi hear about what the group has accomplished. It is a way of showing enemies that the group is strong and numerous and has many allies. "And it is for giving mok ya n , " he concluded. The young men listening to this explanation with me were impressed particularly with the importance of renown. One of them said that Ankpela meant that "when we go around, people will know we are Suolol, and will know that we are making something - that we have 'work' - and are not just sitting around doing nothing. Then no one will be able to speak badly of us or insult us." Other people explained that the mok ink is also a context of competition (tanol). Subclans within the pig-killing group compete to see which of them will kill more pigs. But people said that this competition is just "inside" the group; in relation to allies and enemies elsewhere in Mendi, Pig Festivals are undertaken in order to augment the whole tribal alliance's reputation for organizational strength and for an ability to amass and distribute wealth. Although many Mendi believe that the Pig Festival is an ancient institution, it appears to be a relatively recent innovation in their area. In the case of Suolol, the first Pig Festival they sponsored successfully was completed around 1956; it took place at the Wepra (Waparaga) ceremonial ground. Before that, long houses had been built and inaugurated during the 1940s in the northern part of their territory at Marowal (near Kuma), but an incident of violence apparently involving native police on patrol from the north (possibly Mount Hagen) - disrupted those Festival plans. Suolol men assert that before the 1940s, their group was too busy supporting allies in tribal fights to initiate preparations for an ink. The oldest Suolol men had heard that their enemies, the Tukunsup of Egari, had sponsored a mok ink sometime before they were born, perhaps during the first decade of this century.7 While the history of the mok ink may be less than a century long in Mendi, it is even shorter elsewhere in the Southern Highlands. Paul Sillitoe (1979) reports that large-scale pig kills associated with the building of long houses made their appearance in Nipa, to the west of Mendi, only in the mid-1970s.8 Although the Suolol have sponsored only two mok ink over twenty years apart, they participated heavily in Pig Festivals sponsored by their major allies, the Surup and the Yansup, as well as sponsoring their own. The Yansup sponsored pig kills at Sol (near Senkere, in the southern part of their territory) and at Ol Egar (in the north: refer back to Map 2.1). The Sol affair occurred around 1956 and coincided with the first Suolol mok ink. The 01 Egar event took place during the early 1960s. The Surup were known to have sponsored two mok ink: one around the late 1930s at Kupia and one around 1967 at Sekip. During the Sekip sai le people from the Senkere community killed many pigs of their own in "supporting" pig kills. One might generalize that while Pig Festivals sponsored by one tribe or clan cluster may be more than

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twenty years apart, overall a tribe may be involved significantly in ink sponsored by themselves or one of their major allies every ten years or so. Individuals, on the other hand, eat mok ink pork at least once a year, receiving pork directly from twem partners who are members of m&-sponsoring groups or second- and third-hand from exchange partners who are partners of that year's Festival sponsors. It might be noted that until the 1960s, mok ink were not the only major pigkilling festivals. A number of fertility cults are followed in the Mendi Valley. Two, called Pirn and Kupia, have their sacred places in the Upper Mendi, on Yansup and on Surup territories, and Suolol men have figured prominently as ritual leaders in Kupia. According to older informants, Kupia was performed four times since just before the Australians came to Mendi in 1950 until the mid-1960s, and about four times during the period from the 1940s back to the 1920s. These cults are associated with mythic origin stories, and may well predate the mok ink. During the 1950s and 1960s, a new cult called Timp swept through the valley, proceeding from south to north. Timp was sponsored by Suolol at Kombal during the 1960s, at the same time as they were involved in preparations for the Sekip pig kill. Finally, during the period from the completion of the Wepra mok ink in 1956 to 1979, many ol tenga were made within the Suolol-Yansup-Surup alliance compensating for deaths that occurred during the wars of the 1930s and 1940s. That is, one ought not to think of mok ink as isolated major events, for they occur in the context of many other kinds of large-scale ceremonial prestations. However, these Festivals are notable for being actively in process for a much longer period of time than the rest. Therefore, they provide an overarching context for other more intensively organized events that may occur in the interim between the time the Festival houses are built and the time (a decade or more later) pork is distributed in the sai le. Outline of Suolol political history I found that in order to understand the political situation in Senkere during 1977-9, I had to know quite a bit about the history of Suolol's mok ink preparations.9 The relevant facts, according to oral accounts I received, concern Suolol's relationship with its allies and competitive tensions among its component subclans and big-men, as well as actions taken by its major enemies. After the Sol and Wepra pig kills of 1956, around 1963 Suolol's major enemy, the large Tukunsup alliance, held sai le in two of its localities (Koen in the south and Egari in the north).10 The 1960s were a time of increasing discord within the Senkere community. Aspects of this situation have been described elsewhere (Lederman 1980, 1981), and only the bare outlines will

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be given here. Around 1964, an old Olsem leader died, and his son Olonda, then a rising big-man about forty years of age, accused the Surup of Was of being responsible. Members of Was Surup refused to accept responsibility and to make an ol tenga payment; what is more, one Was leader insulted Olonda personally during their discussions concerning compensation. Olonda challenged the man to a competitive exchange contest (tanol) involving cassowaries, which Suolol informants claim he won hands down. During this contest, the Kombal Molsem clan supported Olonda in his effort to accumulate cassowaries. For this he was very grateful, and in return he promised to support them in the future should they need his help. The Surup were helped by some members of the Mesa, a group normally aligned with Olonda's sent kank Olsem as fellow members of the Kurelka clan. Leaders of Mesa explained their actions saying that while they call themselves Mesa-Kurelka, they "sleep in between" Suolol and Surup: that is, their part of the Suolol territory is located at the boundary with Surup lands. They intermarry frequently with Surup people (as do other Suolol), consider the Surup their amtia, or "mother's line" and have particularly strong exchange relationships with them. Members of Mesa have a strong interest in maintaining amicable relations with Surup people, as their important twem partners. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Mesa were accused by some members of Kurelka and Molsem of joining the Surup tribe - of becoming "MesaSurup" and no longer "Mesa-Kurelka." Mesa leaders denied this. Individually they have relatives among the Surup, but as a group they insist that they have always affiliated with Kurelka and will always continue to do so. A year or so after Olonda's cassowari contest, around 1965, a dispute developed between Eko, a young Mesa leader, and Uan, a man of similar status in Kombal Molsem. The dispute is said to have originated over a series of card games during which the Mesa man won alot of the Molsem's money. The Timp cult, which was in its culminating stage at the time, became the context for an exchange contest between Eko and Uan meant to settle their card dispute, but the Mesa Eko again made a more impressive showing than Molsem Uan. Both men organized displays of forty-eight pigs, but whereas Eko's were drawn entirely from his twem partners, Uan had had to ask for help from fellow clan members. Therefore, his wealth display was not considered to be a good demonstration of his own personal strength and equality relative to Eko. Soon afterward, Eko challenged Uan to a cassowari contest to give him another chance to establish a balance between them. In this contest, many members of Kurelka supported Eko; however, Olonda, true to his word, supported the Molsem side. This contest also resulted in a "win" for the Mesa leader: Whereas both sides accumulated the same number of cassowaries, Eko and several members of Pulumsem and Olsem killed six of theirs, distributing

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the meat as free gifts to their exchange partners and taking a loss, while the Molsem participants reinvested their cassowaries in their twem networks. Eko interpreted this as a deliberate refusal to balance their relationship.11 Many people in Kurelka believe that as a result of this contest Olonda became angry at the Mesa clan, and was determined to best them. The means he chose involved shaming the Surup, with whom the Mesa were so close. In 1966, the year after the contest, the Surup scheduled their sai pombe, the parade marking the last stage of their mok ink. The pombe was to be held at Was. The Suolol, as one of the Surup's major allies, were invited to attend. But a parade was also scheduled during the same week at Map, the place of another Mendi tribe. The Surup sent word to Suolol that they should all parade at Map and then return for the Surup's own pombe to Was and Sekip (the localities in which that group planned to stage its pig kill). At the same time, the southern Tukunsup at Wogia - minor enemies of the Surup as well as of the Suolol - announced that they planned to parade uninvited on a Surup ceremonial ground, on a date before the one that the Surup had set for their official sai pombe. Tukunsup were said to have wanted to shame Surup and to disrupt their Pig Festival plans. Olonda heard of this plan, and met with a Wogia leader to see if they could collaborate. When the Surup went to parade at Map, Olonda told them that he and his group would meet them but would travel to Map by a different route. Instead of going to Map, however, Olonda along with many Kombal Molsem men and the Wogia people went to Sekip instead, parading in the Surup's empty ceremonial ground. This was a major insult and deceit and had soured relations between Surup and those involved. Some months later, the Surup held their official sai pombe at Sekip with the help of their allies, including Mesa, other Kurelka members from both the northern and the southern parts of Suolol territory (not Olonda's faction and the Kombal Molsem) and the northern Molsem subclans, as well as a number of subclans from the Yansup tribe. In spite of this antagonistic behavior, when the Surup held their pig kill the following year, the Suolol, including Olonda and the Kombal Molsem people, supported them (as allies are expected to) by killing pigs with them. Meanwhile, trouble was still brewing within Suolol. In particular, the problem between Eko and Uan persisted, and deepened when the Mesa suffered the deaths of two important leaders around 1968, for which they considered Uan's group responsible. One of the leaders was a Surup residing matrilocally with the Mesa; consequently, the Surup's interest in intra-Suolol conflicts was heightened. Other Molsem subclans eventually accepted responsibility for one of the deaths, making an ol tenga payment to Eko and other Mesa men. But the death of the Mesa's Surup "sister's son" remained uncompensated, and no one was willing to organize support for an ol tenga in his honor, despite Eko's requests for one. The situation persisted for the next six years. Despite these problems, shortly after the Surup pig kill was over, members

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of Suolol began talking about holding a sai pombe of their own. They organized a mol at Kombal to ascertain the degree of support for a Suolol mok ink. Many people came to beat their drums and to march on the Kombal ceremonial ground, and so discussions commenced concerning which of the several Suolol ceremonial grounds would be the site of the long Festival houses. The Suolol's major enemies, Kunda and Tul clans (both affiliated with the Tukunsup) scoffed when they heard that Suolol was planning a Pig Festival.12 According to Suolol informants, at various ceremonial events sponsored by Suolol and other groups during 1969, two Tukunsup leaders from Kundaga boasted about their own pig kill and insulted the men from Kuma (Suolol's northern community, located near Kundaga). Kuma men were angry about this. During the discussions concerning possible locations for their sai anda, the long Festival houses, they argued that because the previous Suolol pig kill of 1956 had been held at Wepra, and because the Timp and mol had been held at Kombal during the 1960s - that is, with all these events having been held in the southern part of Suolol lands - it was only fair for the next pig kill to be held in the north, at their place. They were the ones who lived right near Kundaga and Egari; it was they who had suffered directly the insults of Suolol's enemies. They argued that the southern Suolol were surrounded by allies, by contrast, and had less need to build long houses - testaments to tribal strength - in their area. So it was decided, and the sai anda were built at Kuma in 1969. Kirop, a minor Molsem leader of the Senkere community, disagreed with this choice of site. He argued that Kuma and the Senkere community should both erect sai anda. He convinced the Senkere and Molmanda Molsem of this, and they constructed a house of their own at Senkere. At this time, others in the Senkere area - the Kurelka subclans at Wepra, the Mesa at Ponia and the Kombal Molsem subclans - all planned to kill their pigs up north at Kuma.13 A couple of years later, around 1972, it happened that an important Olsem man died. When his body was still displayed on its bier, and the Olsem and others sat round it keening and discussing the death, Kirop appeared carrying eight pearl shells. One of these was spectacular to look at and very valuable (such shells are called momak kwin in Mendi). He gave the pearl shells to Olsem as a whole to express his sorrow over the death. The Olsem were impressed with Kirop's act of generosity. When the Olsem distributed the pearl shells among themselves, Pua (then a respected man in his mid-thirties) received the momak kwin and one of the others. Pua wanted to show his appreciation for the gift, for he had been greatly saddened by the death (so much so that kowar were made to him by other Olsem members). He decided that the Olsem ought to help Kirop hold a pig kill at Senkere. He went to the forest by himself to prepare houseposts for a second Senkere sai anda (this one representing Kurelka participation in a pig kill there), and when he thought he had enough for his section of it he carried

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them down to Senkere. He announced that he was going to help Kirop, because he did not want him to be angry that everyone was going to Kuma to kill their pigs. He exhorted other Kurelka to help him and marked out the ground where the house would stand, allotting a room to twelve other Olsem and Pulumsem families. The house was completed by 1973.14 Shortly thereafter, two other houses were constructed, one by the Mesa and the remaining Kurelka men, and the other by the Kombal big-man Aepen and his Molsem faction. The parade held to inaugurate the four new Senkere long houses (ant senk) took place in 1974 and involved a large distribution of meat: Many pigs and cassowaries and a couple of European cows were killed. Members of a branch of Suolol living in Kaupena (in the Southern Highlands district of Ialibu) came to participate in the festivities. They included a number of men who had only recently moved from Senkere and Kuma to Kaupena (where opportunities for coffee gardening and other money-making endeavors are greater than in Mendi). One of these men, Alo, took sick after arriving in Senkere for the ant senk. He died shortly after the event, and a Surup man was suspected of killing him by means of sorcery (a suspicion which the Surup insisted was false). This death, and efforts by Eko during 1974-6 to establish a commercial cattle project on land held by all the Kurelka subclans together, exacerbated intra-Suolol tensions. Around 1975-6, an extension of the Provincial road system was built through the southern Suolol territory, giving the Senkere community as a whole vehicular access to Mendi town. But during the next year, heavy rains and high waters destroyed a bridge connecting Senkere, Molmanda and Wepra to Kombal and Ponea, upsetting plans for cooperative commercial enterprises (see Map 2.1). Both Alo's death and the destruction of the bridge were widely considered to be related to the conflict between the Mesa (who, with the Surup, live south of the bridge, closer to Mendi town) and the Kombal Molsem (many of whom, with Olonda in Wepra, live north of the bridge). A number of other events widened the rift between these Senkere-area Suolol subclans. The worst of these was the death of an Olsem man in early February 1978. Ever since Eko had begun calling for a second ol tenga in compensation for one of the Mesa deaths that occurred before the Kombal mol, people had been expecting someone in Olonda's subclan to die - perhaps even Olonda himself. They saw that Eko and his group still bore a grudge over the deaths.15 Since competitive exchange contests had not reestablished good relations between the Mesa and their neighbors, and since the Mesa had suffered two deaths that many suspected were related to the unbalanced relationships between Suolol subclans, informants from a variety of subclans said that they had expected the Mesa's bad feelings to erupt in this antisocial manner. The death in February was widely interpreted to be the result of a sorcery

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attack by Eko (or by someone else on behalf of the Mesa, for which Eko and other Mesa members would be responsible). Eko calmly and consistently denied these charges, and was insistent, both during private discussion with me as well as during community meetings held to discuss the matter, that he would never have killed a fellow Kurelka ' 'brother." Record of events The preceding account outlined the relevant background of events that during my stay in the Senkere community from late 1977 through the first part of 1979, I had the opportunity to observe at close hand.16 Oral accounts of the preceding fifteen or twenty years were couched predominantly in terms of the actions of groups and of big-men (men who had that status in the past, or who had acquired it because, or in spite, of the events recounted). My observations during 1977-9 revealed more, and I suspect that they are relevant to the earlier period as well. The kinds of tension and competition evident in the events I will describe next appear to be typical (in the sense that they were not considered extraordinary by my informants), and pertain not simply to pig kills but also to other sorts of major projects. The opposing positions When I arrived in the Senkere area in 1977, it was immediately apparent that there were two opposed positions, advocated by different members of the community, concerning when the sai le ought to be held. Pua had been arguing for a date nearly two years hence - December 1979. n He claimed that he was concerned about all the men engaged in wage work outside of Mendi and all the ordinary men who would not be ready with enough pigs to kill in 1978. He felt that a good pig kill must involve everyone, and not just the bigmen. Kirop, who had been instrumental in starting the separate Senkere pig kill plans, agreed with Pua about the date, although Kirop was not at all explicit about his reasons. (Others speculated that while Kirop had a good reputation for making pearl shell prestations, he was not really a big-man, as he had "no pigs" and so would have trouble making a respectable showing at the sai le.) Olonda, along with the Molsem of Kombal, had been advocating an earlier date - December 1978 - for some time; and he carried on a consistent campaign for it during 1977 and the early months of 1978. In many contexts, he said that he was getting old now (as far as I could tell, he was in his midfifties; Pua was by then in his early forties). He asserted that he wanted to participate in the culminating event of the mok ink in a manner befitting the status he had achieved, before his strength declined. He had grown pessimis-

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tic about the ability of his community to hold itself together, as a result of all the antagonism which had built up over the previous decade. In his view, people were dying in alarming numbers and young men - who ought to have been rising to leadership roles in the village - were leaving to work for money in other parts of Papua New Guinea, or else showed little interest in organizing clan events. What is more, in his view the Senkere community had little chance to acquire the new forms of wealth and power apparently available in Kaupena (in Ialibu District), Mount Hagen (in the Western Highlands Province), and other places where some members of Suolol lived. Olonda spoke frequently of moving to Kaupena as soon as the pig kill was over; he had already been given a coffee garden there by his fellow clansmen, which he visited occasionally. His main concern for the meanwhile was with the Suolol's reputation, and with their ability to kill pigs before too long. Olonda took every opportunity, whenever numbers of people gathered for village courts or informal discussions, to articulate his position: In early January, a pig belonging to the wife of a Pulumsem man broke into one of Pua's gardens, rooting up most of the sweet potato tubers growing there. When Pua's wife Epopil complained, the pig's owner struck her. A village court meeting was organized on the spot, and was attended by an unusually large number of people. Pua and Epopil demanded monetary compensation for the wound and also because Epopil's assailant's pigs had broken into the same garden several other times. The meeting began with statements by the principals about what had occurred, and it was quickly established that Epopil was entitled to compensation. Along the way, however, a number of women voiced complaints against Pua or their own husbands for not taking care to mend their fences. Various men shouted at the women to be quiet, without effect. Olonda came to the center of the crowd to speak. Everyone became silent. He said that we Suolol have built our long sai anda and we have many pigs. Because of this many gardens are destroyed - not just this one. This is no good. As a result, people get taken to court and must compensate one another. Later they think about what happened and get angry at each other. They obtain poisons and try to kill each other by means of sorcery. This is not good, he reiterated. Many people listening muttered their agreement. After Olonda was finished speaking, a price was fixed for the compensation payment, and there was some further discussion about the difficulties people had in living peacefully with one another, about recent disagreements, and about broken fences, before a new case was heard. Olonda frequently argued that there were " t o o many p i g s " in Senkere., and often warned of impending troubles for the group. A few days after the event described above, he organized the pearl shell display referred to in the epigraph to this chapter. During his remarks at the court meeting, he announced that he intended to display some of the pearl shells he was holding in preparation for repaying affinal saon and making other gifts required before the sai le. Between the day of the court and the

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time of the display, he persuaded seven or eight other men to display their pearl shells as well: One hundred twenty of them were exhibited (five "twentyfours," "twenty-four" being a counting unit significant in major prestations). The point of the display was to demonstrate the participants' readiness to repay affinal saon and to give incremental gifts - prerequisites for killing their pigs. It was also meant to stimulate public discussion about the pig kill plans, and indeed, about a third of the community attended. Much informal talk went on while the pearl shells were being removed from their protective bark containers and set up against one of the long sai anda walls on a bed of ferns. Much of the discussion concerned the quality of the pearl shells on display, and radically divergent opinions were expressed. Some said the shells were impressive, but many others said they were small and dull in color. Just as with Pua's and Olonda's divergent opinions concerning the size of the Senkere community's pig herd, these comments were not simple statements of fact but also reflected people's judgments concerning the community's readiness to kill their pigs. Events that occur during wealth displays in Mendi are frequently interpreted to mean something more than what they are manifestly about. Uan's performance during his competition with Eko was a case in point (see note 11). Sometimes people are credited with doing or saying one thing publicly in order to convey another message indirectly, in a subtle manner that may bring important matters to people's attention for informal discussion later on, while avoiding direct, public confrontations. Natural occurrences may become objects of metaphoric reference and interpretation. Thus, in his short speech during the pearl shell display Olonda used the rain as a metaphor for all the possible obstacles he saw standing in the way of a unified Suolol pig kill. He was particularly worried about sorcery attacks against himself and his subclan, which would make visible the divisions within the Senkere community. He emphasized that the Senkere community must kill pigs when the people living at Kuma did, and asserted that if "Kuma" kills pigs this year, "Senkere" must as well. As the meeting broke up, people spoke of how they would travel to Kuma the next day to discuss the pig kill plans. One close friend of Pua's (one of his wife's clansmen) commented to me that it seemed clear to him that they would all kill pigs that year. He felt that people who pushed for an early date had a bargaining edge over those (like Pua) who favored a later date since the former could always kill pigs and then tear down their sections of the long houses, leaving the ceremonial ground in a sorry state for the rest. Other men picked up Olonda's common refrain about how very many people had died recently in their own and neighboring communities. They said that sorcery and conflict were rife, and opined that there were currently few really great leaders capable of pulling people together under such conditions. Olonda was not such a man, some noted, since he tended to provoke conflicts rather than

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settle them. Nevertheless, the people I was speaking with (supporters of both Pua and Olonda) agreed that Olonda had many twem partners, was able to organize great wealth distributions that benefited his fellow clansmen, and was a charismatic orator capable of making speeches that crystallized group policy. They thought his words would be listened to. They agreed with Olonda that he and other big-men around Senkere were getting old, that there appeared no one to replace them as leaders, and that it might be best to kill pigs sooner rather than later whether ordinary men like themselves were ready or not. Despite these considerations, some of these men commented that Olonda's rhetoric concerning the importance of coordination with the northern Suolol living around Kuma (a policy with which everyone agreed) and its impending disruption was also meant to disguise another message: Both communities ought to kill pigs that year, but if Kuma did not, Olonda might do so himself, alone. One man noted that big-men always try to rush things in order to get others moving. If one's big-men publicly announce an early date for a ceremonial prestation, then one can more easily request wealth from one's exchange partners, he said. They will all have heard that one is in need of wealth and they will be more ready to help. One week later, a second pearl shell display was organized by Kirop along with two of his Molsem fellow clansmen and Pua. Together they displayed ninety-six pearl shells, or four "twenty-fours." The opinion among the thirty or so in attendance concerning the quality of these shells was mixed (as in the earlier display), although Pua's shells were generally admired. Some spectators commented that either the other participants were holding back their best pearl shells or that their resources were in bad shape. Either way the prospects for a respectable pig kill that year appeared poor. One prominant Kurelka man made a speech to this effect, admonishing the participants to speak their minds rather than being indirect about their intentions. He asked the men if they planned to kill their pigs that year. Pua's response, like Olonda's the week before, was that he would kill his pigs at Senkere whenever Kuma chose to kill theirs. Olonda, speaking as an observer, echoed this theme and added that he wanted to kill pigs soon, as many people in Mendi are dying from sorcery attacks and he himself wanted to leave for Kaupena soon. Olonda then asserted directly that he really wanted to kill his pigs this year, regardless of Kuma's plans, in order to show the Surup that he and his group are strong. Another observer, not himself a leader, retorted that it was fine for Olonda to say he would kill his pigs that year, because he indeed has pigs. But, he said, others do not. Olonda responded saying that everyone should be holding onto their wealth in preparation for the pig kill now, rather than sending pearl shells and pigs off to their exchange partners. This response provoked a long argument among the observers at the display. Various people put forward reasons why coordinating with Kuma might be too difficult - there would be

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too much pork to eat all at once(!); they would use up all the firewood in the forest; and so on. Some men asserted that those who said they would only kill pigs when Kuma did really meant something else: probably something about when exactly they would be ready to kill their pigs, and not about the Suololwide issue of coordination. Nevertheless, others appeared to be sincerely concerned that all the Suolol kill their pigs together. Without this, Suolol's tribal existence would be called into question. After the meeting was over, Pua told me that he had been discussing the sai le date with people from Kuma, and wanted to coordinate with them. He wanted the Suolol event to be spectacular and felt that this depended on everyone participating. He said that he was simply articulating a position that many Suolol men held. At this time, in January, the people living at Kuma had not expressed a commitment to any particular pig kill date. However, they had scheduled their saipombe, the parade marking the beginning of the final stage of the mok ink, for February 11, 1978, when a full moon would facilitate the travel of invited paraders coming from far off. They said they would hold a meeting to discuss the timing of the pig kill during the parade. A week before the parade, the Olsem man (referred to at the end of the last section) died, and therefore his clansmen and others from the Senkere area could not dress up and parade at Kuma for fear of insulting the dead man's spirit. They attended informally and instead of parading, gave a gift to the Kuma people of twelve pearl shells, which the latter were to repay whenever the Senkere people held their own sai pombe. This return payment was to figure prominently in a subsequent sequence of events (see the later section "The Creation of Group Unity"). The pivotal episodes During the Kuma parade, several Suolol leaders from Kuma and from the Senkere area including Olonda met to discuss the date for the pig kill. One man reported to me that he had heard that the big-men were talking about killing pigs in December of the present year, that they had set the date, and that discussion of the matter was now closed. He asserted, in response to my questions, that ordinary men like himself had no say in the matter. It was something for leaders only. When I asked a number of other ordinary men about whether they had heard of a meeting of Suolol leaders, they echoed this view. Later I spoke with Kirop and Pua. Kirop asserted that the talk at Kuma was meant to encourage ordinary men to start organizing their exchange obligations with their affines in preparation for the pig kill. He said that he thought the Kuma leaders would listen to Pua and himself, and that they also wanted to kill their pigs not during 1978 but at the end of the following year. Kirop asserted that the men of Kuma were not old, nor were they as worried about

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sorcery as Olonda was. In any case, he said Olonda could kill pigs himself this year if he wanted to. It was his right and no one would stop him. But the Suolol would kill pigs in 1979, he insisted. Much of the rest of February was devoted to meetings and considerable informal discussion concerning the reasons the Olsem man had died. In the eyes of Wepra residents, Eko was the chief suspect. He and his group were accused of having become part of the Surup alliance, a charge which Eko denied. Formal court summonses were obtained by both sides, and many people were angry and uncertain about what would happen next. During February and continuing into March, in many informal discussions, the recent history of the community was reviewed from many points of view. People reminded one another of details of events relevant to the troubles within the Suolol and between them and the Surup. In particular, people spoke much about the death of Alo and how a Surup sorcerer may have killed him. Two weeks into March, a parade was held at a locality near Mendi town, to which the Suolol and others were invited. Many of the Suolol who went did not participate formally, again because of the death they had suffered in February. This event, like other large-scale events held or announced around the Mendi Valley at this time, stimulated discussion among the Suolol about their own sal le plans. Many ordinary men said they believed that pigs would truly be killed that very year, a prospect they did not relish. In any case, the Senkere saipombe parade date was set for four "moons" hence (early July). Pua admitted that he was worried that his word was not prevailing. He decried all the small meetings which had been held recently in which a few men had agreed on a pig kill date and then announced it as if it were a "Suolol" decision. He said that it was time that a large community meeting be held, in which the matter might be settled. One unified plan ought to be articulated publicly. At the beginning of May, a northern Mendi locality called Karil held an ant senk ceremony to inaugurate its own Festival houses. People from Suolol and their enemies the Tukunsup were both invited, since some of the Karil clans were friendly with one and the rest were friendly with the other.18 Members of both invited groups attended, armed with arrows and bows. A fight broke out between members of two other groups, the Yansup and the Yakump (who are, like the Suolol and the Tukunsup, major enemies), but it did not last long. Since the Senkere people had scheduled their sai pombe for early July, preparations began during May to rebuild rotting sections of the long houses, which had not been refurbished since they were built more than five years earlier (and some of which had been destroyed by fire in the course of a fight between Eko, Uan, and others in late 1977). The grass growing in the ceremonial ground had to be trimmed and people had to ensure that they would have access to enough sugar cane with which to refresh their guests in July:

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many people obtaining sugar cane as saon from their twem partners outside the community. During May, the Surup (who were going to be coming to Senkere for the Suolol saipombe) held a parade rehearsal informally at Tukere, one of their localities. Many young men from Senkere marched with them to various communities in the northern Mendi Valley to bring lines of men to the parade (ol tia mulube), a procedure meant to publicize the Suolol sai pombe to be held in two months. In mid-June, a second parade was held by the Surup at Sumbura, a locality on their territory on the border with Suolol territory. At the Sumbura parade, June 18, 1978, insults were exchanged between some Suolol and Surup men. One Molsem leader called the Surup "women" and boasted about how, years before, the Suolol had shamed the Surup by parading at their ceremonial ground uninvited when the Surup were away. The Surup replied that since the Suolol were having so much trouble agreeing about dates for their parade, they themselves would set the Suolol's parade date for them and, at the same time, repay Suolol for their shaming parade of over a decade ago. They would come to parade at Senkere in two weeks, a fortnight before the July date Olonda and others had announced for the Senkere sai pombe.19 The Surup spent the following week collecting pearl shells, and made several large pearl shell gifts to others of their allies and even to some of Suolol's minor enemies, all of whom agreed to come with them to Senkere on June 30, the early date. The Surup also sent word to Olonda and others at Senkere that they intended their parade to be the only, official Suolol parade. Ready or not, they wanted the Suolol as a group to parade with them when they came. Many of the Suolol were not ready. They needed more time in order to collect pearl shells so as to give parade gifts to the groups they had invited to their parade. These included the Kaupena branch of the Suolol tribe whom Olonda had invited, and the Surup themselves. They also needed more time to get enough sugarcane and sweet potatoes with which to feed paraders. Not to feed them would be both shameful and insulting, as, according to parade conventions, it would signify that they were not invited. (One has no obligation to feed uninvited paraders, but one is expected to invite one's allies.) Response to the Surup threat that they would soon come to parade on their own terms was mixed. Pua felt that some Suolol men ought to put on their face paint and plumes and join in the parade, acknowledging its legitimacy. It was, after all, in retaliation for a similar deed the Suolol had perpetrated years before. Olonda, who considered the Surup his personal enemies by then, was adamant that no one ought to parade on the Sump's day. There would be only one official Suolol parade, according to Olonda, and it would take place on the date that Suolol itself set and formally announced. A meeting was called on June 20 to discuss the situation. It was not a large meeting, but did include some men from Kuma as well as about seventeen

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men from the Senkere area (including Olonda and Pua). Kirop did not attend the meeting; he disagreed with everyone and wanted to postpone the Suolol parade until December. During the meeting, it was reported that the Sump had threatened to close the government road (which passed through their territory), thereby preventing the Kaupena people from attending the Suolol parade. But they promised that they would make no trouble if Suolol agreed to parade with them on June 30. This was a blow for Olonda, who had been the one to invite the Kaupena people. Another meeting was held the next day, which about eighteen men attended (including Pua and Kirop, but not Olonda this time). People reasserted their commitment to give the Surup a pearl shell gift but only if they came in July. The final pig kill date was also discussed at this meeting. Toward the end of the meeting, a Kuma big-man made an announcement. He said that people in his community had also been discussing these matters and could now speak with one voice. They were now firmly committed to killing their pigs in December 1979, instead of 1978. The reason for this shift had to do with Karil. Ever since the Karil ant senk in early May, the Kuma Suolol had been trying to convince one of the Karil clans to kill pigs with them for it appeared that the other Karil clan had announced it would be killing its pigs around 1983 together with Kundaga, Pongal, and other Tukunsup communities (all enemies of the Suolol's). Suolol's Karil allies realized they would make a sorry show killing pigs by themselves, so they agreed to join with Kuma and the rest of Suolol. They had just held their ant senk, however, and were far behind Suolol in the pig kill preparations. The December 1979 pig kill date was still close for them, but they had said that they might be able to make it. The present year would be impossible, however. After this meeting, Pua told me that people were no longer talking about killing pigs in 1978. He was convinced that the schedule that he had been advocating for so long had finally been adopted. At this time, however, no formal group position had yet been articulated, and Olonda was in fact still advocating that the pig kill be held in December 1978. The creation of group unity Meanwhile, time was running out, and no clear position concerning the Surup parade had yet emerged from these small meetings and from the numerous conversations about the matter taking place in Senkere. It was decided to hold a large formal meeting to which all Suolol men and any interested members of their allies would be invited. The meeting took place on June 26, just four days before the Surup had said they were coming to Senkere. More than one hundred people attended. As I described it in an earlier account (Lederman 1980), a large assemblage of men constituted the core of the gathering. Some women and young people attended, but they sat on the sidelines. The meeting

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was a male-dominated event in which women expressed little overt interest. It was held in the Senkere ceremonial ground, and to further mark it as a special, clan-oriented occasion, the pearl shells to be given to invited paraders were displayed and a large quantity of pandanus nuts were roasted during the meeting. A number of leaders and other members of neighboring clans attended. The discussion, which started after the pandanus nuts had been enclosed in their earth oven, initially concerned the remaining preparations for the Suolol sai pombe. A full range of attitudes to Sump's plans was expressed. Men from neighboring clans expressed confusion over why more Sump men were not present; there were only two - subclan brothers of the wife of one Molsem man. They said that the Sump and Suolol tribes were allies and, as ''brothers," must decide together when the parade should occur. Several of them commented that dissension like that between the Sump and the Suolol boded ill for the parade, as the parade's purpose is to strengthen (not weaken) alliances between groups. Olonda made the most important speech of the meeting, in the opinion of my informants. The speech reflected both the power and the constraints of leadership in Mendi. It seemed on the face of things that Olonda was backed into a corner. The facts he faced were that he could not prevent the Sump from coming that week; that many Senkere people had affines and other important twem partners among the Sump on whom they depended for wealth and whom they could not afford to offend if they wished to participate in the pig kill; and that therefore many Suolol men would have to dress up and parade with Sump that week regardless of Olonda's feelings about the crumbling relationship between the Sump and Suolol tribes. Despite these considerations he was determined not to let the Sump control the situation. Olonda began his speech with a review of the history of the Sump-Suolol rivalry. He deemphasized the aggressiveness of Suolol's surprise parade at Sekip twelve years before, arguing that while they had paraded uninvited the first time, they later joined with Sump during Sump's own official sai pombe. He then presented his argument for why the Suolol could not parade - as a group and in its own name - with Sump that week. He said that only the Sump tribe could parade as a sem onda this time because not all the significant components of Suolol, as a tribal alliance, were ready: The large branch of Suolol living in Kuma had not yet repaid twelve pearl shells, which they had owed to Senkere Suolol ever since the Senkere people had attended the Kuma's sai pombe in February. Regardless of the readiness of individual Senkere men with their own personal parade decorations, with refreshments for paraders, and with pearl shells to give their guests, Suolol as a proper sem onda was not ready to hold its parade that week. Rather, the Suolol would sponsor a parade of its own after that of the Sump. Olonda's speech galvanized the discussion. Kuma, as everyone knew, could

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not participate respectably in the Senkere event without repaying the pearl shells. And most people agreed that maintaining the Suolol alliance between the Kuma people in the north and the Senkere people in the south was important. Participants from neighboring clans - Wem, Semerip, Mendpo, Sol Yansup, and others - were impressed with Olonda's logic and made speeches of their own asserting that they would parade at Suolol's sai pombe later on, and not at the one sponsored by Surup. They emphasized that Surup and Suolol were "brothers", 20 that they wanted to contribute to a large festival, and that they would help to bring other groups to it. They clearly supported Olonda's position. The meeting did not end with this, however. Much divisive talk concerning intra-Suolol conflicts followed during which Olonda tried with great flourish but little success to reassert control over the discussion. He repeated his point that the matter was out of the hands of the men of Senkere. Participants from other tribes continued to support his position in their statements. Olonda made one final speech articulating his position, and this one successfully closed the discussion. The meeting ended with the distribution of roasted pandanus nuts. The significance of Olonda's position ought to be clear. In it he had made a personal concession in order to obtain something he wanted more. In this context he had considered it necessary to use the rhetoric of Suolol unity the insistence on coordinating with Kuma - which he had publicly renounced months before. Moreover, what coordinating with Kuma meant, given Kuma's revised pig kill plans, was to kill pigs in 1979 instead of at the earlier date he still favored. He adopted this new position because it was a convincing argument against the Suolol's participation in the Sump's parade (which was apparently unthinkable to him). It effectively deflected the issue away from his own personal conflicts with Sump and other very local antagonisms, and toward a rather more positive, social goal (specifically, that of group unity). In this case, waiting for fellow clansmen from Kuma in the interest of Suolol as a whole served his own personal interest in preventing the Sump from usurping the parade. But, by advocating such a course, Olonda had given in to the later sai le date in a very public context. It would be extremely difficult to take back such words. An understanding of the stmcture of relations underlying Mendi politics helps in assessing the effectiveness of Olonda's speech. At first sight, subsequent events proceeded in apparent conflict with his words. As he must have known, many Senkere men planned to parade with the Sump no matter what was said during the meeting. Indeed, by June 28, two days after the meeting, many Senkere men were busy preparing their wig and plume headdresses and in the end, more than one-fourth of the young and mature men of Senkere community paraded with the Sump when the latter came to their parade ground June 30 and July 1. Not only that, but Pua (who had, one might recall, been arguing that the Suolol ought to recognize the legitimacy of the Sump's pa-

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rade in some fashion) found a way to make a shell payment to the Surup. On July 2, the day after the Surup parade, Pua went to Sekip (a Surup locality) and gave pearl shells to the Surup in compensation for a ceremonial axe one of their allies had broken accidentally during the parade. The recipients of this gift were two Surup leaders, both important exchange partners of Pua. When they accepted the gift in a small public gathering, they announced that they were pleased that Suolol men had paraded with them and were satisfied that they had repaid Suolol for the latter's previous aggressive parade. Most significantly, at Pua's insistence they agreed not to close the road to the Kaupena group whom Olonda had invited to come to the Suolol saipombe. Thus, although the June 26 meeting appeared to have ended with the consensus that the Suolol would not parade with the Surup, many Suolol men did in fact join the parade. But this did not mean that Olonda's oratory had had no practical effect. The men who participated had acted as individuals; their actions were governed by their many personal obligations to their Surup exchange partners which, given the upcoming sai le, could not be abrogated. Pua commented to me, later on, that Olonda had not done much private lobbying with individual Suolol men prior to and after the meeting. If this was true, he might not have been aware of the extent to which particular men felt obligated to join their Surup twem partners in the parade. In any case, although he might have been able to convince a few not to participate, it is doubtful that he could have hoped to change the minds of many. Most of those who participated in the Surup affair were people like Pua who had important twem obligations to particular Surup individuals. These Suolol members had indeed acted as individuals. The point is that Olonda had done his best at the meeting to ensure that they could do nothing else. The consensus at the end of the meeting signaled the members' acceptance of this. That is, during formal public meetings such as the one I have been describing - meetings called to discuss matters of group policy, and dominated by men and their leaders, and attended by members of other groups - attention is focused on the group significance of events (even though the events discussed also affect and depend upon the personal obligations of group members to their exchange partners). The meeting was clearly not merely a ratification or summation of many individual personal decisions, nor was it undone by the individual actions that followed it. Rather, it added a significant element that had, until then, been missing. Olonda foiled the Surup's attempt to make their parade the ''official" Suolol one by removing the sem onda meaning of that week's event, at least from the perspective of the Suolol and those of its allies who were present at the meeting. Had he said nothing, the participation of individual Suolol men in the Surup saipombe would have been widely understood (especially outside of Suolol, but perhaps inside as well) as participation by Suolol as a group. The Surup

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would have spoken about it as such, surely. By explicitly denying that it was a Suolol-sponsored event, Olonda stripped the parade of its corporate meaning and people's approval of his speeches during the meeting ratified his position publicly before representatives of other clans. Even Pua's pearl shell distribution to his Sump exchange partners after the parade did not make the participation of Suolol men much more than personal, although it did create enough ambiguity for Sump to save face and thereby enable them to back down from their threat to block the road to Olonda's guests from Kaupena. In summary, the successful staging and harmonious outcome of the meeting were significant not because they determined what actions would take place subsequently, but because they shaped a widespread public understanding about the meaning of those actions, in this case, their meaning with respect to the relations between clans. These understandings were considerations in the private decisions for action made by individual members; they had a practical effect on the lives of the people who paraded that week with Sump, as well as on those of the people who did not. A number of men from around Senkere told me that if Olonda had not spoken as he did during the meeting, and no Suolol policy vis-a-vis the Sump parade had been articulated publicly, then they would have strongly resisted subsequent efforts by Olonda (or anyone else) to organize a separate "official" Suolol parade. They said that they would have already expended resources on one parade and would not have wanted to do so a second time. Many people did not share Olonda's feelings about the importance of standing up to the Sump; the two groups, as groups, were still technically allies despite personal antagonisms of particular members. As it turned out, because of the involvement of Suolol members in the Sump parade, the Suolol tribe's own parade was held not in July, as originally planned, but two months later. Most of the Suolol men in the Senkere community participated in it, including many of those who had paraded with the Sump earlier. For those who had had to participate in the Sump parade, participation in their own tribal sai pombe created problems of resource allocation. Men whose twem obligations had impelled them to participate in the Sump event needed extra time to organize their affairs: to find the means for renting parade headdresses and other self-decorations a second time, for providing sugarcane and sweet potatoes for guests, and for contributing pearl shell gifts, in Suolol's name, to give to invited paraders from other sent onda. These events illustrate how twem relationships and exchanges do not simply reflect group policy and the requirements of sem ceremonies, but impress a shape on public events. The requirements of twem relationships often affect the timing of group events, and may even occasionally contribute to their cancellation. More accurately, twem and sem relationships, although analytically distinguishable, are intimately articulated in the practical politics of Mendi

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Plate 10. Sai pombe parade marking the beginning of the end of the Suolol mok ink. Spectators sit atop the long Festival houses (in foreground, left, and in background). Setting: Senkere ceremonial ground.

life, both public and private. These events also illustrate how Olonda and other Mendi big-men are constrained by the opinions and by the autonomous actions of ordinary people whose voices do not always ring out during meetings and policy discussions. A big-man's success depends on securing broad popular cooperation - which is never assured - and on the willingness of people to ratify publicly his personal judgments. By the same token, sem policy does not simply refer back to previous sem policies or to the actions of clans (though retrospective accounts sometimes make events appear this way). Clan policy also at least implicitly responds to a concatenation of the personal twem relationships of the group's members. Despite the power of Olonda's oratory, his personal conflict with the Surup did not really become the Suolol's as a whole. Too many Suolol people had valuable Surup exchange partners for that to happen. Twem relationships are sometimes strained when partners strive to participate in many clan events. Similarly, plans for clan ceremonies may be overruled from time to time because of conflicting interests born of personal network obligations. In events such as the Surup sai pombe and those described at the end of Chapter 5, people's words and actions become objects for local interpretation; in all of these situations, the distinction between network and group is politically sig-

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nificant. In practical terms, the demands of twem networks and of sem collectivities are in a state of constantly renegotiated truce. The sai le, Highland Pig Festivals, and the structure of exchange Until the sai pombe, the Senkere Suolol's main problem, at least as regards their mok ink, was with the Festival's tribal or group aspect. The question of which sem onda would participate together was important not only in terms of the eventual size of the pig kill (that is, the numbers of pigs slaughtered), but also in terms of the creation or breakdown of political alliances. The mok ink sequence of ceremonies is a difficult test of the strength of clan organization (and organizers): of the maintenance of a collective sense of purpose and the coordination of the actions of members over a relatively long period of time. But it is more than this. Whereas all public events in Mendi involve both network and group relationships, each type of situation appears to center attention on one or the other kind of social relation. In this regard, the mok ink is unique. It contrasts with other occasions for ceremonially marking both twem and sem relations, and explicitly integrating them. The mok ink is an ingenious play on the tension between network and group. The sai le Once group policy was clear enough so that an approximate date could be set for the pig kill, sem concerns receded from everyday attention, and twem concerns relating to the mok ink became the main preoccupation of Suolol members. This is not to say that there were no public events during this period. In particular, several kowar (specifically kumun wi) and one ol tenga were organized during 1978-9 by members of the Senkere community; but as these were all made by local individuals and subclans to one another, they constituted a kind of redistribution of wealth within the mok ink group. In general, people avoided committing themselves to events that would require them to send wealth outside their group; their main concern was with devising ways to draw wealth in. Toward this end, then, a number of marriages were arranged for young men in the community. This had the effect of rapidly expanding their networks (as well as those of their brothers) and, more specifically, improving their access to pigs. But the most important method for drawing in wealth was not public, and did not involve sponsoring kowar and marriages. The Pig Festival depended primarily on the ability of individual clan members to draw on their networks for wealth. The most complex aspect of their exchange work involved obtaining a sufficient quantity and quality of pearl shells and money from their married clan sisters and daughters (and their in-laws) in time to make incre-

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mental repayments (e.g., nopae; mok ya ri - a gift for the "pig rope," or labor caring for pigs; nonknaik senk - a gift in the name of the children) to their wives and mothers (and their people) for gifts in pig (mok we mulae) the latter had made or had promised to make. All these repayments had to be made before the pig kill; otherwise there would not be enough pigs for the event to proceed. During 1978-9, each man was engaged in organizing his gift exchange obligations in hopes that gift-credits to his "sisters" would eventually balance out his obligations to his wife's relatives; more generally, he was concerned to ensure that he would have as many gifts repaid to him with increments as he would have to give with increments. Each man also prodded his affines for more pigs; many they would hold for him until a month or so before the pig kill, and some he and his wife would look after themselves. In either case, however, he would not have full rights to the pigs, and the ability to kill them, before incremental gifts were given to his affines and wife. In 1979, beginning in August and intensifying over the following months, each individual man publicly displayed the pearl shells and money he had accumulated from various sources (kumun wi and other kowar, clan sisters' people and other twem partners) and distributed them to his affines. Some men made one public distribution, but those with large networks (e.g., Olonda and Pua) made two or three distributions. Olonda made his first display in September, and another two during November. Pua made his during November (two separate distributions) and December (one more). Most ordinary men distributed money and pearl shells in late November and in December, just weeks before pigs were to be killed. The scale of individual displays varied greatly, and depended on the numbers and sizes of pigs a man intended to slaughter as well as on his outstanding gift exchange obligations. For example, Pua (M2) gave gifts to his affines totaling 192 pearl shells (eight "twentyfours") of average or good quality and K3100, some of which constituted a kowar in honor of Alo (see the last part of the earlier section "Outline of Suolol Political History"). Ordinary men typically distributed about twentyfour pearl shells and K200-400 to their affines, plus an occasional live pig or marsupial. The final, much anticipated event took place at the end of December, and according to all reports,21 it was truly spectacular and reflected the large size of the Suolol tribe. Some 1,400 pigs were killed (more than one per capita) by Suolol members alone on two separate days (an unusual procedure necessitated by the fact that pigs were being killed at two locations, Senkere and Kuma, whereas they are usually killed at just one ceremonial ground). On the third day, allies of the Suolol at Yare, Sol and other nearby localities held supporting pig kills of their own to amplify the festivities. In his brief description of the mok ink, D'Arcy Ryan (1961: 199) called it "an apotheosis of the Mendi economy." Despite the emphasis on clan orga-

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Plate 11. Sai le. A man distributes cooked pork and vegetables to his exchange partners (Bela, 1978). nization in his work, and despite the significance of the mok ink in clan politics, Ryan wrote that "its real importance lies in the vast network of minor exchanges taking place between the hosts and their twem partners" (1961: 219). He wrote that while a "clan cluster" must be prosperous in order to contemplate a mok ink, the decision to sponsor one does not depend on the group's having an appropriate number of pigs on hand at the time that they build their long houses; "nor," he argued, "is there much prospect that they will, without outside assistance, have nearly enough when the time comes" to hold the event. Consequently, they must not only attend to the rearing of their own pigs, but they must so arrange their external transactions that their debts are payable in pigs, and will mature at the same time as their ink. Furthermore, during the period of preparation, they will have all the normal economic obligations of a Mendi clan: marriage-, and mortuary-payments in which they are either donors or recipients, participation in other people's inks, and so on. In other words, their normal economic life continues over thefiveyear ink period, but it is intensified, planned and directed wherever possible, in one specific direction: to obtain as many pigs as possible by a certain date. (1961:220) Ryan's emphasis on the importance of twem relationships for accumulating pigs in the mok ink is in accord with my own observations in Upper Mendi. This perspective may be relevant in the study of Pig Festivals elsewhere in the Highlands as well.

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Pig Festivals and the meaning of numbers In the anthropological literature on Highlands pig kills, it is often assumed that people hold Pig Festivals when they have "enough" pigs. The size and frequency of Pig Festivals are interpreted as indices of the productivity of gardens. Few writers reduce the Festivals to such a measure. Nevertheless, the implication persists that the timing and scale of pig kills are determined by technical facts of production: by scarcity or surplus seen as objective conditions. There is a sense in which the Mendi (along with other Highlanders, no doubt) never have "enough" pigs. The contexts of exchange are flexible, and the rules of exchange (e.g., those involving incremental gifts) make possible the absorption of large increases in the supply of wealth. Ryan was accurate when he wrote that the mok ink hosts strive "to obtain as many pigs as possible by a certain date." More pigs, more valuables, are always desired. But at the same time - and this is a central political fact - it is equally true that under certain circumstances, people in Mendi also argue that there are "too many" pigs in their community. Women often complain that their neighbor's pigs are destroying their gardens. Big-men like Olonda may use these complaints when arguing that the time to kill pigs has long since arrived. It is of course possible for a man to calculate in a mechanical fashion just how many pigs he needs in order to satisfy all of his exchange partners and relatives at the pig kill. For example, Mel of Anksuol told me that he first counts up the number of people to whom he must give mok kwin (i.e., legs of pork or other large pieces of meat with the bone - kwin - left in). 22 In his case, he reported that he would give eleven legs of pork to maternal relatives, affines, and other friends from whom he had received the same in a variety of contexts (eight of which were other groups' Pig Festivals), plus one backbone received during an ant senk. This meant that he had to kill three pigs just to repay mok kwin gifts. In addition, he could list fifty exchange partners whom he was most concerned to feed. He figured that in order to be able to give these people good-sized chunks of pork, he would have to kill at least four pigs altogether. As it happened, his younger brother got married just before the pig kill, and gave him four pigs from those the bride brought with her. As a result, he killed eight. That is, the evaluation of pig herds (like the evaluation of the quality of pearl shells) is only partially a technical problem of production, whether one analyzes the matter from the perspective of the individual or of the group. For the individual, once a man figures out how many pigs he needs at minimum, he may be in a position to say what "enough pigs" means in his own case. But he does not have to produce them himself, and he can always use more, as the above example and Ryan's statement both imply. For the group, assessments about the herd are part of political rhetoric; an indirect way of referring to intra- and inter-sem onda conflict. Such statements are not to be

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Table 6.1. Lengths of time sai le pigs were held before the December 1979 pig kill Pig killers*

Less than one year

More than one year

Born in killer's house''

Total killed

M2C Mil* 1 M4 M10 M3 2 M12 M6 M5 3 M15 4 M20 M21 M22 M13 M16 M14 M17 M18 21 men

17 2 6 3 2 5 4 6 3 2 0 3 0 1 0 3 3 0 1 2 1 64 (47%)

10 9 4 6 6 3 3 1 3 4 5 2 5 3 4 0 0 3 1 0 1 73 (53%)

(0) (0) (0) (3) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (1) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (4) (3%)

27 11 10 9 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 137 (100%)

"The men indicated by M # correspond to those described in tables in Chapter 3 and elsewhere in the book (the "accounts sample" described in Appendix B). Men indicated by 1, 2, 3, and 4 were substitutes for some of those from the "accounts sample" who could not be interviewed for this survey. ^This category is a subset of the category of pigs held for more than one year. C M1, the other major big-man in the original "accounts sample" has not been included because he did not respond completely to the survey questions. The information he did provide tallies closely with the information presented here. ^Mll is the husband of Fl ("Tenpuri"), a very active woman who nevertheless cannot officially slaughter her own pigs.

taken literally. Indeed, groups may have the same number of pigs on hand when members are complaining about "too many pigs" as they do when they announce that they have "too few." In fact, people get a substantial number of the pigs they kill at the eleventh hour. Table 6.1 lists the lengths of time twenty-one men of the Senkere community held the pigs they killed at the Senkere sai le.23 The twenty-one men constitute 17 percent of all those Senkere men who killed pigs, and their one hundred thirty-seven pigs are 20 percent of the total number of pigs killed.

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In all, six hundred seventy-two pigs were killed by one hundred twenty-two men, or five and a half pigs per man. The equivalent figure for the twentyone men included in the table is 6.1 pigs per man. Table 6.1 shows that 47 percent of the pigs killed by men in the sample were obtained less than one year before the pig kill. About half of these were obtained within about a month of the event. That is, many of the pigs killed at Senkere were obtained from twem partners rather than produced at home. Very few of those pigs were raised from birth by the pig killer's family. Once again, this is not the result of production constraints; it is a systematic social pattern generated by the rules of exchange and is one of the meaningful ''points" or goals of Festival activity. In Mendi, having "enough pigs" does not mean having time enough (and sufficiently favorable climatic conditions) to be able to raise many pigs. People may always have enough pigs, in the quantitative sense that they always have on hand about the number many of them killed during the sai le (see Appendix A and Chapter 7). It means having access to other people's pigs. Individuals are ready to kill pigs when they have organized their saon in such a way that they have rights to pigs held by their affines and other exchange partners for which they will publicly give incremental gifts - as well as having some on hand. Such organization depends on a long-term commitment to twem relationships, including most especially their relationships with their wives and wives' relatives (a matter to which I will return in a bit). It might be noted that wage earners living outside of Mendi sometimes return and kill pigs they have simply bought in the market: pigs that do not represent an investment of social labor in twem relationships and that do not require mok ya ri gifts to affines. While their rural relatives appreciate their participation and their pork, without the validation of incremental gifts to their wives' relatives, their performance is considered somewhat bogus. The timing of pig kills and the structure of exchange The narrative presented in the previous sections of this chapter illustrates that the timing of pig kills (just like the matter of pig herd size) is a highly charged political question in Mendi, as I suspect it is elsewhere in the Highlands. Arguments about the timing of major events may be indirect ways of talking about other issues. It is, therefore, doubtful that the temporal length or periodicity of pig kill "cycles" can be predicted, whether on the basis of ecological, economic, or other variables. Pig kills in Mendi are more accurately viewed as historical events than they are as the culminations of ritual cycles, and as such, their most important characteristic (from a perspective internal to their logic) is a complex articulation of particular people, interests, and ambitions in social situations constrained by past events. Nevertheless, it is true that the structure of exchange throughout the High-

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lands varies in a systematic fashion, and this patterning demands explanation. In some places, like Chimbu and Mendi, political groups stage periodic pigkilling festivals; in others, like Enga and Mount Hagen, groups organize their festivals into chains, passing large numbers of live pigs along from community to community. Some Highland peoples like the Wola and the Daribi do not organize their exchanges and festivals by means of corporate groups at all. In two papers, Andrew Strathern (1969a, 1978a) suggested that a distinction between "home production" and "finance" - as strategies by which people raise items for ceremonial exchange - may help us understand variations in Highland political economies, and in particular, variations in the role of big-men in them. By "home production" he meant a strategy whereby a participant in ceremonial exchange "depends on the labor force of his own settlement to raise the goods," whereas by "finance" he meant a strategy whereby a participant "enters into a number of reciprocal partnerships with other men, such that they supply him with the items he needs, and he repays them later" (1969a: 42). In Strathern's view, Highland societies differ in their emphasis on one or the other of these means. He proposed that among the Wiru, the Maring and others who stress "home production," big-men are relatively undifferentiated from other men. Big-men who rely on "home production" have more limited means of gaining access to valuables, so their displays are smaller.24 In Melpa and Enga societies, big-men are prominent in exchange ceremonies because they are able to break through the limits of "home production," tapping the resources of people in other groups and therefore not taxing their own clan resources. Strathern (1969a) tentatively correlated "pig-killing societies with a stress on production" and enchained "moka and tee exchanges with a stress on finance." His more recent (1978a) comparison between the Wiru and the Melpa ceremonial exchange systems appears to support this correlation. Wiru big-men, who depend on "home production," are not particularly impressive participants in ceremonies. For example, they did not kill more than fifteen pigs each in the cases cited by Strathern. Big-men in the Mount Hagen (Melpa) area may give away as many as one hundred pigs in moka. Although his general distinction between "finance" and "production" is important, when viewed in more detail, Strathern's model does not fit the Mendi case. In Mendi, big-men are not as prominent as they are in Enga society or in the Mount Hagen area. For example, during the Senkere pig kill, the largest number of pigs killed by one man was twenty-seven, a figure more comparable to Wiru big-men than to Melpa leaders. And in Mendi, pig kills (and other periodic distributions) are the "apotheosis" of political and economic life; Mendi clan exchanges do not take the form of moka-stylQ transactional chains. Moreover, in Mendi, group-sponsored pig kills take place

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infrequently relative to moka and tee events, implying a lesser emphasis on corporate organization. By virtue of these facts, we might expect that the items raised for ceremonial prestations in Mendi were home produced, but we find this not to be the case. A large proportion of the pigs killed at the Senkere mok ink were raised by "financial" means and as we have seen, gift-credit is important in preparations for all Mendi distributions. What is more, big-men are not the only ones who "finance" their prestations. Everyone does this in Mendi.25 Therefore, in Mendi, a reliance on gift-credit does not distinguish big-men from ordinary people. If the Mendi rely on credit as the Melpa and the Enga do, what then accounts for the political and economic differences - particularly as regards big-men and the frequency of corporate group exchanges - between the Mendi and the others? In order to answer this question, we have to be more specific about the social organization of transactions. In Mendi, "finance" is decentralized and universally practiced. The strength of, and cultural emphasis on, autonomous twem relationships in Mendi affects the form of even the most important group events. In particular, in Mendi (in contrast to Mount Hagen), clansmen do not simply act as supporters of their big-men. Rather, they display wealth jointly with them. Even when a gift is given to a group as a whole - as in the case of sai pombe parades and large war compensation prestations - and is ceremonially accepted by big-men of the group, the gift is not retained by the big-men (or anyone else) for a future clan prestation. It is immediately divided up and redistributed among members of the group who may use their shares for their own individual purposes. Any other course of action is censurable. To put this another way, wealth is not accumulated by corporate groups (nor by their representatives in the name of the group); sent onda displays and prestations constitute a significant but temporary damming of wealth, which normally serves as a medium of personal twem relationships. The Mendi are not alone in their emphasis on networks rather than on groups, as Strathern's comparison (1978a: 99) between the Melpa and the Wiru illustrates: In Hagen great emphasis is placed on moka with allies . . . in such moka the individual links men have with their partners are unstressed in formal communication at the time of a festival. What is stressed is the ongoing political relationship of reciprocity between the groups involved and the amalgam of friendship and hostility realized in idioms of competition for status between them. In the Wiru case, the values placed on elements in the pig-killing complex are reversed: it is the network of individual kin and affinal ties which is expressed in formal speech, which the conceited prestations . . . are quite unaccompanied by verbal intergroup communication. This contrast between the two systems I take to be indigenous. The difference between Mendi big-men and big-men in Mount Hagen and Enga might have to do with the very different relationship between network

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What gifts engender

and group - as distinct structural principles organizing economic and political action - in each place. Big-men in most Highland societies appear to stake their fortunes on the fortunes of their clans and to commit themselves to organizing collective action in the name of their groups: ceremonial prestations, ritual events, and warfare. Because of their male bias and exclusivity, Highland clans make structural inequality possible (if not inevitable). To the extent that corporate clan interests are made to dominate network ones in particular Highland societies, big-men, as representatives of clans, may be able to gain nonreciprocal control over the energies of other people. But where an ethic of individual autonomy, based on personal exchange networks, is strong, clan structure itself is affected, and the social power of big-men their personal influence over public affairs and their control over the allocation of the products of other people's labor - is constrained. It would be wrong to conclude that the Mendi case implies that societies with a network focus are necessarily more egalitarian than patrician-dominated ones. One would have to know how generally accessible network relationships and their media of exchange are, whether there exists a ranking of kinds of network linkages or kinds of exchange valuables, and so on. That is, while it is tempting to try to deduce or to predict the moral and political quality of social relations from a knowledge of structural features, such an exercize in the construction of linear relations is misguided (see, e.g., Modjeska 1982). We should know by now that social analysis must be historical and contextual, and that human subjects ever foil predictions made about them. The hierarchic implications of clan organization, and the apparently equalizing implications of networks - if they exist outside of the Mendi case are functions of the histories of communities of people, not of some natural or structural necessity. It is more appropriate to offer another kind of conclusion or, rather, an interpretation of the anthropological record of Highland societies in light of the foregoing analysis. The Mendi case suggests that a tension between network and group, as structural principles of relationship constituting social persons (or agents), and associated in practical contexts with particular interests and meanings, may have dominated the political history of Highland societies for some time. The issue appears to have been joined differently in different places, and a distinctly different balance of forces currently prevails, in this regard, in the central (mostly northern) part of the Highlands than in the frontier (mostly southern) part.26 Whether pigs are killed, as in mok ink, or passed along from recipient to recipient, as in moka, may not be the primary question to ask if we wish to understand significant variations in Highland political economies. We might be better off first asking what kinds of social agency are recognized in the culture in question; more specifically, given the pervasive emphasis on wealth exchange for constituting recognized forms of sociality in Highlands cultures,

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The politics of a Pig Festival

we might ask what sorts of persons may be agents in exchange. In Mendi, twem is an open system in which the agency of men and women, young and old, is recognized: but they are recognized only as individuals, their actions stand only for themselves, and not for a larger social good. In Mendi, '"chains" of exchanges (''financial" relationships, to use Strathern's terms) are characteristic not of clan distributions (as among the Melpa and Enga), but of twem transactions. This difference has political implications: Credit-style gift exchange structured by networks suggests a decentralization of control over the products of labor and other items of value, whereas ceremonial exchange organized in the names of groups (or in the "common good") opens up the possibility that a few men will gain control over that which everyone values. That is, twem implies an anarchic organization over which it is relatively difficult for a few men to establish control. But this possibility is not fully realized, because twem relations do not operate in a vacuum; they articulate with sem relations whose structure and social ethic make that kind of control possible, however much it is resisted. Despite their politically anarchic character, it ought to be clear that twem relationships are ordered; their structural form is implicit in the rules of exchange. These rules are crucial in the mok ink context when many transactions must occur within a short period of time among people with overlapping networks. And in this context they also play a role in integrating twem and sem interests for all participants, even for women. As was noted earlier, the pigs killed during the mok ink period are not produced by the labor of clansmen and their wives alone. Many are obtained very soon before the pig kill from a variety of twem partners. Others which might have been on hand for a number of years prior to the Festival were likewise obtained by means of networks. A large proportion of these pigs were obtained by the sponsors of the mok ink from their wives' relatives and from their wives in exchange for pearl shells and money. A pig killer's affines may be members of a range of allied groups, and they may also be members of his own tribal group (though under most circumstances not his own clan). As Table 6.2 indicates, whereas 58 percent of the pigs killed by the twenty-one men surveyed were obtained from twem partners living in many other Mendi communities,27 42 percent were obtained from affines and other twem partners who were also fellow Suolol, most of these being from the Senkere community itself. In the case of pigs obtained from unrelated partners, full rights in the pigs are usually transferred well before the sai le. But other rules apply to pigs provided by affines for their "sisters' husbands" in transactions called mok we mulae, taking place during the months and years before the pig kill. During the pre-sai le period, the pigs may continue to be cared for by the prospective pig killer's wife's relatives (those who have promised the pigs to him) or else they are looked after by someone in his own household (usually his wife). They cannot be killed while they are

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What gifts engender

Table 6.2. Sai le pigs: sources and repayments Still owes

Pig killers"

Total pigs killed

Pig donors within Suolol

(Pig donors also within Senkere)*

Nopae giftsc

saonc

M2 Mil 1 M4 M10 M3 2 M12 M6 M5 3 M15 4 M20 M21 M22 M13 M16 M14 M17 M18 21 men

27 11 10 9 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 137 (100%)

10 5 1 4 4 6 2 3 5 2 3 0 5 1 2 3 1 0 1 0 0 58 (42%)

(9) (5) (1) (4) (1) (5) (2) (0) (4) (2) (0) (0) (5) (1) (2) (3) (1) (0) (1) (0) (0) (46) (34%)

16 4 7 3 6 2 3 4 3 4 3 0 1 3 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 62 (45%)

1 0 4 1 1 2 1 2 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 23 (17%)

"See Note a, Table 6.1. These figures are a subset of pig donors within Suolol. Senkere residents include people living in the southern part of Suolol tribal territory (the localities Ponea, Kombal, Wepra, Senkere and Molmanda), and not residents of northern Suolol localities (e.g., Kuma) nor Suolol members elsewhere in Mendi or Ialibu (e.g., Wakwak, Kaupena). c These two columns overlap somewhat. The figures indicate the extent to which men killed their pigs despite shortfalls in the shell gifts they were meant to make prior to the slaughter. Nopae is an incremental gift over the value of the pig; saon refers to the pig gift itself. These figures do not indicate how many shells (or how much money) were given as saon or nopae - only how many individual gifts were made.

still considered gift-credits (saon) and more importantly until a number of incremental values (nopae, mok ya ri, and nonknaik senk) are given to the wife and her relatives. These incremental values above the original value of the animal are for the "pig rope" (mok ya) (that is, the woman's work caring for the pig) and for the children (nonknaik) of the marriage. "Pig rope" and child payments signify that affines have what we might think of as joint rights

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The politics of a Pig Festival

in the allocation of the pigs up until the time the pig killer gives them nopae and the other incremental gifts. All these transactions appear irrational in the light of anthropological arguments that have been made in the past concerning pig production and the "agistment" of pigs in preparation for Pig Festivals. Why do the Mendi obtain pigs to kill by means of such exchanges, when the numbers of pigs killed by individuals there (ranging from two to twenty-seven for the people surveyed) are typically on hand in people's houses year-round? Such ' 'financial" arrangements do not, in Mendi, result in many more pigs available to be killed than the mok ink hosts have in ordinary, non-Festival contexts. Since many of the people with whom a pig killer "agists" pigs (or from whom he may otherwise obtain pigs as mok we mulae just before the pig kill) live in his own locality, this behavior cannot be explained as a means of easing the strain on garden resources within his community, nor can it be explained as a way of preventing the spread of disease among a dense pig population. Because a large number of these transactions take place between fellow members of the same tribe, they cannot be explained as a means of reducing the labor burden of pig killers either. The rationale for these transactions is to be found in the exchange rules themselves. Mok we mulae cannot be glossed as "agistment." According to English usage, "agistment" means feeding and caring for animals in return for a payment. It has been the standard term in the Highland anthropological literature used to refer to the process whereby pig "owners" turn pigs over to others to be looked after. But the Mendi do not, as I understand them, regard mok we mulae as a labor service constituting a credit (saon) that entails a "payment" with nopae (or the other incremental payments) as "profit" or "interest." Rather, the Mendi regard mok we mulae as a transaction giving the parties joint rights over the disposition of a pig. Women may prevent their husbands from killing those pigs (held in his own stalls) which she or her relatives gave him as mok we, until he makes appropriate gifts of nopae, mok ya ri, and so on (generally in pearl shells and sometimes in money). His wife's relatives may withhold pigs (even those that the pig killer himself obtained from his other twem partners and later gave to them to look after) until he makes these gifts. Sometimes, in occasional cases involving affines who are members of the same tribe, a man's wife's relatives may decide that they will themselves kill a pig originally held for him, perhaps because they claim that he has not fulfilled his social obligations to them as a twem partner. They are obliged to repay his saon only, simply replacing the value of the pig, and usually in money. These rules, in general, structure the flow of wealth in individual networks, encouraging wives' relatives to extend credit with the expectation of receiving

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What gifts engender

incremental repayments like nopae, and encouraging sisters' in-laws to provide the pearl shells and other valuables needed in order to make those payments. The twem ethic of mok ink holds that brothers and sisters "sit together" (at least metaphorically) during their group's pig kill and give pork together to the brother's wife's people. A sister therefore has an interest in the success of her brother's display. When they give wealth to their brothers during the mok ink period, Mendi women frequently do so on their own as autonomous people with a right to the disposition of the things they give, and not as agents of their husbands'. Finally, the "property" rules implicit in mok we mulae transactions recognize the right wives have to control the pigs they have helped raise. These rules acknowledge the centrality of women's labor in producing the pigs required for the mok ink. When Mendi women receive pearl shells from their husbands as nopae and mok ya ri, and redistribute these gifts to their relatives prior to the pig kill, their creation of and control over wealth are acknowledged formally. At the same time, their interests are actively engaged in the mok ink. Given the general emphasis in Mendi on personal autonomy, the event could not be contemplated without a degree of interested cooperation on their part. The mok ink, then, contrasts with other large-scale ceremonial events in Mendi for, although all of them are the practical expressions of both twem and sem relationships, the pig kill alone ceremonializes both. By incorporating women and twem interests into its formal structure, the extended sequence of mok ink events cloaks both with cultural value and legitimacy and is simultaneously validated by them. The Pig Festival reproduces the characteristic structure of social relations in Mendi; it is an especially marked statement of the dynamic relationship between twem and sem in Mendi culture.

7

"Development" in Mendi

Tone, a young man, commenting on the relative value of money and pearl shells: " . . . money is better [than pearl shells] this way: You can get more things with money than with pearl shells; money is stronger. Money isn't heavy, and it isn't so big that when you give it to someone everyone can see how much you gave. Shells you have to give in the open. Money you can hide in your hand. With shells people have more to talk and argue about." Nare, a leader, toward the end of a discussion about whether pearl shells will ever be abandoned in Mendi: "Pearl shells will not be abandoned. When one holds a pearl shell in one's hand, one feels that it is heavy, or "right" [momak kilponge kendpi]. There is no pleasure in displaying and counting money the way there is with pearl shells. . . . When people think only of food, when they all hold pencils in their hands and work for money, then all [our former practices] will go. This is not true yet. Later people will still arrange kowar when their relatives die; only with money. No one will organize the large clan festivals anymore. But everyone does not yet go to school. When they do, then pearl shells will go."

Introduction The research on which this study is based was motivated initially by a question about the relationship between the intensity of production and political structure. Anthropological and archaeological speculation about this relationship is frequently voiced in an idiom of evolution and cause, rather than of history and social agency. This is particularly so where the society in question is distant or alien, where the local heroes and significant events and issues are hard to discern as such, and where the local paradigms and syntax are missing. When these things are not recoverable, our own questions - about hierarchy and equality, politics, and economics - are all we have. In that event, the problem is that our assumptions about the functional relationship between production and politics have been simplistic: Economic intensification or development entails political centralization and the emergence of economically 213

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What gifts engender

Plate 12. The Mendi airport. based relations of power. Historical motion has a bias for hierarchy; by implication, social relations with an egalitarian leaning are immobile, "cold." 1 Highland New Guinea seemed a good arena for a critical review of these assumptions. In the Highlands, relatively egalitarian political relations are observed in conjunction with relatively intensive systems of production and exchange, which have existed since long before the colonial period, and which are known archaeologically and ethnohistorically to have intensified and to have expanded in geographical range (especially during the past few centuries). What is more, Highland societies differ among themselves in terms both of economic intensity and political form. It is therefore possible to investigate intraregional variations systematically in order better to understand the structural possibilities in related, contemporary Highland political economies as well as to study the internal structure and histories of particular societies.

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' 'Development'' in Mendi

With this sort of information, we might come to imagine how Highland economies developed without becoming stratified: a historical dynamic without a strong hierarchical bias. For history proper, it would remain to discover who made, or is making, that history and what their own sense is of what they are up to. For Highland societies, understanding indigenous exchange practices is the initial challenge since these practices are at once the motivating and organizing framework for production and a central medium of political action. They are, in fact, the point of articulation between our questions and local concerns. The intensity of particular Highland production systems is arguably the result of structures of demand and distribution constituted by culturally and historically specific rules of gift exchange innovated within (and operating on) a variety of environmental and demographic constraints. Studies of how various systems of exchange - each with its own structure of demand and rules about the allocation of garden products and other valuables - differentially affect the level of production in a range of Highland societies might lay bare the indigenous mechanisms of economic intensification (see, e.g., Modjeska 1982). At the same time, both individual status and political relations between groups are made in gift exchange in Highland societies. Just as they vary economically, Highland societies vary politically: Neither the relative prominence of big-men, nor the form and scale of cooperative action, nor the relationships between men and women are uniform, and these variations may be correlated with particular structures of exchange (see, e.g., Strathern 1969a, 1978a). Thus, a comparative study of exchange, sensitive to its role in mediating production and politics, might suggest the structural dynamic of regional history; ethnographic studies of exchange might do the same for particular societies. Mendi seemed a particularly appropriate site for such an inquiry. The Mendi have an elaborate system of exchange. Their agricultural methods are comparable in intensity to those of the Enga communities studied by Eric Waddell. But the Mendi are also somewhat more egalitarian than the central Enga and other peoples to their north. Their leaders are less different from ordinary men than are leaders in Mae Enga and Melpa societies, clan organization is not as dominant, and the autonomy of both women and unmarried people is culturally recognized in ways they are not among the Mendi's northern neighbors. In these regards, Mendi social relations have much in common with other Southern Highland societies, whose emphasis on corporate group action and big-manship is generally less than in societies to the north. Other Southern Highland societies might have presented a starker contrast with the Enga and Melpa, but an analysis of the Mendi suggests the possibility of a framework for integrating recently noted north-south contrasts.2 In this book, I have been concerned primarily with an analysis of local

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What gifts engender

realities, and very little with regional comparison. While this case does not begin to bear the weight of the analytical burden outlined above, I believe that it is prerequisite to it. It also addresses the matter of a history of "equality" in ways that I shall clarify. Research in Mendi led me to some unexpected results. The structure of exchange was complex in ways I had not anticipated. I found that in order to understand the structure and dynamic of Mendi society as it is currently constituted, it was important to distinguish between two forms of sociality, or structural principles, each of which organizes exchange in its own way. I have used the Mendi terms twem and sent to refer to these structural principles, and have glossed them as "personal exchange partnership" and "corporate clan (or group) relationship" respectively. Each specifies a relationship between persons mediated by valued products and resources. The distinction between network and group relations is not simply an alien analytical construct. Just like the Melpa people's "producer" and "transactor" distinction explicated by Marilyn Strathern, network-group is a significant contrast in indigenous Mendi social thought. To identify the salient characteristics of sent as a social relation structuring production, exchange and political action is not a significant achievement; corporate groups are widely understood by anthropologists as the political (and formerly military) means by which central Highlanders safeguard access to land, the productive basis of their social life. The study of exchange in the Highlands has also until recently been dominated by descriptions of clansponsored public ceremonies, an important political forum. However, to understand twem as a principle of relationship structuring production, exchange and political action in a manner distinct from sem is a departure from the common understanding and bears reemphasis here. In Chapter 3, I distinguished twem relationships from those of sem on a number of counts and on that basis argued that twem networks are not merely the mechanism or means by which individuals accumulate valuables for clan prestations. Exchange partnerships are not maintained and elaborated simply in order to facilitate clan events, but are also ends in themselves; they are part of the way in which the Mendi make themselves as autonomous social agents or persons, and as such they are very much a part of Mendi "politics," broadly construed. That is not the only way in which twem is "political." Network activities are expressions of an ethic of exchange at times contradictory to the ethic of clan solidarity. An accumulation of obligations to exchange partners acquired in the course of twem "exchange work" may actually inhibit participation in clan festivals, just as participation in festivals may occasionally cause the breakup of partnerships. Although network and group obligations may be fulfilled simultaneously and are in fact interdependent, they sometimes conflict.3 Consequently, political discourse and action in the clan forum is conditioned by the network-group relationship no less than network action is.

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When both sorts of obligations cannot be satisfied simultaneously, men may choose to make good on promises to their exchange partners rather than to participate with their clansmen in a group event, or they may do the reverse. Unlike in some northern Highland societies, the Mendi do not give automatic priority to clan obligations over those to exchange partners. Although at times this conflict delays or entirely cancels a clan event (as was illustrated in Chapters 5 and 6), the continuous deployment of wealth for twem purposes frequently results simply in clan or tribal performances that are less impressive than they might have been had corporate action been paramount. This was evident even during the final year of the Suolol Pig Festival. During 1983, I spoke with a number of Senkere community members about their participation in the pig kill three and a half years before. One theme repeated itself in men's responses to questions about the pigs they had killed. A number of prominent men apologized about their performances and explained them in terms of competing network or sem kank (subclan) commitments. One Mesa leader killed "only" eight pigs; he had killed or given away fifteen pigs just a few months before as part of a kowar in honor of an important kinsman who had died some years earlier. A Pulumsem leader, who also killed eight pigs, had contributed another eight pigs as nopae (for no return) to a marriage distribution earlier in the year, and twelve as part of a kowar to three Mesa men. Still another leader, who killed seven pigs at the Suolol event, had contributed to four separate kowar several months before the pig kill - two (involving nine pigs) to affines who were members of other subclans within Suolol, and two (involving eight pigs) to matrilateral relatives elsewhere. The ordinary men I questioned were less apologetic (perhaps because they had never argued as strongly as had the prominent men referred to above for the priority of the Suolol project), but their involvements had a similar form. During the several months preceding the Suolol pig kill, they had also given some of the pigs to which they had had access to exchange partners in order to meet personal gift obligations and to help in marriages or kowar. Meeting twem obligations does not however necessarily entail a small showing at clan festivals. The leader Pua's pig kill performance was an extreme example: 27 pigs killed despite contributions to marriage exchanges and kowar totaling at least 30 pigs during the nine months preceding the Suolol event. Nevertheless, the point holds that despite a public commitment to a strong corporate showing in the name of Suolol and despite a public emphasis on drawing wealth into the community, during the months before the pig kill, rather than disbursing it, obligations at "another level" were still honored and had an effect on the quantitative scale (if not the meaning) of the tribal event. All in all, these kinds of choices imply that, compared to their northern neighbors, the Mendi do not stress large-scale corporate action. Nevertheless, they do consider such action generally legitimate, and from

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What gifts engender

time to time they agree in principle to orient their network obligations to facilitate it. In Chapters 4 and 5, I described some of the ways in which the potential conflict between network and group interests are argued out and mediated. The rules concerning incremental gifts provide a tacit rationale for the extension of gift-credit to men by their affines for repayment at the time of a corporate event, conjoining wives' and twem interests with those of men and clans: By means of these rules men are encouraged to be generous to their affines at clan prestations, and their affines are encouraged to give to them and to wait until the public ceremony for a repayment. Another relevant structural fact that works to mesh sem and twem interests was revealed clearly in the organization of ol ombul and ol tenga (Chapter 5), and was also true of the mok ink. Even though the first two types of ceremonial event are organized formally as prestations from one sem onda to another, still the wealth given and received in the name of groups is almost immediately redistributed to individuals for their use in twem networks. That is, the accumulation of wealth for corporate use is fairly constrained in Mendi; it can be viewed as a temporary damming of the flow of valuables through twem networks, rather than a radical appropriation from them. It contrasts v/ith customary practices in those Highland societies in which prestations are passed along a chain of groups, a resource in the control of those individuals most active in determining group policy. Beyond these structural facts, the relationship between twem and sem is negotiated both directly and indirectly when men get together to discuss corporate events. As important advocates of clan action, big-men use various means to persuade other men to give corporate projects priority: allusions to past or present competition with other groups (and active maneuvers to encourage the latter to intervene) and notably a rhetoric of gender idioms that play on the differential involvement of men and women in network and clan affairs and suggest an hierarchic ordering of their respective value. Both means divert attention away from individual and subgroup interests that could divide the community of men and weaken the solidarity of the clan. They focus instead on other sources of tension: male-female relations and intergroup relations. The periodic achievement of large-scale group unity depends on political organizing and the management of social meaning. It is not an unquestioned, institutionalized fact of life in Mendi. Because of this, it is unclear how the social structure as a whole should be characterized. As I noted in Chapter 4, the actors disagree among themselves on this question (to the extent that they explicitly consider it). Even if clans are taken to be the dominant component of Mendi social structure - in the sense that the organizing efforts of big-men are accorded general cultural value, and that those efforts affect daily life in direct and indirect ways for everyone, regardless of whether they participate actively in clan events - their dominance is not uncontested nor is it uncon-

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ditional. Moreover, the relationship between the network and clan principles is not fixed; it has without doubt changed over the course of the past generation (especially since the suppression of tribal warfare and the efflorescence of exchanges) and will continue to do so. For present purposes, the point is that whatever one's interpretation of the balance of force between twem and sent today, the dynamic tension between them is a core characteristic of Mendi social life. Twem, sent, and indigenous development The problematic articulation of network and group principles evident in Mendi gift exchange is relevant to the questions with which I started my research, concerning the functional relationship between production and political structure. I began this study with the assumption that gift exchange places a demand on garden production. Although this proposition is at odds with the common bias of development analysts that economies like that of the Mendi are "subsistence systems" (see the section "Perspectives on Changing Times" later in this chapter) it should no longer be controversial among anthropologists. What I hope this book adds, in the form of an ethnographic case study, to a general understanding of societies of the gift, is an argument about their internal complexity and dynamism.4 Recognizing the importance of exchange networks introduces a complexity and even instability into the structure of gift exchange itself in Mendi, whereas we have tended to see dynamism and tension in Highland societies at another level: in the cyclical fortunes of empirical groups, or alternatively in conflict between women and men (as interdependent household members, or as producers and transactors). With regard to an understanding of production and politics, this argument has two implications (which I will discuss in more detail below). First, the intensification of production is not always attributable to clan prestations alone. Network exchanges may also contribute to this effect and in ways that may even be empirically distinct from ceremonial exchange (as they are in Mendi). Another way of putting this is that big-men and clans - politically centralizing forces - are not necessarily the only agents of intensification in Mendi (compare especially Modjeska 1982). Ordinary people, and exchange partnerships - forces for decentralization - may also have this effect. Second, politics itself is not just a matter of big-men and corporate group relationships in Mendi. Network issues exist in a continuous practical tension with those of clans; each is articulated in relationship to the other. Therefore, in order to understand the politics even of Mendi clan events, network issues must be taken into account. In the section "Twem and the Politics of Pig Kills," I shall take up the question of the periodicity of these events from this perspective. As was noted in Chapter 6, while the timing of Pig Festivals has

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What gifts engender

been explained as a function of the feedback relationships of ecological systems elsewhere in the Highlands, in places like Mendi a sociopolitical approach is more productive. On this matter, the ethnographic literature provides accounts of competition among big-men and groups, and intimations of conflicts between men and women over the allocation of garden products and pigs. Here, I suggest that a structural tension between network and group may also be involved in some places. In Mendi, this tension underlies a wide range of politically charged conflicts. Twem and the intensification of production How might twem help account for the intensity of production in Mendi? In Chapter 3, I argued that "exchange work" communicates the demand for valuables widely and is likely to keep the level of production relatively high and constant. In contrast, clan ceremonies create an uneven demand for wealth. From the perspective of particular groups, the temporal patterning of clan prestations involves periodic peaks and stretches of apparent inactivity. Detailed long-term studies of agricultural output have not been made in Mendi. However, in Simbu (formerly Chimbu) Province - where ceremonial exchange takes the form of periodic pig kills comparable to those in Mendi (as opposed to chains of live pig prestations like the Enga tee and the Melpa moka) - such studies have been undertaken by Harold Brookfield and Paula Brown, and by Robin Hide. Although production in Simbu is to some extent cyclical - alternating between highs and lows - Brookfield (1973: 155) writes: Pig herds are rebuilt to an intermediate level fairly swiftly after a ceremony, and the rebuilding can be accelerated by trade. They are then managed about this level until such time as the need for ceremony arises from other causes, when they are permitted to increase. Robin Hide (1981) also documents the rapid buildup of Sinasina (also in Simbu) herds after Pig Festivals, well before preparations for a subsequent ceremony. He also notes that herds are characterized by high rates of turnover; that is, while the pig population may be maintained at a relatively high, constant quantitative level for a long time before a Festival, individual pigs may not be held for very long. This sort of change in the herd would not show up in periodic general herd counts but would be evident if a researcher were regularly to ask people for the names and the provenance of the pigs they currently hold. For the Mendi, there is also evidence of a rapid buildup of herds just before and just after Festivals, and for high rates of turnover during inter-Festival periods (though more research is also needed). Some clues were presented in Chapter 6 concerning the size of the Suolol Pig Festival herds of individual men, and the length of time pigs were held by Festival participants before the event (see Table 6.1). This information suggests something about the extent

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in Mendi

Table 7.1. Comparison of pig herds: 1978, 1979, 1983 December 1979

M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M9 M12 M15 M17 M18 M21 M22 A B C D E F G 19 men

February 1978

Pigs killed

Pigs left over

July 1983

26 8 5 13 2 5 8 4 4 2 4 6 7 8 6 6 6 3 5 128

27 8 9 6 6 7 7 5 2 2 4 3 8 12 7 4 9 4 4 134

2 6 3 0 1 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 5 3 2 0 4 0 0 32

24 2 11 16 13 0 7 2 4 4 4 8 17 8 4 7 1 3 2 137

: Men indicated by M # correspond to individuals on tables in Appendix B (the "accounts sample"). Since half of the original 1978 sample were not available for interviews in 1983, substitutions were made; these are listed here and in Tables 7.2 and 7.3 as A-G. (For a comparison of the households of those men included here with those included in the 1978 sample, see Appendix B.)

to which the herd on the eve of the pig kill was the result not so much of "home production" as of rapidly "financed" buildup. Those data were collected in survey form by community members after I left Mendi in 1979. I was able to make further inquiries in the Senkere area myself in 1983 concerning the post-Festival herd; some of these data are summarized in Tables 7.1,7.2, and 7.3. Table 7.1 compares the pig herds of nineteen men at three points in time: in early 1978 (about two years before the pig kill), at the time of the pig kill, and in mid-1983 (about three and a half years later). Tables 7.2 and 7.3 describe the sources of pigs held by those men in 1978 and in 1983, respectively. Table 7.1 suggests that despite having killed somewhat more than 80 percent of their herds at the 1979 pig kill, by 1983 the men surveyed had already built their herds up past what they had been in 1978 (and even a bit

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Table 7 .2. Sources of 1978 pigs

M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M9 M12 M15 M17 M18 M21 M22 A B C D E F G 19 men

Total pigs

Homeproduced

Marriages

Twem

Kowar

Market

26 8 5 13 2 5 8 4 4 2 4 6 7 8 6 6 6 3 5 128(100%)

7 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 16(13%)

9 3 0 1 2 4 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 1 28 (22%)

3 0 3 6 0 1 6 1 0 0 1 5 3 0 4 5 2 1 3 44 (34%)

4 5 0 6 0 0 2 0 0 2 3 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 1 26 (20%)

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 7 1 0 2 0 0 14(11%)

past the numbers of pigs they had collectively killed in 1979). These men had an average of 6.7 pigs each in 1978, 8.7 just before the pig kill, and 7.2 in 1983. While it would be interesting to compare the average size of individual pigs in the two periods, I am unable to do this. Robin Hide's data suggest that, because the Sinasina's main concern is to produce fat pigs for their pig kills, they forbid breeding for a while before each Festival. Mendi informants' opinions accord well with Sinasina practice. During 1977-9, they explained the lack of home-produced pigs by saying that they did not want their sows to become skinny (which they do when they are lactating). Tables 7.2 and 7.3 support informants' assertions about the changing importance of pig production before and after the Festival. During 1978, exchange partners were the most important source of pigs, followed by marriages and kowar. In 1983, litters were the single most important source of pigs, followed by exchange partners and kowar. The relatively sharp drop in the importance of marriages as a source of pigs between 1978 and 1983 appears to support informants' statements that they were concerned to many off their sons before the pig kill because they expected that it would be harder to obtain gift-credit after the Festival was over. (Less altruistically, the mar-

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Table 7.3. Sources of 1983 pigs

M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M9 M12 M15 M17 M18 M21 M22 A B C D E F G 19 men

Total pigs

Homeproduced

Marriages

Twem

24 2 11 16 13 0 7 2 4 4 4 8 17 8 4 7 1 3 2

7 0 5 9 7 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 1 0 1 2 0 50 (36%)

6 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 4 0 0 1 19(14%)

0 1 1 3 5 0 2 1 0 1 1 2 4 4 2 2 0 1 1 31 (23%)

137(100%)

Kowar 9 1 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0

24(18%)

Market 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 2 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

13 (9%)

riages of sons were also a quick way of acquiring many credit-extending affines just when they were needed and of getting young men actively involved in Festival preparations on an adult scale, as the cases cited in Chapters 3 and 6 imply.) What motivated all this production? The post-Festival period at Senkere was not a time of inactivity but was dominated by individual and sem kank kowar (as well as by personal twem transactions and marriages). The corporate focus of exchange was relatively muted in 1983; indeed if I had begun my research then, there would have been less evidence of the practical reality of "Suolol." Alcome (a middle-aged Olsem man) explained that the incentive or motivation for production after 1979 was to make kowar and other twem gifts: "During the time of the pig kill, we didn't produce many pigs. Now many sows have been made pregnant and have farrowed here. We are all trying to increase our herds in preparation for kowar and other like purposes. We cannot just ask our twem partners for pigs now." Alcome said that now it was good to have mok konde on hand: pigs for which one owed no one because one had raised them oneself (i.e., pigs that

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one had not acquired as saon from twem partners who would eventually request a return). Both through the production of pigs and the acquiring of obligations to make kowar (which involve accepting initiatory gifts to be repaid with large increments of nopae)y the post-pig-kill period was a time for investment, Mendi-style: a time of shoring up and extending personal relationships and social standing through the generous distribution of wealth. The rules of exchange dominating the period after the pig kill differed from those that held during 1977-9, and encouraged a high rate of turnover in the wealth people held. Despite the fact that people's 1983 gift-debts then did not appear to exceed those they had accumulated over the many years before the pig kill, practically everyone appeared to be worried that they had too many outstanding obligations. If their 1983 obligations weighed heavily, it was because they were not systematically balanced out by incoming incremental gifts (or the expectation that such gifts would be relatively easy to arrange), unlike the situation during the Festival. The 1983 obligations may also have been more troubling to people since for many years before the pig kill, they had been able to delay repaying gifts given to them until the Festival. Afterward, without a good corporate excuse for delaying, they were expected to make quicker returns, in the twem fashion. That it was definitely harder in 1983 to accumulate wealth for any length of time by means of requests to twem partners was also an important part of the rationale for the emphasis on home production. Other information supporting the contention that the Mendi typically build up and maintain relatively large herds during non-Festival times comes from personal exchange histories. In Mendi it is possible to ask people about the pigs they accumulated and killed at various times in their lives - at the times of the births of their children, at sai ley and so forth. Indeed, some men found this theme to be a particularly meaningful framework around which to organize a life history narrative. Most of the Senkere men with whom I spoke about these matters did not report having their largest herds just before the two Suolol pig kills (1956 and 1979). Nor did they tend to organize their narratives around their efforts to build up their herds specifically for clan pig kills. Rather, in the several detailed narratives I was given, informants stressed how they had parlayed pigs into new exchange partnerships or how they had organized or sponsored an impressive public prestation in their own names. This was true of both the prominent men and the ordinary men with whom I spoke. In Mendi in particular, corporate events appear to draw on a level of production motivated most immediately by a twem rationale. Although periodic corporate prestations may have a cumulative effect over the long term on the level of production, network exchanges may be directly responsible for keeping the overall level of production high. The twem principle itself may account for the typical level of demand and of production during the interFestival times. The social requirements of exchange partnerships may account

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for the observation that herds are built up rapidly after Pig Festivals and maintained for long periods in the absence of other large-scale corporate events. It would be simplistic to propose that corporate prestations are entirely dependent on fwm-motivated production, as the two are thoroughly interdependent. Whatever else they do, twem networks also communicate regionally the demand for pigs and other things coming from localized corporate projects. Even when one's own group is not sponsoring a prestation, corporate projects elsewhere in the region undoubtedly have at least an indirect effect on the level of demand in one's twem network (whether or not a particular donor is aware of it). But by the same token, since corporate wealth prestations are rapidly dissolved into twem gifts, the clan cannot be considered a final cause of the rate of circulation or the level of production.5 What seems certain is that twem and sem relations have an interdependent effect on circulation and that twem relations have an explicit and direct effect on production. Twem and the politics of pig kills The network-group distinction I have been making may be key to a general interpretation of a range of politically charged conflicts in Mendi: malefemale antagonism (expressed especially between husbands and wives, and not much between brothers and sisters), arguments at clan meetings between men (particularly big-men and ordinary men), and even certain aspects of inter-group competition. Although all of these bear, one way or another, on the broad question about indigenous styles of development with which I am concerned, I will discuss just one here. The recognition that exchange networks embody a structural principle distinct from that of clanship casts some light on the scheduling of pig kills in a way that might be illuminating not just in Mendi, but elsewhere as well. Brookfield and others have argued that the period between pig kills is not determined simply by the reproduction and growth rates of pigs. Theoretically, since Highlanders build up their herds by means not only of breeding but also of exchange and trade, they could hold pig kills at intervals of less than the four years it takes for pigs to grow to maturity (assuming that the Festival sponsors trade with people who do not also have frequent pig kills). Typically however, the interval between a community's pig kills is longer than four years. Brookfield, Hide, and others have suggested that this period is determined by sociopolitical factors, but their suggestions are unspecific. Much effort has been expended in studies of the rationale for corporate ceremonial exchanges in the central Highlands, and a lot is now clear concerning their organization and meaning. We have a reasonable understanding of why people (and particularly big-men) wish to hold such ceremonies. The problem is that one sometimes gets the sense that they are an uncontested good; that the main limits on the frequency and scale of Pig Festivals and the

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What gifts engender

like are technical problems of production or logistics. For the central Highlands we have not considered adequately the question of whether there are systematic reasons some people may wish to postpone or cancel clansponsored projects and resist corporate or centralizing forms of organization. Although there is much of relevance to this question in the literature on Highland gender relations (see references to Rappaport's study cited in Friedman 1974), this source of information remains to be developed explicitly. We also need to know much more about relations between big-men and ordinary men. Not only would answers to this question enable us to see structural relationships between central and fringe Highland societies; it would also provide us with a better understanding of the alternative structural possibilities internal to central Highland social systems, and therefore, of the resources available for culturally constituted change. The preceding account has suggested an answer for the Mendi case. From the perspective of the twem ethic, we can understand delays in the staging of clan events (or to put the matter in more neutral terms, the length of time between them) not as a sign of a weakness or lack of organization generally and of productive capacity but, rather, as a sign of the strength of a different kind of organization. In Mendi, the network ethic is strong; the priority of clan over network goals is acknowledged and asserted only periodically, and then with qualifications, and lacks the urgency it may have had during precolonial times. In any case, it must constantly be restated. Although clans may have been reproduced actively in wartime in the past, ceremonial exchanges are nowadays the chief means by which they are made real. It is all the more important then, in Mendi, that the twem obligations be interwoven with those of sem during large-scale ceremonial prestations. If they were not then sem events might have less legitimacy and take place more rarely (given the importance most people accord their network relationships and the strain that group events place on them). In some Highland societies, the network principle (or something like it) is more important than in Mendi: The Wola, to the west of Mendi, are a case in point. In other Highland societies, the relationship between network and group appears to be reversed. Mae Enga society, to the north, may be the clearest example in which corporate solidarity dominates other social relationships. In Enga, group sponsored prestations (particularly the tee) are much more frequent than they are in Mendi, big-men are "bigger," and women are more clearly incorporated as second-class citizens in their husband's clans. But even here (as in Wola) it would be interesting to explore indications that the dominant structural principle is not the only "thinkable" one in the culture. If it is correct that the Mae and the Mendi agricultural systems are intensive to a comparable degree (at the least, they employ similar techniques of cultivation), one might add that it is unwise to use the frequency of corporate pig prestations as an index of general economic intensity. More a fact of political

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structure than of production, the frequency of clan-sponsored events may be an index of the strength of corporate organization relative to other possibilities. Independent measures of output would be required to assess the intensity of production; also, a wider study of the rate of exchanges - taking account of informal and dyadic transactions as well as public prestations of various sorts, and of the frequency and occasions for pig exchanges as opposed to pig kills - would have to be designed in order to compare the economies of these Highland societies. Perspectives on changing times Everyone, real or imagined, deserves the open destiny of life. [Grace Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute]

I have been considering the functional effects of the indigenous structure of relations. The articulation of network and group implies a particular style of development - a set of social choices (in effect) about the ends of production (needs, desires) and about how the means and ends of production are to be controlled. It also implies a particular ordering of social interests, values and understandings; it is to these matters that I turn here. Times are changing everywhere in the Highlands. Some readers might question the importance of dissecting local political economic structures to reveal their internal contradictions when the main "dialectic" these days involves the incorporation of places like Senkere into a market economy and a system of parliamentary government. What difference is made by an appreciation for the internal complexity of rural gift relationships if these local realities will soon be invalidated or overwhelmed by global ones? After all, by the late 1970s when I met them, the Mendi had had a generation's experience with various forms of state government, and most people had had some direct experience with a market economy, selling their cabbages or their labor. Even at the height of involvement in the mok ink, Senkere residents were not always satisfied with life in Mendi. Many of them looked forward to the end of the Festival, when they might turn their attention to other concerns, including making money (which had become an increasingly important component of marriage gifts and other kinds of prestations). But, indigenous forms of sociality are not so easily uprooted; to discount them is to risk misperceiving the shape of events. A sense of the internal complexity of local societies enables us to ask better questions about the meaning of people's stated intentions and desires with respect to the larger world. The local cultural system, continually remade in the sorts of social relations I have described, is still the framework within which the Mendi define, categorize, and orchestrate the new things and ways of acting to which they have been introduced during the past generation or so. Its study is prerequisite to any understanding of their active role in making their own (contemporary) history,

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What gifts engender

whatever its outcome: For surely, by means of syncretic (or "ambiguous"; cf. Gregory 1982) innovations like the incorporation of money into gift exchange, the Mendi are - consciously or not - putting their own forms of sociality at risk.6 At the very least then, the foregoing analysis ought to cast some light on the local terms of debate about ongoing and proposed changes. In this section, I mean to describe how some members of the Senkere community assess the value of indigenous and introduced practices during the pre-pig-kill period and afterward, drawing them by proxy into a dialogue with some more familiar analysts of these matters. To Kaupena and back (1977-83) While the concerns of Senkere community residents revolved around local politics and preparations for the pig kill during 1977-9 when I was there, undercurrents of dissatisfaction were evident as well. Indeed, although they have not thus far been foregrounded, parts of another story have been presented throughout this account: from the pervasive use of money both in personal and group prestations to the significance of a series of card games (and the disputes they engendered) in local political history (see Chapter 6 and also Lederman 1981). Most notable for the present discussion were Olonda's speeches at various gatherings held during 1978 when the date for the pig kill was still in question. Concerned to speed the Festival along to its conclusion, Olonda made frequent references to the number of sorcery deaths that had occurred within Suolol (among other troubles). He wanted to kill his pigs as soon as possible and then leave Mendi for Kaupena, a place in Ialibu District to the east, where members of Awa-Kurelka (affiliated with Narelke) had given him land and coffee trees. By that time, many Kurelka (particularly Olsem members from Wepra) had already relocated to Kaupena, where they are collectively known as MendKurelka. Some seven families and six married men moved during the early 1970s after two of them had happened upon the Awa-Kurelka during a trip to Ialibu and they had all decided that their shared name implied that they had a common origin. The Ialibu Kurelka offered the Mendi house and garden land, some of which was already planted in coffee. The Kurelka in Mendi invited their Kaupena allies to Suolol mok ink events throughout the 1970s - it might be recalled that one such invitation became a sensitive issue in the conflict between Olonda and the Surup in 1978 (in addition to Chapter 6, see Lederman 1980) - and they had collectively made one of two promised prestations to the Awa-Kurelka to reciprocate their land gifts.7 These people had left Mendi for many reasons. While the land offer itself was attractive, no Senkere area group except the Mesa complained that they were short of land. Making a living in Kaupena, however, was supposed to be easier than in Upper Mendi,8 and what is more, the opportunities for mak-

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' 'Development'' in Mendi

ing money there were vastly superior. Unlike the Senkere community, Kaupena is near the Highlands Highway and, being in Ialibu, is much closer to Mount Hagen and other marketing centers. There are sawmills and coffee plantations in the area and, compared with Mendi, excellent opportunity for wage work. And whereas trade stores in Upper Mendi mostly service rural communities, trade stores in the Kaupena area could be maintained on the roadsides where they were said to bring in larger profits. Furthermore, echoing his allusions to the incidence of sorcery, many people agreed with Olonda that Mendi was not what they would like it to be. With him, they worried that the deaths he spoke about signified a breakdown of the strength of clan alliances: The competition between the Senkere area Suolol and their Surup neighbors was one aspect of this, and the tension between the Mesa, the Molsem, and some Olsem followers of Olonda was another. Additionally, Olonda and others felt that there were too few young people in their community with leadership aspirations; no one presented himself as a potential organizer of a future Suolol pig kill, a situation that also threatened the long-term viability of the group. In fact, in 1978 I was able to speak at length with seventeen young men about the Festival, and with only two exceptions, they all doubted that there would ever be another. While they accepted the importance of its rationale (as well as that for other corporate prestations like ol tenga), they viewed the mok ink as much too much work and could not imagine themselves actively sponsoring one as their elders had. Therefore, as soon as the mok ink was over, Olonda made good his promise to leave Mendi, taking one wife and three children with him. Four other married men (three with parts of their families) followed his example. Listening to all the talk during 1977-9 about how members of the Senkere community would be off to Kaupena after the pig kill, I imagined that when I returned to Papua New Guinea again in a few years, I too would have to go to Ialibu to see many of the people I knew best. But that turned out not to be true. By 1983 several of those who had gone to Kaupena in the early 1970s and more recently had returned to Mendi; while Olonda was still there, part or all of three families and five of the married men who had left their families in Mendi had returned. At least one other family was planning to return to Mendi as soon as the man received a ceremonial payment due him in Kaupena. Those who had returned said that they expected that Olonda would as well, eventually. Why had they returned? In several separate interviews and discussions, they all cited their fear of malaria (which is less common in Upper Mendi) and their discomfort with the hotter weather. They also said that people in Kaupena were in poor health and were dying, whereas Mendi is a healthy place, and the sorcery troubles that had plagued them before had been settled. But the severity of sorcery accusations in 1983 seemed (to me at least) to be similar to those of the late 1970s.9 In any case, Olonda's predictions about the breakdown of group unity and

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What gifts engender

a lack of interest in organizing corporate events on the part of the younger generation turned out to be a bit premature. First, while there were no corporate group events in progress organizationally comparable to the Suolol mok ink, a series of church-building projects, initiated by the Catholic mission had, by 1982, become contexts for the mobilization at least of large localized segments of tribes. During the early 1980s, thatch churches situated along the government road at Sumbra (a southern Surup locality), Kombal, Senkere (both in southern Suolol territory), and Sol (southern Yansup) were all rebuilt with corrugated metal and other permanent materials paid for by the Catholic mission. Whatever the intentions of the Catholic missionaries may have been, members of the three sem onda segments each planned to sponsor a two-day parade and pig kill, a kind of condensed version of the mok ink, to mark the official opening of their churches. In 1982, when the southern Yansup at Sol, together with their Mendpo, Waol, Semerip, and Wem neighbors, were ready to stage their event, they erected a fence around their parade ground and announced that they intended to charge an individual admission fee (in the style of some community school openings or a "six-to-six" social, both of which are meant to raise money). They argued that invited paraders from other groups ought to perform for free, and that they would expect to do the same when the Suolol and the Surup churches were formally opened later on. Pua and others of the Suolol disagreed with the plan to charge admission and argued that, following the long-standing Mendi practice, invited paraders be given a collective gift that acknowledged publicly Suolol's aid. After some covert lobbying among the Waol, Semerip and Wem people, who decided to support them, the Suolol organized a friendly (but nevertheless dangerous) "invasion" parade reminiscent of the one staged by Olonda against the Surup during the latter's Pig Festival in the 1960s: putting on their parade decorations in the dead of night and breaking down the fence to begin a parade of their own at Sol at dawn. The Yansup and their remaining supporters, seeing themselves outnumbered, hurriedly dabbed their faces with paint and joined in. No fights broke out, as were threatened, and no precedent of a new kind of individualized and commercialized festival was set for the southern Suolol and Surup, who would each hold theirs sometimes after 1985. These occasions appear to have been appropriated as sem onda events. Further evidence of the continued importance of sem onda can be read in the actions of those Kurelka men who remained after Olonda had left Wepra. In the context of a discussion about events in which both Olsem and Pulumsem men had participated during 1982, I was told that the Olsem now also considered themselves "Pulumsem" because there would not be enough Olsem around either to sponsor an ol tenga or to defend themselves if the need arose. The Mesa were also strengthening their position by forging closer ties through a series of reciprocal wealth distributions with a group of the same

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' 'Development'' in Mendi

name living at Tela, a place a couple of hours' walk south, near Mendi town. That is, despite the shift of population out of the area, ways were still being found to maintain group size (as they had been in the past) because the need to maintain corporate group strength was still strongly felt; whether or not they would sponsor another pig kill, most of the men I spoke with were sure that there would be other ol tenga and ol ombul to make. These things are necessary to forestall angry hearts and the sorcery conflicts these engender. So much for the reproduction of group solidarity under changed conditions; what of a leader gap? Many of the young men I had spoken with in 1978 were married by 1983; to my surprise, those who had insisted four years before that they would never themselves move to sponsor a mok ink now spoke about starting one of their own. One said that there was more wealth around during the mok ink; two others noted that the 1979 event had been for their fathers' generation. As one of them told me, "Our fathers started that mok ink. They are its source; their names are on it, not ours. After the mol [drum-beating parades] for the new church, we will start our own mok ink." Thus, what sometimes sounded in the 1970s like a generally disparaging assessment of life in Mendi was, on closer inspection, a qualified skepticism about corporate action: Leaders had doubted that it would continue; ordinary people had wondered sometimes whether its importance outweighed its possibly negative personal repercussions. Young men had been somewhat alienated from it; they felt they were merely assisting their older brothers or their fathers (who in several cases killed their pigs for them) and that they had only a passive role. I think that it was the passivity that bothered them the most, not the general idea of group projects. Moreover, whatever their individual ambitions concerning moving to Kaupena to make money after the pig kill, everyone I spoke with in the 1970s had expressed a faith in the continued importance of kowar, marriage gifts and twem partnerships. Whatever their doubts about the continued viability of Suolol after the Festival, these things would remain. Just as clan politics was carried over in a new medium like the church buildings, a certain syncretism was also evident in the reproduction of twem partnership networks. Money has circulated in twem networks for decades in Mendi; during the late 1970s and early 1980s, networks were the major means of access to cash for most of the Mendi I know. Twem obligations - personal gifts and both marriages and small-scale mortuary exchanges - are also a major use of money.10 In fact it appears that, considering clan prestations and networks together, the indigenous system generates a demand for modern currency far greater than the demand generated by existing market outlets. So, when a Mendi says that he wants to make money, that does not necessarily mean that he wants to abandon rural social relations; for the villagers I know, money and bisnis are desired almost certainly because of their involvement in gift exchanges. For a time then, both money-making expeditions to

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Kaupena, Mount Hagen and elsewhere and local commercial endeavors in Mendi may be seen as meaningful and valuable primarily to the extent that they facilitate success in the rural society. Most of the people I knew in the 1970s and in 1983 assumed that gift relationships would continue to be important in the foreseeable future. This attitude was evident in a series of informal discussions I initiated in 1979 on the subject of whether pearl shells would ever be abandoned. Despite the fact that my informants all knew that pearl shells had been devalued elsewhere in the Highlands - where money, cartons of beer, pigs, and cattle serve in ceremonial prestations - most of them doubted that this would happen in Mendi. Even those who thought that pearl shells would be set aside once money became more plentiful still talked about the value of money in terms of noncommercial uses: marriage gifts, kowar, twem transactions, and the like. But new media do not necessarily carry the old message as well; innovations such as the incorporation of money into gift exchange are not unproblematic. At least some of the Mendi are aware of the differences between the old and the new, although they vary in their evaluations of them. One young man said that he expected pearl shells would remain important because they were better to display than money is; "Money is not so good; pearl shells make [a distribution] big and money cannot do that." In a separate conversation, another young man agreed with the first about the special characteristics of shells but had a different evaluation of them: "We won't get rid of pearl shells, but money is better this way: You can get more things with money than with pearl shells; money is stronger. Money isn't heavy, and it isn't so big that when you give it to someone everyone can see how much you gave. Shells you have to give in the open. Money you can hide in your hand. With shells people have more to talk and argue about." Money is used pervasively as a gift, but the unambiguous value of a bill or coin is designed to facilitate transactions between strangers. As unique, irregular objects, pearl shells can more easily be made to stand for particular social relationships. It is not surprising then that questions about pearl shells and money might suggest the much broader comparison Nare made: "Pearl shells will not be abandoned. When one holds a pearl shell in one's hand, one feels that it is heavy, or 'right' [momak kilponge kendpi]. There is no pleasure in displaying and counting money the way there is with pearl shells. It is good to display shells; whereas money is not 'red,' it has no 'skin' nor any good rope by which to hang and cannot, therefore, be used for adornment. "Money is good because one can subdivide or 'break' it and use it to buy food and other small things with. One cannot break up a pearl shell. If one does, it is worthless and ought to be thrown away. "Before, pearl shells gave one the power to get pigs, wives, and gift-credit [saon] and were used in all sorts of ceremonial prestations: ol tenga, ol ombul, and mok ya ri. Now things are changing. "So long as our homes remain low and have pig stalls inside them, so long as the

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men wear bark belts and the women reed aprons, we will retain pearl shells. When all these things disappear, then the pearl shells will as well. When people think only of food, when they all hold pencils in their hands and work for money, then all that will go. This is not true yet. Later, people will still arrange kowar when their relatives die - only with money. No one will organize the large clan festivals anymore. But everyone does not yet go to school. When they do, then pearl shells will go." Even in this dramatic statement about the conditions for a radical transformation of society, Nare cannot quite imagine a world without gifts at death (although he apparently can imagine one without clan ceremonies). I have been considering the relevance of an analysis of rural social relations for an understanding of contemporary changes and, in particular, the extent to which local forms of sociality have been capable of expressing themselves through introduced media. Mendi society still has a certain internal cohesion but faces a serious challenge just the same. Nare's remarks just quoted, among others, indicate that some of the Mendi are aware not merely that their own social relations are different from those to which they have recently been introduced but also that the two are culturally structured in incompatible ways. "Consumption," "exchange," and the meaning of life Economic planners understand well the technical barriers to capitalist development in places like Mendi, but the culturally defined needs and desires of rural people themselves are less well understood and at least as important for the outcome of development projects like the one currently under way in the Southern Highlands Province. For example, one goal of the Southern Highlands Rural Development Project is to increase per capita agricultural output. The rationale is to use local labor more fully in order to provide a more adequate subsistence and to engage people in producing for the market, thereby increasing per capita income. Ultimately, the point is to be able to use locally generated revenues to improve the standard of living through provision of better Provincial health and educational services. With regard to increasing agricultural output, on the one hand much effort has thus far been expended in agronomical field trials of varieties of more nutritious and better-yielding vegetables in the Southern Highlands Province. On the other hand, economists have continued to insist that few incentives exist within Highland societies for producers to raise their output. The main product of these economies is understood to be "food," and while improvements could be made, the people already produce enough of that. Highlanders exist in a state of what E. K. Fisk and others have called "subsistence affluence." The society as a whole is also thought to be characterized by reserves of "surplus labor" and land that will remain underutilized so long as production is geared to subsistence needs alone. But market-oriented development projects do not simply fill a vacuum in societies like Mendi. The Mendi, along with other Highlanders, already have

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"developed" systems of production and exchange. While a portion of their social product is allocated to meet culturally defined subsistence needs, a significant portion supplies valuables for the transactions that reproduce their social and political institutions.11 Highlanders are no different from the rest of us for regularly shortchanging their nutritional needs in favor of luxury consumption; it is only that our tastes differ (but this is not a small qualification). Whereas improvements in subsistence quality will no doubt be appreciated in Mendi and elsewhere in the Highlands, Highlanders do not live by sweet potatoes alone. They also have complex concerns that affect production and the allocation of garden products in ways that can conflict with the development goals of improving the nutrition of the population and increasing cash cropping. Exchange partnerships and clans meet needs not satisfied by markets and other introduced institutions. Thus, when planners propose the development of a market economy here, they are not suggesting that the Mendi merely take up slack in their system of production. Rather they are presenting the Mendi with a choice between two alternative styles of development: two very different ways of life founded on very different structures of value, interest, and relationship. Such a choice is not easily made. Occasionally when people I knew in Wepra compared their own way of life with that of the "Europeans," I was told that the latter had a better deal. Wange, one of my field assistants, arrived at my house one morning with a long tale of troubles. He had lost K20 in a card game the day before; the money was to have been part of the marriage wealth Wange was giving to his prospective wife's family. On top of that Aku, the young woman in question, had left Wange's father's house that day to return to her brother's because she felt that the old man had insulted her. Wange knew that he would have to find additional gifts for her and for her brother to wipe out the bad feeling, and he was disgusted by the whole business. As he sat brooding about it, a friend of his described a similarly frustrating set of circumstances concerning a mortuary gift in which he was to take part. In this context, Wange said to me, "Your ways are better. You use your money to buy food and clothes when you are still alive. When you die, you die and that's that. But we hold on to our money and use it, when people die, for kowar and other such things. We never get to 'eat' it ourselves." Just then, personal consumption appeared to him as preferable to the less immediate benefits of gift giving. Similarly, one evening Nare was filling me in on the latest episodes in a complex dispute in which he was embroiled. He had offered to make a kowar to his brother Kume's wife's aged father in honor of the death of Kurne's child - a gift that Kume ought to have made but had neglected. Despite this voluntary gesture, which should have endeared Nare to Kume's father-in-law, the old man never ceased complaining about the size of the pigs and the quantity of money Nare proposed to give him. Nare was exasperated by this

235

' 'Development'' in Mendi

response and was considering abandoning the whole project. He commented to me: "Our debts are like throwing money into the fire! We make kowar and do not get anything in return. It is not like you [whites] whose only concern is to buy good clothes, bedding, and food. Kowar and such things are like burning wealth. It is all gone and cold afterward. One thinks of one's "name," but I would rather have something in my hand to show for my efforts!" Both Nare's and Wange's comments were made in the context of frustration over transactions, and they contrast strongly with the ways in which people talk in more favorable situations. Like others I heard during my time in Mendi, both comments reflect the belief that the Western attitude to wealth results in a tangible benefit to the individual who can buy good food and other things instead of giving wealth away and having nothing in hand oneself afterward. But the meaning of these comments is not transparent. When things are not going well, the social returns on gift-style ''investments" may not be mentioned; their risks are foregrounded, but their value is self-evident and therefore unremarkable. Moreover, the significance of consumption itself is culturally particular; in Mendi, consumption carries a heavy load of negative associations. Another, more extended local dialogue may help illuminate how alternatives are currently understood and evaluated. Nare, who ran the Senkere community's medical aid station since the late 1950s and was literate in Tok Pisin (Melanesian pidgin), is also a leader, and he had been an important organizer of the preparations members of Suolol were making for the sai le ever since they started in the late 1960s. His brother Peter (Pulpia) is a mechanic who lives in Mendi town and works at one of the garages there. During 1978, he was one of those whose primary concerns lay elsewhere, although he also planned to participate in the Festival. Peter wanted very much to set up a business of his own. He had worked as a mechanic for many years and was quite skilled. He had dreams of starting a garage financed by his fellow clansmen and imagined that he would also train and hire a couple of the young men in his group who had had schooling: One of Nare's sons, then in high school, spoke of joining him when he graduated. Peter thought that the mok ink was something of a waste of his fellow clansmen's energies and resources, better spent on projects such as the one he had been proposing. Occasionally when the two were together - Nare visiting town or Peter visiting the village - they would talk about their respective projects. Nare disagreed with Peter about the value of the Festival cycle. The mok ink was very important, especially these days, he would assert. As outlined in Chapter 6, there were many troubles in the Senkere community then: factional conflicts, a frightening number of deaths, and a general sense on the part of older people and leaders that the young people were not committed to rural life. Nare and other leaders thought that the mok ink would instill pride in the

236

What gifts engender

community and would bolster people's commitment to it, in addition to strengthening Suolol's reputation in the region. Peter and some of the other men who work for wages or who run businesses in town criticized rural clan members for squandering their financial resources and labor on exchanges. They felt that clan projects like the mok ink "hold money fast" (as one man put it) but are unprofitable forms of accumulation; networks diffuse resources and make any form of accumulation difficult. And they complained about the demands their rural relatives and friends make upon their resources: requests for their active contribution to clan prestations or for personal gifts. They said that their rural relatives did not realize that they had problems of their own: rent to pay, food to buy, and so forth. Alternatively, they felt ashamed (and also somewhat fearful of jealousy-induced sorcery attack) and obligated to give when their rural relatives visited them, knowing that they had regular access to money.12 Those people who are committed to traditional social relations note that commercial projects (bisnis in Tok Pisin) may be incompatible with the traditional emphasis on reciprocal exchange: In the words of Panga (a Pulumsem man), "long-house Festivals and bisnis compete with one another for wealth; we cannot do both together." The problem is not simply one of the quantity of money available in the area. To many rural people bisnis also signifies a potential withdrawal from exchange and is therefore antagonistic to the social ethic of both twem and sent. While clan projects like the Pig Festival require coordination and cooperation, and are supposed to benefit the group as a whole, bisnis is understood to exacerbate inequality and to benefit individuals primarily (Lederman 1981). Many rural people think that wage earners hoard money, or else that they only redistribute it to their immediate families. Twem projects can also be thought of as benefiting the individual by making his "name" big, but like clan events, they achieve this through the redistribution of wealth to other people; whereas not a few of the Mendi recognize that capital accumulation results in an unacceptable (more permanent) kind of difference between people. The difference between bisnis and indigenous social projects (personal and corporate) was sometimes expressed by the Mendi I know in a rhetorical contrast between consumption and gift exchange (see also M. Strathern 1981 on Mount Hagen). Nare enjoyed reminding me in a joking way that whites had an easy time of it. All we had to worry about was feeding and clothing ourselves, and perhaps writing our books, whereas his people had all sorts of hard work, such as taking care to please twem partners, making kowar and ol tenga, and so forth. From his point of view, we were the ones with the "subsistence system" and his society was the one concerned with exchange. Likewise, he and others considered that wage earners in town were selfish and concerned only with personal consumption. Whereas if one wishes to have a name and honor in the rural society, one must extend credit to one's twem partners and one must contribute wealth to clan projects.

237

' 'Development'' in Mendi

From this perspective, "consumption" is opposed to the social ethic of both network and group relationships. Twem and consumption are not aligned with the individual interest and against corporate clan involvements; both network and group projects are conceived of as properly social. Both network and group involve the redistribution of wealth, an allocation of the social product that inhibits capital accumulation on a scale detrimental to prospects for commercial development. While indigenous relations of production and exchange have been compatible with an increasing social product, unlike in a capitalist economy that is not their bottom line. The main focus of indigenous "development" is the gift-engendered elaboration of multistranded social relationships themselves, rather than the provision of a bountiful material life or the accumulation of capital. So, even when the Mendi argue that local and introduced ways are compatible, their actions reveal an implicit proviso that bisnis not be an end in itself but be made to serve gift ends, as well as an implicit recognition that doing bisnis in itself constitutes a challenge to local concepts of a fully human social life.

Appendix A: The research community

The research on which this book is based was conducted primarily in the community that hosted my husband and myself during our stay in Mendi. In the government records and on maps, this community is known officially as the census unit "Waparaga," although residents and other Mendi call it Wepra. (In this appendix, census unit names are indicated with quotation marks; local names are left unmarked.) It is located in the Upper Mendi census division of the Mendi Valley. In the most recent census available to me, which was conducted in late 1979, "Waparaga" was reported to have a population of 330 persons, 68 of whom were absent from the village at the time the census was conducted. The details are summarized in Table A.I. In contrast, the 1975 population census reported that "Waparaga" had a total population of 313, of whom 31 were absent at the time of census. "Waparaga" is one of three census units in Suolol tribal territory. The other two are "Kombal" and "Kuma." (In the text, I refer to "Kornbal" and "Waparaga" - both in the southern part of Suolol tribal territory, and comprising the neighborhoods known locally as Ponea, Wepra, Kombal, Senkere, and Molmanda - as the Senkere community, after the name of the main ceremonial ground in the area.) In 1979, the population figures for "Kombal" were 121 male and 126 female residents plus 34 absentees, for a total population of 281. At "Kuma" in the same year there were 335 male and 338 female residents plus 72 absentees, totaling 745 people. Four years before, "Kombal" had a population of 276 and "Kuma" 720. Therefore, the population of the Suolol as a whole in 1975 was 1,309, and in 1979 it was 1,356. These figures represent an underestimate of the tribal population since many members had moved to Ialibu to stay with an affiliated group at Kaupena. Other people affiliating with Suolol clans live in localities called Omei and Umbim in the lower Mendi Valley, south of Mendi town. It is hard to compare these figures with those of other tribes or clans in 238

239

The research community

Table A.I.

Village census information: Residents

Age groups (years) 0-5 6-17 18-45 46 + Totals

Male

Female

Waparaga, 1979

Absentees Male

Female

Subtotal Male

Female

Total

17 40 47 22

13 52 46 25

2 11 24 5

1 10 15 0

19 51 71 27

14 62 61 25

33 113 132 52

126

136

42

26

168

162

330

262

68

Mendi using census data. Tribal or other political groupings are not listed as such in the government records. Localities that have been designated "census units" may, from an indigenous Mendi viewpoint, comprise several distinct places, each associated with a separate clan group (plus immigrants). For example, people living at Ponea and Kombal both census as part of the "Kombal" census unit, for the most part. Molmanda, Senkere and Wepra residents all census at "Waparaga" (actually in the Senkere ceremonial ground), and people living in the northern Suolol localities of Kalap, Semera, Marowal, Tipins, Kuma, and Kerenda all census at "Kuma." A number of census units, unlike those of the Suolol, include clan groups that the people themselves do not conceptualize as a political unit (and which, at least in the case of the census unit "Egari," are traditional enemies). I have described the relationship between Mendi residence and census units in detail elsewhere (Lederman 1985). Table A.2 summarizes information gathered in the course of a household census conducted by my husband and myself during the first three months of 1978. The total population was found to be 343, a figure higher than that obtained by government census-takers in 1979 (Table A.I). The people grouped themselves into 59 households of various sorts. While the average household was composed of about six persons and included one married couple, household size and composition varied greatly. I have called all those households that included only one currently married man "simple." Forty-nine out of the total (83 percent) were of this sort. Most of these were based in one way or another on a monogamously married couple and their children. But whereas eighteen "Waparaga" households (31 percent of all households) were composed simply of a "nuclear" family, the majority (twenty-six, or 44 percent of all households) included an elderly widowed parent or an unmarried or divorced sibling or other relative of the husband or wife or else involved a polygamous marriage. Eleven of these households included a married daughter or sister of the main male member, along with her children. (While women are expected to live with their husbands, these

Table A.2.

Waparaga households,£ January-March 1978 Household types^ Total households

Simple households

Compound households

Households also maintained elsewhere

Marriage type

Sem kank

People

Olsem

105

168

18

17

1

1

15

4

Pulurasem

89

107

13

10

3

0

14

2

Pigs

Monogamous

Polyg

Anksuol

32

43

5

4

1

0

4

2

MolsemSenkere

68

63

11

11

0

1

10

1

MolsemMolraanda

49

85

12

7

5

2

15

2

343

466

59

49

10

58

11

Total

"Waparaga" is the government census unit name referring to localities called Wepra, and Molmanda by the residents (and called "the Senkere community" in the text). A "compound" household involves more than one married man (and their families), all one homestead. All other households are termed "simple" including those "headed widow/widower or a never-married person.

241

The research community

women had moved back to their agnatic relatives' homes because of a dispute with their husbands, or because the latter had left home to work for wages outside of Mendi.) Occasionally, a friend's or a sibling's child might stay with the household for a few months or years for a change of scene, because of a quarrel with his or her parents or to be closer to school. Five households (8 percent of the total) included no currently married people but were composed of a bachelor, or a widow or widower, with or without other residents. In one case, Awame and Lin - two elderly widows unrelated to one another and not the former wives of closely related men - lived together; in another case, another old widow named Koyma, who had been married to an Olsem man, lived with a Pulumsem boy who helped her with chores; in still another case the old man Temp, referred to in Chapter 2, lived with the wife of a man who was often absent from the community, working in town. When more than one married man and his wife or wives live together in one homestead - a men's house (ensa) and a women's house (tendd) where they all eat - I have called the resulting household "compound": ten (17 percent) of the community's households were of this sort. In another kind of case, four families each had a second homestead outside of "Waparaga," usually because the man was attempting to retain control over garden land in his mother's place. Finally, there were eleven polygamously married men in the community. Four of these lived in "simple" households with no attached members, four lived with elderly parents or other attached individuals, and three lived in households that also included a monogamous couple. Readers should bear in mind that the category "household" identifies a residential unit and is meant simply as a means of describing the "Waparaga" population. It reflects how people usually grouped themselves for eating the evening meal and for sleeping. Households are not necessarily economic units; they are not an entirely appropriate basis for economically minded surveys, although they were a good basis for general demographic censusing. To survey a Mendi community like the one described here in terms of units of economic cooperation would have been impossible until quite far into a period of research, as the patterning of cooperation in production and exchange is not obvious. As I noted in the text, even husbands and wives do not always coordinate their production and exchange work. The figures included on Table A.2 concerning pig numbers ought to be considered rough estimates, since they were gleaned by means of oral reports. Direct, observational cross-checking was possible only for members of the subclans Olsem, Pulumsem, and Anksuol. One cannot say whether these figures are underestimates or overestimates since individuals varied regarding what they wished to have known about their herds. As noted in the text, the size of pig herds is a politically significant fact. Depending on when a person is questioned and what his or her position is concerning the contentious issues being discussed around the community, she or he may exaggerate or down-

242

Appendix A

play the numbers of pigs available. There is always room for interpretation. One time an informant may count all the pigs on hand (but not necessarily 4 'paid for" and disbursable). Another time, the same informant may count only those pigs over which he or she has complete control. In any event, a total of 466 pigs were reported for a population of 343 people in 1978, a year and a half before the community's pig kill: 1.36 pigs per capita. This figure is low compared to numbers reported by Waddell (1972). Waddell wrote that the 69 residents of Modopa (Raiapu Enga) held 158 pigs (some of which were "agisted" into the community by nonresidents). That is, they had 2.3 pigs per capita. This figure, however, reflected organizational difficulties involving a delay in the local tee ceremonial exchange event (Waddell 1972: 61-2). Elsewhere, estimates of pig-to-people ratios have been offered at 1.5 per capita for a Chimbu population (Brookfield and Brown 1963: 59) and 1.6 per capita for another Enga population (Bulmer 1960: 95). But in 1978, "Waparaga" residents were more likely to have rights in pigs outside the community than to be looking after other people's pigs (see Chapters 6 and 7). Immediately before the pig kill at Senkere in 1979, the ratio of pigs to people there was higher than in 1978. (For more information on "Waparaga" pig herds, see the tables in Chapter 7.)

Appendix B: The "accounts sample' and some comments on research methodology

In this appendix, I describe the research routines that yielded some of the information upon which this book is based. One general point about the book's format ought to be noted first. In several chapter epigraphs and elsewhere in the text, I present case material from my fleldnotes set off as extracts. This format was meant to call attention to particular incidents used to illustrate points made in the surrounding text discussion. They are not word-for-word transcriptions of the fieldnotes, however, but rather are condensations or paraphrases of more discursive accounts in the notes. Direct (translated) quotations of Mendi informants' words have been indicated as such wherever they appear.

The "accounts sample" The household census, the results of which were reported in Appendix A, was the first formal research project I undertook after settling in at Wepra. After my husband and I had spoken with all the adult men and women of the Senkere community, in the course of doing the census, forty-three men and women (the "accounts sample'") were selected for the other intensive interviews I planned to conduct. Some salient characteristics of the sample are presented in tabular form here (see Tables B.I, B.2, and B.3). The interviews included the following: 1. Exchange accounts. From May 1978 through the end of February 1979, each person was interviewed monthly concerning the transactions in which they had participated. They were asked about purchases and sales, new giftdebts and gift-credits, gifts of valuables or food, and exchanges of labor. During September 1978 to February 1979, they were also asked about "searches" and "roads" (see Chapter 3 for an explanation). Finally, during 243

244

Appendix B

Table B.I.

Characteristics of the "accounts sample":

23 men

Current status Male informants M16,19

Age groups

Number of persons

Never married

56+

2

0

1

Widower

Monogamous

Polygamous 1

Ml, 5 /8, 11 r 14, 17

46-55

M2, 3 ,4, 6, 1 ,9

36-45

M10 i 12, 13 i 18, 20

26-35

5

2

0

3

M15,21, 22,23

16-25

4

3

0

1

Table B.2.

Characteristics of the "accounts sample":

0

20 women

Current status Age groups

Number of persons

Never married

F8,9,13, 14

56 +

4

0

Fl,3,6,7

46-55

4

0

F4,5,15, 16,17

36-45

5

F2,ll,19,

26-35

F10,12, 18,20

16-25

Female informants

Table B.3.

Monogamous

Polygamous

2

1

1

0

2

2

0

0

3

2

3

0

0

3

0

4

0

0

3

1

Widow

Households included in "accounts sample"

Polygamous

2

Monogamous

13

Ml,F7,F8; M8,F5,F6 M2,F2; M3,F17; M4,F4; M5,F15; M7,F19; M9,Fll; M10,F20; M11,F1; M12,F10; M13,F12; M14,F3; M15,F18; M16,F13

January to March 1978, and again during February to March 1979, they v/ere asked about transactions specifically related to the Pig Festival. This involved inquiries concerning each person's expectations about the meeting of affinal gift obligations - those that involve a return that is greater than the initial gift.

245

The "accounts sample"

Table B.4.

Details of active exchange partnerships and total networks of 23 men Active partners8.

Male mants

Ml M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10 Mil M12 M13 M14 M15 M16 M17 M18 M19 M20 M21 M22 M23 23 Men

Male Total

Total partners^ Male

Female

%

Total

%

Total "active"

Total

Female

%

Total

%

Total ntwk.

"active"

90 65 29 40 39 54 29 24 34 36 24 41 16 26 39 9 39 32 11 29 16 17 14

94 76 83 87 81 95 83 89 92 72 77 80 64 84 72 82 85 89 85 76 67 71 87

6 21 6 6 9 3 6 3 3 14 7 10 9 5 15 2 7 4 2 9 8 7 2

6 24 35 13 19 5 17 11 8 28 23 20 36 16 28 18 15 11 15 24 33 29 13

96 86 35 46 48 57 35 27 37 50 31 51 25 31 54 11 46 36 13 38 24 24 16

144 133 85 73 62 74 53 45 46 45 37 48 43 37 47 22 49 46 22 41 30 26 29

96 78 92 77 67 94 85 83 85 67 79 77 81 79 76 85 83 87 85 79 77 70 94

6 38 7 22 30 5 9 9 8 22 10 14 10 10 15 4 10 7 4 11 9 11 2

4 22 8 23 33 6 15 17 15 33 21 23 19 21 24 15 17 13 15 21 23 30 6

150 171 92 95 92 79 62 54 54 67 47 62 53 47 62 26 59 53 26 52 39 37 31

64 50 38 48 52 72 56 50 69 75 66 82 47 66 87 42 78 68 50 73 62 65 52

753

82

164

18

917

1,237

82

273

18

1,510

61

£ Active means all those people with whom informants had outstanding debts or credits during May 1978-February 1979 and any others with whom they transacted during that period. k_ Total networks refers to "active," inactive, and "terminated" partners. All three types were mentioned by informants during direct interviews concerning their networks. "Inactive" partnerships only happened to be so during the study period.

Where husbands and wives were included in the sample (see Table B.3), we attempted to interview them separately, although this was not always possible. Interviews were conducted with each person once every four to six weeks and took place at their homes in the early morning, before they went off to work in their gardens or to do exchange errands or other visiting. 2. Exchange partnership histories. The same forty-three people were also interviewed about their exchange partnership histories. Each informant listed his or her exchange partners and was then asked, for each partner, how the relationship started and how it had been maintained and used. For those informants with more than twenty exchange partners, this interview took place in two or more sessions. In many cases, these interviews provided an excellent context for unelicited comments on appropriate and inappropriate exchange behavior, on local historical events, and on personal ambitions. The intermeshing of these sorts of facts in my informants' commentaries deserves

246

Appendix B

Table B.5. Details of active exchange partnerships and total networks of 20 women Active partners8.

Total partners^

Female

Male

Female informants

Total

%

Fl F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 Fll F12 F13 F14 F15 F16 F17 F18 F19 F20

52 37 24 26 23 7 10 15 11 26 16 3 3 7 8 2 5 12 4 1

84 56 77 68 70 54 48 71 58 81 70 23 60 50 80 50 83 71 80 50

20 Women

292

67

Male

%

Total "active"

10 29 7 12 10 6 11 6 8 6 7 10 2 7 2 2 1 5 1 1

16 44 23 32 30 46 52 29 42 19 30 77 40 50 20 50 17 29 20 50

62 66 31 38 33 13 21 21 19 32 23 13 5 14 10 4 6 17 5 2

143

33

435

Total

Total %

Female Total

%

Total Percent ntwk. "active"

73 73 70 73 57 52 65 73 61 83 68 39 74 36 53 60 82 64 71 75

36 41 13 12 18 16 11 7 11 6 12 20 16 14 27 10 13 16 4 2

27 27 30 27 43 48 35 27 39 17 32 61 26 64 47 40 18 36 29 25

132 152 44 45 42 33 31 26 28 35 38 33 23 22 57 25 17 44 14 8

47 43 70 84 79 39 68 81 68 91 61 39 22 64 18 16 35 39 36 25

564 66

285

34

849

51

96 111 31 33 24 17 20 19 17 29 26 13 17 8 30 15 14 28 10 6

£ See Table B.4. b See Table B.4.

an extended discussion for which there is no space here. Some of the results of these interviews are presented in Tables B.4 through B.9, and also in summary form in the tables in Chapter 3 and elsewhere. The data presented (primarily in Chapter 3) based on the information provided by members of the sample should not be taken as representative of the community as a whole. It is simply a tabular description of a variety of cases. These cases may be useful for the development of hypotheses concerning quantitative patterns. Such quantitative research would require a wider and more scientifically selected sample (if such is possible) and certainly more than one researcher; the effort would have to be approached with the same seriousness as is quantitative research in market economies. Alternatively, when the full array of case material from the present research is worked up, further qualitative patterns will be evident. The selection of the "accounts sample" was not random. Moreover, it reflects only in part the socio-economic categories I thought to be significant on the basis of the information I obtained from the household survey. The inclusion of particular individuals also depended on their willingness to be interviewed intensively and regularly. The relevant sociological factors in-

Table B.6.

Male mants Ml M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10 Mil M12 M13 M14 M15 M16 M17 M18 M19 M20 M21 M22 M23 23 Men

Details of the structure of the networks:

Nopae-receiving partners

Nopae-giving partners

Affinal (own; clansmen's)

Clanswomen; related through clanswomen

Maternal Total 6 11 4 22 21 21 18 5 7 10 8 16 10 1 7 1 9 7 7 35 8 9 8 251

% 4 6 4 23 23 27 29 9 13 15 17 26 19 2 11 4 15 13 27 67 21 24 26 17

Total 41 70 23 28 31 17 14 16 16 16 21 13 15 27 19 8 16 6 6 3 2 0 0 408

% 27 41 25 29 34 22 23 30 30 24 45 21 28 57 31 31 27 11 23 6 5 0 0 27

Total 19 22 16 11 19 10 18 13 6 17 7 11 7 8 7 7 13 5 8 4 15 16 10 269

% 13 13 17 12 21 13 29 24 11 25 15 18 13 17 11 27 22 9 31 8 38 43 32 18

23 men

Clansmenpartners Total 70 50 40 26 16 28 12 17 23 19 9 19 13 11 20 7 12 17 5 5 13 12 12 456

% 46 29 43 27 17 35 19 31 43 28 19 31 25 23 32 27 20 32 19 10 33 32 39 30

Unrelated partners Total 14 18 9 8 5 3 0 3 2 5 2 3 8 0 9 3 9 18 0 5 1 0 1 126

Total network

% 9 11 10 8 5 4 0 6 4 7 4 5 15 0 15 12 15 34 0 10 3 0 3

150 171 92 95 92 79 62 54 54 67 47 62 53 47 62 26 59 53 26 52 39 37 31 8

1,510

Table B.7.

Female 1nior~ mants Fl F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 Fll F12 F13 F14 F15 F16 F17 F18 F19 F20 20 Women

Details of the structure of the networks:

Nopae-receiving partners

Nopae-giving partners

Clansmen; clansmen 1 s affines

Affinal (H and his clan, incl. s, D)

Maternal Total 33 31 3 3 3 6 1 1 6 1 2 4

7 0 5 1 5 13 0 2 127

% 25 20 7 7 7 18 3 4 21 3 5 12 30 0 9 4 29 30 0 25 15

Total 22 48 15 9 10 7 10 10 4 11 16 9 4 14 12 12 6 18 4 2 229

% 17 32 34 20 24 21 32 38 14 31 42 27 17 64 21 48 35 41 29 25 27

Total 41 35 9 22 10 12 17 12 9 20 10 14

4 8 32 11 3 4 8 2 289

% 31 23 20 49 24 36 55 46 32 57 26 42 17 36 56 44 18 9 57 25 34

20 women

Clanswomen; related through clanswomen Total 29 23 15 4 17 5 3 3 9 2 3 5 8 0 8 1 3 7 0 2 155

% 22 15 34 9 40 15 10 12 32 6 8 15 35 0 14 4 18 16 0 25 18

Unrelated partners Total 7 15 2 7 2 3 0 0 0 1 7 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 49

iOIai network

%

132 152 44 45 42 33 31 26 28 35 38 33 23 22 57 25 17 44 14 8

5 10 5 16 5 9 0 0 0 3 18 3 0 0 0 0 0 5 14 0 6

849

Table B.8.

Details of the structure of terminated partnerships:

Nopae-receiving partners

NQE>ae-giving partners

Affinal (own; clansmen 1 s)

Clanswomen; related through clanswomen

Maternal

Male informants

Total

Ml M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10 Mil M12 M13 M14 M15 M16 M17 M18 M19 M20 M21 M22 M23

2 6 2 13 0 6 0 4 2 0 3 5 4 0 1 0 2 0 0 3 4 1 1

7 30 17 39 0 30 0 25 40 0 43 100 50 0 100 0 12 0 0 75 100 50 100

13 1 5 13 9 8 11 7 3 1 1 0 1

23 Men

59

25

%

Total

%

Total

Total partnerships terminated

%

Total

6 1 3 2 0 2 5 2 0 1 0 0 0 5 0 0 5 2 0 0 0

8 5 2 5 0 2 0 2 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 3 0 0 0 0 0

28 25 17 15 0 10 0 12 0 0 14 0 12 0 0 17 6 30 0 0 0 0 0

0 7 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 1 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0

0 35 0 0 0 10 0 6 0 33 29 0 25 0 0 0 0 50 0 0 0 0 0

29 20 12 33 9 20 16 16 5 3 7 5 8 12 1 6 17 10 0 4 4 2 1

31

13

20

8

240

0

95

40

35

15

i—i

0 0 0

21 5 25 6 0 10 31 12 0 33 0 0 0 42 0 0 29 20 0 0 0 50 0

7

Unrelated partners

Total

45 5 42 39 100 40 69 44 60 33 14 0 12 58 0 83 53 0 0 25 0 0 0

0 5 9 0 0

Clansmenpartners

23 men

%

%

Table B.9.

Female informants Fl F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 Fll F12 F13 F14 F15 F16 F17 F18 F19 F20 20 Women

Details of the structure of terminated partnerships:

Nopae-receiving partners

Nopae-giving partners

Clansmen; clansmen's affines

Affinal (H and his clan, incl. s, D)

Maternal Total

%

Total

13 5 2 2 1 6 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 2 0 2 5 0 0

57 56 40 40 25 86 14 33 0 0 17 20 54 0 18 0 100 56 0 0

3 1 0 1 0 0 5 1 1 0 2 2 3 0 5 4 0 1 3 0

49

38

32

7

% 13 11 0 20 0 0 71 33 25 0 33 40 23 0 45 80 0 11 75 0 25

Total 2 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 1 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 15

% 9 22 20 20 0 0 14 0 50 0 17 40 0 50 0 0 0 0 25 0 12

Clanswomen; related through clanswomen

20 women

Unrelated partners

Total

%

Total

3 1 2 1 3 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 3 2 4 1 0 3 0 2

13 11 40 20 75 0 0 33 25 0 17 0 23 50 36 20 0 33 0 100

2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

28

22

4

%

Total partnerships terminated 23 9 5 5 4 7 7 3 4 0 6 5 13 4 11 5 2 9 4 2

9 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3

128

251

The "accounts sample"

eluded marriage type, economic and political status, subclan membership, and sex. A number of interesting people were not interested in participating or else left the community temporarily during the period when the interviews were beginning. These included one big-man who did not want to be interviewed about his transactions, and one "rubbish man" who left the community to work in Mount Hagen. One comment concerning the categorization or grouping of the people included in this sample is in order. A number of ethnographers have been able to rank men in their research communities in terms of status or degrees of big-manship, using either indigenous or anthropological criteria. It is important to realize, however, that one cannot simply ask people, "Who are the big-men in your community?" or "Is X a big-man?" If one does, one gets a remarkably "top-heavy" organization; everyone, just about, in one's informant's subclan will be designated a big-man, and a good many in his clan as well. The tables included in Chapter 3 and elsewhere in the text indicate that there are some gross quantitative differences between men, between women, and between men and women. But these gross quantitative measures do not clearly indicate social status as perceived by people in a community. Social status is composed of an amalgam of variables not all of which are easily quantifiable. Some variables are historical. For example, the man I have been calling Kirop (who is not included in the sample) was known generally in the community as a big-man because he had been responsible for initiating the building of the long festival houses at Senkere during the late 1960s. During 1977-9, however, he asserted that he had "no pigs" (apparently truthfully). During the research period, his word appeared to carry little weight during important community meetings and discussions. Some men (such as M2) who were generally considered big-men did not speak out prominently at public meetings. Others (like M4), who were not considered "ol koma," had many exchange partners but played minor political roles in the community, apparently seeking neither personal nor public influence in the course of events. Access to wealth is not in itself diagnostic of leadership status. An effective and consistent influence on events and particularly on decisions that affect clans and tribes is more important. Consistency is particularly important; a man's reputation appears to be higher if he regularly sponsors ceremonial events and often has an effect on group policy. The code (e.g., Ml, M2 for men; Fl, F2 for women) used on the tables in this appendix indicates the sex and approximate relative status of members of the "accounts sample," as I came to understand it during the course of my stay in the Senkere community. It may differ from other people's assessments of who's who there (as, of course, community members also differ among themselves). The code names were assigned before people's exchange partnership networks were studied and initially indicated political influence more than economic power. In one case only (M4), I adjusted a code name later on

252

Appendix B

to reflect a particularly extensive network of exchange partners, despite the man's apparent lack of reputation as a leader. Other tabulated cases The tables appearing in Chapters 6 and 7 summarize data concerning only some of the men included in the "accounts sample." Tables 6.1 and 6.2 were originally to be a polling of the "accounts sample" men as to the sources of the pigs that they slaughtered at the sai le. Some of the original members of that sample were not available to be interviewed just after the pig kill, or else did not respond completely, so substitutions were made (see Chapter 6, note 23). The people whose pig herds are described in Tables 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 include some of the original sample plus a number of substitutions made for those people I was not able to interview again in 1983. Table B.10, which compares the "accounts sample" and those used in Chapters 6 and 7 with the community wide household survey, should help readers interpret the information given in the foregoing tables (subject to all the qualifications raised in Appendix A concerning households and pig herds). In addition, some of the forty-three "accounts sample" folks were included among those interviewed in a wider survey concerning their marriage payments and the kowar in which they had participated. Some of them were also among those included in a series of activities and garden work surveys. All the men in the community and a number of women (including "accounts sample" women and all the resident, married clan "sisters" in the community) were interviewed systematically concerning their land-tenure histories. Formal interviews usually took place in the late afternoon at my house and were conducted either in Melanesian pidgin (Tok Pisin), in Mendi, or in Imbonggu (the northern Mendi language also spoken in Ialibu) with the help of pidgin translators. Talk usually continued until the early evening, when a large meal of sweet potatoes, greens, canned fish, and rice was prepared. The people my husband and I interviewed were all remarkably patient with us. Without their interest and attention, and without the intelligent care of Anksuol Mel, Anksuol Tolap, and Pulumsem Wange, our three field assistants (and the others who occasionally helped us by acting as interpreters, commentators, or chefs), these long and detailed interviews could not have been contemplated. For my part, this interview setting was important in establishing a degree of reciprocity which I had felt was lacking in our initial method of conducting systematic interviews at people's houses or around the community. Whenever we visited people in their homes, they offered us sweet potatoes as well as information. To always be a guest, and never a host, did not seem right. As it turned out, interview evenings at our house fit into the community's visiting patterns rather well. People ate together and talk continued informally before, during and long after the interviews.

Table B.10.

Comparison of ssurvey households:

People Waparaga No. household survey (WHS) % WHS "Accounts sample" (Chapters 3 and 4)

% WHS

Pig kill survey (Chapter 6)

% WHS

Pig herd survey (Chapter 7)

No.

No.

No. % WHS

Pigs

Households^

466 100%

100%

124

194

21

114 33 .2% 105 30 .6%

41.6%

156£ 33.5% 1413. 30.3%

Household size

Pigs per household

5.8

7.9

1.

5.9

9.2

1.

5. 7

7 .8

1.

5. 5

7 .4

1.

Pi per c

59

343 100%

36.2%

1978

35.6% 20 33 .9% 19 32 .2%

These figures differ from the pig totals indicated in tables in Chapters 6 and 7. the figures in this table include all "household" pigs, the tables in Chapters account only for the pigs that the individuals listed in those tables control ( exclusively, or else jointly with a spouse or other person). The "household" frame of reference presented here facilitates comparison of the Ch and 7 survey populations with that of the general Waparaga household survey and Appendix A ) .

254

Appendix B

In addition to formal interviewing, my husband and I spent much of our time observing or participating in local and regional events, and accompanying friends when they went hunting, gardening, or visiting. What we learned in these contexts was at least as important as what we learned from formal interviews; indeed, formal interviews would not have been possible without this informal involvement.

Notes

Chapter 1. Mendi coming into view 1 Relatively egalitarian, decentralized political systems are also found in horticultural societies in the Pacific (e.g., Lesu), in East Africa, and elsewhere. 2 The notion that exchange requires (or alternatively, inevitably leads to) the specialization of production and a social division of labor is deeply embedded in Western economic theory (e.g., Smith 1937[1776]). The ethnography of Highland New Guinea challenges this idea. I will take up this issue in Chapter 3, where I discuss the rationale for Mendi exchanges. 3 See Ballard (1978) for implications from the perspective of modern provincial elections. 4 Although speaking a variant of the Mendi language, and grouped together with the Mendi by Wurm (1964) in the "Mendi/Pole subfamily," people in Nipa appear similar in a number of respects to the Huli, to their immediate west. Sillitoe, whose field site was located close to the Huli-speaking area, does not emphasize this relationship, although he does recognize it (1979: 39n). Thus it is inaccurate to gloss "Wola" and "Mendi" societies, as Sillitoe does in his writings. An important indication that the people of the Nipa and the Mendi Valleys follow different cultural traditions comes from the fact that Sillitoe was able to carry out a detailed study of exchange in Nipa without treating women as "transactors": he writes that "the concern of this book with men is the result of [the] separation between the sexes made by the Wola, who rarely permit women to handle wealth except under the guidance of men, and not, as some people in our women's lib conscious society have suggested, the result of my own male chauvinism" (p. 2In). This, as we shall see, would not be possible in Mendi. Other structural features of their marriage and pig-exchange ceremonies, as well as their systems of leadership and land tenure may also be more similar to the Huli than to the Mendi. More recently, they have been adopting some Mendi customs: for example, cassowari "races" and the Pig Festival. 5 In the northern Highlands, several areas have higher population densities, whereas the population per land area in the Highland fringe is generally much lower (Brown 1978). 6 For a good review and criticism of ecological approaches in light of development concerns, see Crittenden (1982). 255

256 7

8

9

10

11 12 13

Notes to pages 15-17 My assumption is that production is a culturally constituted social process: It is a locus of meaningful action. In a narrow sense, production reflects a selection from among a range of possible and imaginable products that might be produced, from among various possible definitions of need and utility, and between various possible ways of distributing that which is producted. Such a process of selection is culturally and politically problematic. People with different positions in a social structure of power may disagree about what constitutes "proper" social behavior: about who should do what work, about who should give what to whom, about the legitimate uses of the products of their creative efforts. In a broader sense, people may disagree about the very meaning of the project in which they are collectively engaged; in this broad sense, "production" is one reflection of the social process through which a social order is created and defined, sustained or transformed and redefined. I am adopting this term from Raymond Kelly (1977: 1), who wrote "the term 'structural principle' is restricted to principles of relationship. A particular principle designates a specific form of connection or linkage. Insofar as structural principles are relational in essence, they possess linking and constitutive capabilities (by definition) and may be employed in a wide variety of social and cultural contexts." He distinguished "structural principles" from "rules," which specify the contexts in which particular principles are applicable. The initial anthropological consensus that Highland leaders were first among equals has come under attack recently by researchers with different assumptions and training (Gerritson 1975; Standish 1978). But this debate is in need of evaluation. Evaluation is particularly needed regarding the status of exogenous structural analyses of inequality and exploitation. Analyses based on criteria developed in the critical analysis of Euro-American social relations imply that such criteria are universally applicable. The tacit assumption, which merits discussion, is that local history and cultural idioms are analytically unimportant. It seems to me, however, that the first task is to determine whether an indigenous critique of the social order exists in some form. Mendi families look after a little more than one pig per capita, on the average. Pigs are housed in stalls inside Mendi women's houses, which are long, low buildings where the family gathers to eat in the evening and where the women and children sleep. Pigs are led from their stalls to bush areas to forage every other day. They generally return home on their own at dusk to receive a ration of sweet potatoes and vegetable scraps. On alternate days, they are kept penned at home or staked in old gardens on a long tether, there to root out any small tubers that might still be left in old sweet potato mounds and to turn over the soil by the bye. An average family may eat pork about five times a month, receiving portions or subportions of the meat first-, second-, or even third-hand from exchange partners and kin on the occasion of marriages, mortuary feasts, or clan festivals. Although this may seem obvious, it is not when one considers that, for some time, the growth of pig herds was treated as a natural fact and not as a deliberate social product (Vayda et al. 1961; Rappaport 1968; see also Hide 1974). Alternative explanations for the intensification of Highland production systems that refer to the subsistence requirements of a naturally expanding human population have not been fruitful. According to Harold Brookfield, who made a comparative survey of the relationship between population density and agricultural intensity in Melanesia, intensification does not appear to be related to a population-induced need to economize on land. Rather, intensification was found to be related to the demand for pigs generated by ceremonial exchange (Brookfield

257

Notes to pages 18-30

1971). Elsewhere it has been suggested that population growth may itself be a dependent variable, a function of the demand for surplus (White 1973). 14 That a balance between idioms of agency and structure is difficult to achieve is evident in the organization of one recent notable attempt at structurally informed history (Sahlins 1981) and in another recent effort to review and define the "practice" orientation in contemporary anthropological work (Ortner 1984). As Ortner and many others have pointed out, each using a slightly different language, this balance is a (perhaps the) central problem of contemporary social theory. Chapter 2. Sem relations: solidarity and its limits 1 From my field notes. Please see Appendix B for a discussion of field methods and of the use of field notes in this book. 2 Robert Gordon (1983) has recently reviewed some ambiguities in the changing relationship between tribes and the national authorities in his analysis of resurgent "tribal" fighting in the contemporary Highlands. As of 1983, the Mendi had not readopted this style of action, although the potential for it certainly exists, and some Mendi men have gone to fight beside relatives in other Highland provinces. 3 I shall return to the question of how this relationship is construed in a later section of this chapter. Meantime, Barnes's term "cumulative patrifiliation" is adequate. Men prefer to affiliate with the clan of their father; to the extent that a family has been able to live in one place for a period undisturbed by war defeats or environmental catastrophe, men have the same sem identity as their father's father, and so on, as well. Therefore, they give the appearance of following a patrilineal descent rule. 4 My use of the term "corporate" is meant to imply neither any particular membership rule nor a hierarchical organization. 5 Responsibility for sorcery attacks is typically "corporate" nowadays. Discussions of such attacks often refer to the fact that whereas occasionally members of one group might wish to punish the wrongdoing of a specific member of another group, more often they merely suspect "someone" in that group (based on evidence often including divination rituals which are typically vague). Even when the attackers have aimed at a specific victim in another group, poison is often thought to miss its mark and to stray to other members of the intended victim's sem onda, even when the others might not currently be living in the latter's locality. 6 Later on, we will consider the extent to which group meanings can be denied and subverted by individuals. 7 Sem kank, or subclan, cleavages are not structural. They are not culturally constituted as enduring at least in part because, unlike sem onda, they do not define land-holding groups and are not based on differential access to permanent or accumulable resources. 8 Men who are inactive in ceremonial exchange may even be polygynists in Mendi. One "rubbish" man in the Senkere community had two wives, both of whom had eloped with him (although marriage payments were made for each of them subsequently). None of the three is talked about with much respect, but they are not ostracized either, by any means. 9 Elsewhere (Lederman 1980) I have described the deliberate, formal ways in which individual acts are made to have or to lose a corporate significance, and why it matters. Individuals can shape interpretations concerning corporate actions by playing an active role in public meetings. When people make public prestations, they often take that opportunity to explain the reasons for the event, often with

258

10

11 12

13

14

15 16

17

Notes to pages 30-39 encouragement from their audience. Agreements and understandings about events reached in formal, public contexts are remembered and referred to in subsequent discussions, and have something of the quality of a historical document. Some groups also recognize kinship and political relations with same-name groups residing and holding land elsewhere, and individuals sometimes move between these noncontiguous same-name sem onda. Thus "Kurelka" is to be found both in Upper Mendi and in Ialibu. These two are not quite one corporate group: A special prestation had to be made between them to establish their members' reciprocal land rights. Furthermore, each has its own local political commitments and affiliations. Thus "Suolol," the tribal alliance of which the Upper Mendi "Kurelka" is a part, does not exist as a "name" in Ialibu. For this reason, I will refer to the entire southern part of Suolol as the "Senkere community." This is meant to include Senkere, Molmanda, and Kombal (all Molsem localities) as well as Wepra and Ponea (both Kurelka localities). Mendi rhetoric concerning the enduring nature of male labor and concerning ancestral powers in the land might be a way of talking about the investment of labor by previous generations (cf. Bloch 1975). If this is so, food is an ambiguous mediator between living people and the ancestors, because it is conventionally a female product. Occasionally friends of different clans do their gardening together and plant trees on each other's land. When they die, their children (or their brothers' children, if they themselves have had none) may all have what appear to be equally strong individual claims to the gardens. In such cases, clan rights carry weight over evidence concerning one's father's active use of the land. Land does, from time to time, slip out of clan control. This can happen peacefully as well as a result of warfare. For example, one old bachelor, the last representative of one Kurelka subclan, gave members of a subclan affiliated with Molsem (Kurelka's allied pair clan) two whole blocks of land which, as it happened, were contiguous with Molsem lands. The transfer was occasioned by a series of intra-Molsem sorcery accusations, which forced the Molsem subclan in question to leave their homes. Fellow clan members, like exchange partners, make explicit and specific loans to one another on occasion. Nevertheless, the characteristic moral tone, in relations between fellow members of a clan, is of corporate solidarity and identification. Exceptions to the tacit conventions of "brotherhood," even when they are frequent and socially acceptable, must be explicitly acknowledged as such. Likewise, people expect that relations between those who are not members of the same corporate group will follow the conventions I outline in Chapter 3. Exceptions - when a twem partner acts "like a brother" - are often remarked upon or pointed out. Not all Highland societies have antigamy rules; this may have implications for the structure of exchange (see Feil 1984). It is possible that the conflation of affines and corporate group members that I describe here, possibly a concomitant of widening alliances, is a historical fact of the past generation. In that case, the political implications of the twem-sem structural relation would have been different in the past (see note 17). They have been successful in this recently. Since pacification, some major tribal enemies have made war death prestations to one another for what the people say is the first time. If this process is in fact new (which is hard to determine), it amounts to a widening of each person's potential circle of social responsibility. Sem onda size may also be another index of the extent to which people are socially integrated. Ryan (1959) claimed that the Mendi had no named social groups above the level of the clan and that "clan clusters" (what I have been calling

259

18 19

20 21

22

23

Notes to pages 40-63 "tribes") were unnamed. Twenty years later, in Upper Mendi at least, I found that tribes were frequently named: Suolol, Surup, Yansup, Yakump, and so forth. This account is reconstructed from my first field notebook, but it follows the format of part of Wagner's argument closely to highlight important ethnographic contrasts between Daribi and Mendi social constructions. Because, unlike anthropologists, they are not concerned with questions of crosscultural comparison, the Mendi and other Highlanders have no need for complex metaterminologies for their social groups. Proper names and a knowledge of regional political history are sufficient. As Strathern wrote concerning Melpa idioms, "The Hageners themselves are able conceptually to equate tribes of different size, since they are all 'big names' "; at the same time they recognize that the status of all groups is labile (Strathern 1971: 17). As I have implied, the Mendi usually employ only two terms - sem onda and sem kank - in categorizing their groups, and these terms are often used in a relative sense. The Mendi compare their sem primarily in concrete contexts of action. They compare groups in terms of the number of participants and the scale of the displays of wealth that each can muster at similar sorts of ceremonies, for example. Earlier in this chapter and in Chapter 6, I describe the generally tense situation between Mesa and other groups in the Senkere community. This I realized long after the marriage. It had not occurred to me at the time to distinguish among Pulumsem members; however, I did record the names of all those who had contributed to the bridewealth. Later on, when I began to understand these intra-Pulumsem distinctions, it was possible to check the list of contributors for their subgroup affiliations. The status of leaders in Mendi depends much less on clan supporters than it does among the Melpa and the Mae. Mendi leaders amass their wealth through their own productive efforts and through personal network relationships just as everyone else does. These people are not, contrary to what Ryan implied, referred to as ebowe except as an insult. Rather, they may be referred to descriptively as living in the place of their wife, their tention su.

Chapter 3. Twem: personal exchange partnerships 1 In this context, "kinship" refers to a field of relationships not simply of "shared substance" (because twem arguably is that too insofar as it is made in exchange) but also with transgenerational extension. Twem relationships do not endure past an individual's lifetime. What is more, who one's parents' twem partners are has no necessary implications for the composition of one's own exchange network. 2 Twem does not mean "whisper" as Sillitoe (1979) reports it does among the Wola (who speak a dialect of the same language as the Mendi). Whereas twem transactions are generally conducted in private settings, the Mendi insist that twem has no connotation of secrecy or concealment (which are negative, and associated with sorcery), and my observations bear this out. The Mendi use of "twem" appears similar to the Tombema Enga use of "tee." D. K. Feil (1984: 39) reports that for the Tombema, tee lenge (lenge = "to speak") means "to request" and that "some informants insist that herein lies the meaning upon which the whole institution is based." See the later section "Requesting, Giving, and Repaying Gifts," for more on the significance of requesting wealth in Mendi twem relations. 3 As I noted in Chapter 1, ethnohistorical accounts imply that the Mendi may be a central Highlands "frontier" population (now well established and reasonably

260

4

5

6 7

8

9 10 11

12

Notes to pages 64-79 densely populated), having migrated southward from the Enga and perhaps the Melpa/Tembokl-speaking areas. These studies also included accounts of small groups on the fringe of the Highland area within the Southern Highlands Province: Etoro (Kelly 1977), Kaluli (Schieffelin 1976), Onabasulu (Ernst 1978) and others. These groups are relevant to a more general understanding of Highland sociocultural systems but will not be considered here. In his work on the Tombema Enga (who live to the north of the Mae), Daryl Feil also argues against corporate group-centered models of exchange. He claims that tee exchanges occur between individuals, and are not corporate in Tombema society. His work also contributes to the trend I am outlining here. Women marry in their mid-teens and therefore have less of a chance, before marriage, of becoming involved in transactions with a network of nonagnatic exchange partners than do men, who marry in their middle or late twenties. I am making a distinction here between sponsoring a wealth distribution and contributing to (or helping with) a prestation that another person is sponsoring. A similar distinction may be made between being one of the main recipients of a gift and receiving items when a prestation is redistributed by the main recipients. The formal organizers of a prestation and their designated recipients are those who give and receive wealth in their own "names" (or, in whose "names" wealth is ceremonially and publicly given and received by big-men and orators of their groups). Other people may contribute wealth or may receive it, informally and privately. Although some of the wealth involved in the prestation may pass through their hands, they take no significant part in organizing the event, and their "names" (imbi: reputations) are not directly involved in its outcome. This distinction is least clear at marriage for reasons we will turn to later on, and it is most clear at large-scale clan prestations where at least some of the wealth is given and received in the name of clans by big-men, who redistribute it later to members of the group. The distinction also allows room for interpretation and is occasionally a topic of political dispute. This explanation was not convincing, because another old man with a strong reputation as a warrior made a point of telling me that he had been married to twelve women during his lifetime. It is true, however, that all but two had left him after only a few months, seven of them before the marriage payments had even been completed. Ryan published a description of the procedural details of marriage in Mendi (1969). Here, I am concerned simply with the significance of marriage for the development of exchange networks. Although women have some say as to the recipients of the wealth they formally hand over in the ceremonial ground, it is actually the ank kos over which they expect to have the most control (see Chapter 4). The shell came to him indirectly. Members of the sent onda Yansup distributed several hundred pearl shells to Suolol, a number of which were given to the Pulumsem subclan as a whole. A couple of the prominent men in the group took responsibility for sharing out the shells the group had received, and gave two to the young man in question (see the section "Large-Scale Ceremonies," in Chapter 5). The Melpa word "moka" and the Tombema Enga word "maku" are probably not cognate with the Mendi "mok ink." "Mok" is the Mendi word for "pig"; "mok ink" translates loosely as "season (time, year) of the pig." The Mendi word "maike" is a possible cognate for moka, however. It refers to oratory and appears in the names of ceremonial prestations associated with death compensa-

261

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Notes to pages 79-96 tion: "mok maike" (or "pig" maike) and "momak maike y (or "pearl shell" maike). The term for clan death compensation prestations, ol tenga, appears to be cognate with the Melpa wue peng (ol = wue = "man"). Konduko's break with his deceased wife's kin turned out to be temporary. Unlike among the Tombema Enga where exchange relationships are possible only where there is an active female "link," the Mendi may maintain exchange partnerships after the death of (or otherwise in the absense of) a "mediating" female relative. A truly adequate account of twem and sem would encompass an analysis of their articulation with the developing market society in Papua New Guinea, a topic with which I am currently concerned, but which I touch only obliquely in this book. For those Mendi who live in town, working for wages, this process has become distorted. People in town with relatives in rural villages nearby are frequently under pressure to continue acting as if they had obtained their wages in the same reciprocal fashion that villagers obtain wealth. They learn other lessons when, for example, illness means the loss of their job. Although not at all like Sahlins's Zen road to affluence (1972: Chapter 1) in effect, this cultural structuring of the objective fact of a finite quantity of valuables stands similarly in contrast to the meaning this fact is given in systems of exclusive control (which present scarcity as a natural fact and determining condition of human behavior). Conflicts do occur over the control of things in practical contexts; but whereas whoever currently holds an object desired by another always has a special kind of power, the explicit ethic of twem is thoroughly giftlike, conferring positive social value on giving away or passing along wealth. The information presented in the following pages was gleaned both from observed and reported cases and from my practical experience participating in Mendi exchanges. My understanding of twem conventions was deepened during the last month of fieldwork by a series of interviews with some of the people my husband and I had come to know well. They included one thirty-year-old man, two leaders in their forties, two women (one in her thirties and the other in her forties, both very active in exchange), and one man in his fifties. They responded to questions about details of particular transactions in which I knew they had been involved, and each of them elaborated in his or her own way concerning the rationale and etiquette of twem behavior. Although one generally considers carefully whom one will invite to one's pork distribution and calculates the quantity of meat one will need based on one's explicit invitations, one also must be prepared for unexpected, uninvited "guests.'' Big-men pride themselves on being able to accommodate an uninvited throng, but they sometimes do so at their own and their household's expense. The big-men interviewed made a point of saying that they did not always solicit wealth from their partners when other people were present, admitting that they feared jealousy and sorcery attack. The ordinary men interviewed tended not to raise this issue. When I asked them about privacy, they said there was no reason for it. Perhaps people with many "preferred" friendships are more aware of the tacit conventions governing the successful pursuit of such relationships. In any case, the preferred partners of big-men are not invariably other big-men. Frequently they are just particularly reliable or loyal friends. The table underreports partnerships lost as a result of death. It was compiled on the basis of responses to questions concerning why informants actively dropped certain partners from their networks. Death may be a more significant cause of the loss of partnerships but is not really relevant to the issue discussed here.

262 22

23 24

25 26 27

28

29

30 31

Notes to pages 96-109 Even death, as a serious rupture in the complex interconnections between exchange networks, is not entirely irreversible. For example, when a person dies, his or her siblings, children, or spouses may choose to repay valuables the person owed to his or her exchange partners. Conversely, the exchange partners can repay their debts to these relatives. While people do not inherit exchange partners in Mendi, relatives of the dead have informal opportunities like these, and formal opportunities in the context of funeral payments, to mend the tear death creates in the fabric of their social connections. This is true, at least, judging from the college students I have encountered and the economics textbooks they study. No one has ever claimed that trekking around mountainous countryside to visit exchange partners is easy. Many ethnographers have noted that people (and particularly big-men) spend a considerable amount of time at it. But it is not generally looked at from an economic perspective as (by analogy) a sort of "transport" service. More often, it is considered social or political in function. Apart from that, by arguing that twem conventions help organize the demand for wealth in Mendi, thereby articulating otherwise independent producers more closely with one another, I aim to extend to twem relations the idea, associated with the work of Maurice Godelier and others, that "kinship" (loosely construed here) can be a "relation of production/' A thorough analysis of the data on which this section is based demands more space than is available and will be presented elsewhere. See Appendix B for a description of these personal histories. In the present discussion, networks include the agnates with whom informants transacted in the manner of twem (that is, giving valuables as saon, explicitly for a direct repayment). Needless to say, such agnates also treated one another in a solidary fashion - in the manner of clansmen - on occasion. I have called intraclan twem ol "agnatic supporters" or "clansmen-partners" in the tables. They never comprise all of a person's agnates, but form a personal network within the clan, operating situationally on twem principles. In order to keep these ambiguities from getting out of hand, it was important during interviews to be clear as to whether valuables were given as saon or whether they were unsolicited gifts. Much of the time, this information was offered by informants without being explicitly elicited by me. During this period, monthly records were kept for the forty-three persons whose networks are described in these and other tables. The records detailed all transactions informants reported: not only purchases and sales at trade stores and markets around Mendi, but also paeme gift exchanges, saon, labor exchanges and so on. For about five months, information concerning abortive "searches" (i.e., the names of people of whom informants requested wealth but from whom they received nothing) was also recorded. This sort of information derives from asking people for histories of their transactions with particular partners. For each partner, informants would list the contexts (marriages, deaths) and the valuables given to or received from the person. These episodes can be dated roughly, and some sense of their frequency can therefore be ascertained. The overall percentage figures are distorted upwards since there were more men in the sample than women, and figures for men are generally higher than those for women. Please refer to tables in Appendix B for information on the particular men (referred to as Ml, M2, M3, etc.) and women (Fl, F2, F3, etc.) included in the sample interviewed about their networks. Tables B.4 through B.9 present the case

263

Notes to pages 109-129

material on which the remainder of this chapter is based, and which Tables 3.4 through 3.9 only summarize. 32 In evaluating these figures, note that the study period occurred about a year before the Senkere community staged its mok ink, or Pig Festival. Final preparations for the festival had begun. As we will see, this meant that over the course of 1978— 9, there may have been a larger than usual number of outstanding saon, as (following Mendi custom) repayments were increasingly put off until just before the festival. This may mean that the number of active partnerships was larger than usual. On the other hand, it may also mean that there were simply a larger number of outstanding transactions with the same number of partners. 33 Saon are also remembered partly in this manner, and they are remembered in terms of ''projects." That is, if a person is planning to sponsor a kowar and also has a series of unrelated, simple saon, he will group the kowar-related obligations together and then list the simple gifts in terms of categories of relationship. Chapter 4. Gender ideology and the politics of exchange 1 The anthropologist's house was not a "men's house" (ensa), where a prohibition against women entering would have been completely appropriate, nor was the content and form of our discussion the sort from which women are conventionally excluded (although, for example, meetings concerning sent onda ceremonies would be; see Lederman 1980). Walo's response was an indirect comment on this fact; the only sort of activity that is conventionally secret, for both men and women, is sorcery. She made fun of what she recognized as an attempt to apply rules concerning the exclusion of women to an inappropriate domain. She chose to ignore the legitimacy of women's exclusion from some gatherings, as she asserted this gathering to be open. She used the negative sense of exclusion (sorcery), whereas Walipa used its positive connotation (exclusively male, valued). Both distinctions are legitimate in the culture in their appropriate contexts. Each person used the distinction that suited his or her respective meaning, thereby implying something about their respective interpretations of the context in which they were involved. 2 In contrast, it is not clear how much power Mendi women derive from joining together with other women. Female solidarity is evidenced sporadically and informally and does not have the easily articulated legitimacy of the cross-sex bond I have been describing (see also Josephides 1983; but see Sexton [1980] for an example of the recent emergence of women's organizations in the Eastern Highlands Province). 3 This figure should probably be slightly higher. Olonda (Ml) has two other wives who were not available to be interviewed. One was young and, I gather from occasional talks with her, not very involved in exchange. The other was estranged from Ml and lived in her own natal community, although they were still married. 4 Unfortunately, I do not have enough information to check for the degree of overlap in the networks of brothers and sisters. Such an investigation might have yielded interesting results when compared with husbands and wives. Generally, it is unclear whether one ought to assume that the marital household is a production and exchange unit in Mendi. The "atom" of the socioeconomic system may be more complex. 5 After all, such thievery within the household would appear to lessen a woman's daily work load; she could harvest less if she expected other family members to feed themselves during the day. 6 Women's control over the vegetables they plant has taken on new significance

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12 13

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Notes to pages 130-137 with the advent of markets in Mendi town and in rural centers. Whereas women exchanged food for other things in the past, they now get access to money by means of the sale of both indigenous and introduced vegetables: cabbage, pumpkin, corn, beans, greens, potatoes, and so on. Money has a status equivalent to the "strongest" indigenous valuables: pigs and pearl shells. In precolonial times, people report that one could not exchange vegetables for strong wealth items. (See A. Strathern 1979b for a discussion of some of the repercussions.) In Mendi, women do not have valuables that could be called "women's wealth," nor is there a significant category of payment that is exclusively female there, in contrast to Trobriand women (Weiner 1976). When women marry, they do bring netbags and other items to give to their husband's female agnates, who may give the bride similar items in return. Neither women nor men consider these exchanges significant although they do represent a certain investment of labor and are meant to establish amicable relations between the people who make them. On occasions when women receive pork, they also give one another bits of the meat. A fist-sized piece of pork may be subdivided into five or six strips to pass around to the women and children sitting nearby. No particular accounts are kept of such exchanges. These interactions merit closer analysis than I am able to give them here. Material on these small-scale transactions exists in month-to-month records kept for the "accounts sample." I shall analyze them at a later date. Because of the number of transactions involved, it is hard to estimate their significance. It should be noted that women's lesser involvement in exchange is not a simple matter of restricted mobility. In precolonial times, women traveled long distances. Women were particularly important in the salt trade between Mendi and Kandep, walking five days northward, following their matrilateral connections, to places where they would help process salt ash. This is from Alcome's and Saporpi's monthly exchange accounts and is one of many particular transaction "chains" that could be traced out with this sort of a record (see Appendix B). It is therefore a twem type of social relationship, just as the cooperation of some affines - who happen also to be members of one tribal alliance - in sponsoring a tribal prestation is a sent relationship. The relationship between a brother and a sister can, however, have corporate effects. For example, if a woman dies and her brothers decide that her husband's sem is responsible for the death, the brothers may, as members of a corporate group, demand compensation from her husband's group. The use of gender idioms would most likely be different in those Southern Highlands societies in which people engage exclusively in network relations, or in which women do not transact. The historical importance of clans as the means by which access to land is regulated in Mendi has no doubt helped establish the legitimacy of this institution for women as well as for men. But this fact does not necessitate female exclusion from clan affairs. Andrew Strathern (1982b) recently argued that gender hierarchy is the central contradiction and political fact of Hagen society, to which even the moka system of clan-sponsored ceremonial exchanges takes second place. His argument is striking and bears consideration. At the current juncture in Mendi history, a similar conclusion is hard to draw. Needless to say, and as Strathern (1983) recognizes, the situation in either place may change. Generally, the identification of central contradictions has a bearing on the analysis of social reproduction or transformation. Marilyn Stathern (personal communication) has suggested that whereas labor is a

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Notes to pages 138-147

metonymic aspect of the person (in that it is part of a whole), one's "name" is metaphorically related (as it represents the whole). In our analyses of social inequality in Highland societies, it would be a mistake to frame matters simply in terms of labor power and its alienation. Other dimensions have political salience there. 16 This may be a function of the post-colonial situation. There is no way to tell how seriously women treated the protocol of clan ceremonies in the days of tribal warfare. Although I suspect that they were more somber then, as I noted before, this does not mean that women agreed with men about the relative importance of sem and twem relationships generally.

Chapter 5. Twem and sem in context 1 I shall leave aside dormant cults, as I did not have an opportunity to observe them directly. I also shall not consider the organization and operation of modern commercial projects here. Both could be analyzed from the perspective developed in this book. 2 Because leadership in the Highlands has been the subject of many studies, no general account will be presented here. The classic statement was made by Read 1959 (see also Brown 1963; Oliver 1955; Salisbury 1964). In an early article, Sahlins 1963 compared Melanesian big-men with Polynesian chiefs; his argument was criticized by Meggitt (1967) and by Strathern (1971). Recently, new arguments have painted a more complex picture of Melanesian leaders. The achieved status paradigm has never held for all of Melanesia (see e.g., Brunton 1975; Hau'ofa 1975), and new types of political structure have even been suggested in the Highlands (Godelier 1982), that bastion of achieved leadership. The status ot the big-man itself has been a topic of controversy for some time: see Strathern's (1971, 1983b) criticisms of Vicedom's early analysis of Hagen political relations and more recently Gerritson (1975), Sillitoe (1979) and Standish (1978). My own position is similar to Meggitt's and Strathern's, but inflected for the Mendi's more decentralized political structure. 3 See Table B.5. These two and a few other women were, in fact, occasionally described as koma. In a couple of cases, women achieved local reputations for sponsoring kowar. In exceptional cases, a woman may achieve a regional, public reputation. For example, the first wife of a prominent Mendi leader and former Member of Parliament helped run his cattle business, and she now owns a trade store. Prominent women are usually well known and respected within their natal and their husband's communities and have a personal or face-to-face reputation5 among their various exchange partners (who may live in many parts of the Southern Highlands Province); still, they do not achieve the type of public fame that involvement in clan action can bring. 4 In former times there was even a positive prescription enjoining people to eat, rather than give away, especially large pigs. The rationale was that one's ancestral ghosts would be envious of one's twem partners if one gave away one's* largest pigs, and these bad feelings were thought to be dangerous to the living. One shared the pork, however. Feil reports that among the Tombema Enga, people exchange pigs they obtain from other people, and eat their own, partly for reasons of "accounting." Pigs one receives from others constitute debts, and ought to be invested as credits, if one is to come out all right in tee dealings. One's own pigs are neither debts nor credits and therefore may be consumed. Strathern reports a similar rationale among the Wiru, in the context of their pig

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Notes to pages 149-164 kill - that is, they exchange other people's pork rib cages. See Rubel and Rosman (1978) for another rationale for exchange. Return-gift pigs from the wife's side are called mok moke, or pig moke. This term is not a cognate of the Hagen term kng moka or "pig" moka, as far as I can tell. Neither, for that matter, is the term mok ink related to Hagen moka. Rather, the Mendi have two terms for stages in their war death compensation payment - the ol tenga mok maike and momak maike (see Chapter 3, note 12). One man suggested that the ol tenga ceremony may have been imported from the north. The Mendi refer to the Enga tee and the mokadl of Tambul (near the Melpa area) as sunda maike, "sunda" being a general reference to cultural areas to the north of Kandep. Andrew Strathern (1980) recently explored this theme in the context of a comparison between Melpa and Wiru bridewealth payments. The Mendi may be more similar to the Wiru than the Melpa in that bridewealth is not "seen simply as transferring a set of jural rights including sexual access over to the husband. It does do this; but in addition it looks forward to a continuing, indeed never-ending set of exchanges set up through this transaction in the bride's body" (Strathern 1980:62). An extended discussion of the connection between sorcery and exchange cannot be given here. See Lederman (1981). The generalization that "female links" create particular kinds of unequal exchange relationships (e.g., Forge 1972) does not help us to understand the relationship from a female (and not simply a male) viewpoint. Marriage - a malefemale link - does create the possibility for one-way nopae payments. By the rules of nopae payment, men distinguish their female agnates from their wives, and women distinguish their own agnates from their husband's agnates and relatives. When women funnel wealth to their own group, in similar contexts men direct wealth out of it. The information that follows is based not only on observations during 1977-9 and 1983 but also on interviews conducted in 1978 with Senkere community members who were asked for details of the marriage and death prestations in which they had been involved. Nowadays, the value of pigs and pearl shells can be calculated in money terms. One gets some sense of the value of these prestations if one figures that pearl shells of average quality may exchange for K10-K20, and a medium-sized pig for K160 (small adult pigs being valued at K80 and large ones K240 or so; Kl = US$1.47, at 1978 exchange rates). When Nare was building the coffin, my husband, Mike, asked him,' 'Can I help?'' Nare responded in a way that indicated that he thought Mike had meant that he wanted to help Nare provide the pork for the funeral feast (ke kondisa), which Nare was obligated to give in return for the kowar. From Nare's perspective, building a coffin was not cooperative work - at least, that work was not what preoccupied him - but finding pigs for an exchange was! Although the government ban on tribal warfare has been relatively successful in eliminating combat with arrows and axes (at least in the Southern Highlands Province), many contemporary deaths are attributed to sorcery and may still become pretexts for ol tenga. That is, many deaths are still thought to be politically motivated or implicated in intergroup relations. Such deaths require ol tenga, if relations between the relevant groups are to be set right again. Some of his twem partners are likely to belong to the sem onda to which his group is making the prestation. If he requests wealth from a twem partner belonging to

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that group, he must be careful to ensure that he does not give the items back to anyone in his twem partner's sem kank. 14 The background to this payment is exceedingly complex and will not be given here. It may be noted, however, that Tern, a southern subdivision of Tukunsup, is a major enemy of one of Suolol's main allies, Surup. The Suolol consider them minor enemies only. While, generally, major enemies do not compensate one another for deaths, minor enemies may accept such social responsibility by way of establishing more amicable relations. 15 Both "individual autonomy" and "group unity" express the tension Kenneth Read (1959) identified between "equivalence" and "strength," but each expresses this tension differently. It is important to recognize that "autonomy" in Mendi is socially constrained by obligations to a personal network of exchange partners and in some measure against obligations to clansmen. It is not an abstract individualism. Sem unity is likewise explicable only in relation to the twem relationships of sem members. (Thus twem relationships may be the basis of the participatory character of Mendi groups.) Mendi assertions concerning autonomy or unity can be appreciated only when one understands the answers to the questions, "Autonomy from what?" and "Unity as opposed to what?" Chapter 6. Sai le at Senkere: the politics of a Pig Festival 1

Hide's "domestic" strategy may refer to the technical production aspect of what the Mendi call twem, or personal network relationships. As such, the term "domestic" is inadequate in the Mendi context because it obscures the exchange basis of this "nonpolitical" (nongroup) behavior. It may also be inadequate in Mendi because of variation in the degree to which husbands and wives cooperate as a "domestic" unit. I prefer to express the contrast that Hide referred to with terms like personal network versus group obligations. Network and group relationships each may be either private and informal (paeme gifts between clansmen; individual saon between twem partners), or public and formal (war compensation payments ceremonializing group relations; marriage ceremonializing network relations). Both have political implications and affect domestic production. 2 This criticism is not meant to apply to the anthropological literature on the Highlands generally. In particular, recent studies of old and new forms of inequality (Strathern 1982; Godelier 1982) have moved us away from cyclical social structural and ecological models, and toward more historical ones. 3 The sai anda is in itself a concrete representation of both the collective and individualistic organization of Mendi ceremonies. Each house appears to be one 200to 300-foot-long structure but is actually made up of several small sections each built by an individual man, or at most by two or three subclan brothers. The number of houses built and their lengths are both used explicitly by the Mendi to judge the size of the sponsoring sem onda. Conversely, the sai anda at Senkere became, at a number of critical junctures, the focus of conflict between individuals and factions. In one case, a man tore down his segment of his subclan's Festival house and built a free-standing house of his own on his segment's site even though it was located right at the center section of the original long house. (His action was his way of chastising his fellow subclansmen who had not waited for him in making a collective prestation earlier.) In another case, in 1977 two leaders belonging to rival Suolol subclans became involved in a fist fight, which escalated until each man burned down his own section of the sai anda. (These were later rebuilt.)

268 4

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Notes to pages 179-184 Ownership of headdresses and similar items is common, but it is not usual for a person to own all the finery required for parading properly. Therefore, men "rent" what they do not have from twemol who are not currently using theirs or else they obtain them from other men known to have particularly impressive items. Likewise, hosts rarely have adequate sugarcane on hand for refreshing their guests, and they very frequently resort to purchases or credit either within the community or from their twemol in neighboring communities. It might be noted that Festivals are also occasions for intensive courting, since young people from allied groups meet there. Young men and women have dances of their own which may continue long after the formal parades are over, and they attend parties (more or less chaperoned) in the evenings where both stylized and imaginative chants are sung, and equally stylized or imaginative nuzzling occurs. Separate large-scale and small-scale rituals were performed specifically to communicate with and to please ancestral spirits, during times of illness and misfortune. A survey, done for me by a fourth-year student at the Mendi Provincial High School, Ondowai Kep, revealed no evidence of any mok ink or other long house pig kills held earlier than this date. Among the Wola in the Nipa area, the pig kill is called sa liy (probably a variant of the Mendi term "sai le"). From Sillitoe's one-paragraph account of prekill exchanges (1979: 276), it appears that incremental repayments to afflnes are an aspect of this event, as in Mendi. The historical outline I shall present here is a village-based view of the world. It reflects the limited impact which the Australian colonial presence and the independent Papua New Guinea state have had on indigenous perceptions of the ' 'major events" of their recent history. This is, needless to say, a partial account (even of the local-level events I will describe). When one asks specifically about Western-style economic development, the Mendi have plenty to say about it. But when talking to rural people about economic development, provincial politics, mission teachings, and many other manifestations of their contemporary experience, one is often led back to clan policy and other local political issues. Discussions less often proceed from a consideration of pig kills and other local concerns to consideration of commerce and Local Government Councils. This was my experience in Mendi during 1977-9; I imagine that the situation is different in more developed parts of Papua New Guinea. Some shifts in emphasis were evident upon my return to Mendi in 1983. Another locality associated with the Tukunsup, Kundaga, had long houses in their ceremonial ground in the late 1970s. They inaugurated the houses with an ant senk celebration and wealth distribution late in 1977 and killed their pigs at the end of 1983, four years after the Suolol sai le. I do not know how common it has been for major enemies to hold pig kills alternately. They do take careful note of one another's performance, in any case. The key to this argument is Eko's assumption that if Uan had had no dark hidden purposes, he would have tried hard to match or surpass Eko's performance so as to right the balance between them. Eko said that if Uan had tried hard, then surely he could have equalized their relationship: The outcome of their contests was deemed to have been in his control. In his view, Uan had persisted in losing, actively allowing the situation to remain unequal. A tie or an alternating disequilibrium would have been the ideal situation. Uan's pattern of persistent losses was interpreted by Eko and by other more neutral observers as "symbolic" behavior. Such purposeful "irrationality" as Uan displayed hinted at another message, the content of which was obscure to these informants (but clear, they guessed,

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Notes to pages 185-193 to Uan). Uan, for his part, denied that his actions had any double sense, and insisted that he had been trying to establish a balance. The Tukunsup are a large political unit equivalent in size and political "level" to the Surup or the Suolol tribes. Members of the Kunda and Tul clans (which are groups equivalent in political "level" to Molsem and Kurelka clans) live at Kundaga and at Pongal, in the northern and southern parts of Tukunsup territory respectively. Other Tukunsup localities include Egari, Kondipa and Dimipa in the north, and Koen in the south. The Tern, a clan usually associated with the Tukunsup tribal alliance, live at Wogia (a southwestern locality), and do not always fight beside the Tukunsup. I do not have information from a Tukunsup perspective about the history of intra-Tukunsup factionalism, and I am not clear about why the Tern appear to Suolol to be somewhat outside the Tukunsup alliance. The Suolol considered the northern Tukunsup their major enemies, especially the people living at Kundaga and at Egari. The southern Tukunsup are major enemies of Suolol's allies, the Surup, and therefore Suolol's hostilities with those Tukunsup subclans are derivative. It should be noted that while these alignments have persisted for fairly long periods of time, they are not permanent. Subclans may split off from others in their own clan and reaffiliate themselves with other groups. Indeed, this possibility was brought up in the disputes between Molsem and Mesa recounted above. The alignments I have described were salient during the period being described, however. This plan would have entailed a considerable effort if it had, in fact, been executed, as Kuma is a good four-hour walk over a high, forested ridge to the northeast of Senkere. Making such a trip while herding pigs would have proved taxing. It might be noted that the worst frost to happen in the Highlands in recent years, the taim ais, occurred during the middle months of 1972. High-altitude areas such as Kuma and Egari in Mendi and many other parts of the Southern, Western, and Enga Provinces were hard hit; their sweet potato crops were destroyed. The government supplied the people with rations of rice and other food, and people also depended on help from their relatives living in slightly lower-altitude localities. The Senkere community was affected to some degree but apparently is located in a sheltered microenvironment and escaped the worst effects of the frost. They had a good reason for not being satisfied, but the details of their reasoning would lead the story in another direction and will be described elsewhere in this book. I lived in Wepra (Olonda and Pua's place). The preceding account was constructed from discussions I had with all the principals: Pua, Olonda, Uan, Eko, Kirop, and others. I met Eko when I was still living in Mendi town, before moving to Wepra, and our relationship remained friendly throughout my stay at Wepra, despite the political conflict between him and my immediate neighbors. Major interviews with him were conducted at his place in Ponea. These days, pig kills and other large festivals are scheduled during government holidays - the long Christmas break in December and January or shorter vacations in March and July. This facilitates the participation of students and men working in Mendi town and elsewhere. This group is interesting for what it reveals - albeit in an exaggerated fashion about the typical political structure of Mendi groups. At least during the 1970s, the people of Karil lived close both to the Suolol and to the Tukunsup. Karil subclans had radically different allegiances, and had built two separate long houses. Despite a relatively small population, the internal politics of the Karil community are at least as complex as that of Senkere. It turned out that they had been encouraged in this plan by a Molsem man who

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Notes to pages 193-209 had gone to Sekip to mourn the death of his Surup mother's brother in early June. In response to their queries about why he had come, he is supposed to have told his maternal relatives that while he was sorry about the death of his uncle, he was also mourning the Festival houses at Senkere that had been standing for such a long time. This was a public affirmation that their intention of helping Suolol was not meant as a hostile act against Surup. The outsiders all felt that Surup and Suolol ought to be of one mind. The two groups had even at one time gone by the name of Surup-Suol, signifying an especially close alliance. I take some consolation from the fact that in fieldwork, as in life, one cannot always get what one wants. I had come to the Senkere community to study the Pig Festival but was unable to stay for this one. Moreover, my best friends and host were all advocates of the later of the two pig kill dates debated during 1978, so my personal loyalties were perpetually at war with my professional hopes. These are repayments in kind for gifts one has received when one's exchange partners killed their pigs in formal ceremonies, or else they may be given in exchange for pearl shells or money offered by one's partners before one's own pig kill. I am grateful to Nare and to his son Paki for providing me with these data. As I had to leave Mendi before the mok ink was concluded, I sent them questionnaires concerning the provenance of the pigs that a number of men killed. In four cases, they could not interview men I had suggested (individuals from the accounts sample) and made substitutions. I also thank Andrew Ipopi for assisting in filling out the questionnaires. Nare, a Suolol leader, also ran the medical Aid Post for Waparaga; Paki was a student at the Provincial High School during 1977-9 and subsequently went on to technical school in the Eastern Highlands; and Andrew Ipopi (Nare's wife's clan brother) teaches school in the Western Highlands, but returns home regularly to participate in his group's ceremonial events. As Strathern (1978a: 98-9) cautions, this does not necessarily mean that from a societal perspective, economies based on "home production" are less productive than the other kind. In his 1969 article, Strathern distinguished the use of "finance" in Mendi from that of the Enga and the Melpa for being short-term. He was reporting Ryan's account, in which the Mendi are described as extending gift-credit for only short periods of time. This is not accurate. Many gifts (for example, those that repaid mok kwiri) are unreciprocated for more than a decade. Data from the Huli (Glasse 1959), the Wola (Sillitoe 1979), and other groups in the Southern Highlands Province, and from the Tombema Enga (Feil 1984) in the far north, hint at complexities in the structure of personal networks that the Mendi may not share. It is my impression that these were mostly wives' relatives, although they also included other twem partners. Since these data were obtained by means of a questionnaire not administered by me, information concerning the donor's relationship to the pig killer was not as precise as I would have liked it to be. I know enough about the twem relationships of the "accounts sample" to say whether the pig killers consider them affinal. But in the cases of those individuals (A, B, C, and D) substituted by Nare and Paki (who administered the questionnaire) for those with whom I had requested they speak, I cannot independently categorize their relationships with pig donors. An understanding of how these relationships were categorized by the participants themselves depends upon knowledge of the personal history of interaction as much as upon information concerning the genealogies and group affiliations of the people involved, since relationships may

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Notes to pages 214-228 be calculated in more than one way (e.g., two people may be affines and also be distantly related through clan sisters). While collecting simple information on genealogies and group affiliation is possible for large populations, detailed personal histories require many long interviews per individual and are only practical to do with a relatively small number of people.

Chapter 7. "Development" in Mendi 1 2

3

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See, for example, Braudel (1977) and Sahlins's argument in Stone Age Economics, Chapters 2 and 3. This is not to say that an analysis of Mendi social structure provides us with a least common denominator for the region. Rather, the Mendi demonstrate clearly in practice one possible mode of articulation between two types of structural principle that our analytical models dichotomize (present as alternatives). As I have previously noted, this is not the same as saying that "individual" and "social" goals may be interdependent or in conflict; twem and sent do not map neatly onto "individual" and "society." As part of the Mendi concept of the social person, twem relationships constitute a nexus of ongoing social obligations and joint rights to valuables; personal autonomy created in twem relationships is therefore alien to the Western conception of "individualism." Likewise sem cannot be glossed as "society," since it is a narrower concept than that, delimited to that, socially, which twem relations are not. It is interesting to note the anomalous place of the domestic group in this schema; this issue has been touched upon only lightly in this book but deserves extended consideration. This ought to complement the work of Rubel and Rosman who have been concerned to understand diverse exchange systems as structural transformations of one another, using a detailed analysis of potlatch as a point of departure. It is my opinion, however, that until we have more ethnographic analyses sensitive to the internal complexity and histories of gift-exchange societies, large-scale crosscultural arguments concerning transformational relationships will necessarily be limited. In any case, to describe how this actually works would require a regional analysis to which my own data are currently inadequate. With respect to the level of production during 1983, however, I might note that there was only one Pig Festival (in an early stage of preparation) in the Upper Mendi then, at Alpank (Birop), a locality associated with traditional enemies of the Suolol and their Yansup allies. Its effect on the Suolol would have been extremely indirect. A regional analysis like the one I have suggested would have to take account of the effects not only of Pig Festivals but also of large-scale corporate death prestations (large ol tenga and especially ol ombul). It would also have to compare the rate at which pigs are killed and taken out of circulation (as opposed simply to redistributed) in twem and in corporate contexts; that is, it would have to assess their relative "drain" on the social product. On this point see Gewertz (1983), an excellent, historically informed case that illustrates some of the unfortunate unintended consequences of culturally meaningful action (see also Sahlins 1981; Traube 1982). During the mid-1970s, the Southern Highlands Provincial Area Authority bought or rented a large tract of Awa land for coffee blocks. The Awa redistributed K2,000 of what they received to Mend-Kurelka, acknowledging further the latter's legitimate claims to the land. Kaupena is at a significantly lower altitude than Upper Mendi, and a form of shifting cultivation is practiced there by Kurelka residents. Mendi women who

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Notes to pages 229-236 had had gardening experience in the Kaupena area insisted that local customs concerning pig raising also made women's work lighter. My informants' opinions can perhaps be explained by the fact that they were mostly Olsem people who were somewhat peripheral to the current disputes, whereas before they had been centrally involved. In place of the conflict between Mesa and the others, a serious dispute had arisen between two sent kank affiliated with Molsem in Senkere and Molmanda, and involving some parts of Kurelka on one side ( a conflict which had in fact begun a month before the pig kill, and was not entirely unrelated to the earlier troubles). During 1983-4, I initiated a ten-month survey (continued for me after I left Mendi by a local high school graduate) of the sources and uses of money in the Senkere community. An analysis of the first month and a half of that data and of informants' qualitative statements (Lederman 1983) support the assertions made in the text. As I have already noted, about half the sweet potato crop is given as fodder to pigs, a major store of wealth. One rural woman actually said that she believed that wage earners have less money than rural people because they are likely to have been induced to give it all away.

Glossary

Note on orthography In spelling Mendi words, I have adapted the orthography developed by the United Church in Mendi (whose work has been concentrated in Nipa, where the language is somewhat different from that of Upper Mendi). Thus: Vowels a ae ao e i 0

u

(e .g., koma) as in father (e .g., paeme) as in fat (e .g., saon) as in lawn (e .g., ol tenga) as in met (e .g., kirop) as in feet (e .g., kowar) as in go (e .g., poralu) as in boot

Consonants All pronounced as in Spanish except: s (e.g., sem) softer than in English, between sew and s/zow ns (e.g., Yansup) as in Ga/iges Selective glossary Aeme: Brother, fellow clansman Amtia: Mother's line (family) Ank kos: Second stage of the bridewealth gift, redistributed informally by the bride to her people during the first few months after the wedding ceremony Ant senk: Ceremony held to inaugurate the long houses built in the ceremonial ground of groups sponsoring a Pig Festival; a stage in the mok ink Aptia: Father's line (people) Bisnis: (Tok Pisin) Melanesian pidgin term for business, money-making work Imbi: Name, reputation Inikap: General term for bridewealth 273

274

Glossary

Ink anda momak tumawe: Formal prestations of pearl shells and money by members of a Pig Festival-sponsoring group to their affines, which take place in the few months just before the pig kill and are prerequisite to killing pigs. Ink tomp: Parade associated with the mok ink Kaolo: Mourning beads worn for a time by female relatives of the deceased; also refers to a pearl shell prestation made, on the occasion of the formal removal of mourning beads, between female relatives to commemorate a death Ke kondisa: Pork gift given in reciprocation for a kowar or ol tenga Keyent: Food offered as part of the initiatory gift made by people who will be receiving a kowar or ol tenga Kina (K): Melanesian pidgin term for pearl shell; also the name for the national Papua New Guinea currency (exchange rate IK = US$1.47 in 1978) Kirop: Final bride wealth payment usually made to the bride's mother and father Koma: Ceremonial ground; a clearing in Mendi settlements where parades, wealth prestations, and other public events are held Koma tumawe: The formal public wedding wealth distribution; the first stage of the bridewealth prestation Kom'nda (or komanda): House of mourning; also mourning period just after a death, during which time a feast is held in honor of the deceased Kone: Thought, intelligence, conscience Kowar: Mortuary prestation, conventionally made to the maternal relatives of the deceased Kumun wi: Mortuary (kowar) prestation made between agnates Mok: Pig

Mok ink: Pig Festival; a series of parades, wealth prestations, and other events taking place over several years and culminating in a massive pork distribution Mok konde: Pigs one raises by oneself (which one did not receive as a gift) Mok maike: Pig prestation; one stage in an ol tenga Mok moke: Pigs given by the bride's relatives for a reciprocal return by the groom's relatives during the formal wedding ceremony Mok we mulae: Pigs looked after for one by one's wife's relatives; pig gift for which affines must be compensated before a sai le Mok ya ri: Gift made to female relatives "for the pig tether" by men who wish to participate in a sai le, in order to reciprocate the women's labor in raising pigs Moka (Melpa language): Term used by Melanesian pidgin speakers in the Mendi area to refer to ceremonial exchange (most especially kowar and ol tenga) Mol: Drum-beating parade signaling the formal commencement of a mok ink Momak: Pearl shell Momak maike: Pearl shell prestation; one stage in an ol tenga Nonknaik senk: Category of incremental gift made to one's wife and her relatives in honor of the children Nopae: Category of incremental return gift made in the context of marriages ("for the skin" of the bride) and deaths ("for the body" of the deceased) Nurunt: Formal, public wealth distribution; part of an ol tenga Ol epe: "Good man," ordinary man Ol koma: Leader, big-man Ol ombul: Warfare prestation, usually meant to compensate allies for the general destruction of warfare Ol sont mulae: Allies in warfare Ol sont pi: Enemies in warfare Ol sont te: Principals ("root men") in a conflict Ol tenga: Warfare death prestation, made by the principals in a conflict to their allies

275

Glossary

01 ten ''Rubbish man," man of no-account Paeme: Nothing; in the context of gift-giving, refers to unsolicited wealth given with no expectation of a direct, reciprocal return Poralu: Category of incremental return gift; refers specifically to pearl shell gifts Sai anda: Long Pig Festival houses built in the ceremonial ground of groups sponsoring a mok ink to house Festival guests Sai le: Pig kill; the last event in the mok ink Sai pombe: Parade; part of the mok ink Saon: Gift (gift-credit) Saon lupu: To repay a gift Sem: Family, "line" (D'Arcy Ryan [1961] spelled this "shem" and defined it as a "patrilineal descent group") Sem kank: Small family (subclan, lineage) Sem onda: Large family (clan, tribe, "clan cluster") Tom: Poison, sorcery Topowe: Initiatory gifts made to solicit a kowar or ol tenga Twem: Exchange, reciprocal requesting, giving, and repaying of gifts Twemol: Exchange partner

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Index

affinal gifts, 98, 101, 124, 147, 148, 153-4, 170; in Pig Festival, 200-2, 205, 209-12 affines, 27, 28, 36, 39, 66, 68, 69, 74-81, 90, 92, 110-14, 118, 122, 124, 149, 153, 155, 157, 158, 161, 174, 175, 179, 200-3, 205, 209, 218, 223, 270n27; as fellow tribe members, 112, 157, 258nl6, 264nll; and nopae, 151-4; as "wife-givers" or "wife-takers," 79, 151 agency, 18, 22, 208-9, 213-16, 258nl4. See also autonomy, personal; exchange networks; individual; persons agnates, 30-7, 46, 60, 65, 98, 99, 102, 141, 153, 158, 161, 162; as exchange partners, 69, 112, 157, 132, 258nl4, 258nl6, 262n27, 264nll; female, 32, 55-61, 69, 110-12, 119, 122-5, 128, 132, 143; as "supporters," 141, 163, 262n27 "agnatic core," 45 allied clans. See clans, allied; tribes ambition, 87-9. See also name; prestige; reputation ancestors, 43, 50, 52, 54, 58, 60, 258nl2 ancestral ghosts (temo), 34, 180, 265 n4, 268n6 Anga(M20), 73-4, 76, 87, 104, 112-13 Anksuol, 41, 47-50, 54, 56-8, 161, 169, 170 antigamy, 37-40, 258nl5 articulation of twem and sem, 15, 18, 65-70, 81-5,87, 101, 104-5, 110-12, 132-42, 158-9, 163-73, 179; gender idioms and, 142; as historical fact, 218; indigenous development and, 224-5, 227-8; by means of rules of affinal exchange, 77, 147-54, 205, 209-12, 218; and Mendi politics,

283

142-7,170-3, 195-200, 216-20, 225-7, 258nl6; in Pig Festival, 175, 200-12 autonomy, personal, 21-30, 34, 37, 70, 81, 87-9, 122, 128, 129, 144, 148, 171-3, 175, 208, 212, 215, 216, 267nl5, 271n3; constrained by corporate events, 198; female, 117-28, 137. See also agency; exchange networks; individual bachelors. See unmarried people Barnes, J., 20, 58, 257n3 Baudrillard, J., 83 big-manship, 26-30, 55-6, 144, 147, 148, 154, 251; in Mendi and other Highlands compared, 3, 17, 63-6, 87-8, 146-7, 176-7, 218, 255n4, 259n22; reproduction of, in changing times, 229, 231. See also big-men big-men, 50, 57, 58, 63-6, 68, 118, 138, 153-4, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 172, 174, 180, 184, 187, 189-90, 194, 197, 203, 206-9, 215, 217, 219, 224, 225, 226, 251, 256n9, 260n7, 261nl9, 26tn20, 262n24, 265n2; as advocates of clan solidarity, 2630, 54, 136, 142-7, 175, 179, 188, 208, 218; competition between, 45, 177, 182, 193; exchange networks of, 55-6, 7 0 - 1 , 74, 79, 104, 126, 156, 159; exchange practices of, 85, 96, 104-5, 109, 128, 144-8, 154, 177; and household production, 55-6, 62, 88, 146, 179; relationship with ordinary men of, 16, 87-8, 141, 161, 163, 177, 190, 191, 206-9, 226; role of, in scheduling pig kill, 195-200. See also bigmanship "big-women," 81, 109

284

Index

Bloch, M., 15, 258nl2 Bourdieu, P., 21 Bowers, N., 14 Braudel, F., 271nl bride, 75-8, 86, 121, 139, 149, 157 bridewealth, 35, 36, 57, 71, 74-8, 86, 130, 134, 139, 148, 149, 151, 156-8, 169, 259n21, 266n5, 266n6; ankkos, 75, 121, 139, 260nl0; inikap, 75-9, 119-23; koma tumawe, 75, 121, 139, 157 Brookfield, H., 17, 176, 220, 225, 242, 256nl3 brother-sister bond, 55-61, 122-5, 128, 263n4 brothers, 33, 37, 43, 48, 58, 59, 60, 65, 69, 76, 84, 99, 118, 122, 123, 133, 135, 157, 196, 212, 225, 258nl4; as exchange partners, 69, 112, 132, 157, 258nl4, 258nl6, 262n27; as idiom of solidarity, 39. See also agnates; clan solidarity; clansmen Brown, P., 3, 20, 58, 63, 70, 220, 242, 255n5, 265n2 Bulmer, R.,62, 242 capitalist development, 235-7. See also development; market economy; money card games, 74, 169, 228, 234 cash-cropping, 5, 12, 80, 81, 234. See also development; market economy; money cassowaries, 76, 163, 165, 178, 183, 186, 255n4 cattle, 10, 186, 231. See also development ceremonial grounds (koma), 27, 29, 31, 139, 172, 178, 181, 184, 185, 189, 192, 193, 238 "chains," 63, 95, 100, 104, 132, 209, 218, 220, 264nlO change, 44, 137, 153, 160, 188, 264n6, 265nl6; local perspectives on, 226-36 Chimbu (Simbu Province), 9, 21, 53, 63, 176, 206, 220, 242 clan prestations, 16, 28, 56, 57, 62-8, 71, 74, 75, 93-4, 96, 101-2, 104, 132, 1356, 145, 146, 149, 151-3, 159, 162-73, 182, 213, 219-20, 236-7, 256nll, 260n7, 265nl6; accumulation of wealth for, 67, 101, 138, 159, 236; commitment to, 20-1, 171, 216-19; compared with other ceremonial prestations, 163-4; effect of, on rates of wealth circulation, 170; and incremental gifts, 152-3, 157; in other Highland societies, 146-7; participation in, 101, 138, 154; and political reputation, 142-7; politics of, 154, 170-3, 176-8; and twem relationships, 157, 167-70, 198, 218, 262n27 clan solidarity, 27-30, 34, 39-40, 44, 52, 58-60, 65, 67, 69, 70, 117, 169, 171-5,

181, 189, 191, 192, 194-200, 216, 231, 258nl4, 267nl5, 270n20; as achievement, 218;andbig-manship, 142-7, 175, 188; as contested, 37-40, 218, 225-6; importance of, 137; indices of, 226-7. See also bigmen clans, 19, 20, 34, 39, 41, 43-6, 55-6, 68, 69, 132, 137, 141, 151, 215, 219; allied, 20, 25, 30, 39, 44, 46-7, 86, 123, 162, 163, 164, 172, 174, 178, 180, 181, 182, 194, 198, 229, 258nl6 (see also tribes); enemy, 25, 39, 46-7, 59, 163, 164, 174, 181, 182, 192, 239, 258nl7, 267nl4 {see also warfare); legitimacy of, 264nl3; social reproduction of, 30-7; structural character of, 55-61, 68, 208, 269nl2, 269nl8. See also clan solidarity; clansmen; corporate groups; sent onda; tribes clansmen, 59, 62, 63, 76-7, 102, 135, 141, 155, 156, 169, 171, 190, 207, 209. See also agnates coffee gardens, 186, 188, 228, 271n7. See also development commercial society. See development; market economy; money consensus, 27-30, 55, 142, 144, 145, 170, 195-7; role of third parties in, 196 consumption, 74, 78, 82, 101, 131, 147, 148, 233-7; as contradictory to network and group, 236-7. See also food; subsistence contradiction, 119, 135-40, 171-3, 177, 216-19, 227, 264nl4; between local and introduced institutions, 232-7 corporate events, 146, 153, 216, 224-7, 229-33 corporate groups, 18, 2 0 - 1 , 43, 53, 65, 90, 135-41, 171, 177, 187, 216; Mendi commitment to, 142-4, 228-31. See also clans; sem onda; tribes corporateness, 21, 23, 44, 53-5, 58, 68, 132, 257n4, 267nl courts, village, 28, 98, 125, 126, 129, 188, 192 "credits," 17, 81, 84, 95, 101, 153, 168. See also gift-credits Crittendon, R., 14, 255n6 Damon, F., 84 Daribi, 41,53-5, 259nl8 De Lepervanche, M., 58 death, 25, 35, 67, 79, 123, 125, 137, 150, 151, 155, 156, 160, 162, 176, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 192,228,235, 270nl9; causes of, 22-3, 266nl2; nopae as compensation for, 149; significance of, for

285

Index

exchange networks, 81, 261n21, 262n22 "debt," 84, 95. See also gift-debts demand, 4, 102, 147-8, 153, 219; structure of, 11, 14, 16, 102,215 descent, 20, 43, 53, 54, 56-9, 64, 257n3. See also genealogies development, 3, 5, 7, 10, 188, 213-15, 22733, 255n6, 262n28, 268n9; alternative styles of, 227-8, 233-7; indigenous, 21926, 233-7. See also coffee gardens; market economy; money disputes, 32, 45-7, 50, 54, 122, 124, 128, 183-9, 192, 193, 196, 198, 199, 260n7, 272n9 Dumont, L., 83, 89 Eastern Highlands Province, 263n2 egalitarianism, 3-4, 15, 19, 44-52, 55-6, 94, 103, 118, 208, 213-15, 268nll. See also big-men; gender; hierarchy; ordinary men Egari, 164, 174, 181, 182, 185, 239, 269nl2, 269nl4

Eko, 88-9, 183, 186-7, 189, 192, 268nll, 269nl6 enduring structures, 33-4, 44, 52, 58, 60, 68, 258nl2 Epopil(F2), 109, 122, 128, 188 Epstein, S., 3 Ernst, T., 84, 85, 260n4 everyday practice, 15-16, 66, 69; analysis of, 89-90. See also informality exchange, 3, 15, 34, 62, 64, 66, 69, 81-9, 101-3, 109, 134-5, 138, 147, 149-50, 214-16, 227, 236, 260n5, 262n24, 271n4; ceremonial, 15, 62-5, 67, 69, 78, 87, 118, 141-2, 147, 148, 256nl3; competitive, 3 5, 29, 37, 104, 148, 178, 181-4, 187, 268nll; structure of, 17, 148, 205-20, 224-5, 266nl3 exchange networks, 87-9, 92-4, 132, 167, 262n28, 267nl; and access to wealth, 18, 66-8, 87-9,100, 101, 153, 154, 231-2, 236; and clan events, 65, 66, 104-5, 154, 157, 175, 179, 198, 216-18; development of, 56, 67, 70-81, 88, 92, 95-6, 98-100, 103-9, 153, 200, 224-5; and leadership, 56, 144-8, 177; and Mendi social structure, 18, 65, 68-9, 87-9, 103-16, 140, 147-8, 177; and personal autonomy, 68, 87-9, 148; women's, and men's compared, 126-7,130-5 exchange obligations. See gift-credits; giftdebts exchange partners, 27, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 66, 77, 84, 86, 93-6, 102, 109, 113, 115, 135, 136, 153, 154, 156-7, 161, 163,

164, 168, 169, 173, 180, 183, 190, 193, 195, 199, 201, 203, 205, 209, 211, 216, 217, 236, 256nll, 258nl4, 261n20; acting as "brothers," 258nl4; agnates as, 69, 112, 132, 157, 258nl4, 258nl6, 262n27, 264nll; and nopae, 110-12, 148-54; social obligations of, 28, 90-2, 94-5, 99, 171, 197; as sources of pigs, 203-5, 222; See also women, as exchange partners "exchange work," 105, 216, 220, 262n24 and creation of value, 102; men's, and women's compared, 131 exogamy, 37-41, 43, 68 Feil, D., 16, 20, 63, 84, 85, 118, 258nl5, 259n2, 260n5, 265n4, 270n26 femaleness, 70, 119, 136, 140. See also gender; women fences, 31-5, 81, 94, 124, 131, 188 fertility cults, 46-7, 58, 181, 182 "finance," 88-9, 153, 170, 177, 206-9, 211,221,270n25 Finney, B., 3, 16 Fisk, E. K., 14,233 food, 11, 12, 17, 31, 33, 34, 50, 58, 80, 90, 94, 128, 129, 131, 149, 163, 176, 179, 180, 213, 232-6, 258nl2, 263n6. See also consumption; subsistence Forge, A., 266n8 Friedman, J., 225 gardens, 2, 4, 17, 32-5, 50, 57, 66, 67, 91, 124, 125, 129, 138, 170, 188, 203, 258nl3. See also land; production; work gender, 15, 16, 33, 34, 58-61, 70, 117-40, 142-4, 177, 218, 264nl2, 264nl4. See also femaleness; maleness; men; women genealogies, 40-5, 47-52, 55, 56, 58, 59 generosity, 90, 129, 146, 149, 150, 153, 167, 185; and prestige, 261nl7 Gerritson, R., 265n2 Gewertz, D., 271n6 ghosts. See ancestral ghosts gift-credits, 71, 78, 80, 84, 104, 153, 154, 158, 159, 179, 191, 193, 201, 207, 209, 210, 211,218, 232, 270n25 gift-debts, 71, 73, 80, 81, 84, 100, 104, 124-6, 149, 154,158-9, 167-71, 175, 179, 191, 193,224 gift exchange. See clan prestations; exchange, ceremonial gifts, 4, 71, 74, 85, 92-4, 98-9, 101, 11012, 125, 128, 129, 131, 148-50, 261nl7; giving, 90-4, 100, 101; meaning of, 81-9; repaying, 35, 84, 90, 94-6, 98, 103, 104, 125, 148-50, 152, 156-9, 167, 169,224; requesting, 35, 39, 62, 71-3, 75, 78, 80,

286

Index

gifts (cont.) 83, 90-4, 98-103, 156-8, 161, 259n2; twem and sem compared, 36; unsolicited, 35-7, 39, 57, 69, 71, 141, 156-9, 163, 262n27. See also incremental gifts; paeme Glasse, R., 8, 20, 57, 64, 270n26 Godelier, M , 15, 82, 85, 262n24, 265n2, 267n2 Gordon, R., 137, 257n2 Gregory, C , 4, 82,, 84, 92, 227 groom, 74-8, 121, 149, 156, 157 group name, 21-2, 36, 52-5, 258nl0, 258nl7; uses of, 40-3, 45-55 groups. See clans; corporate groups; sem onda; tribes Gudeman, S., 15, 82, 84 Hau'ofa, E., 265n2 Herdt, G., 15 Hide, R., 176, 220, 225, 256nl2, 267nl Hides, J., 1,2 hierarchy, 3, 15, 16, 103, 135, 208, 213-15; gender, 135-40, 143-4; segmentary, 4 3 53. See also articulation of twem and sem; egalitarianism; inequality; maleness Highland societies, 1-5, 10, 13-14, 17-21, 43, 44, 53, 83, 117, 176, 177, 206-9, 213-15,225-6, 255n5,260n4 history, 13-14, 17-18, 32, 52, 85-6, 98, 130, 137, 142, 145,v 162, 187, 208, 21315, 219, 258nl6, 258nl7, 264n6, 264n9, 264nl4, 268n7, 268nlO; community, 2 3 6, 28, 29, 31, 41, 45-6, 50-2, 56, 64, 73-4,88, 144, 161-2, 164-75, 180-201, 227-37, 256n9, 268n9, 269nl2; encoded in genealogies, 41, 50-2; encoded in group names, 48-52; of Highland societies, 1-3, 13-14, 17-20, 208; outline of Suolol, 182-7; personal, 112-14, 138-9, 224, 262n26, 263n33; and structure, 18, 208, 257nl4 home production, 17, 88-9, 146, 205-9, 211, 221, 270n24. See also pigs; production hospitality, 128, 129, 131, 179, 180, 192-3. See also visits

147-54, 179-80, 189,201, 203, 205, 209-12, 218, 224, 268n8; and access to wealth, 79, 124, 152; contexts for, 78, 148-9, 171, 200-2; significance of, 14754. See also mok ya ri; nonknaik senk; nopae; poralu indirect speech, 46, 92, 203-5, 268nll. See also oratory individual, 30, 35, 87, 90, 169, 271n3. See also persons individual action, corporate significance of, 35, 46, 169, 172, 197-200 individualism, 4 - 5 , 64, 89, 267nl5, 271n3 inequality, 15, 103, 142-3, 151, 153, 208, 256n9, 265nl5, 267n2; and big-manship, 142-7; and incremental gifts, 147-54. See also gender; hierarchy informality, 134, 137, 267nl5. See also everyday practice intensification of production, 4, 13-14, 1618, 213-15, 219-27, 256nl3; twem and, 220-5 jealousy, 93, 180, 261n20 Josephides, L., 64, 123, 263n2 Kalap-Kurelka, 24, 25, 26, 41, 46, 239 Kaluli, 21,260n4 Karil, 192, 194, 269nl8 Kaupena, 41, 98, 186, 188, 194, 197, 22833, 238, 271n8 Keesing, R., 15, 20 Kelly, R., 21, 65, 84, 256n8, 260n4 Kirop, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 194 koma. See ceremonial grounds Kombal, 40, 41, 45, 47, 56, 88, 182, 230, 238, 239, 258nll Konduko (M17), 79, 98, 113, 261nl3 Kone (M12), 76, 94, 109, 112, 125 kowar, 35, 36, 71, 73-5, 79, 80, 81, 87, 93, 94, 104, 112, 123, 138, 141, 145, 149, 150, 151, 153-6, 159-64, 167, 179, 200, 201, 213, 217, 222, 223, 233, 236, 252,

263n33, 265n3, 266nll. See also kumun wi Koyma (F14), 40, 80, 241

households, 35, 57, 101, 126-7, 146, 219, kula, 62, 84 Kuma, 41, 63, 74, 123, 164, 172, 174, 185, 239-41, 263n4, 267nl, 271n3 189, 190, 191, 193, 195-6, 201, 238, 239, Huli, 1, 3, 8, 9, 21, 64, 74, 255n4, 270n26 269nl3, 269nl4 husbands, 56, 57, 60, 69, 76, 78, 93, 99, kumun wi, 161, 179,200,201 118, 123-7, 132, 133, 146, 188, 225 Ialibu, 7, 9, 40, 47, 98, 122, 169, 186, 188, 228, 238, 252 increment, principle of, 78-9, 104, 148. See also incremental gifts incremental gifts, 78-9, 90, 104, 110-12,

Kunda, 164, 165, 185, 269nl2 Kundaga, 174, 185, 194, 268nl0, 269nl2 !Kung San, 4 Kuper, A., 21,64 Kurelka, 21-4, 26, 30, 31, 39-42, 45, 4 7 50, 57, 88, 124, 145, 151, 161, 169, 170,

287

Index

172, 183, 184, 185, 228, 258nlO, 258nll, 258nl3, 269nl2, 272n9 Kutubu, Lake, 2, 7, 12, 163, 178 labor, 60, 82, 84, 149, 258nl2, 265nl5. See also production; work Lacey, R., 5 land, 10-14, 30, 43, 57, 58, 59, 123, 129, 146, 216, 228, 255n4, 256nl3, 257n7, 258nl2, 258nl3, 271n7 leadership. See big-men Lederman, R., 4, 5, 25, 142, 172, 182, 194, 228, 236, 239, 257n9, 263nl, 266n7, 272nlO Leroy, J., 20, 64 Levi-Strauss, C , 151 life cycle, 70-81 lineage system, segmentary, 41-5 '' loose structures,'' 20 Mae Enga, 9, 21, 43, 54-5, 59, 61, 63, 69, 74, 143, 146, 170, 206, 207, 209, 215, 220, 226, 242, 259n22, 260n3, 266n5, 270n25 maleness, 60, 70, 119, 136, 142, 258nl2; and gender hierarchy, 15, 58-61 market economy, 3, 5, 64, 82-3, 166, 227, 262n28, 264n6. See also development; money marriage, 35-40, 50, 57, 67, 68, 69, 74-9, 86, 87, 90, 100, 103, 110, 118, 130, 1324, 138-41, 146, 151, 154-9, 162, 163, 167, 179, 200, 217, 222, 227, 231, 252, 255n4, 256nll, 260n6, 260n7, 260n9, 264n7, 266n8, 267nl Marx, K., 82, 83 maternal relatives, 35, 36, 40, 41, 56, 57, 59, 76, 112, 115-16, 119, 133, 141, 149, 151, 152, 153, 156, 160, 183, 201, 203 Mauss, M.,84, 92 meetings, 28-30, 117, 135, 144, 145, 18898, 225, 257n9, 263nl Meggitt, M., 3, 15, 16, 20, 43, 44, 54, 62, 63, 118, 144, 177, 265n2 Meigs, A., 15 Mel, 19, 20, 47-8, 123, 161, 167, 203 Melpa (Mount Hagen), 5, 21, 26, 54-5, 5 7 8, 63, 64, 65, 69, 78, 87, 117-19, 134, 143, 146, 148, 170, 177, 181, 188, 206, 209, 215, 216, 220, 236, 259n22, 260nl2, 266n6, 270n25 men, 58, 59, 63, 69, 78, 85, 96, 98, 103, 115-19, 142-4, 146, 151, 153, 154, 194, 197, 209, 215, 219, 255n4, 260n6, 262n30, 262n31, 264nl3, 266n8; mediating roles of, 132-5. See also clans; gender; maleness

Mendi, 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 15, 16, 18, 21, 44, 52, 85, 259n3, 269nl2, 271n2; compared with other Highland societies, 21, 43-5, 53-5, 57-60, 62-5, 69, 74, 87-8, 118-19, 1223, 134, 143-4, 146-7,205-9,214-15, 226, 255n4, 266n6 men's houses (ensa), 27, 48, 50, 241, 263nl Mesa, 23-6, 35, 40, 41, 45, 46, 49, 50, 88, 161, 183-6, 217, 228-31, 259n20, 269nl2, 272n9; as "agnatic core" of Suolol, 45 migration, 227-32 missions, Christian, 8, 160, 180, 230 Modjeska, C. N . , 5 , 8 4 , 137,215 mok ink, 79, 80, 87, 89, 147, 174, 175, 201, 218, 227, 228, 235, 260nl2; general characteristics of, 178-82; history of Suolol's 182-7. See also Pig Festival mokmaike, 163, 164, 260nl2, 266n5 mok moke, 75, 169, 266n5 mok we mulae, 179, 201, 209-12 mokyari, 89, 91, 129, 179, 181, 201, 21012, 232 moka, 55, 64, 78, 79, 104, 143, 148, 170, 177, 206, 207, 208, 220, 260nl2; cognate terms for, 260nl2, 266n5 Molmanda, 123, 172, 238, 239, 258nll Molsem, 23, 25, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, 45-50, 57-8,88, 123, 151, 169-70, 172, 183-7, 190, 193, 229, 258nll, 258nl3, 269nl2, 269nl9, 272n9 momakmaike, 163, 169, 260nl2, 266n5 Ml, 109, 144, 145, 263n3. See also Olonda money, 15, 30, 35, 36, 66, 68, 74, 75, 76, 80-1, 91, 101, 121, 129, 130, 139, 146, 149, 161, 163, 165, 166, 169, 178, 186, 200-2, 213, 227, 228, 230, 231, 234, 236, 264n6, 266nlO; compared with pearl shells, 231-2; incorporation of, into gift exchange, 228, 231-2, 234. See also cashcropping; development mortuary ceremonies. See kowar mortuary feasts, 256nl 1. See also kowar mortuary prestations, 73, 138, 158, 231, 234-5. See also kowar Mount Hagen, 228, 232. See also Melpa M2, 109, 112, 144, 145. See also Pua name, 21-2, 35, 47, 62, 74, 87, 90, 102, 129, 131, 132, 136, 144, 145, 146, 195, 230, 235, 236, 260n7, 265nl5; control over one's, 138; group (see group name); making one's, big, 87-8, 180; representing person, 265nl5; and reputation, 73-4 Nare, 40, 86, 88, 100, 101, 157, 160, 172, 213, 232, 234-6, 266nll, 270n23 networks. See exchange networks; twem

288

Index

Nipa. See Wola nonagnates, 44, 56-9, 259n23 nonknaik senk, 179, 201, 210 nopae, 71, 78, 80, 90, 110-12, 124, 14754, 158-63, 168,170, 171, 179, 201, 210, 211, 212, 217, 224, 266n8; and bigmanship, 147, 148, 154; defined, 149 ol koma, 144. See also big-men olombul, 79, 87, 141, 164-9, 171, 218, 231,232, 271n5 ol tenga, 23, 25, 35, 36, 45-6, 56, 69, 79, 87, 93, 104, 141, 149, 152, 162-4, 16973, 182, 183, 184, 186, 200, 218, 229, 230, 232, 236, 266n5, 266nl2, 271n5 old people, 32, 48, 49, 80-1, 96, 103, 160, 165, 174, 234 Oliver, D., 177, 265n2 Olonda(Ml),45, 109, 144, 145, 183-4, 186-201, 228-30, 263n3, 269nl6 Olsem, 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 48, 54, 183, 185, 186, 191, 228, 230, 259n20, 272n9 "one line," 37,41,48,50 oratory, 64, 66, 118, 135, 144, 145, 160, 163, 188, 190, 195-200, 257n9, 260nl2. See also speech, indirect ordinary men, 85, 96, 109, 143-4, 146, 154, 155, 156, 187, 190, 191, 192, 201, 215, 217, 224, 261n20; relationship of, with big-men, 16, 87-8, 141, 161, 163, 177, 190, 191, 206-9, 225; roles of, in scheduling pig kill, 195. See also big-men ordinary people, 16, 105, 175, 177, 219. See also big-men origin tales, 41, 47, 182 Ortner, S.,257nl4 pacification, 32, 258nl7. See also warfare, tribal paeme, 35, 57, 69, 71, 76, 84, 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 164, 262n28, 267nl. See also gifts, unsolicited parades, 56, 71, 78, 121, 145, 163, 166, 172, 178, 179, 184, 191, 192, 230; Senkere, 196-200 pearl shells, 3, 15, 30, 35, 36, 66, 67, 68, 73, 75, 76, 80-1, 85-7, 101, 121, 123, 124, 125, 129-32, 138, 139, 146-9, 160, 162, 163, 165, 169, 170, 174, 178, 189, 200-2, 213, 260nll, 264n6, 266nlO; compared with money, 232-3; as corporate gifts, 85-7, 193-7; formal transactions with, by women, 130 persons, 137, 158, 216; concept of, 26, 70, 87-9, 265nl5, 271n3; and things, 81-9, 149-51; value of, 149, 158. See also agency; autonomy, personal

pig cycles, 176, 177, 205. See also Pig Festival, scheduling; pig kills, scheduling Pig Festival, 28, 31, 39, 48, 79, 91, 110, 133, 141, 142, 145, 147, 152-3, 161, 162, 170, 178, 182, 203, 217, 230, 236, 263n32, 271n5; compared with postfestival period, 220-5; ecological models of, 176; future of, 229-31; general characteristics of, in Mendi, 178-82; houses, 23, 31, 178, 181, 185-6, 188, 189, 192, 267n3; network aspects of, 175, 179, 180, 200-5, 209-12, 263n32; politics of, 176-8; rationale of, 180-1, 205; recognition of women in, 175, 179-81, 209-12; scheduling, 176, 181-2, 187-91, 205, 219-20; Suolol, history of, 187-200. See also mok ink; pig kills pig herds: during and after Pig Festival, 179, 220-5; size of, 176, 189, 241-2 pig kills, 2 5 , 3 1 , 5 0 , 7 0 , 9 1 , 9 8 , 1 3 8 , 180, 181, 182, 184, 187, 188, 189, 194, 196, 205, 217, 220, 228, 229, 235, 252, 268n8, 268nl0; accumulation of pigs for, 200-12; organization of gift obligations before, 101, 139, 169, 189-90, 200-2,209-12, 263n32; preparation for, 178-9, 189-91; scheduling, 187-200, 203, 225-7, 269nl7;sizeof, 174, 180,200 pigs, 2, 15, 16, 30, 35, 36, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 75, 76, 80-1, 88-9, 91, 93, 100, 101, 117, 121, 124, 129, 131, 132, 134, 138, 147, 163, 169, 178, 179, 188, 217, 222, 232, 264n6, 266n5, 266nlO; agistment of, 209-12; caring for, 256nl0, 272nll; demand for, 17, 153, 187-8, 203, 204, 205, 256nl3; as property, 85, 117-18, 129, 201, 209-12; rules about eating one's own, 265n4; sources of, 84, 153, 200, 203-5, 209-12, 221-4; standing for exchange relationships, 86. See also gifts; pig herds; pig kills; pork; production; wealth poison, 24, 26, 34, 188, 257n5. See also sorcery Polanyi, K., 83 political discourse, 135-40, 170-3, 203-4 political economies, Highland, 3-5, 14-19, 65,219 political relations, 3, 26-30, 35, 63-5, 82, 141-7, 213-19, 225-7, 261nl7. See also egalitarianism; gender; hierarchy political system, 19, 25, 29, 82, 84, 101, 138, 141-2, 147-54, 176-8,219-20, 225-7, 255nl, 256n7, 265n2. See also egalitarianism; gender; hierarchy Ponea, 40, 41, 50, 88, 238, 239, 258nll population, 2, 5, 9-14, 17, 238, 256nl3 poralu, 90, 149, 162, 179

289

Index

pork, 16, 17, 63, 64, 70, 71, 91, 131, 148, 161, 163, 176, 178, 186, 191, 203, 205, 212, 256nll, 264n7, 265n4, 266nll; distribution of, 91, 123, 128, 180, 261nl9 Pospisil, L., 3, 16 potlatch, 62, 271n4 prestations. See clan prestations; gifts prestige, 3, 128, 148, 177, 180-1; and generosity, 261nl7 "primitive capitalists," 3, 16 "producers," 117-18, 134,216 production, 14-18, 34, 66, 69, 82, 101, 117, 147, 175, 176, 177, 203-5, 214, 216, 219, 227, 233-4, 256n7, 262n24; goals of, 16, 153, 222-4, 226-7; level of, 16, 35, 146, 176, 215, 220-5, 271n5. See also home production; intensification of production property, 30-7, 58-60, 65, 67-8, 82, 85, 92, 102, 129, 132-5, 209-12, 261nl6, 26In 17. See also women, and control over wealth Pua(M2), 109, 122, 138, 144, 145, 156, 185-94, 196-7, 201, 217, 230, 269nl6 Pulumsem, 23, 24, 25, 35, 40, 41, 45, 48, 50, 54, 76, 88, 158, 166, 186, 188, 217, 230, 259n21, 260nll Rappaport, R., 62, 63, 138, 147, 176, 226, 256nl2 Read, K., 3, 15, 70, 265n2, 267nl5 Reay, M.,63 reciprocity, 35-7, 65, 142, 150, 151, 158, 164, 236, 261nl5, 268nll; forms of, 14854. See also exchange reputation, 95, 98, 109, 124, 126, 144, 145, 148, 190, 260n7; women's, 124, 128, 129, 130, 131, 136, 144-5, 265n3. See also name; prestige residence, 33-4, 48, 54, 56-60 "roads," 99-104, 132, 186 Rosman, A., 17-18, 64, 151, 266n4, 271n4 "rubbish men," 28, 88, 150, 251; as polygynists, 257n8 Rubel, P., 17-18, 64, 151, 266n4, 271n4 Ryan, D'A., 9, 20, 37, 43-5, 56-60, 62, 64, 66-8, 79, 81, 101, 104, 118, 119, 122, 130, 133-4, 139, 147, 156, 178, 201, 203, 258nl7, 259n23, 260n9, 270n25 Sahlins, M., 3, 4, 15, 35, 83, 84, 176, 177, 257nl4, 261nl6, 265n2, 271nl, 271n6 sai anda. See Pig Festival, houses sai le. See pig kills Salisbury, R., 265n2 salt trade, 147, 264n9 soon, 81, 83-5, 95, 99, 105, 149, 150, 1568, 161, 164, 167, 170, 171, 179, 188-9,

193, 210, 211, 224, 232, 262n27, 262n28, 263n32, 263n33, 267nl; as Mendi term for "gift," 84. See also gifts scarcity, 170-2, 203, 261nl6 Schieffelin, E.,65, 260n4 Schneider, D., 64 "searches," 93-4, 99-104, 132, 164, 262n28 secrecy, 92-3, 232, 259n2, 261n20, 263nl sem, 30-7, 136-7, 152, 236; contrasted with twem, 37-40, 68-9, 81-5, 87; as "corporate," 22; and gender hierarchy, 143-4; as names, meaning of, 21-2; relationship of, to twem, 101, 104-5, 110-12, 132-40, 145; as structural principle, 15, 216; and Western notion of "society," 271n3. See also articulation of twem and sem sem kank, 20, 28, 37, 40, 46, 47, 49, 50, 257n5, 257n7, 259nl9. See also subclans sem onda, 20, 21, 22, 30-5, 39, 40, 46, 47, 50, 52, 87, 167, 174, 195, 197, 258nl7, 259nl9, 260nl 1. See also clans; corporate groups; sem; tribes Senkere, 24, 28, 31, 32, 40, 41, 48, 56, 79, 80, 109, 138, 139, 145, 165, 169, 172, 174, 178, 181, 182, 189, 192-201, 204-6, 228, 230, 235, 238, 239, 258nll Sexton, L., 263n2 sexual antagonism, 117 sharing, 35-7, 39, 83, 90 Sillitoe, P., 8, 20, 64, 181, 255n4, 259n2, 265n2, 270n26 Simbu Province. See Chimbu sisters, 32, 33, 37, 56, 57, 65, 69, 71, 76, 118, 122-5, 128, 130, 133, 135, 143, 151, 152, 157, 158, 160, 179, 200, 212, 225. See also brother-sister bond Smith, A., 101,255n2 sociality, 15, 39, 53, 158, 208, 216, 227, 237; wealth as symbol of, 149-51 solidarity. See clan solidarity sorcery, 20, 22, 50, 92, 93, 98, 117, 137, 149-50, 164, 172, 186-90, 192, 228, 229, 231, 235, 257n5, 258nl3, 259n2, 261n20, 263nl, 266n7, 266nl2. See also poison Southern Highlands Province, 2, 5-7, 11-14, 2 1 , 6 2 - 5 , 7 9 , 123,233 speech, indirect, 174, 189, 190, 191. See also oratory "spheres of exchange," 68-9, 82, 85, 129 Strathern, A., 3, 4, 16, 17, 20, 26, 54-5, 57, 58, 62, 64, 66, 78, 79, 84, 87, 88, 104, 143, 146, 148, 153, 177, 206-9, 215, 259nl9, 264n6, 264nl4, 265n2, 265n4, 266n6, 267n2, 270n24 Strathern, M., 15, 60, 64, 70, 87, 117-19, 216, 236, 265nl5

290

Index

subclans, 20, 28-30, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 48, 55, 151, 157, 182, 257n7, 269nl2. See also sem kank subsistence, 233, 256nl3. See also consumption; food "subsistence affluence," 233 "subsistence bias," 14-18, 219, 233 subsistence system, 219, 236 Suolol, 9, 12, 13, 29, 30, 39, 40, 45, 48, 50, 57, 76, 89, 139, 157, 161, 164-9, 171, 172, 174, 181-7, 192, 193, 195, 201, 217, 223, 228, 230, 236, 238, 258nl0, 259nl7, 260nll, 267nl4, 269nl2; and conflict with Surup, 184, 192-8; disputes within, 1837, 192; solidarity of, 188-91, 196 Surup, 24, 25, 26, 29, 39, 46, 172, 181-4, 186, 190, 192-9, 228, 229, 230, 259nl7, 267nl4, 269nl2, 270n20 sweet potatoes, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 31, 78, 129, 179, 272nll Tambul, 7, 48, 80, 165, 266n5 Tasupae (M19), 23, 25, 46, 76, 80, 92, 113 tee, 16, 63, 170, 206, 207, 220, 226, 259n2, 260n5, 265n4, 266n5 Tem-Tukunsup, 169, 170, 267nl4, 269nl2 Tenpuri (Fl), 109, 126, 128, 138-9 Thompson, E., 18 Tombema Enga, 259n2, 260n5, 260nl2, 261nl3, 265n4, 270n26 topowe, 149, 161, 162, 164, 171 "transactors," 117-18, 125, 134, 216 Traube, E.,271n6 tribes, 20, 30, 39, 46, 69, 112, 157, 163, 167, 178, 200, 239. See also clans, allied Trobriand Islands, 62, 84, 85, 264n7 Tukunsup, 164, 165, 181, 182, 184, 185, 192, 194, 268nl0, 269nl2 twem, 15, 20, 21, 36, 70, 82-3, 136, 144, 152, 237, 259n2, 271n3; and circulation of wealth, 66-8; and concept of person, 8 7 9; contrasted with market exchange relations, 82-3; contrasted with sent, 37-40, 68-9, 81-5, 87; defined, 62, 79, 87-9, 141, 216, 259n2; and femaleness, 136, 140; formal recognition of, 140, 141, 164, 212; and level of production, 220-5; and Mendi politics, 142-7, 225-7; and property relations, 132-5; relationship of, to sem, 101, 104-5, 110-12, 132-40, 145; as social relationship, 82-3, 99-103, 271n3. See also articulation of twem and sem; exchange networks; exchange partners twemol. See exchange partners Uan, 88-9,189,192, 268nll unmarried people, 35, 36, 48, 70-4, 76, 79, 113, 174, 258nl3

Upper Mendi, 8,9, 11, 12, 13,31, 34,46, 164, 238 value, 102, 138, 143, 148 Vayda, A., 176, 256nl2 visits, 80, 94-5, 105. See also hospitality Waddell, E., 12-14,215,242 wage work, 76, 187, 188, 205, 213, 229, 233, 236, 262nl5, 272nl2. See also development; market economy; money Wagner, R., 20, 21, 40, 41, 52-5, 83, 259nl8 Wange, 77-8, 86, 132-3, 158, 234 Waparaga, 9, 238, 239. See also Wepra warfare, 12, 19, 25, 40, 59, 74, 86, 137, 144, 162, 163, 164, 181, 219, 226, 257n2, 258nl3, 265nl6, 266nl2; abolition of, 4, 5, 19-20; compensation prestations for, 39, 153, 162, 258nl7, 266n5, 267nl (see also ol ombul; ol tenga); as negative exchange, 150 Watson, J., 5, 17 wealth, 3, 28, 36, 99, 101, 109, 121-2, 124, 132, 134, 144, 158, 170-3, 208, 231, 235, 255n4, 260n7; access to, 35-6, 65, 67-8, 72, 84-5, 88, 93, 99-103, 117-18, 131, 152, 153, 170-3; accumulation of, 35-7, 39, 67, 68, 69, 74-5, 134, 135, 150, 153, 167, 180, 181, 190, 200-12, 218, 224; circulation of, 3, 15, 26, 54, 65-8, 71, 81-2, 85, 86, 87, 93, 99-104, 134, 146, 170, 200, 218, 236; demand for, 67, 102, 138, 148, 153, 170, 220, 262n24; displays of, 29, 36-7, 174, 188-91; repaying, 94-6, 103, 161; requesting, 35, 39, 62, 71-3, 75, 78, 80, 83, 92, 93, 103, 156-8, 161, 164, 259n2; and social character of persons, 25, 81-9, 99-103, 149-151; as symbolically ambiguous, 68, 82, 85, 101, 129. See also gifts; money; pearl shells; pigs; women, and control over wealth Weiner, A.,82, 85,264n7 Wepra, 9, 40, 41, 45, 47, 48, 50, 88, 157, 166, 181, 182, 228, 238, 239, 258nll, 269nl6 Western Highlands Province, 12, 47, 48, 79, 80, 188 Wiru, 64, 65, 147, 206, 266n4, 266n6 wives, 56, 57, 69, 78, 80, 88, 91, 93, 94, 98, 118, 123-7, 130, 132, 133, 146, 153, 174, 179, 180, 188, 201, 205, 209-12, 218, 225, 232 Wola (Nipa), 7, 8, 64, 65, 181, 226, 255n4, 259n2, 268n8, 270n26 women, 59, 74, 85, 88, 95, 99, 160, 166,

291

Index

188, 194, 203, 209-12, 215, 219, 262n30, 262n31, 263nl; autonomy of, 119-25, 135; and clans, 32-4, 55-61, 69, 118, 142-5, 153-4, 209-12, 226, 264nl3, 265nl6; and control over wealth, 70-1, 76, 102-3, 117-22, 125-6, 151, 156, 260nl0, 263n6; as exchange partners, 69, 77, 78, 80-1, 96, 98, 105, 109, 115-28, 130, 132-5, 144, 255n4, 260n6; as intermediaries, 102-3, 118, 125, 132-5, 266n8; organizations of, 263n2; reputations of, 124, 128, 129, 130, 131, 136, 144-5, 265n3. See also agnates, female; femaleness; gender; women's work "women's wealth," 264n7 women's work, 33, 117-18, 129, 131, 149,

175, 179, 212, 258nl2, 263n5, 263n6, 271n8 work, 31, 33-4, 36, 50, 65, 75, 78, 89, 94, 102, 117, 124, 129, 131, 138, 148, 149, 150, 179, 181, 212, 263n5, 263n6, 266nl 1. See also wage work; women's work Wormsley, W., 9, 64

Yakump, 47, 192, 259nl7 Yansup, 21, 39, 47, 98, 144, 160, 164-9, 171, 181, 182, 184, 192, 230, 259nl7, 260nll young people, 96, 103, 112, 156, 174, 193, 194, 200, 223, 229, 231, 232, 260nll, 268n5