The Power of Perspective: Social Ontology and Agency on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu

280 Pages·2007·1.016 MB·English

by  Knut Mikjel Rio

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The Power of Perspective
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Bride with mat
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The Power of Perspective
Social Ontology and Agency on
Ambrym Island, Vanuatu
Knut Mikjel Rio
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
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First published in 2007 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2007 Knut Mikjel Rio
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 1-84545-293-3 hardback
ISBN 1-84545- paperback
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Contents
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List of Figures vii
Foreword: ‘Putting people first’ ix
Acknowledgements xiv
A Note on Language xvi
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Chapter 2 Kinship and Sand Drawing 35
Chapter 3 The Totalising Third Party 64
Chapter 4 The Spirals of Marriage 82
Chapter 5 Of Yams and Men 103
Chapter 6 The Intentionality of Ceremonial Agency 132
Chapter 7 Displaying Life after Death 158
Chapter 8 The Phenomenology of Ambrym Exchange 185
Chapter 9 Conclusions: Denying the Gift 213
Appendices 227
Bibliography 243
Index 255
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Etul and yams
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List of Figures
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1.1 Map of Vanuatu 11
1.2 Map of Ambrym and North Ambrym 12
2.1 The North Ambrym six marriage classes 43
2.2 The relation to ZSD 45
2.3 Deacon’s informant’s diagram drawn in the sand 49
2.4 Tengweliesand drawing 52
3.1 Cylindrical representation of North Ambrym kinship 65
3.2 The relation of spouses to their mother’s place 69
3.3 The perspective of the bride’s mesongin marriage 71
3.4 Relation between three places related in marriage 75
4.1 The stream of blood 90
4.2 The circle of marriage 91
4.3 ‘Mother – exchange’ 92
4.4 Marriage coming around 94
4.5 Tracing relation between spouses through groom’s mother 95
4.6 The blocking of relationship-terms 96
4.7 Daughter-marriage 98
4.8 Spiralling marriages 99
4.9 The constitution and distribution of the buluim 100
5.1 A yam garden 107
5.2 Development of yam in growth 110
6.1 Different prestations as part of brideprice 143
6.2 Summation of prestations in maljel 148
6.3 Distribution of helarin ceremonial ground 149
6.4 The larger imagery of the arrangement of food in maljel 153
6.5 The mesong – wunjongrelation 155
6.6 Payments to mesongin marriage and maljel 156
7.1 Payments of tontonan 165
7.2 Contribution to a tontonan 166
7.3 A satellite payment of tontonan 167
7.4 Payment of ‘death pig’ 169
7.5 The relation of two ‘daughters’ to their ‘father’ 173
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viii | List of Figures
7.6 A cycle of relationships brought into focus in 182
ceremonial life
8.1 Posture of crossing arms 200
9.1 The flow of gifts and counter-gifts 220
9.2 Two conceptual models of reciprocity through the 221
different stages of prestations
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Foreword: ‘Putting people first’
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In the ‘Suva Declaration’ on sustainable human development in the
Pacific of 1993, the South Pacific Forum had as their motto ‘Putting
People First’. In response to a rapidly changing modern world, the
attitude of the Forum was ‘to take into account development approaches
which are more consistent with the cherished values which make up the
unique Pacific way of life’ (South Pacific Forum 1994). Inside these
discursive glosses of ‘the Pacific way of life’ lies a clearly historically
situated idea about how Pacific communities work. It builds on the
notion that people in this part of the world consider themselves to be the
primary resources. Everything else that matters – things like land, food,
goods and money – are merely means to maintain and reproduce this
resource. ‘Putting people first’ is hence not only a slogan, but also a
description of Pacific communities. We find this kind of qualitative
evaluation repeated in Pacific festivals, tourist guidebooks, in the policies
of non-governmental organisations and in the anthropological literature.
We will also encounter that kind of representation of Pacific
communities in this book. When writing about the Pacific one simply
cannot escape this morally, historically and politically laden argument
about qualitative difference in the world. The Pacific is different, at least
to itself, as we see in the self-representation of the Pacific Forum. We also
have to recognise how the very idea of social and cultural difference in
our Western imagination has fed on images of the Pacific. ‘The South
Seas’ have for a long time held a privileged position in Western
museums, travel literature and popular films. Any idea of ‘the Pacific
way of life’ is itself an encounter: between this Western imagination and
the self-conscious identity of Pacific islanders. We will take that
representation seriously, to see what ‘putting people first’ means in a
localised setting, on Ambrym Island in the archipelago of Vanuatu. And
we will investigate what that means in terms of the anthropological
project. If people really are considered the primary resources of society,
then this also has implications for social analysis and our view of human
sociality. We might for instance have to admit to the economic bias in the
relationships involved in maintaining this resource, concerning the
centrality of concepts like ‘exchanging’, ‘replacing’ and ‘producing’
people. But we then also have to thoroughly rethink our conception of
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these terms and try to seek out the potential of the comparative
indigenous terms. Maybe ‘putting people first’ refers to a particular view
of society, an acknowledgement of the immanent agency of society itself,
and maybe these conceptions can challenge our own ideas about what
‘society’ is.
I will engage in these kinds of issues through a focus on the influence
of third parties on people’s lives on the island of Ambrym in north-
central Vanuatu. By ‘third parties’ I imply a particular kind of agency
that people find to be crucial in the formation of their ongoing life: the
direct influence of particular relatives, of spirits and of other parties who
stand in a position of ‘seeing’ people’s activities in larger perspectives
than they see themselves.
In the locality of this study, the northern part of Ambrym, people
recognise a certain kind of spirit that can serve as an example of the
agency I am referring to. They call this spirit wehenru, literally meaning
‘second wife’. It is believed to accompany some men in their lives. This
is a female creature that is invisible to all others but the ‘husband’, the
man who takes her into his house. As the meaning of the term suggests,
this kind of spirit is living as his wife, pleasing him, not sexually, but by
providing him with luck and fortune. If a man is accompanied by a
wehenru, he can go into a store and buy something, and after he leaves
the store, the money will be back in his pocket. A friend of mine in the
village of Ranon told me about a man whom he had worked with in a
copraplantation on Malo Island, who was accompanied by such a spirit.
One night they had sat by their fire after work, and my friend had
complained that the food was poor on the plantation and that he missed
the Ambrym yams and banana puddings. The next evening the other
man provided him with fresh yam and pudding, allegedly brought in
from Ambrym by his wehenru. It is often considered great luck to be in
the possession of such a spirit. They do not really need any favours in
return, and their presence is for the most part made visible by their gifts
of food and money. Typically a man who wins a lot in games of dice and
poker is led to believe that such a woman spirit is helping him. The
relation is hence a one-way relation, the spirit mostly revealing herself
through people’s possessions and luck.
But despite this benevolent character of the wehenru, most men are
terrified of having one of their own. This is because of the idea that this
‘second wife’ is also judging one’s behaviour. The things that are given
should not be kept to oneself, and generosity is considered imperative to
people who receive things from the wehenru. If people act selfishly and
immorally the spirit will abandon them and might even punish them
with sickness and death. A man I know in the village of Fanla had been
accompanied by such a spirit for many years, and had managed to keep
her happy by his overwhelming kindness to other people. He was always
engaging in other people’s ceremonies, and he did his best in getting rid