Rethinking Women's Roles: Perspectives from the Pacific [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9780520321007

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Rethinking Women's Roles

Rethinking Women's Roles Perspectives from the Pacific

Edited by

Denise O'Brien and

Sharon W. Tiffany

U N I V E R S I T Y OF C A L I F O R N I A PRESS Berkeley

Los Angeles

London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright © 1984 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Rethinking women's roles. Based on papers presented at 2 consecutive meetings of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. Bibliography: p. Includes index. Contents: Feminist perceptions in anthropology / Sharon \V. Tiffany— Domesticity and the denigration of women / Marilyn Strathern—(Complementarity, the relationship between female and male in the Hast Sepik Village of Bun, Papua New Guinea / Nancy McDowell—[etc.] 1. Women—Melanesia—Congresses. 2. Sex roles—Melanesia— Congresses. 3. Women—Oceania—Congresses. 4. Ethnology—Methodology— Congresses. 5. Melanesia—Social conditions—Congresses. 6. Oceania—Social conditions—(Congresses. I. O'Brien, Denise. II. Tiffany, Sharon W. III. Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. GN668.R45 1984 305.4'2'99 83-24213 ISBN 05-520-05142—4

Printed in the United States of America 1

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To the memory of Margaret Mead

Contents Editors' Preface 1

Introduction: Feminist Perceptions in Anthropology Sharon W. Tiffany

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Domesticity and the Denigration of Women Marilyn Strathern

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Complementarity: The Relationship between Female and Male in the East Sepik Village of Bun, Papua New Guinea Nancy McDowell

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"Women Never Hunt": The Portrayal of Women in Melancsian Ethnography Denise O'Brien

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Revenge Suicide by Lusi Women: An Expression of Power Dorothy Ayers Counts

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Women, Work, and Change in Nagovisi Jill Nash

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Pigs, Pearlshells, and 'Women's Work': Collective Response to Change in Highland Papua New Guinea Lorraine Dusak Sexton

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"Sing to the Lord a New Song": Women in the Churches of Oceania Charles W. Forman

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European Women in the Solomon Islands, 1900-1942: Accommodation and Change on the Pacific Frontier James A. Boutilier

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References

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Contributors

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Index

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Editors' Preface This volume grew out of papers on the general topic of Women in Oceania presented at two consecutive meetings of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. After a working session in Clearwater, Florida, in 1979, in which over twenty scholars participated, it was clear that a formal symposium and any resulting publication must focus on a limited number of themes in order to be successful. The most significant issues emerging from the working session concerned models and images of women in society, the relationship between women and power, and the historical change in women's roles. We asked members of the 1980 symposium in Galveston, Texas, to discuss one or more of these themes, which, in turn, have structured the chapters in this book. Our work began with the intent to produce a book about women of the Pacific. Instead, this is a volume about the lives and experiences of women in Melanesia, and it does not give comparable coverage to the other culture areas of Oceania. The reasons for this concentration are various. Some are particular to this book; others are related to the nature of anthropological research in Oceania and to the nature of Pacific Island societies. With the exceptions of Tiffany, who worked in Samoa, and Forman, whose research extends beyond Melanesia, all other contributors conducted their primary research in Melanesian societies. Chapters with a strong ethnographic focus (Counts, chap. 5; McDowell, chap. 3; Nash, chap. 6; and Sexton, chap. 7) are based on the authors' fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. The historical and theoretical chapters (Boutilier, chap. 9; Forman, chap. 8; O'Brien, chap. 4; and Strathern, chap. 3) deal primarily with Melanesian data, although there is comparative material from Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia in three chapters (Tiffany, chap. 1; Forman, chap. 8; O'Brien, chap. 4). Anthropologists have long been fascinated by the cultural diversity of Melanesia, and one has only to mention Mead and Malinowski to recall that some of the classic ethnography of this century has been done there. After World War II, when anthropological research intensified throughout the Pacific, researchers were drawn to Melanesia by the dual opportunities of building on these classic foundations and of working in societies that had experienced little or no contact with the non-Melanesian world. For historians, Melanesia is an arena where the influence, ideas, and ambitions of European and Asiatic powers have met and mingled for centuries, most

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dramatically during the last hundred years. Events in Melanesia offer unique perspectives on the diversity of colonial experiences, frontier situations, and emerging nations. A final reason for our initially unintended focus is that the ethnographic and historical questions about women raised in this volume can be discussed in terms of Melanesian societies. Melanesia highlights, often in striking and flamboyant ways, the differences between female and male and the importance of gender in social, economic, and political institutions. We emphasize that this book is about women in Melanesia. Although much of our attention has been directed to indigenous women, we have also been concerned with the role of European women in the Pacific as missionaries and venturers to the frontier (Boutilier, chap. 9; Forman, chap. 8), and as ethnographers (O'Brien, chap. 4; Strathern, chap. 2). Place names in the Pacific have had a confusing evolution over the last hundred years, reflecting the many political changes in the area. T h e geographic and political connotations of the names used in this volume are as follows: Oceania (fig. 1) includes four major culture areas: Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Melanesia (fig. 2): Geographically the principal land areas are the island of New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Britain, New Ireland, New Caledonia, Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), Fiji, and the Loyalty Islands. New Guinea (fig. 2): Now divided politically into Irian Jaya, a province of Indonesia, and referred to geographically as West New Guinea; and Papua New Guinea, a country that became independent in 1975, referred to geographically as Elast New Guinea. Politically, Papua New Guinea also includes the neighboring islands of Manus, the Trobriands, the D'Entrecasteaux, the Lousiade Archipelago, New Ireland, New Britain, Buka, and Bougainville. Buka and Bougainville are geographically part of the Solomon Islands archipelago. Prior to 1963, when West New Guinea passed under Indonesian control, it was a colony of the Netherlands and was called Dutch New Guinea or Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea. Since 1963, West New Guinea has sometimes been called West Irian or Irian Barat. Prior to 1975, East New Guinea was divided into two political units, both under Australian control: the Territory of Papua and the Territory of New Guinea, collectively known as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (abbreviated T P N G ) . The Territory of New Guinea has also been known as Northeast New Guinea, the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, and the Trust Territory of New Guinea. Early in the twentieth century, reflecting colonial conditions, Papua was called British New Guinea, and Northeast New Guinea was known as German New Guinea.

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Highland New Guinea (fig. 2), or the Central Highlands of New Guinea: A geographic and cultural designation which includes the mountain ranges and valleys extending throughout the center of East and West New Guinea, roughly from the Wissel Lakes (Paniai, Irian Jaya) in the west to Kainantu, Papua New Guinea in the east. Solomon Islands (fig. 6): Includes geographically Buka, Bougainville, Shortlands, Choiseul, Santa Isabel, Guadalcanal, Malaita, San Cristobal, New Georgia, the Russell Islands, the Santa Cruz Islands, and several Polynesian outliers, among them Tikopia, Ontong Java, Sikaina, Rennell, and Bellona. Politically, Bougainville and Buka are part of Papua New Guinea; the other islands, since their independence in 1978, are designated politically as T h e Solomon Islands. Prior to independence, they were known as the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (abbreviated BSIP). Figure 1 illustrates the boundaries of the major Pacific culture areas and identifies the location of peoples and places in Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia mentioned in the text. Figure 2 depicts Melanesia in more detail, including the locations of peoples and major places mentioned in this volume. Figure 6 delineates populations and place names in the Solomon Islands archipelago. Population names have also changed over the years or have had variant spellings. T h e alternative spellings of population names have been explained when relevant within particular chapters. The groups include: Belau (formerly Palau, see fig. 1 and chap. 1); Kapauku (sometimes called Ekagi, see fig. 2, and chap. 1); Kuma (fig. 2 and chap. 4), part of a larger population called Minj (fig. 2 and chap. 7); Simbu (formerly Chimbu, see fig. 2 and chap. 7); and Siwai (formerly Siuai, see fig. 6 and chap. 6). With the exception of proper names, all foreign words are italicized, and their English glosses are written in single quotes. Foreign words in the text are primarily from the indigenous languages of Melanesia and from Neo-Melanesian, a language sometimes called Pidgin, widely spoken and written throughout Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, and Vanuatu. Occasionally a term is enclosed in single quotes (e.g., 'big man') even though its foreign language equivalent is not given, to indicate that the term is originally derived from a Melanesian or other non-English language. Translations from foreign languages, one sentence or more in length, are enclosed in double quotation marks, sometimes with one or more words enclosed in single quotes to indicate that these are glosses for terms already mentioned in the preceding text. Otherwise, double quotation marks are used for statements from English-speaking informants. Sparingly, italics are used to indicate an author's special or restricted usage in English. Long quotations or case studies have been set off by indentations from the body of the text. European is used to refer to any person whose ethnic origins are in Western Europe, although he or she may be American, Australian, British, Canadian, or French.

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£e the very basis . . . through which social and cosmologica! concerns are integrated" (Weiner 1978:175, emphasis in original). In other words, we do not give cultural value to natural processes as Trobrianders do. My analysis here is based on Weiner's published works; I have since had the privilege of reading as yet unpublished papers that both expand and modify her position. 'Weiner (1978:183) writes: "I analyze reproduction not as a biological construct, but as a cultural concept in which the basic processes for reproducing human beings, social relations, cosmological phenomena, and material resources are culturally defined and structurally interconnected." Edholm, Harris, and Young (1977) would take exception to the manner in which Weiner runs together human reproduction, social reproduction, and material resources that presumably include labor. "Editors' note: In the text of her monograph Weiner (1976) avoids giving a gloss for the term dala and specifically rejects (1976:38-39) the 'subclan/lineage' gloss used by Malinowski and others. In the book's glossary (1976:253), Weiner defines dala as "unnamed ancestral beings through which Trobrianders trace their descent through women. . . . Dala also refers to hamlet and garden lands. . . ." We have chosen to gloss dala as 'matrilineal kin group' in accord with our policy of providing glosses for all foreign terms and with Weiner's usage throughout the monograph, where she refers to dala exogamy (1976:451) and dala members (1976:38, 43, 45, 49, 55, 225).

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task of ceremonially setting dala interests off from other categories of relationships. Women thus celebrate an abstract formulation of femaleness that is a vehicle through which specific social relationships are conceptualized. Trobriand men are in charge of basic food production. They convert labor into prestige, to the extent that certain foodstuffs, particularly yams, circulate as valuables. Women own wealth, and they are recipients of valuables, as they are of male labor. Since it is through women that major group-based ties are traced, transactions between the sexes are bound up with the relationship of individuals to 'matrilineal kin groups', with social continuity and long-term identity. Transactions between men, by contrast, bring renown in a personal, short-term sense. Men bring renown chiefly to themselves, whereas women act on behalf of men and women alike. A notion of social reproduction in Hagen would have to take different organizational features into account. There is a constant effort on the part of Hagen men to separate labor from prestige. Women produce food, but this is not itself wealth, though it can be tranformed into pigs and, nowadays, money. Wealth objects are the means by which men combine personal renown with that of their clan or subclan. The primordial basis for group solidarity is traced through males; thus there is a congruence between a man's desire for prestige and promotion of his clan and its social continuity (A. Strathern 1972). Insofar as the clan is seen as a set of males, females represent personal, even antisocial concerns. Intersexual transactions are domestic, not political or sociocosmic, events. Hagen women do not manipulate wealth on a public scale, for their contribution to social reproduction is in symbolic antithesis to the flow of wealth through men that ceremonializes all manner of social relations. Thus Hagen women give little systematic ceremonial expression to their part in human regeneration. They own no counterpart to the skirts which are Trobriand women's social media for controlling "immortality through the recapitulation of dala identity" (Weiner 1976:231). The Hagen net-bags to which Weiner draws attention are certainly symbols of nurturance, and the provisioning of food has a central place in women's image of the female. Yet these bags circulate among women along lines of friendship or kinship without also creating significant social identities meaningful to either sex.7 Unlike Tobriand husbands who assist in the procurement of women's skirts, 'Among women, net-bags are important gifts at marriage and at the birth of a child (new net-bags are for the bride and old ones are for the mother w h o will soil the net-bags in which the newborn child is laid). Women may use net-bags to compensate another for some wrong. T h e y are significant items of apparel at death—the widow is overshadowed by the net-bags that bear her husband's soul—but they play no part in mortuary exchanges because they do not have the status of a valuable (M. Strathern 198 la). Hagen women today have not entered the sphere of public exchanges in the manner described by Sexton (chap. 7) for the Daulo area of Highland N e w Guinea.

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Hagen husbands are not involved in the accumulation of net-bags. Whatever power these items represent, it remains covert. Women's net-bags cannot be used in Hagen to make the kind of public announcements that Trobriand skirts effect; Hagen net-bags are not true analogues to Trobriand women's wealth. It is significant that Hagen clan formation is perceived to turn on ties between males. T o be sure, Weiner (1976:118) suggests that ethnographic emphasis on the reproduction of patrilineal identity in accounts of Highlands societies has neglected the regeneration of affinal ties, and that Trobriand women document the importance of their own and also of their husbands' and fathers' dala." But more than descent principles are at issue. In Hagen it is maleness that carries much of the symbolic load borne by femaleness in the Trobriands. Definitions of maleness are specifically bound up with certain extrasocietal claims to power. Hagen concern with regenesis is expressed most clearly through the performance of spirit cults (A. Strathern 1970, \919b). The stated aim of these cults is both fertility in general and clan growth in particular. They are organized by men to the exclusion of women, with men representing a synthesis of male and female powers. Given the Hagen association of males with collective ends and females with personal ones, male cults convert fertility individually manifested into fertility for the clan. At the same time Hagen men bring to bear on domestic reproduction special powers whose sources lie in male access to the wild and to the spirit world. This access is demonstrated on many occasions. It is recalled, for example, in decorations worn at exchange festivals, when assertions of group strength and identity are made against others. Human clan ghosts figure in support of these political demonstrations. T h e cults are rather turned inward, in the manifestation of internal health, and the spirits invoked are nonhuman. It is an aspect of their being male that men are able to mediate between these spirits and the human world. Men's interests are not, however, bound by a narrow concern for agnatic welfare. Males are seen to promote clan continuity that is inseparably bound up with their land, their livestock, and the health and fecundity of their wives as much as themselves.' "Weiner (1978:175) specifically makes this point against Meggitt (1965), though I fail to see how Meggitt's extensive documentation of Enga wealth exchanges and transfers at marriage and death, in which affinal and matrilateral kin figure, qualifies for "almost a total" lack of attention to the regeneration of affinal relations. "In the context of moka 'ceremonial exchange', it is Hagen women's links between clans that are celebrated, as well as their role in raising pigs. When women dance, the color of their decorations contains a high element of red. Red is incorporated into the decorations of male participants in the female spirit cult, at one point in an explicit pairing of red and white plumes (A. Strathern 1979b). Femaleness in this context points inward rather than outward, incorporated within the vitality of the clan body.

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In the same way as the ceremonial endeavors of Trobriand women embrace the identity of men, so Hagen men through their cults bring fertility to men and women alike. Their aim—the birth of children, productive pigs, and plentiful gardens—is not located within the domain of one sex or the other. Men do not have an exclusive reproductive prerogative; it is as agents of conversion that they participate in the cults—by tapping extrahuman sources of power and by making the fecundity of individuals a matter for clan concern. Fertility itself is not an exclusive male power, nor is it considered especially female. Its bisexual nature is explicit in cult symbolism. Andrew Strathern (1979^) notes that for the female spirit cult, not only do the men participating play male to the spirit's female, but they also divide themselves into two sides, representing 'men' and 'women'. Sexual identity as such is not being manipulated; the men are not imitating women. Rather, they present femaleness as a given constituent of the world along with maleness, and the 'men's' and 'women's' sides act in concert. The exclusion of women does not mean, then, that femaleness is discounted. Hageners believe neither that essential fertility rests with men nor that women have powers men must imitate and control. A male/female contrast is being used to differentiate special, nonhuman powers from the mundane and to make statements about social reproduction. Thus women cannot participate because they are held to be polluting, and their destructive potential is, in this context, set against life-giving forces of the spirit. T h e collective benefits of fertility for the whole clan therefore counter individual interests. Poison, a secret weapon men may deploy against clan solidarity, is said to be as inimical to the female spirit as menstrual fluid is to men.1" In this equation females are represented as exogenous and intrusive, a danger that comes from beyond the clan boundary, as wives must come. A quite different combination of male and female is recreated within the body of clansmen. There is precise symmetry between the 'men's' and 'women's' sides acting in the cult: male and female come together in procreation as joint contributors to clan strength. Indeed, there is a whole other domain of symbolism invoked outside the cult context which uses intersexual pairing as a metaphor for social interdependence. The mutuality and assistance that should characterize relations among clan brothers is sometimes likened to interaction between spouses, and vice versa." I shall return to this point. For the moment, note ,0 In the female spirit cult, human women are represented as polluting beings from whom the participants are to be protected. If fertility as such is located in neither male nor female but in both, pollution by contrast is humanly female. "Comparisons between clan solidarity and husband/wife cooperation are made outside the cult context as well as within it. In the cult, however, this is a salient emphasis, which is muted elsewhere by other images of husband/wife relations that point to the dangers wives represent to male solidarity.

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that in the female spirit cult the reproductive contribution of females is celebrated in a way that clan continuity and solidarity are attributed to the joint interests of men and women. T h e incorporation of femaleness within their endeavors should not be interpreted as men trying to control women's biology. In Hagen there is no concept of a "nature" to be shaped and transformed (Gillison 1980; M. Strathe m 1980). It would be a travesty of Hagen cosmology to suggest that men imagine they manipulate "nature" through ritual that is "culture." And this is certainly not an antithesis relevant to Hagen gender symbolism. Weiner's (1976:14) emphasis on the necessity to recognize the kinds of cultural resources at women's disposal partly rests on the extent to which Trobriand Islanders' evaluations of reproduction are different from our own. In stressing the cultural quality of women's roles, Weiner is writing about the significance Trobriand Islanders give to human regeneration; but her intention also seems to be to rescue women from that state of nature implied in our own nature/culture constructs. For her further emphasis on our acknowledging that Trobriand women's symbolic contribution to regenesis is a matter of "power" arises from, I would suggest, a Western equation between culture, control, and personhood. Femaleness in Hagen does not have the range of meanings it carries in the Trobriands. More importantly, one does not have to find for Hagen women a domain of cultural activity that refers to their own special powers in order to take them seriously.

The Enga and the Domestic T h e r e is an analogy between Hagen representations of male and female in the spirit cults and the way the sexes are used as symbols of achievement in moka 'ceremonial exchange'. Even as the cults bring fertility to both, men and women alike are held to be interested in the acquisition of prestige. At the same time, Hageners employ a contrast between male and female to differentiate the special nature of these aims from other affairs. As cult fertility appears to be of a pure, male kind against its destructive female counterpart, so prestige appears as a male attribute against the 'rubbishness' of females. T h e abstract qualities of femaleness used in these evaluations are not to be confused with the Hagen definition of women as persons. Feil indicates that to take women seriously one must show them as independent actors, as persons whose spheres of action are as significant as those of men. Analytically impeccable as this tenet is from the observer's point of view (since it is the observer w h o runs the risk of thinking women might not be persons), Feil seeks validation in terms of T o m b e m a Enga ideas. When men put tee 'ceremonial exchange' into the context of group relations,

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they lose sight of "individuals qua individuals. . . . [By contrast,] women are ever mindful of the interpersonal content of tee gifts . . . a woman's perspective on it most closely coincides with what is needed to make [the basic tee process] work" (Feil 1978 T^ oi f> U>