equality as a value: ideology in dumont, melanesia and the west

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EQUALITY AS A VALUE: Ideology in Dumont, Melanesia and the WestAuthor(s): Joel RobbinsSource: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, No. 36(October 1994), pp. 21-70Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23171803 .

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SOCIAL ANALYSIS No. 36, October 1994

EQUALITY AS A VALUE:

Ideology in Dumont, Melanesia and the West.

Joel Robbins

Introduction

It is a platitude to state that inequality is socially ubiquitous.

(Hamilton 1986:9)

Sociologists typically write about inequality, not equality.

(Turner 1986:15)

If one concentrates no more on function but on meaning, then each sort of

representation must be grasped where it is fully accentuated and

elaborated, where it rises to predominance and not where it is kept, by the

prevalence of other representations, in a rudimentary or residual state."

(Dumont 1980:xxxix)

That all people are equal and should in some sense be treated as such is surely the

greatest scoff law in the Western tradition. Even if we grant that the Western tradition is in some sense an egalitarian one on the level of ideology, no one would claim that equality is regularly and thoroughly either achieved or aimed for in practice

in any of the concrete societies to which the tradition has been attached. Equality as a

value is so glaringly unrealized that it represents the most obvious rent in our

ideological fabric and the one at which social critics most often begin the job of

unraveling the whole. Such critiques from within the Western tradition are both

necessary and laudable. But the fact that equality (whatever its rhetorical value on

the ideological plane) is such an empirical non-starter in Western societies has led to a curious blindness on the part of Western social scientists: they are increasingly

unable to see equality as an important feature of social life anywhere. At any rate, as

Turner tells us in the statement quoted above, social scientists are certainly more

likely to write about inequality than its opposite. The general attitude towards equality in contemporary social science is best

characterized as suspicious. People's claims to be acting to maximize equality or that equality actually exists in some sphere of their own society are taken to be

ideological covers or supports for existing inequalities. It is as if in some way

21



equality is in its essence ideal and illusory, while inequality is simply the nature of

social reality. This leads to a logic whereby all of the egalitarian aspects of a culture or ideology can be discounted in the face of any empirical (not to mention ideally

sanctioned) inequalities, whereas any empirical equalities that might be found are

immediately discounted as either ideological distractions, safety valves, or some

other epiphenomenon in the service of a more fundamental inequality. Consider how

absurd it would be, in the present climate, to contend that one had found a case in

which the equalities were "real" and the inequalities were "illusory," where

inequalities simply served to "mask" more fundamental equalities or represented

simply an ideal (re)formulation of empirically existing equalities. When the

argument is turned around this way the language is all wrong, the assertions sound

absurd. But this is the language of our social science, and such absurdity represents

a limit to our ability to conceive of equality. The irony, of course, is that just such a notion of basic human equality, an

equality which we feel is often warped or misrepresented in thought and practice,

motivates our critiques of inequality in the first place. The assumption that underlies

most of our critical practice is, as Wright (1992:121) puts it, that "[i]ndividuals are more 'naturally' equal than they are socially unequal." But the clumsiness that

comes when we talk about equality as a fundamental feature of any existing society

suggests that we have given up hope of discovering what equality might be like when

it is culturally valued and socially realized. In our own Western circumstances suspicions about equality are warranted often

enough, and pointing out the ideological function of the notion of equality is

important; but the situation is otherwise when anthropologists uncritically bring this

suspicion to their analyses of other cultures. The cultures anthropologists study may

not be egalitarian in any meaningful sense, but then again they might. Behind the

present essay, as its most general motivation, stands the claim that anthropologists

ought to be able to show both why the concept equality occupies the awkward place it does in our own culture and also what other sorts of places it might have in other

cultures. Then anthropologists would at least be in a position to spur the Western

critical imagination out of its rather pessimistic rut. As Beteille (1986:128) has

advised, "if we are to take equality seriously, we must enlarge the concept of

equality." If anthropologists are to assist in this task of enlargement, they will have

to take other cultures' ideas of equality seriously and avoid approaching them simply

as mystifications of more or less minimal conceptual complexity. Claims about a disciplinary blindness to equality may seem overdrawn or

inaccurate to anyone who has not been attentive to developments in the field erf

anthropology over the last decade or so. Despite the general Western skepticism

concerning claims to have found an actually existing egalitarian society, the force of

the binary logic implicit in anthropology's mission to study the "other" has often led to the labeling to the societies they study as "egalitarian," "acephalous," "non

stratified," or "primitive communist." Such terms were, however, rarely well

theorized and stood more as descriptive epithets or impressionistic tags than as

analytic concepts. Flanagan and Rayner (1988:1) are thus accurate when they assert

22



that egalitarianism remains a residual category in the discipline. The theoretical

vagueness of "egalitarianism" and related expressions is evidenced by how quickly

anthropologists abandoned these terms during the last decade. Such rapid abandonment would not have been the case, one imagines, if anthropologists had

possessed any satisfactory theory of what an egalitarian society consists in.

Echoing Evans-Pritchard's earlier claims of a shift from function to meaning, we

can say that the decline of notions of egalitarianism has come about as a consequence of the rise of a variety of concepts and theories that have engineered a shift from

meaning to inequality, power and domination as the foci of anthropological studies.

Various sorts of Marxism, feminism and cultural studies, along with the specific theories of Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Foucault, Gramsci, Hall, Said etc., have in different

ways sharpened the anthropological ability to detect inequalities and have motivated

anthropologists to be on the lookout for them in all domains of social life. These

various approaches are also all suspicious of egalitarian claims. Indeed, even when

some theoretical strands of movements that have participated in the shift to

inequality, power and domination highlight the concept of egalitarian societies, as

Collier and Yanagisako (1987:36-37) suggest is the case in feminist anthropology, the trend has been to argue that any inequalities in a society disqualify an egalitarian reading of its social life. Given both an enhanced ability to find instances of

inequality and the tendency to let any instances of inequality render a society

unworthy of examination as egalitarian, it is not suprising that egalitarianism has

become a virtual non-topic in anthropology.

One might imagine that Melanesia, one of the ethnographic areas focused on in

this essay, has been exempt from the recent anthropological concern with inequality. Melanesianist ethnographers have regularly described the cultures they study as

"aggressively egalitarian" (Forge 1970:257), "fiercely egalitarian" (Burridge 1969:38), or as ones where "men assume a thoroughgoing posture of equality"

(Schieffelin 1976:129), to choose some of the more colourful examples. If we are

willing to settle for more pedestrian proclamations of egalitarianism, the majority of

Melanesian ethnographers will oblige in supplying them (e.g., from different phases of the field's development, Lawrence 1964:11, LiPuma 1988:40). But while these

sorts of claims of egalitarianism were more often asserted than argued for,

anthropologists have recently begun to argue pointedly that they are incorrect. This

trend has been well documented in Jolly's (1987) article "The Chimera of Equality in Melanesia." Indeed, the very title of the article is a symptom of the suspicious climate whose history she so ably traces. After discussing Forge's "The Golden Fleece," published in 1972 and one of the few attempts actively to actively think out what might qualify Melanesian societies as egalitarian, Jolly (1087:172-3) writes:

...ten years later, the dominant discourse had shifted from egalitarianism

to talk of 'inequalities' among men and between men and women....This

dramatic shift was primarily the result of the challenge both Marxist and feminist theory presented in the context of Melanesian ethnography

[footnote omitted].

23



This shift finds its landmark in Strathern's (1982) edited volume, Inequality in

the New Guinea Highlands, while the tenor of the "dominant discourse" that was

firmly in place by the mid to late 1980's can be exemplified by the following two

quotations:

In many of these societies [of the Northern Highlands] clans are

essentially communities of men in which women have only secondary

rights (an arrangement that seriously qualifies Highlander's

anthropological reputation for egalitarianism) (Lederman 1987:340).

Although compared to many other Highlands groups Kewa have only mild

fears of female pollution and today practise very little sexual separation,

women are clearly politically subordinated to men and economically

dependent on them. This is the other side of the male 'egalitarian ethos'

coin (Josephides 1985:8). The scare quotes around '"egalitarian ethos in Josephides contribution are perched

above the phrase like vultures waiting to devour a dying concept - the egalitarian

epithet in Melanesia as elsewhere is quite obviously in trouble1.

To summarize, I am in no way claiming that the study of inequalities, whether

construed in indigenous terms or in our own, is useless. I am, however, convinced

that a failure to recognize how equality and inequality are differently defined and

organized in different cultures threatens the viability of any properly anthropological

project. To see inequality everywhere, especially where an "egalitarian ideology" is

vocally stressed, is an easy ethnocentrism, relying as it does on our own ingrained sense, probably accurate enough as far as the Western world goes, that equality is

never really a paramount value in any culture. Attempts to spot inequality and

domination anywhere and everywhere risk merely reproducing the Western social

science and social philosophy upon which they are based, rather than expanding them or "enlarging" their concepts. Such efforts at reproduction might well bolster

certain critical trends in theory that feel accurate or important in our own home

contexts. But the possibility exists that in not taking equality as a value seriously as

a possible aspect of other cultures we are missing out on opportunities to engage in

the critical practices of situating Western discourses of equality by viewing them

from another vantage point and of presenting other models of equality currently

unthought of in the West.

The remainder of this essay thus develops two themes. The first considers the

place of equality in Western cultures. One needs little coaxing to recognize that

equality is a confusing, polysemous concept in the West. It is, in fact, something of a loose cannon on the ideological deck, firing consistently in favour of no particular political side. Rather than take this state of affairs as an indication that equality is

simply a mystification, however, the present task is to subject it to a cultural analysis

that can to some extent explain its multivocality and political slipperiness. The second theme consists in the development of an analysis of the definition and place d"

equality in another group of cultures: those of Melanesia. The Melanesian material is

24



analysed with an eye toward specifying alternative modelings of equality and

describing what at least one kind of "egalitarian" culture looks like in some detail.

There is a final aspect of this essay that requires introduction, as it underlies

much of what has already been said and all that follows. In essence, this project is

an attempt at doing "Dumontian" anthropology. As will be explained below and in

the conclusion, the analysis springs from what I consider to be typically Dumontian

motivations and proceeds theoretically and methodologically along the lines of

Dumont's own analyses. Although I think few would argue that Dumont does not

present a fairly coherent and original version of anthropology throughout his work,2

the fact that "Dumontian" sounds somewhat queer as an adjective, and does not

resonate nearly as richly as, say, "Durkheimian," "Maussian," or "L<5vi-Straussian,"

indicates that Dumontian anthropology has been neither fully codified nor

institutionalized as yet. But if we define "egalitarian" as a culture in which equality is a paramount value, then Dumont is the most likely candidate among

anthropological theorists to aid us in analyzing one. He is the one anthropologist

working with a coherent theory of the operations of value in culture. Delineating what that theory is will be the task of the next section and constitutes a third major

goal of this essay.

Dumont's Anthropology

While a thorough review of Dumont's works is neither possible nor desirable here, the above mentioned lack of standardization of a Dumontian approach necessitates

that one make an effort to specify which aspects of his work one is putting forward as

a coherent program.

Dumont is often enough understood primarily as a structuralist. Dumont

(1986:234) himself is not beyond referring to his "structural allegiance," an

allegiance made plain to readers of, in particular, Homo Hierarchicus and his work

on kinship. Douglas (1975:185) in fact remarks in regard to Homo Hierarchicus

that, "when it was first published in French it was the first serious structural analysis of a particular society." At times one gets the sense that Dumont would like to find

the similarities between his approach and L£vi-Strauss' explained most forcefully by reference to their common Maussian heritage, rather than by any casting of himself

as an epigone of his contemporary; he also claims Evans-Pritchard as a major influence. Still, it is quite obvious that much of the force of Dumont's work comes from his supple use of both the holism and the relationalism that are central to

structuralism. I will define these terms further in the course of a consideration of the

important differences between Dumont and Ldvi-Strauss.

Levi-Strauss has arguably developed the most sophisticated technique

anthropologists have for specifying cultural differences. His structuralism allows for a consideration not only of differences between individual symbols and

understandings but also, in the best cases, for a determination of more organized or

fundamental differences in the ways such symbols, understandings, and their

attendant social actions are related. As, for example, in his studies of kinship, the

25



study of differences between relational wholes promises a much firmer grasp of the

nature of differences between societies than a simple cataloging of the heterogeneity

of their elements considered separately. But then, again, L6vi-Strauss is at heart a

universalist: while he offers perhaps the finest tools for locating differences, he

himself is most happy when he can reduce difference to transformation in his pursuit

of basic structures of the human mind. While it is true that many structuralists

politely look the other way when L6vi-Strauss' universalism makes its entrance,

Dumont's anthropology must be considered in relation to the seriousness of the

original structuralist commitment to universalism.

Put simply, perhaps even too boldly, it is Dumont who has most firmly yoked the

ability of structuralist theory to specify cultural difference to an approach that also (1)

aims at analyzing such differences as differences and that (2) is explicit about its motives for stressing those differences. In his important essay "The Anthropological

Community and Ideology" (reprinted in Dumont 1986), Dumont grapples with the

tension between universalism and cultural particularism that is at the heart of

anthropology. The first part of the essay suffers from a certain lack of clarity. It is in

fact an over-ambitious attempt to totalize an entire career, bringing in not only

Dumont's theoretical concerns but also the results of his analyses of both Western

and Indian (or "nonmodern") ideologies. Still, one detects in this article the

culminating statement of Dumont's motivation. For, here, the often

anthropologically pedestrian claims Dumont has always made about understanding

the other so as to better understand ourselves give way to the more charged

contention that, in its ability to synthesize universalism with a systematic

appreciation of differences, the "anthropological specialization corresponds to an

avant-garde that is necessary in the movement of ideas" in the West (1986:207).

While the modern (in Dumont's sense) notion of universalism is obviously a

condition of possibility of anthropology, it is clear that Dumont sees the countering of

that ideology with a sense of difference as a central intellectual and "political" task of

anthropology.

Anthropologists are likely to greet such an emphasis on difference as anything but news. Isn't difference what anthropology in general is about anyway? But it is

precisely Dumont's structuralism that here differentiates him from the run of the mill

specialist in difference, since he is looking primarily for differences between sets of relations, not between elements. And because he insists on analyzing societies as

relational wholes, every element in every culture is, by virtue of the different relations

it contracts, different from similar elements in any other culture. Differences in his scheme are never reducible to deeper lying similarities, except on the most abstract

level where elements are not considered in relation to one another or to the whole.

Near the end of Homo Hierarchicus Dumont presents a synoptic "comparative

diagram" laying out the relations between the major variables of his study first in

India and then in the West (1980:233)[see figure 1]. While these diagrams may appear overly simplistic in the face of the massive analysis which precedes them, a

possibility Dumont himself admits (1980:234), they exemplify in clear form what Dumont means by comparative analysis. First of all, both figures that make up the

26



comparative diagram attempt to depict the relations among a group of elements. And

both diagrams contain similar elements. The senses of the elements in each of the

two halves of the diagram, however, are defined by their relation to the other

elements and to the whole. As these relations change, the same elements change character between the two diagrams as to their nature, now fundamentally valued

they are, whether they are ideological or "non-ideological," and whether they are

more or less conscious. Second, since there is implied here the contention that the

meanings of each element can only be grasped in recognizing its relationship to the

whole, any comparisons between societies must compare, or at least first understand

HOMO MAJOR

ff. - ' '

HIERARCHY

interdependence

separation

politico-economic

domain

^

HOMO MINOR

EQUALITY

Economics . Politics

religion (individualistic)

^ °vC • • • , ert*»

^

Figure 1: "Comparative Diagram" From Louis Dumont Homo Hierarchicus p. 233

those societies as wholes. Finally, the elements involved in the diagram are already themselves elaborate cultural constructs - the elements contracting relations here are

guiding ideas of social life, not elementary, primitive, or minimal symbolic units.3

The relationalism and holism of Dumont's comparative method are simply good, first

principles structuralism. What are original with Dumont, or at least best carried out

by him, are first the inclusion in his analyses of elements that are less concrete

symbols than they are abstract cultural complexes and second the recognition that

such complexes exist at, and are defined in part by, their placement at different levels

of culture and consciousness depending on the relational make up of the wholc.

Hierarchy in one diagram, for example, is quite different from hierarchy in the other -

27



though they share the same name. Because he is working at the level of abstract

cultural elements, one should not be surprised that purity and impurity do not figure

in Dumont's final comparison -

they are after all symbolic "concomitants" of

hierarchy and holism and not vice versa. Similarly, because his attention is focused

on what I am calling abstract cultural elements, one should not immediately balk at

the universalism implied by statements like ...all societies contain the same 'elements, 'features or 'factors ....in any

society there will always be found that which corresponds in a residual

way...to what another society differentiates, articulates, and

valorizes....(1980:420 fn.l 18d, see also p.237).

Here Dumont combines a theory of abstract universals with one of the irreducible

differences between their various concrete manifestations. We are likely to find

hierarchy, equality, individualism, holism etc. in all societies - they are elementary forms of social and cultural life - but what they actually amount to in each culture

will depend on the structure of the whole of which they are a part.

For Dumont, the structure of the whole is a matter of value. Value in Dumont's

work is not to be understood simply as that which is held to be good, or that which is

maximized, but rather as that which structures the relations of elements in the

whole.4 Central to the definition of the kind of structure in question is Dumont's

notion of hierarchy. A dominant value in any given case is that element which in

general encompasses its contrary, which conditions its opposite by controlling the

places and means of appearance of that opposite. The contrary is not in any sense

non-existent, although it may be pushed to find an existence outside of ideology or

consciousness, and the forms it takes as a subordinated element will of necessity

differ from those it might take in cultures where it is valorized. Because I will be

giving a variety of examples of hierarchical relations below, I will not provide a concrete exemplification of this exegesis here.

But Dumont obviously claims more for his analysis of hierarchical relationships

as defined by values than that it is a simple addition to the structuralist arsenal of

types of relation (see footnote 2). For in each society Dumont (1986:231) urges us to

"seek out the preeminent value-idea by which it is animated." That is, preeminent values serve to structure the entire ideological whole, lending it its "main lines of

organization" and its "necessarily hierarchical configuration of levels" (1986:231).

While hierarchical relations may appear between various elements throughout the

whole, there are also overarching hierarchical relations which encompass the

structure of all others and are determined by a culture's paramount value. Dumont

has not been particularly successful in providing us with images or metaphors that

heuristically define these value-structured totalities. Somewhere he fashions the role

of value as similar to that of a magnet in creating a magnetic field. I have found it

helpful to think in terms of a rather busy mobile with many separate and delicately balanced arms that are all, in the last analysis, dependent upon and coordinated in

their movement by a central string. A preeminent value would be like such a central

string, anchoring the play of the whole in space and being a reference point for the

movements, caused by disparate natural forces of gravity and current, of any of the

28



parts. However one chooses to try to concretize what it is that Dumont is getting at,

it is clear that it is at this point in our exposition that we are able to use his work as a

strong theory of comparison - the comparison of value-structured totalities of abstract

cultural elements.

Here we rejoin the question of what an egalitarian society might be. In Dumont's

terms, an egalitarian society would be one in which equality is the paramount value,

in which equality encompasses inequality on the level of ideology and serves to

structure the relations between other values. But note, an egalitarian society would

not be one where there were no empirical inequalities, nor even one where there were

empirical inequalities but no ideological charter for them. Dumont, after all, has never denied the existence of power in India; only the universal nature of its valuation

and application in social life have been put in question. Inequality will be a feature of all societies and all ideologies, and the question of egalitarianism asks only whether

equality is the value to which all of the others must refer. Within the terms of

Dumont's theory, equality does not become a mystification as soon as any

inequalities are found in a society.5 At the very least the question of egalitarianism becomes more complex.

While I will eventually try to demonstrate that certain Melanesian cultures

provide a fertile ground for considering how equality operates as a fundamental

value, I cannot proceed immediately to that task. Standing in my way is the fact that

Dumont has repeatedly been inclined to call Western culture egalitarian. As all

readers of Dumont know, his work is based to a large extent on two pairs of opposed terms: hierarchy/equality and holism/individualism. In the logic of these oppositions the West becomes egalitarian (or "equalitarian") and individualistic. This is unfortunate, for it is clear that individualism is the preeminent value in the West and

that egalitarianism is both conditioned and encompassed by it. In calling the West

egalitarian, Dumont raises what is at best a secondary value to a primary place. This

misplaced emphasis threatens to encourage the currently narrow view erf egalitarianism as everywhere the secondary or mystifying value it seems to be in the

West by suggesting that the West exemplifies the nature of egalitarian societies.

Actually, despite the impression he often leaves with his readers, Dumont seems

often enough to recognize that equality is subordinated to individualism in the West.

Statements such as "it is not difficult to descry behind 'liberty and 'equality' their

substratum, the valuation of the individual..." are fairly explicit in making individualism the ground of modern ideology (Dumont 1977:19). Similarly, when

Dumont (1977:4) claims that "it is by no means the case that all individualistic societies stress equality to the same degree," he implies that the core value erf

Western ideology is individualism while casting egalitarianism as a more variable feature.

But it is in his earliest work on the history of Western ideology, "The Modern

Conception of the Individual: Notes on its Genesis and that of Concomitant Institutions" (collected in Dumont 1986), that Dumont offers his clearest statement on the subordination of equality to individualism in the West. Pointing to the differences between a "liberal" theory of equality which champions "an ideal

29



equality...of rights and chances," and a socialist theory "which wants equality to be

realized in fact," Dumont argues that the latter should not be seen as a simple

outgrowth of the former for "the transition bridges a discontinuity, a major change in

orientation" (1986:76 emphases in the original). Here Dumont has accurately

located the crucial point at which the concept of equality is sundered in two and then

encompassed by individualism, but I must put off the explication of this claim until the following section. What is important in the present context is to note that

Dumont's next move in this article is to claim that

as we are concerned here exclusively with the rise of individualism, it will

be understood that we are leaving aside the extreme forms of

equalitarianism [i.e. "socialist" in the above sense] which express the

emergence of a contrary tendency (1986:77).

Two things become clear in the light of this passage: the first is that equality can

in fact conflict with individualism, and thus there is no rigorous sense in which

Western ideology can be said to promote both individualism and equality to their

fullest extent; the second is that if one wants, following Dumont, to examine the core

value of Western ideology, the focus should be squarely on individualism and not on

those values that can represent 'contrary tendencies.'6

The issue of whether or not equality is the paramount value in the West is

important. If it proves not to be, then, in keeping with Dumont's warning that served

as an epigraph for this essay and urged us to study the meanings of representations

where they are paramount, we must look elsewhere for a culture that values equality

if we are successfully to study its meaning. I will not provide further evidence that

Dumont recognizes that equality is not the fundamental value in the West but will

instead attempt to demonstrate through a Dumontian style of analysis that it is not.

This analysis should be useful in itself in clarifying the nature of Western individualist ideology and the confusing place of equality within it and it will provide

the comparative touchstone for a consideration of Melanesian egalitarianism.

Individualism and Equality

What makes us all the same is that we are all different.

(Television advertisement for American Telephone & Telegraph)

Philosophers and social theorists who examine Western ideas of equality tend to

classify them into several types. The names and content of these types vary

depending on who is doing the typologizing, but I want to suggest that no matter how the types are defined the outcome of these analyses quite regularly serves to

encompass equality within the dominant value of individualism. I will argue that no matter how many types of equality are defined in any

analysis, they will finally be dichotomized into those which are consistent with individualism and those which are not. In order to show this, it will be necessary to

find a core meaning of individualism. I will suggest that just as Indian holism is

articulated through the hierarchical opposition of pure and impure, Western

30



individualism is structured by a valuation of difference over similarity. Those types of equality which are not consistent with difference are abandoned as a value, leaving

finally an ideal of equality conditioned by and subordinated to individualism.

Finally, I will point out that the most important relations of equality regularly argued

for by Westerners show their dependence on individualism by their persistent avoidance of discussion of actual social relations with concrete others - equality is in the West a relation with the state, not with consociates. At this point Melanesian

materials will be brought in to illustrate that there are types of egalitarianism not

imagined in the Western tradition. Before demonstrating the ways in which the value of individualism is articulated

through the opposition of difference and similarity, it is useful to make a distinction not explicitly made by Dumont. The social forms that act as bearers of value need to

be distinguished from the dimensions along which value is reckoned. What is meant

by the social forms that act as bearers of value can be clarified by examining

Dumont's notion of holism. Readers of Dumont are often left confused about the

relationship of holism and hierarchy; it can seem that Indian culture is hierarchical because it is holist, but this working hypothesis leaves the reader confused when

Dumont claims that hierarchy is a universal feature of culture. This confusion arises

because Dumont uses holism in two different senses. On the one hand it refers to a

kind of analysis carried out by the anthropologist in which he/she must perceive a culture as a whole in order to situate its values in their proper hierarchical places. It

is in this sense that hierarchy is universal, since values as such appear to be universal

and to universally entail hierarchy (cf. Howell 1985). On the other hand, in Indian culture as understood by Dumont the whole is not simply an analyst's construction, it

is also a conception in the indigenous culture. In fact, the whole in India is what I am here calling the bearer of value, it is the state of the whole on the dimension erf

purity/impurity that is crucial. Individual actions are situated with regard to the

impact they have on the relative purity of the whole. An indigenous conception of the whole is absent in modern Western culture. Instead, it is the individual which is the

bearer of value. Difference/similarity is the dimension along which the value of the

individual is reckoned. The actions of persons are situated not with regard to their

impact on the whole but on the individual as regards its relative differentiation. But

one must be an individual before one is even capable of bearing value. Thus, for

example, the persons regarded as most fully insane in Western psychiatry and

psychoanalysis are seen to have problems of incomplete differentiation (weak ego

boundaries and the like) which render them less than individuals and thus incapable of bearing value.

We can now examine how equality is situated in a culture that reckons the value

of individuals along the dimension of difference/similarity. Lukes (1973) provides a useful discussion of individualism which also considers its relationship to ideas of

equality. Lukes mentions no fewer than eleven "unit-ideas" of individualism, but he isolates four of them as the "core" or "central values" of individualism (Lukes

1973:143, 148). The four core ideas of individualism are (1) the dignity of man, (2) autonomy, (3) privacy and (4) self-development. The intrinsic dignity of human

31



beings is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian tradition and to modem Western

culture. It also, as Lukes (1973:125) notes, "lies at the heart of the idea of equality"

that reigns in the Western world. Yet, as Lukes implies, the idea of human dignity is on its own rather devoid of content - in order to develop a program that respects the

equal human dignity of each person one needs to define explicitly the content of the

dignity they share (Lukes 1973:131). The other three unit-ideas of individualism

(autonomy, privacy and self-development) serve to specify the content of that shared

dignity. Thus, individuals share autonomy; they are capable of directing their own

thoughts and actions. They are capable of activities and relationships that require privacy, non-interference from outsiders. And finally, they are capable of self

development, of cultivating that unique "individuality" that is the familiar subject of romantic individualism.

Human capacities for and rights of autonomy, privacy, and self-development

"represent the three faces of liberty..." (Lukes 1973:125). Thus it is the shared

capacity for and right of liberty that defines the basic equality or dignity of human

beings in individualist ideology. As Lukes (1973:158) himself notes, he "presents equality in terms of liberty." Indeed, equality in individualist ideology is defined

completely in terms of liberty. The representation of equality in terms of liberty is a crucial maneuver in Western

ideology and it is the means by which individualism is allowed to encompass and define equality. At the heart of the "unit-ideas" that define the concept of liberty is

the right of persons to differentiate themselves. To be allowed to make unique and uncoerced decisions, to define unique (different) relationships free of outside intervention, and to pursue the unique and differential development of the self - these

all constitute liberty as the right to differ. Liberty is valued as an expression of individualism's chartering of difference. Equality is valued only inasmuch as it also

squares with the valuation of difference. Indeed, few writers have failed to note that

current doctrines of equal rights and a "career open to talents" charter unequal (i.e.

differential) outcomes (e.g. Wood 1986). It follows that liberty and equality are not equally subordinated to individualism

in Western ideology — a fact Dumont (1977:4) appears to miss when he writes that

"individualism entails not only equality but also liberty; equality and liberty are by no

means always convergent, and the combination of them varies from one society of the

individualistic type to another." Liberty is not simply entailed by individualism; it is

nothing but the concrete expression of individualism as a stress on the autonomy and

unique individuality of each person and on their right to pursue the value of

differentiation. Equality, on the other hand, exists only as the definition of that

quotient of "individualness" and inherent capacity to differ shared by all individuals.

Equality can only shine with the reflected light given off by liberty, while the latter is

directly illuminated by the glow of individualism. It is only as the equal ability and

right to become different that equality is fully integrated as a value into Western

ideology. But as I mentioned above several types of equality exist in the Western tradition

and not all of them are as intimately tied to ideas of liberty and difference as the one

32



we have been examining. Bryan Turner (1986:34) identifies four general types of

equality that feature in Western discourse:

The first is ontological equality or the fundamental equality of persons.

Secondly, there is equality of opportunity to achieve desirable ends.

Thirdly there is equality of condition where there is an attempt to make

the conditions of life equal for relevant social groups. Fourthly there is

equality of outcome or equality of result [footnote omitted, emphasis

added].7

Oncological equality is already familiar to us from our consideration of Lukes'

analysis of the "dignity of man." Inasmuch as what persons are held to

fundamentally share is the traits necessary to pursue individual liberty, this definition

of equality is allowed under the overarching value of individualism. Equality of

opportunity, at least in the abstract, is also consistent with individualism because the

opportunities imagined to be desirable are differentially defined by the individual and their pursuit and attainment are understood to enhance that individual's liberty and

capacity for differential self-creation. In practice, however, legislating equality of

opportunity becomes difficult. The reader will recall that it is precisely at the point where "an ideal of equality... of rights and chances" becomes a call for "equality to

be realized in fact" that Dumont claims to encounter a "discontinuity, a major change in orientation" that brings equality into conflict with individualism (1986:76 emphasis removed). Dumont stresses discontinuity here in order to head off the

assumption that the movement from the former to the latter kind of equalitarian claim

represents a simple historical evolution from discourse to practice. The problematic character of calls for realized equality should not be understood as a simple problem of moving from the 'ideal' to the 'real' as one moves from ontological equality to

equality of opportunity. The difficulties of engineering actual equality of opportunity within an individualistic ideology must instead be analyzed in relation to the place of

equality of condition and of outcome in that ideology.

Equality of outcome is at once the least acceptable and the most potent idea of

equality that enters discussions of equality in the Western tradition. This is the equality of leveling, of making people actually equal in concrete term?. Relatively liberal (Spiegelberg 1986:147) and reactionary libertarian (Flew 1981:30) thinkers alike reject out of hand any concrete efforts to achieve equality of outcome, fearing that, respectively, "fanatical levelers" would produce "dull uniformity" or that

proponents of "procrustean" enforced equality wish to see "the ceiling...screwed down onto the floor." Equality of outcome is the type of equality that most forcefully flies in the face of individualist ideals of liberty as the right to differ. It threaatens to

deny free reign to autonomy, privacy and self-development and implies that some

central authority must intervene to assure that similarity is not jeopardized by activities in any of these areas (see Flew 1981). Flew (1981) shows clearly how easily mocked the idea of equality is when, in an individualist universe, it is identified solely with equality of outcome. Turner (1986:123) is surely correct in noting that "...a commitment to equality of outcome as a belief will be highly deviant

in a society where individualism is a relatively dominant belief."

33



Less often recognized is the extent to which this subordinated positioning of

equality of outcome within an individualist ideology severely compromises the scope of equality of condition. As Turner (1986:35) points out, "the concept of equality of

opportunity is closely related to and somewhat inseparable from the notion of

equality of condition." The argument, familiar to all, is that equality of opportunity cannot be achieved unless all start from the same place and with the same

advantages. But equality of condition is also linked to equality of outcome, for if all

are to start from the same place, some previous equality of outcome rendering all the

same is presupposed. While equality of outcome is often understood as a leveling of

achieved inequalities at some mythical endpoint (as if in heaven), the notion of

equality of condition relies on a leveling at some equally ill-defined starting point (as if in school). But any leveled starting point must also logically be the endpoint of some episode or era of achieved leveling. Thus equality of condition contains

equality of outcome as a premise. Because equality of condition is linked to notions

of equality of outcome and thus to a valorization of similarity, it is difficult to argue for successfully from within individualist ideology - as anyone who has even passing familiarity with arguments about public educational provision in the United States is

undoubtedly aware. Yet equality of condition maintains a measure of dignity or

logical force within Western ideology not enjoyed by equality of outcome. The

reasons for this will become clear below when we reassemble the four notions of

equality in a model of the place of equality in an ideology hierarchically structured by individualism.

The complexity of the notion of equality as delineated above may appear chaotic, and certainly leads to confessions, like that of Turner (1986:34), that "...equality is almost as difficult to define clearly as it is to achieve politically." However, if individualism is taken as the paramount value of Western ideology and to be

articulated through a valuation of difference over similarity, a Dumontian analysis of

the hierarchical relations between elements within that ideology reveals a coherent

order. As we have seen, "ontological equality," equivalent to Lukes' conception cf

the "dignity of man," is, when defined in terms of liberty and equal capacity to differ, little more than an aspect of individualism itself. In fact, it is necessary to individualism inasmuch as that doctrine requires some general definition of the individual. It is also at the heart of the universalism which Dumont is always quick to link to individualism (e.g. 1986). Ontological equality has thus had some freedom to develop in Western culture -

elaborating itself in the religious, political, and

economic domains.

The other three notions of equality, those of opportunity, condition and outcome,

all show the scars of their development under an ideology with which they are to different degrees in conflict. They are all linked in a logical chain that ends in their

encompassment by individualism. Equality of opportunity is janus faced: it can be read both as a fulfillment of the dictates of the ontological equality of the capacity to differ and as a call for equality of condition. In the first case it occupies a valued

place in individualist ideology, in the second case it comes into direct conflict with individualism. In its relation to notions of ontological equality, equality of

34



opportunity is nothing more than the abstract claim that persons should have equal

access to those means necessary to develop the individualistic tendencies they all

share. In this form, notions of equality of opportunity easily enough become

ideological supports for that strand of individualism that charters radical inequalities. As Spiegelberg (1986: 139) notes:

The need for providing initial equality of opportunities may be

comparatively obvious even for the denier of other equalities. For without

equality of opportunities it would be impossible to determine and evaluate

in an objective and impartial way even those natural inequalities which,

according to him, should be the basis for differential treatment.

In the abstract then, notions of equality of opportunity and of ontological equality are both perfectly consistent with individualist ideology and with the existence of

inequality. But note: when equality of opportunity leaves the realm of abstractions to make

concrete proposals it ties itself to the notion of equality of condition, which itself is tied to equality of outcome by a logic demonstrated above. Equality of condition and

SIMILARITY DIFFERENCE

Ontological < 1 Equality of Opportunity -1 > Equality — I - ► Equality

! Abstract I Concrete ! „ °<. \ « Individualism Condition Outcome

Decreasing Value >•

— ► — Entailment

Figure 2: The Logic of Equality Subordinated to Individualism

of outcome are both very much subordinated values in Western ideology, and equality

of opportunity becomes so as well when it is linked to them. Any value that

ultimately promotes concrete similarity is subordinated in the ideology because it conflicts with notions of liberty as the right to pursue difference. Equality of

outcome, condition and concrete opportunity may be promoted at restricted levels of

the ideology (especially in familial relations, friendships and voluntary groups, and some religious organizations), but only ontological equality finds a secure place in the

upper reaches of the ideological hierarchy. The structure of the concept of equality can thus be represented in its relation to

the ultimate value of individualism as it is articulated through the opposition cf

similarity and difference in the diagram below [see figure 2], The table is to be read with an axis of decreasing value from left to right. Ontological equality, as defined in Western culture, is fully consistent with individualism. But the other three concepts are locked in a chain of entailment such that equality of opportunity expects equality of condition for its fullest realization, and equality of condition similarly expects

equality of outcome. As one moves down this chain of entailment, however, one

35



passes from the promotion of differences to the promotion of similarities, and

subsequently to a position less valorized within the ideology. This string of

entailments, leading into less desirable arguments and ending with the reprehensible

procrusteanism of equality of outcome is, I would argue, what renders debates about

equality so protracted and difficult to conduct. What begins as a highly valued

position in favour of difference and liberty appears to be fully realizable only through

the unacceptable eradication of difference. Given breathing room within the

ideology, one could imagine equality formulating a compromise between its

divergent drives toward difference and similarity. But under current conditions, the tortuous polysemy of "equality" is revealed as a product of the way its uneasy

alliance between difference and similarity is fractured under the sway of an

individualist ideology which rejects any alliance, at least at the highest level, with

similarity.8 Equality in the West, in its confusing commingling of both difference and

similarity, resembles what the phenomenological philosopher Ihde (1986) calls a "multi-stable" figure. A multi-stable figure is one that can appear as several different

things, but only as one at a time. The paradigm of the class are those optical illusions that can look like either two faces or a goblet but not both at once. Equality

similarly can appear to promote difference or similarity, but not, under the current

ideology, both at once. I would suggest that multi-stability is probably a typical state

of existence for subordinated representations in an ideology, as the operation of a

dominant value prevents them from working out their own syntheses by

"unnaturally" weighting their parts. The situation here is similar to the one Dumont

handles by the concept of levels, whereby a representation, say right and left, is

allowed to reverse itself in terms of value in different contexts without precipitating a

logical uproar. The concept of levels is indeed useful in dealing with specific reversals, but in analyzing entire representations as the often contradictory sum of

their contextual manifestations it may prove useful to retain the concept of multi

stability. In sum, similarity is the spectre that haunts all discourses of equality under

Western ideology. Concrete similarity is anathema to both individualism and its

allied notion of liberty. It is because the concept of equality contains within itself a valuation of similarity that, as many commentators have noticed, equality often

conflicts with liberty. In Dumont's (1977:4) words "equality and liberty are by no means always convergent...". Difference, though not necessarily inequality, is the

realization of Western individualism. Any aspect of the notion of equality that

promotes similarity is subordinated within Western ideology and this subordination serves to complicate the logic of the overall concept.9

Before turning to a consideration of the Melanesian materials, it is necessary to

point out one further feature of Western thinking about individualism and equality. The individual is conceived of as apart from its social relationships inasmuch as each individual bears value for him or herself. Because social relationships are thus rendered irrelevant, equality is not a matter of social relations between people.

Instead, equality in the West is always a matter of comparing two or more

36



individual s relationships with society or the state in the sense that the latter acts to

equally guarantee the former's right to differ. People are equal with regard to the

state or to society, but their equality does not refer to any relationship between

them.10 The mediated character of equality between individuals has deep roots in the

Western tradition and earlier representations of equality placed God in the space now

occupied by society or the state. The import of this model of equality as a

relationship between unrelated individuals and the state will, like that of Western

notions of similarity, become clear when the Melanesian materials are discussed.

Some Features of Equality in Melanesia

Dumont (1986:215-16) himself has confessed that the cultures of Melanesia, and

especially Papua New Guinea, fit poorly into either of the two models of society he has offered under the labels "Western" and "nonmodern" (or "Indian"). He writes:

Let us take Melanesia, or, more precisely, New Guinea: what is known

about it, and the failure of both substantialist and structuralist theories to

this day in that field would seem to indicate that we have not discovered -

or that, by comparison with other cases, we have not discovered at all -

the ideological axes which would provide a relatively coherent and simple

formula....In terms of our present interest, these differentiations would lie

beyond or outside the opposition individualism/holism, with the result that

they would be as badly described from one point of view as from the other

(1986:215-16 emphasis in original). This admission of difficulty invites us to formulate the hypothesis that at least some Melanesian societies need to be analyzed as ones in which equality is the paramount value. Yet Dumont does not mention the hierarchy/equality couplet here and equality

as a value is not an element of the same sort as individualism and holism. Adopting

the distinction made above, individualism and holism are not in themselves values

but rather refer to the bearers of value. I will argue that the analogous element in

Melanesia is the relationship; relationships are the social forms in regard to which value is reckoned. Once the "relationalism" of Melanesian cultures is recognized it

becomes possible to demonstrate that equality is the paramount value there.

That Melanesians are best regarded as relational is a point that has long been

implicit in the literature and has emerged strongly in M. Strathem's 1988 book The Gender of the Gift and in other of her recent essays (Strathem 1987, 1992a). Strathem convincingly argues against the appropriateness of individualist and holistic models in Melanesia. Out of her critique of these models a relational model of Melanesian sociality emerges clearly.

Anthropologists are not often inclined to argue for thoroughgoing individualism as a value in non-Western societies and to this extent Strathern's critique of it is not

surprising. But in the cogency with which she argues that it is relationships which are the fundamental reality in Melanesia her critique leaves a valuable resource upon which further work can build. Put too simply, Strathem claims that persons are not

37



defined as unitary individuals but are rather understood as a construction (an

"effect") of relationships. On the one hand, the relational construction of the person

refers to the way persons are viewed as composed of the relations that produce them

and that, often through idioms of substance, anticipate their own future relationships.

This is the sense in which the person is "a microcosm of relations" (Strathern

1988:131 emphasis removed). On the other hand, the notion of the relational person

also calls into question the construct of the individual as the unitary source of action,

as when Strathem (1987:295) writes that "[a]nother person may be the cause of

action, not as one mind overriding another's, but in terms of the requirement of a

relationship in which the presence of one party is necessary to and created by the

other...". Relationships thus "elicit" the person and its actions as well as composing

it (Wagner 1974, 1986; Strathern 1988) . In Melanesia even the corporate groups

which Western anthropologists so often figure as "supraindividual individuals" are

more usefully understood as relationally produced. Where we are tempted to look fa

groups making relationships we often enough find relationships and their associated

exchanges making and remaking groups (Schieffelin 1976; Wagner 1974). Referring to Leenhardt (1979), Strathern (1992a: 100) argues that in Melanesia

"[i]t is impossible...to imagine a person cut out from relations and remaining alive."

The implicit contrast here is with the Western idea that the person stripped of its

relationships is precisely the individual, the social form to which value can be attached as it differentiates itself through relating and other activities. Melanesians

do not recognize the individual as a bearer of value in this way, but in fact they do

conceptualize persons who are relationally deficient - they are thought of not as

individuals but as "rubbish men" (Burridge 1975; McDowell 1980). Without

adequate relationships the person is something less than a person and cannot even

participate in the creation of value, much in the way that those who cannot form

adequate individual boundaries in the West are construed as insane and thus not

capable of bearing value.

Yet it is not Strathern's relational critique of individualism that is the most

radical aspect of her work. As she writes:

The irony is that what clouds the anthropologists' holistic enterprise in the

late twentieth century is no longer individualism. The 'death of the

individual' has seen to that. Rather, the problem is the Western

dismantling of the very category that once carried the concept of a holistic

entity, that is, 'society' (Strathem 1992a:91-2). For the Melanesianist, "society" is an inappropriate construct because "the people of

Melanesia do not work with concepts of society or culture" (Strathern 1992a:73).

Instead of an ideal of the social whole that we might gloss as "society," Melanesians

work with concepts of relations. There is no notion of an ordered whole in which

persons take their rightful places in Melanesia, and thus no whole can be the bearer of value as it is in holistic societies. In the absence of such a whole, relating carries its own intrinsic motivations as the creation of a social form to which value can attach

rather than as a way of reproducing some piece of a larger structure. The protracted

debate over "loose structure" in Melanesia evidences the importance of relationalism

38



as opposed to holism. If this debate demonstrated liule else, it firmly established that

the creadon and maintenance of relationships in general is far more important than

the creadon or maintenance of relationships that instantiate a specific place in some

overarching model of the social whole. The anthropological apperception of

Melanesian societies as loose rested on a misunderstanding of the fundamental

importance of relationships there - for the holistic structure which Melanesians

realized loosely was posited not by the actors but by the anthropologists

themselves.11

If relationships are the bearers of value in Melanesia, then in order to demonstrate

that the societies of the region are egalitarian it remains to be shown that value in

relationships is delineated along an axis of equalityfinequality. Here it is important to recall what is virtually a truism in the Melanesian literature: relationships are

created, maintained and transformed in exchange. The fundamental place of

exchange in Melanesian social life is central to the arguments of Strathern (1988) and the work of Gregory (1982) on which she draws. Bunridge's (1975:98) assertion that in Melanesia "exchange...[is] the basic value" is indeed no overstatement,

though it confuses the mechanism which produces value with the value itself. What

Melanesians value in exchange is equality. Relationships bear value by being the

vehicle for equal exchanges.

Forge's (1972) article "The Golden Fleece" is the most creative effort toward

giving content to the claim that Melanesians are egalitarian that has yet appeared and

his model is based on the creation of equality between persons in exchange. He

writes that in Melanesia "the principal mechanism by which equality is maintained is equal exchange of things of the same class or of identical things" (Forge 1972:534). Persons are rendered equal within relationships through the exchange of equivalent

things. This is a demonstrative equality, proven against continual challenge to

demonstrate equivalent ability to give (Forge 1972:534).12 The principle of equality in relationships is expressed in a variety of social forms in Melanesia. People may render each other equivalent violence (see Schieffelin 1976) or misfortune (killing for revenge, for example, or harming themselves intentionally to demonstrate equality with an accidentally harmed friend). They may practice sister exchange to avoid the

inequalities of asymmetrical affinity (Forge 1972). Men can choose to address one another using the same term or name (Flanagan 1988). And, finally, in what is often

understood as the canonical form of Melanesian exchange, people may simply

exchange versions of the same material goods. What is at issue here is not the ability or desire of Melanesians to evaluate exact equivalence of items exchanged, an issue

that in some cases may not be relevant despite the frequent indigenous use cf

measuring devices (Brown 1979:717-718, Foster 1990, Strathern 1992b). Rather, it is crucial that we recognize the widespread concern with what we might want to call

an ethic of exchange, the expectation that people will provide what is reckoned as a

sufficient return on items given, an expectation often enforced by the possibility of becoming a rubbish man and by the threat of sorcery (see Brison 1992:202). The exchange of strict equivalents is perhaps the realization of the ideal type, and this

may be why it is often found useful in healing relationships damaged through

59



disputes (Foster 1990:67, author's unpublished data); but even when strict

equivalents are not exchanged the existence of standards of sufficient return ensures

that relationships can be understood to be in a state of equality. Revenge killing, the matching of homicides in war, the exchange of equivalent

things or names, and even sister exchange are all similar to what in the West is

considered "leveling." In all these cases an achieved or potentially achieved

inequality between donor and recipient is erased by making the partners to the

relationship equivalent in their "gifts" to each other. However, this is a leveling of

persons within the relationship only. People may be differently leveled in each of their different relationships. Thus the notion of demonstrated similarity within concrete 'relationships

- what Forge (1972:535) calls "the extreme of equality -

identity" - does not perfectly resemble the everyone-the-same, 'ceiling screwed to

the floor' leveling that so terrifies holders of modern individualist ideology.

Similarly, it is not enough to see a certain empirical equalizing effect simply in the fact that the continual obligation to give prevents material accumulation in the hands

of any persons (Mitchell 1978). Exchange does more than simply level everyone in

an abstract sense through redistribution. The equality forged in exchange is

relational, requiring partners to demonstrate equivalent capacities in regard to each

other.

But there are also relationships based (ideally) on the continual giving of goods back and forth at ever increasing quantities which at first appear to us as far removed

from any leveling of achieved inequalities. Such relationships often have a

competitive quality, each partner struggling to give more in what looks like a pursuit of inequality. It is these sorts of relationships that have lead both Brown (1979) and

Forge to write of the impossibility of achieving "perfect balance" in exchanges where "the equality achieved is never perfect" (Forge 1972:535). Both Brown and Forge make these points as part of arguments attempting to prove that exchange relations

have no final, equivalent end point, and thus, more important to their arguments, that

series of exchanges do not end. But in doing so both of them admit that while perfect

equality may not be realizable, it is what is aimed for. Exchanges do not stop

precisely because the desired equality is not definitively achieved.

Even where persons continually give more than they receive, they do so first to

demonstrate their equality with their partner and only subsequently to give the

relationship future impetus by subordinating the receiver. Exchanges that produce

alternating inequalities always demonstrate equality as part of their "argument." The

Hagen Moka nicely demonstrates this dependence of inequality on demonstrated

equality, for there the repayment in the service of equality is conceptually separated from that "increment" which establishes a new debt and temporary superiority (Strathem 1971). People must first demonstrate equality before any bid for inequality is made. Furthermore, every incremental prestation expects a return by the currently bested partner. Thus, even when inequalities are generated the never ceasing flows

of exchange ensure that they will only be "alternating" inequalities (Forge 1972, Strathem 1971). In sum, while perfect equality may never be achieved in certain

40



societies, the point or equality is always passed through in the generation of what

amount to alternating inequalities.

What we see here is a kind of future-oriented leveling, a leveling played in reverse. For if leveling is the redress of achieved inequalities, competitive

egalitarianism through gift giving is the pursuit of achieved equalities. While the West at its most noble dreams of an egalitarian beginning from which people can

attain the inequalities they deserve, Melanesians labour to create endpoints of

equality. And while never-ending exchanges may evidence this valuation of equality without ever providing in practice that secure plateau free from the marks of

alternating inequality, there follow two examples of the achieved egalitarian endings which are at stake in these sorts of exchanges. Consider Read's (1959:429) discussion of Gahuku-Gama soccer matches:

In these matches each 'team' aims to equal the goals scored by the other

and no team should win, that is establish outright superiority. Games

usually go on for days until the scores are considered to be equal. Then turn to the Tangu relationship of mngwotngwotiki. Burridge glosses the name

of this relationship, "usually entered into after a series of formal exchanges," as

"enough, sufficient, equivalent," and he points out that entering into mngwotngwotiki

"points to a plateau of achievement, an approximate but mutually acknowledged moral equivalence" (Burridge 1969:61). The plateau in question bears some resemblance to the flat plane of leveled equality in the West, though it is specifically Melanesian in that it is not a starting but an ending point and is a plane upon which rest only specific relationships.

Having arrived at a general sense of the contours of Melanesian egalitarianism, noticed its relationalism, articulation through exchange, demonstrative character, and

"backward" and "forward" leveling aspects, we must now take up the question of the

place of inequalities in these egalitarian societies. For, as Dumont would lead us to

expect, it is not the case that Melanesian societies are without inequalities. But if

equality is the paramount value, it should be possible to show that these inequalities are somehow defined or conditioned by the value of equality. Here we will briefly consider the specific cases of big-men and affinal relationships.

Big-men appear at first to be a jarring feature on the egalitarian horizon.13 Do

they not cultivate a general inequality, or at least multiple specific relationships of

inequality? Sahlins' (1963) classic argument that big men systems are egalitarian because positions of leadership are open to all men on the basis of achievement is not adequate to answer this charge of inegalitarianism in the context of the present argument. He simply reproduces the Western model of equality as the liberty to

differ, a point recognized by Jolly (1987:170) when she points out that Sahlins' scheme "exhibits certain classic features of the liberal discourse on equality." Instead, we must recognize that while there is no doubt that big-men are at least in

some sense unequal with regard to ordinary men, there are several indications that

the big-man's inequality is only possible when it is articulated through equality, much in the way power exists in India only as it is subordinated to a religious system with which it must negotiate its own peace from a position of weakness.

41



Big-men are masters of the sort of escalating exchanges which produce

alternating inequalities. These exchanges were shown above to contain egalitarian

elements. Thus the exchanges through which big-men become big already implicate

them in equality. Furthermore, the model big-man will in fact make equivalent

returns on all things given to him by his supporters, thus maintaining many equal

exchange relationships. Finally, in those exchanges which most demonstrate their

bigness, big-men are involved in creating equal relationships with other big-men. As

Burridge (1969:38-9) has written of the Tangu:

In order to show precisely how equal they are managers [big-men] require

rivals of similar ability....Those who work hard gain prestige and credit by

disposing of their produce through a more rapid turnover and wider ranges

of equivalent exchanges. Big-men produce their superiority only through use of the idiom of equality, only by

having more equivalent relationships than others. In this case Orwell's formula that

"some are more equal than others" is perhaps not a logical scandal.

Despite all of this, it is true that big-men are unequal. Although they ideally reciprocate equally even to their less potent partners and allies, their manipulations of

schedules of repayment and the economies of scale give them a surplus of prestige.

(Prestige is in fact the most fully relational of inequalities: it cannot be hoarded and

exists by definition only in relationships.) But the point is not that there are not

inequalities, only that they are encompassed by equality: this obviously occurs here when inequality can only be the product of multiple equalities and when the big-man must never be without equivalent peers with whom he can exchange equally at the

fullest of his capacities. Furthermore, big men recognize that they play on the

margins of their cultures' paramount valuations of equality. Burridge (1975) has

spoken of big men as beyond the moral sphere in precisely this sense. In the same vein, among the Gahuku-Gama, Read (1959:534) "heard some of the more respected leaders describe themselves as 'bad men'....whose behaviour frequently seems to

exhibit a small concern for the virtues which they attempt to encourage in others".14

The case of affinal and matrilateral inequalities, those between wife-givers and

wife-takers and between mothers' brothers and sisters' sons, is a bit more difficult to

locate in regard to the valuation of equality. Sister-exchange marriage, and to a

lesser extent patrilateral cross cousin marriage, serve in many Melanesian societies to

attenuate these inequalities (Forge 1972). But the problem of affinal and matrilateral

inequality is still worth considering for those societies that either do not practice sister exchange or patrilateral cross cousin marriage or practice them only sporadically.

At the heart of affinal and matrilateral inequalities in Melanesia is the belief, somewhat common there, that the gift of a woman can never be reciprocated

equivalently except with another woman and that the maternal line's gift of substance

to a child is similarly a debt that can never be made good (for the latter see e.g. Errington and Gewertz 1987a). Relationships between affines and matrilateral relatives often register these inequalities through exchanges of unlike, unequivalent

things between the partners. In the Western sense of ontological equality, which of

42



course is not relational in the Melanesian sense, we can see a certain equality

generated especially in the case of matrilateral relationships of inequality by the fact

that everyone has them. But the argument being developed here requires a way to

link these inequalities to more fundamental practices of creating egalitarian

relationships. Forge (1972:537) describes such a linkage when he writes that "the

satisfactory maintenance of their unequal exchange depends on each remaining a

viable full member of the total community, that is, performing satisfactorily in their

respective equal exchanges." Thus structured inequalities resulting from marriage, where they are rigid, are often used to form alliances that aid both parties in their

pursuit of relationships of equality. Inequalities are again subordinated to, based on and put in the service of, the paramount value of achieving relational equality.

The above paragraph involves what Forge accurately calls inequalities between

men generated by their relationships to women15 and thus leads us to a final

consideration which complicates any egalitarian reading of Melanesian cultures:

what equality is there in intersexual relationships, or in relationships between women? Throughout this paper I have followed the ethnography on which I have

relied in presenting the logic of the male world as the logic of Melanesian societies as

a whole. While Errington and Gewertz (1987a,b) and especially Strathern (1988) have convincingly shown that the ascription of inequality to woman in Melanesia is

complicated when indigenous conceptions are taken into account, the fact remains

that there is little available data bearing on how women are or are not integrated into

the Melanesian egalitarianism I have so far depicted. Forge (1972:536) speculates intelligently on some of these issues in his attempt to build a model of Melanesian

egalitarianism: In egalitarian New Guinea society it is only the men who are equal in the sense of being at least potentially the same or identical. Women are

different...the differences are those of complementarity; men and women

are interdependent but are in no sense the same or symmetrical and cannot

be identical. But as logical as this argument is, it tells us nothing about women's relationships

among themselves and is based for the most part on an understanding only of

Melanesian men's views of the issue.16 The model here presented is necessarily

incomplete. This should not, however, obscure the main arguments of this essay: that

equality can be understood and applied differently in different cultures and that

equality can be a paramount value elsewhere in ways that it is not in the West. It is a

strength of Dumont's program, as has been noted, that the mere existence of

inegalitarian elements in a society does not prevent us from studying it as an

egalitarian one. These contentions can now be further elaborated through a detailed

analysis of equality as a value in a single Melanesian culture.

Equality as a Value and the Structure of Emotion in Kalauna

The Kalauna, Goodenough island dwellers numbering about 475 persons, are the

subject of two fine monographs by Michael Young (1971, 1983).17 Living in the

43



Massim, though not participants in the Kula, the Kalauna are deeply involved in

working out the relationship between equality and inequality. In both monographs

Young regularly refers to Kalauna's egalitarianism. Goodenough Islanders in

general, he tells us, "affect an uncompromising egalitarianism" (1971:10). In the case of Kalauna he refers to their "fierce egalitarianism" and "the vehemently

egalitarian ethos of the culture" (1971:62,1983:31). And while neither monograph is focused per se on how this egalitarianism is patterned and manifested in Kalauna

culture, Young more than other ethnographers attends to the conflict between equality

and inequality. As he has written:

The intimations of rank on Goodenough are curiously persistent in an

otherwise pervasive egalitarian milieu. Imagine trying to force a rubber ball under water: it persists in popping up again. Do not imagine a well inflated beach ball, whose buoyancy sends it springing into the air, but

rather a soggy, weakly inflated ball that rises almost apologetically to the

surface where it bobs, partly submerged. That is the appearance of rank

on Goodenough Island (forthcoming^). The current task is to demonstrate that what deflates the beach ball of rank and robs it

of its buoyancy is its existence subordinated to and encompassed by a paramount

value of equality.

While adjudications between equality and inequality exist in many domains of

Kalauna social life, for example in those of marriage and affinity, it is evident that

food (and the yam in particular) is the primary medium through which relations of

equality and inequality are negotiated.18 What then is the relationship of equality and inequality in the world of food production and exchange? In general, there are

no institutionalized inequalities in food production and exchange abilities. What is at issue however is not simply food production for exchange, but also gustatory abstinence aimed at preserving produced food for the exchanges where its prestige

generating social value is realized. While one particular clan controls important

prospering and abstinence magic with community-wide effectiveness, there is no

shortage of land and in the final stages of the yam gardening cycle each person uses

their own inherited magic for making yams big and appetites small. Furthermore, in

sorcery and in the "malicious gossip" (veyaina) which is "thought to be almost as

damaging as sorcery" the people of Kalauna possess effective leveling mechanisms

for preventing or eradicating achieved inequalities in food production. As Young (1971:10, see also 1983:39) points out: "sorcery was, and still is, greatly feared by those who would display an uncommon talent or a conspicuous degree of wealth...."

But this sort of leveling, familiar to Westerners, is also complemented by

exchanges that create that forward-oriented relational leveling we have already described as characteristically Melanesian. This is evident in the two major food

exchanges in Kalauna life, the abutu and the competitive food giving that constitutes the climax of individual festivals in the Kalauna festival cycle. Here we will look at the ways in which equality as a value encompasses inequality within these two

44



Abutu are intra- or intervillage competitive food exchanges involving clans and

other complexes of people related in a variety of ways. While Young (1985:185)

notes that abutu is "a means by which egalitarian relations are competitively

negotiated between individuals and groups," he makes it clear that these exchanges

are also potential crucibles for the forging of relations of superiority and inequality. "The dominant intention of a party to abutu is to shame the opposing side by giving

it more and 'better' food than it is able to pay back simultaneously, thereby

demonstrating - within the terms of the culture -

greater power, worthiness, and even

virtue" (1971:194). There is evidence to support the assertion that the abutu's

potential to generate inequality is firmly anchored in a logic that presumes equality as

a value. Thus, as in the case of moka, after A gives to B, "B amasses its return

prestation, measured minutely for equivalence, and strives to give more," after which

A has a final chance to carry out the same procedure (1985:186). Here again the first

concern is to demonstrate equality through equivalent return, and onto that equivalent

return is added a dominating excess. It is not simply a matter of giving more, but erf

giving the same "and then some" (maintaining the full temporal sense of "then"

usually ignored in the clich6). People of Kalauna go further than simply embedding inequality in the logic of

egalitarian relationalism forged through equivalent exchange, however. For

collective opinion (which is the only gold standard for prestige, as opposed to more

materially or structurally based inequalities) seemingly insists on seeing these

competitive contests as having ended in equivalence. In the dark night of general

consensus, all abutu are ties. To quote Young (1971:203) at length from an

evocative passage:

There is no finale, no ceremonial declaration of the winners, and as the

enemy fofofo [exchange representatives, literally trading partners - see

below] and their women folk come for the last time to take away... [their

gifts]...the feeling (in an observer at least) is one of anti-climax....No one

shouts abuse at the disappearing, food-laden figures of the enemy ....[The

initiator of the abutu notes that his enemy] owes him eighteen bunches of

bananas, a couple of wooden platters of 'taitu', and six yams of an

impossible size. Their pigs were equal. He may conclude that he has won

because of the bananas, while his opposite number, making similar

calculations in his own house, may conclude that the victory is his because

of the taro. A few months later they will tend to agree with everyone else

that it was 'fair', a drawn contest, [emphasis added] What has happened here is that the egalitarian emphasis of an exchange form which

insists on equivalent returns has asserted itself, both in the individual reckonings, where inequalities appear as needles in a haystack of successful equivalencies, and in the final verdict - which is for equality. On this reading, Young (1985:186) is

referring to the structure of the institution, and not to contingent coincidences, when

he remarks that "clear victories in abutu are rare." So, as with the "big-man logic"

analyzed in the previous section, any outcome of prestige or other inequality that is

45



produced through abutu is dependent for its creation on an institution that promotes

demonstrably egalitarian relationships. A closer look at how the actual task of giving is accomplished in abutu provides

another way of comprehending the institution's egalitarian bias. The principals in an

abutu are called inuba, and they are thought to be "enemies", at least for the duration

of the contest (1971:190). Yet the inuba do not interact directly. Instead, from the

initial challenge to the last exchange the main public roles are taken by the respective

inuba's hereditary exchange partners (fofofo). It is the initiating inuba's fofofo who

carry the challenge to the "enemy." And upon the enemy's acceptance, their own

fofofo take over all of their public functions in the exchange (1971:197). The two

fofofo do the actual exchanging, they also do the stylized verbal and physical insulting and threatening that accompanies the exchanges. After the exchanges have

been completed, the inuba do not even eat the food received from their enemies, and

instead their fofofo eat and redistribute this food, feeding the inuba from their own

stores. In all of this, "the inuba's role is conspicuously and deliberately non

participant" (1971:191). The complicated structure of the actual practices of exchange in abutu evidences

egalitarianism by preventing the parties who might potentially be related unequally from actually forming any direct relationships at all. Young (forthcoming^) refers to

the "displaced agency" of the two inuba who allow their fofofo to "insulate" them

from one another. Although the two inuba are understood to be competing, the

dyadic, relational structure of the potential inequalities is at least complicated if not

fully obscured. Not only do they leave to the fofofo the work of exchange, but the

two parties who stand to become relationally unequal refuse contact with each other

and each other's dominating strength as embodied in the food through which such

relationships are expressed. Even the displays of power through threat and insult are carried out by the fofofo, who are not at present endeavouring to back up their own

claims to asymmetrical exchange (one wants to complain "let the inuba say that to

my face!").19 The status contestants are not interacting with each other directly; if

inequality results it is oddly removed from any direct relationship. And finally, it is important to remember the inactivity of the inuba. If this is

dominance, it is a kind of dominance that immobilizes - at the moment of possible superiority one becomes, in one's inactivity, non-participation and non-relatedness, akin to a stone monument to one's own glory. Relating to no one, your power is

noticed as if it is a thing you no longer, in your immobility, wield in any active sense. This question of the link between immobility and inequality or power leads us directly to a consideration of festivals. It is in the concluding phase of festivals that the stone monument metaphor finds its clearest application.

Kalaunan social life is marked by a cycle of festivals put on by various clans with the assistance of their fofofo. Festivals can be drawn out affairs, consisting of several phases. Several aspects of the festival concern us here. Festivals conclude with a

"large-scale" distribution of pigs and vegetable food which serves to pay off old debts and create new ones (1971:233). Festival climaxes are furthermore structured

in a manner similar to abutu, with fofofo carrying out all of the active tasks

46



(1971:233-4). There is, however, only one inuba clan and only one fofofo - the

inequality or dominance aimed for here is with the rest of society, not with a single "enemy." Furthermore, the returns on initial gift-challenges made at the festival are not given immediately (as they at least ideally should be in the abutu) and thus imbalances of some duration are created. We might imagine that this is a greater threat to Kalaunan equality.

However, I will not focus on the way equality enters into the structure of

potentially hierarchical exchanges in this case, preferring instead to accept festival

climaxes as real threats to equality and to examine in this light the behaviour of the

sponsoring inuba. At the climax of the festival, several men and women of the inuba

are present, sitting atop a platform, as kaiwabu. The primary referent of the term

kaiwabu is these festival sponsors seated atop their perch. As Young (1971:76)

writes, the term "bears considerable and significant connotations of rank."

Throughout his first monograph one becomes aware that kaiwabu are virtually the

embodiment of hierarchy, and the term has secondary usages in describing people who are "'Lording it'" over others (1971:76). At the festival climax, the kaiwabu are decked out in finery - "visible evidence of superiority and rank, which is reinforced by the physical position of the kaiwabu seated above the crowd" (1971:250)20.

But the true nature of equality's triumph over inequality in the festival climax can

only be seen when the kaiwabu's behaviour is taken into account. As in the abutu

exchange, it is the fofofo who do the active, publicly visible work at the festival climax. The fofofo do all of the talking - greeting visitors and demeaning the size of the feast in stylized refrains - and the fofofo do the distributing of food as well. What, then, do the kaiwabu do? Young answers:

From the moment of seating himself cross-legged on the platform at mid

moming to the time of the departure of the final guests at dusk, the

kaiwabu should not be seen to move, speak, eat, drink or do anything

except gaze fixedly at the crowd and vigorously chew betel (1971:249).

Kaiwabu do not speak, do not exchange, do not even move. Indeed, in their inaction

they "epitomize the displaced agency" that was also evident in the behaviour of the

inuba of the abutu (forthcoming: 9). Further adding to the sense that the leadership role is here severely compromised is the fact that those taking the role of kaiwabu are

often not even the "real leaders...who initiated the festival" but are rather "surrogates"

who act the role while the real leaders "are likely to be squatting quietly under their houses with no more than a token feather in their hair by which to identify them with the festivity" (forthcoming: 11).

We are again faced with the seemingly paradoxical expression of inequality as non-relatedness, immobility, distance from and inactivity in the buzz and hum of social life as constituted at a high pitch by institutions of competitive exchange. How do we interpret this paradox, this stone-still monument to a power that plays "dead"

at the very moment when it has created its best chance to live.21

One can, and in his second monograph Young (1983:200ff) does, set up an

oppositional paradigm in which stasis is correlated with hierarchy. In this

47



formulation, kaiwabu are stationary because immobility connotes hierarchy. This

formula has some credence in the Massim (see Munn 1986:298 fn.45), and bears a

certain conceptual similarity to the homologies productive of Polynesian "sitting

chiefs." But this analysis does nothing to show a motivation underlying a linkage

between hierarchy and stasis. In his first book (1971:248-253, see also forthcoming:

11), in a section entitled "The Symbol of the Kaiwabu," Young offers a more

ambitious analysis of the institution of the kaiwabu, interpreting it as a synthetic

product and representation of the conflict of equality and hierarchy in Kalauna

culture. I will follow him in this effort.

I rely here on Clastres (1987) discussion of South American chieftainship. Clastres himself relies on L6vi-Strauss' well known model of society as a set of

levels of exchange of women, goods and words. The South American chiefs

discussed by Clastres are systematically cut off from all of these exchange spheres.

Thus, he argues, they may embody power, but it is a power outside of society as

formally defined by exchange. The kaiwabu is susceptible to a similar analysis, especially if hierarchy is

substituted for power as the socially isolated element. In their immobility the

kaiwabu are cut off from both speech and material exchange (the exchange of women

is here not relevant). True, the kaiwabu can grunt and grind their teeth aggressively, but this formalized noise making is not speech, is not relational in the full sense of'

linguistic interaction. The fofofo distribute, the fofofo insult recipients, but the kaiwabu "preserve the fiction of social non-involvement" (1971:25). "Fiction" is a

tricky word in this context. For the kaiwabu "preside" over events that take place in

real time. It is here, in this time, that debts are redeemed and created and inequality is bodied forth. Through performing this fiction of non-involvement at precisely the

moment of hierarchy's greatest potential for realization, the kaiwabu ensures that in

any active, relational sense hierarchy misses its main chance.

I read Clastres as saying that the South Americans he discusses have their

"asocial" chiefs so that they constantly have available a model of power which they can both appreciate and control. They are not stateless, he says, but through the

structure they offer for chieftainship they are "against the state" - they posit the state

only to banish it. Young (1971:248ff) is inclined to argue that the kaiwabu symbolizes both hierarchy (for obvious reasons) and equality (because it is an

institution open to various people on a rotating basis and because through immobility and formalized features of dress it eradicates individuality). I prefer to interpret kaiwabu in less temporal (rotation) and individualistic (everyone gets the same chance) terms, for I take Melanesian inequality to be relational. Instead, I consider the kaiwabu as a model of hierarchy, a model of hierarchy pushed out of society and made non-relational, immobilized and contained. Perhaps, in explicit parallel with Clastres' analysis, the people of Kalauna are just toying with hierarchy, just giving themselves a model of hierarchy by means of which they can valorize their own egalitarianism.22 This is inequality well encompassed, provided with a condition of appearance in which it realizes very little of its generic social potential. Remember Dumont's universalism when it comes to general features of social life. If inequality

48



there has to be, the immobile, arelational, socially disconnected kaiwabu is the kind

of inequality that equality as a value can live with.

The picture thus far painted of Kalauna as a culture in which equality is the

paramount value has been based on the analysis of competitive exchanges of food.

This analysis furthers, and gives detailed ethnographic support for, the general arguments about the way Melanesian equality is generated in exchange made in the

previous section. But the social structure of Kalauna society, as opposed to its

practices of competitive exchange, appears unambiguously to promote inequality over equality. At issue here is the fact that there is one Kalaunan clan which

possesses hereditary prerogatives and capacities which make its members in some

sense leaders of this egalitarian society. This generates a type of inequality, that of the inherited ranking of clans, that differs from those previously discussed by virtue

of being written into the vary structure of society itself - while its expression can be

negotiated, its existence cannot. We can speculate that it is the existence of this

structural inequality that makes the relationship of equality and inequality so troubled in Kalauna, that it in some sense creates the conditions for the strikingly asocial

presentation of inequality in the climax of the festivals. But regardless of whether

such causal arguments are viable, it is certainly true that an analysis of equality as a

paramount value in Kalauna will need to show how it encompasses not only the

inequalities generated in exchange but also those that are chartered by the social

structure itself.

Kalauna society is made up of seven patrilineal clans. Ancestors of all of the

clans arose from the ground at different times and clans differ from each other by virtue of their possession of specific "customs and competencies" which are

chartered by and contained in (in the case of magical spells) their separate myths of

origin. The ancestors of the Lulauvile clan were the second group to emerge from the

ground and the clan holds the most complete and coherent narrative of the history of

Kalauna and, more important for our purposes, the most important magic (1971:62). Because of the clan's store of magical competencies, it is Lulauvile that supplies

Kalauna with the "ritual guardians" (toitavealata) who "look after" the community's

crops and well being (1971:63, 1983:53). Lulauvilean toitavealata are responsible for performing general prospering rites at specific points in the gardening cycle.

They can also ensure favourable weather, suppress or curtail the community's

appetite, and several experts also carry out special rites in order to combat famine.

These sorts of magic all contribute to the creation of a state of malia, which Young translates as "prosperity, plenty, abundance" — a state in which harvests are large,

appetites small, and plenty of food is available for demonstrations of equality in

exchange. But Lulauvile power also has a dark side. For what Lulauvile magicians give they can also take away. Magic for bringing pests, excesses of wind, rain, or sun, and insatiable hunger allows the toitavealata to create a state of famine, of loka,

the opposite of malia (1983:59). This combination of beneficial and harmful magical abilities gives Lulauvile, and especially the toitavealata among its number, no mean claim to authority even in Kalauna's egalitarian atmosphere.

49



But Lulauvile s preeminence is not based solely on their magical abilities: the

clan also sports some sociological peculiarities that smack of hierarchical

paramountcy. Lulauvile is numerically the largest clan. It is the only clan whose

members can intermarry (shades of regal incest). It is also the only clan which is

fofofo to itself (1971:63ff). Recalling our earlier analysis of abutu and festival climaxes, it is the splitting of the functions of "leader" and "transactor" between the

inuba clan and their fofofo which to a large extent mitigates the hierarchical thrust of

these large-scale exchanges. With members of Lulauvile serving in both roles during the same exchange, the message of immobilized, non-relational hierarchy is

considerably distorted into what looks like a clear statement of clan power. Lulauvilean s unique position, both in terms of the power of their magical

competencies and the social prerogatives they take in organizing marriages and

exchanges, places them paradoxically at the apex of an egalitarian society. Especially in his second monograph, Young repeatedly stresses the singularity of the Lulauvileans' position and the conflicts generated by the clash of their own

inegalitarian self-understanding with the community's far more grudging recognition of their supremacy. He notes that "at the level of quotidian political process, the tension between Lulauvile's view of itself and the other six clans' view of Lulauvile

provides the most interesting dynamic in the community" (1983:45). What provides for this "dynamic" character is people's challenges to Lulauvile authority. Lulauvile

claims to preeminence "are seldom overtly acknowledged by the rest of the

community" (1983:45). Challenge in this case can take the form of non-recognition. A stronger form of challenge consists in vicious gossiping aimed at leveling inequalities (1983:91,147). Such Kalaunan backlashes against the inequality in their midst is heartening for those who would make a claim for equality as the culture's

paramount value.

On the other hand, these backlashes certainly do not stand as an example of

equality encompassing inequality, for they do not modify inequality in its very definition or push it from its structural social prominence. Yet equality does finally encompass Lulauvile inequality in Kalauna. In order to see how it does so we will have to examine evidence presented by a Kalaunan emotional state called unuwewe

and the spectacular and frightening consequences of its full expression. Our consideration of unuwewe will be considerably enriched by pairing it with a

similar emotion called veumaiyiyi. Neither term is particularly gracious in the face of

translation. The two emotions share what "feels" like a mixture of "resentment" of

another and "self-pity" (1983:47). But what gives both emotions what in Western terms is a strange twist is that in both cases the self-pity has an element of what seems almost to be masochism or self-hatred. What is important to the present

argument, however, is not a phenomenological description of the felt quality of these emotions but rather an understanding of Kalaunan cultural representations of how

these emotions are aroused and expressed and of the typical consequences of their

expression. The typical consequences of the expression of unuwewe and veumaiyiyi are aspects of Kalaunan culture that must be considered as part of that culture's

articulation of equality and inequality.

50



Veumaiyiyi is an emotion that leads you to punish or harm yourself in response to

a person who somehow offends you. Young notes that "anyone who is insulted,

injured or wronged in any way may experience veumaiyiyi" (1974:54-5). As an

example of enacted veumaiyiyi Young describes a man cutting down his betel palm in order to shame someone who stole from it (1971:262). The goal of veumaiyiyi activity is to redress the shame one feels by producing equivalent shame in another.

The equivalence-creating telos of the emotion leads Young to link veumaiyiyi with

abutu, another institution conducive to the establishment of relationships of equality

through self-deprivation (and the people of Kalauna seem to see veumaiyiyi as an

appropriate state in which to give an abutu)(1971:262, 1983:73). I believe Young is

right to see veumaiyiyi as an emotion in the service of equality. But he does not

explain why the redress takes such awkward form, why it detours through self

punishment in order to punish the one who has claimed superiority. If veumaiyiyi was allowed to tamper with one of our own commonplaces, it would render the

absurd sounding "cutting off your nose to spite the face of another." I will offer an

inteipretation in terms of egalitarianism that can explain why veumaiyiyi takes this

form, but I must forestall the presentation of it long enough to introduce some details

concerning the nature of umiwewe.

Young s finest discussions of unuwewe examine it as it is represented in the

mythic histories of former Lulauvile guardians which are used to orient and validate the activities of current leaders. In fact, unuwewe is the "motive" of all of the myths

presented in Magicians of Manumanua (1983:74). Unuwewe, like veumaiyiyi, follows upon offenses perpetrated in the form of "false accusation, unjust insult,

maligned identity" (1983:72). When these attacks are aimed at Lulauvile leaders, we

can assume that they constitute those types of gossipy egalitarian challenges to that

clan's claims to inequality discussed above (cf. 1983:240). The response to these

challenges is what most differentiates unuwewe from veumaiyiyi. For rather than

self-punishment to shame another, unuwewe leads to nothing less than self destruction to destroy society. Young often refers to unuwewe as suicidal (e.g. 1983:

glossary p.302). In its fullest form, the Kalaunan imagination figures the social

destructiveness of unuwewe as the leader's abandonment of the village and practice of devastating weather magic as a complement to his own self-destruction (1983:91). A virtual Book of Revelations for the Kalauna, their myths of leadership offer

unuwewe as a final reckoning in which both their leaders and their society are

destroyed. Even more so than in veumaiyiyi, the mixture of self-harm and other

harm carried to a rather chilling extreme in the consequences of unuwewe requires

explanation.

Before hazarding such an explanation, it must be pointed out that unuwewe is

something of a "noble passion." It is a noble passion in the sense that it is most

properly or fully enacted by members of the leading clan. Young never says this

explicitly, but only Lulauvile members possess the magic capable of rendering the total devastation understood as the outcome of enacted unuwewe. Thus, while others

may experience unuwewe, only Lulauvile leaders can enact it in its fullest form.

51



We are now in a position to ask how the supreme valorization of equality helps to

explain the way in which self-harm and other-harm are mixed in the structures of

both veumaiyiyi and unuwewe, and how it might account for the differences between

the two emotions. Beginning with veumaiyiyi, we have already remarked upon

Young's interpretation of this emotion as part of the leveling logic of egalitarianism -

you shame the other to make him equivalent to yourself in an exchange sphere of loss

or harm. But why harm yourself to achieve this end? This too has to do with the

value of equality. Consider what leads, in an egalitarian society, to the sorts of

attacks that result in veumaiyiyi. These initial attacks are motivated by the desire to

level one that you feel has become unequal to you. All the people of Kalauna know

this logic. But then, if one has been offended, the offense must have been motivated

by your own superiority in some aspect of your relationship to the person committing the offense. The self-harm aspect should be understood as self-leveling. If you must

steal from my betel nut tree, then you must not have a suitable one of your own, or

must be aggressing against me on account of some other way in which I am unequal to you. To equalize our relationship it is not enough to return the offense, I must also

remove the inequality that generated your initial attack. Veumaiyiyi levels not only the other but also the self - it is an attack against both your inegalitarian pretensions and my own. Equality here violently encompasses inequality by aiming for its

general eradication.

Playing on the similarities between the two emotions, an initial interpretation of

umiwewe can follow lines similar to those used in analyzing veumaiyiyi. Umiwewe,

like veumaiyiyi, is a response to the leveling attacks of others. And like veumaiyiyi it evidences the structure of self-harm and other-harm. One might wonder that the

Lulauvile leaders, who after all have a structural basis for their inegalitarian claims,

would be inclined to attack their own prominence by any display of self-leveling

through self-harm. But as Young has nicely phrased it, the Lulauvilean's image of

themselves as paramount is in conflict with "the bedrock social philosophy of

Kalauna" (1985:195). Clearly the Lulauvile leaders are not untouched either by this

"bedrock" egalitarian ideology, or by their own relationship of contradiction to it.

The suicidal aspect of uiuiwewe shows that they have not only internalized equality as a value, but that they are prepared to act as if it is the paramount value. That is,

umiwewe stands as evidence that the Lulauvile leaders, at least as mythically

represented, are complicit with Kalauna's overarching egalitarianism. The argument that supports this will become clearer when we consider why, as compared to

veumaiyiyi, unuwewe has to be so extreme.

The results of unuwewe unleashed full force are deadly simple: no more leader

and no more Kalauna. Why do the petty (or not so petty) attempted leveling attacks of the other six clans lead the Lulauvile leaders to such a drastic course of action?

Why, in Young's phrasing, is the "response quite disproportionate to its stimulus"

(1983:98). Would not enacted veumaiyiyi get the job done just as efficiently and with less disastrous side effects? The best answers to these questions come when we

assume that equality is the paramount value in Kalauna and we imagine carefully the

position of Lulauvile leaders.

52



The Lulauvile leader lives a contradiction. Embodying hierarchy in an egalitarian

society, he is reminded of his offense against the paramount value of equality with

every attack he absorbs. Unuwewe constitutes a remarkably logical solution to the

problem of the leader's structurally created contradictory existence. Simple self-harm

will never serve to level a Lulauvile leader. His hierarchical position is structural and

will endure as long as he does - only by removing himself can he solve the problem

of his hierarchical existence. Thus suicide. But suicide alone will not suffice, for the

beauty or curse of structural inequality is that the leader will be replaced. By suicide

the leader solves the personal problem of his own contradictory nature, but he does

nothing to adjust the social structural feature which, after all, created his

contradictory dilemma in the first place. While the leader's problem is in one sense

his own, in a more profound sense it is a full scale social contradiction. This

explains the social destruction of realized unuwewe. Only in the destruction of

Kalauna society and culture is the inequality inherent in that culture's raising of one

clan above the other six fully brought under the sway of equality as a paramount

value. In distinguishing between veumaiyiyi and uruiwewe Young (1983:73) notes that "I suspect unuwewe to be a stronger, more extreme and morally unprincipled

form of veumaiyiyi." While the greater extremity of uruiwewe is obvious, in the

present context the claim that it is "more morally unprincipled" than veumaiyiyi

appears as somewhat ironic. One might want to call it morally unprincipled in the

sense that it destroys society and is thus in some sense beyond it. But then again, in

its rigorous egalitarianism, unuwewe may be the most morally principled expression of equality as a value that the leader's situation will allow.23

In Dumontian terms, we can perhaps understand this unfortunate solution as a

failure of "levels." There seems to be no context or domain in Kalauna culture in

which hierarchy, though subordinated to equality, can find a legitimate existence.

Many Melanesian societies allow such havens for inequality, especially in the

elaborate gender and age hierarchies of ritual, while carrying out other relations in

egalitarian terms (Harrison 1985 is a fine statement of this currently oft expressed

observation). But Kalauna culture seems to provide no such alcoves where hierarchy

might disengage from its battle with equality, especially when Lulauvile's powerful

prospering magic underlies the food production which is itself important in every domain where equality is upheld (1985:195). Thus the dispute between hierarchy and

equality must be played out to its tragic end. Equality's victory may be Pyrrhic, but it

emerges as the paramount value nonetheless.

A few remarks in closing. When he first introduced the theme of Lulauvile's

contradictory supremacy, Young also introduced the concept of "submerged rank"

(1971:63). Submerged rank has gone on to become a fairly successful notion in its

own right, often utilized by Melanesian ethnographers. He later clarified the concept by stating that submerged rank refers to a situation in which "history has moved against it [rank]...[and] circumstances are less favourable than they once were to its

overt recognition" (1985:195). I have no dispute with the historical twist given to the concept here, but I would point out that on the basis of the forgoing analysis the

submerging forces have to do with the paramount social value itself. The

53



submergence of hierarchy has occurred either because the paramount social value has

changed, or because the means or scope of that value's expression have changed. In

neither case can the outcome be turned over to the work of mere historical

contingency, unless such contingency is seen to effect a highly structured situation

with its own canons and tendencies of response. Perhaps there were once levels at

which hierarchy could sit comfortably within the ideology, but one imagines that

equality was simply awaiting an opportunity to widen its sphere of influence.

Consider, m this regard, the following:

When I returned to Kalauna for a month's visit in May 1977, I was

dismayed to find that this hitherto consolidated community had all but

broken apart. It was as if an explosion had occurred in the center of the

village, and in slow motion the blast had flung family groups and even entire hamlets outward and downward, scattering them over the

gardenlands that slope toward the sea. The old village had a sad and desolate air; far more people now lived outside than within it (1985:256).

If Lulauvile stands for centralizing order, continuity and stasis, then the

dispersal of Lulauvile in the seventies betokened an unequivocal defeat.

Conversely, Kalauna's new era of "wandering" betokened a victory for the

principle of egalita-rianism...(1985:263). The dispersal of the village and of the Lulauvile clan is susceptible to explanation in a number of ways. Young settles upon two "main factors": growing population and the

death of two great leaders (1985:193). However, a final Lulauvile leader named

Kimaola remained alive at the time of the break up. "A few"among the people of

Kalauna felt that the deaths of the two leaders "engendered vengeance sorcery" that

encouraged village dispersal. "One or two believed that Kimaola had actually performed the magic to impel people to abandon the village..." (1985:258). A disaffected Lulauvile group understood that "the principle of order succumbed to

disorder through umiwewe - a self-inflicted victimage - in the protean figure of

Kimaola" (1985:263). The subtitle of Magicians of Manumanua is Living Myth in Kalauna. If we hold to a definition of it as village based, Kalauna society seems to

"die myth" quite as fully as it lives it when, through unuwewe, equality as a value

gets its due even in real time.

Conclusion: What Does Dumont Want?

After all, each thing exists only by virtue of its limitations, in other words,

by virtue of a more or less hostile act against its environment: without the

Pope there would have been no Luther, and without the heathens, no Pope,

and so it cannot be denied that man's most deeply felt association with his fellow-men consists in dissociation from them.

Robert Musil -The Man Without Qualities

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People must be provided with the means for conceptualizing differences.

Louis Dumont - Caste, Racism and 'Stratification': Reflections

of a Social Anthropologist.

This essay began with a consideration of the current anthropological unwillingness or

inability to consider equality as a paramount value in any existing culture. Assuming

that equality is everywhere a mystification, anthropologists have dedicated

themselves to finding ever more subtle sources of inequality and dominance in the

cultures of the world. I suggested that this sort of approach reproduced social

theories probably appropriate only when applied to Western materials. Furthermore, I

expressed concern that an exclusive focus on inequality left anthropologists with little

to contribute either to a consideration of the complexities of the cultural place of

equality in the West or to attempts to discover definitions of equality not imagined in the Western tradition. The desirability of having such alternative definitions of

equality on hand was attested to in Beteille's call for an "enlargement" of the concept. The next section of the essay considered the place of equality in Western cultures,

determining that it was subordinated to individualism through a logic that allowed it

full expression only insofar as it denied its complex nature and valorized difference

over similarity. Western equality was also shown to be a concept applicable only to

relations between individuals and states, not to relations between individuals. Melanesian equality, on the other hand, was analyzed as subordinated to no other

value and as realized in specific relationships. The section on Kalauna was designed to show the analytic value of an analysis of Melanesian cultures as if they took

equality to be a paramount value.

Underlying the entire effort presented here was a desire to carry out a Dumontian

analysis of equality as a value. In determining what, beyond ethnographic gains,

may have been reaped from this exercise, I want to return briefly to a consideration of

the nature of Dumont's program. To begin with a blunt question: is Dumont a Utopian? It is not hard to detect

what amounts to an almost messianic undertone in Dumont's discourse. Needham

(1987:143-4) speaks of the "degree of fervor...that marks his argument...", and sees

Dumont as acting in the cause of "hierarchy and totality" as "against egalitarianism and individualism" (cf. Morris 1991:273). When Dumont laments that state of

Anthropology in the remark that "instead of an ordered progress in which everyone would have a place, we witness individual successes or failures and a chronic

instability in the major interest or interests of the profession," we can detect

something akin to a longing for hierarchy (Galey 1982:20). And given the

historically negative valuation of the concept of individualism in France, Dumont's attraction to holism is not unexpected (see Lukes 1973:3ff). Any reader of Homo

Hierarchicus cannot fail to be struck by the sense in which all the best in Durkheim

and Mauss' work is taken to be already discovered by the Indian tradition - the

implication being that the problems of the West spring from the deviations it has taken from the social path laid down by those two premier social theorists and put into practice in India (speaking atemporally, of course) (see also Dumont 1986:102).

55



But Needham's reading is overly simplistic. Whatever longing for hierarchy and

holism Dumont might be found to harbour, it is wrong to interpret, as Needham

(1987:143) does, his remark that the West needs a "highly complex hierarchical

articulation" as an outright endorsement of a replacement of Western individualism

and equality with hierarchy and holism. Dumont has been consistent in his concern

that the project of grafting hierarchy onto individualistic traditions results only in totalitarianism (e.g. 1980:231). The nation or state or society becomes a super individual, while the holistic valuation immanent in hierarchy leads all citizens to conform to the dictates of the leaders who represent that super-individual. What

Dumont wants for the West is some more subtle mixture of individualist, holist and hierarchical principles which recognizes the social constitution of the individual. I have already gone on record with my inability to gloss the Utopia implicit in

Dumont's "The Anthropological Community and Ideology," but I am confident that

it does not amount to a simple replacement of individualism with hierarchy.

My main concern here, however, is with the fact that Dumont does in fact see an

important place for anthropology in the transformation of Western thinking. Even if

we cannot delimit the parameters of his Utopia, the very fact that he proposes changes

testifies to an activist vision of anthropology. Anthropologists ought, after all, to be

well skilled at "conceptualizing differences." Perhaps they can provide a model for

the appropriate way to do so. At the very least they ought to be able to think about

the differences of other cultures in a way productive of expanded social self

recognition in the West. Dumont at times gives the whole anthropological effon a

decidedly Hegelian twist. The final phrase of Homo Hierarchicus asserts that

"Homo hierarchicus [the social type, not the book] can help Homo aequalis to

complete the consciousness he has of himself' (Dumont 1980:238). What sorts of completions of consciousness, then, follow from the Western

internalization of Melanesia versions of equality as a value?

Relationalism is perhaps the most useful notion that comes out of the analysis of

Melanesian equality. What the West lacks, from the point of view of the analysis

presented here, is a coherent application of the value of equality. This lack of

coherence follows from the West's insufficient recognition of the importance of

relationships as a site for the working out of that value. Rather than simply worrying

over what the state owes equally to all individuals by way of allowing individuals to

redeem what they all equally owe themselves by way of differential self-development,

we also need to develop further a sense of what the parties to relationships owe one

another. Certainly some conceptual tools for this already exist in the way we

construe "private" relationships at subordinated levels of our ideology (see footnote

10). Gilligan's (1982) extremely influential account of the causes and value of the relational nature of "feminine" moral reasoning is one example of how such

conceptual tools can be sharpened and brought to the fore. But what is needed is

more than just a recognition of relationships in general as bearers of value, but also a

way of reckoning equality in relationships that does not worry overly much about the

spectre of similarity.

56



The Musil quotation I began this section with provides a simple but frightening

portrait of the value placed on difference in the ideology of individualism. Defined

by difference, the individual's "most deeply felt association with his fellow-men consists in dissociation from them." The Melanesians, forgoing both holism (and the

applicability of Musil's quotation as a description of holistic structuralism as well as

individualism is not an accident here) and individualism, define a version of

relational equality that allows for similarity. Melanesian versions of similarity differ from our own disowned concept, however. Theirs is a similarity articulated in

specific relationships, and thus people who have relationships with different others

will not be similar to one another except in the specific instance generated by their

equivalent exchanges with one another. (For "people" here, as for "individual" in

what follows , one can substitute such groups as "clans" where, as in Kalauna, they

are applicable.) Similarity is an aspect of partners in a relationship, not of isolated individuals. Similarity is also achieved, not inherent. One is similar in different

ways to different people through different exchanges, and thus no assumptions about

the overall homogeneity of people need be made. Furthermore, all specific

similarities are achieved as a goal. People work to be able to treat each other in equal

and similar ways in exchange. Stephen White (1991) has recently laid out very clearly certain problems that

arise out of the Western concern for difference (here glossed as "otherness") as they

have presented themselves in current postmodern theories. While his argument is

made in the context of postmodernism, his diagnosis of the current situation seems to

me widely applicable within Western culture and it also points to the need for some

version of relationalism. White (1991:20) argues that we have two sorts erf

responsibilities. One sort of responsibility which has long been recognized in the Western tradition is the "responsibility to act in the world in a justifiable way" (emphasis in original). The other sort of responsibility is the "responsibility to otherness" and has been particularly emphasised in post-modernism (though through the debate on muliculturalism it has recently gained a high public profile outside the

confines of academic debates on postmodernism - see Taylor 1992)(White

1992:19ff). The responsibility to otherness includes, minimally, an appreciation of and non-prejudicial toleration for differences, and it can in some cases go so far as

requiring a fostering of them. While White lauds the heightened sense of

responsibility to otherness in postmodernism, he is dismayed over the failure to

address the responsibility to act within that same movement. When it comes to the

responsibility to act, "what the postmodern thinker wants to assert...is that meeting

this responsibility always requires one, at some point, to fix or close down

parameters of thought and to ignore or homogenize at least some dimensions of

specificity or difference among actors" (White 1992:21). This leads postmodernists to engage in a "perpetual withholding operation" when they are asked to go beyond critique and suggest guidelines for action (White 1991:16, citing Megill 1985:271).

In order to get off this critical treadmill White endeavours to define a sense of the

responsibility to act that will also meet the demands of the responsibility to otherness. In this effort he draws on Gilligan's above mentioned relational morality

57



and on a version of Habermas model of the ideal speech situation assumed in

communicative action. For our purposes it is important to recognize that both of

these notions involve working out an ethic of relationships. Especially in Habermas we see a call to extend to an interlocutor norms of communication equivalent to those

you expect that interlocutor to extend to yourself that mirrors the Melanesian

construction of equal relationships through the exchange of equivalents. Habermas'

model, of course, is a universal one, the norms of communication are the same across cases, and this is a source of conflict between him and the postmodernists (White 1992:138). Here the Melanesian model perhaps can provide a broader perspective through its stress not on communication but on the abstract form of equivalent

exchange. As long as equivalence is met between partners a relationship bears value

successfully. Outside of the realms of kinship and affinity what should be exchanged and by whom is often left open and this allows for a negotiation about what and how

much should be exchanged in each particular case - people can find the common

ground appropriate to each relationship; thus allowing for the respect of differences while still holding to a norm both of justifiable action and of justifiable expectation of what the other must bring to the relationship. And of course one can choose to forgo certain relationships altogether.

Of course, we would no more solve our problems by becoming Melanesian than

we would by becoming Indian. But the differences in the valuation and

understanding of similarity in the "traditions" ought to stimulate some musings, some Dumontian "completions." If nothing else, the contrasts focus our problem as

being one of how to respect differences without settling for disassociation (and the

perpetual withholding of justified action); or, put otherwise, how to establish an ethic of relationships which does not demand too much in the way of similarity. In a recent article, Iris M. Young (1990) declares that not only individualism but also the much proposed antidote to it in the form of communalism are flawed concepts that participate in the same exhausted Western logic. Relying on postmodern specifications of the responsibility to otherness, she analyzes both individualism and communalism as "totalizing" individualistic concepts - the one calling for a self centered and self-controlled individual and the other for a self-directing community of absolutely similar people perfectly transparent to each other and bounded against an outside world of difference. She proposes an as an alternative Utopia an image erf

"city life" where people truly acknowledge and appreciate each other in general but

save their primary contacts for those who are similar and leave those who are

different for the most part alone. Her Utopia is fairly sketchy. But the problem of different degrees of mutual and equivalent acknowledgment as a form of relating without asking people to remake themselves completely along one's own lines is

reminiscent, at an abstract level, of Melanesian practices of equivalent exchange. In

Melanesia equivalence is demonstrated in particular relationships, but the result of each such relationship of equality in no way defines the totality of the person. Similarity coexists with difference in an ideology that legislates a relational attitude of equivalent mutual recognition through exchanges not totally defined either by self aggrandizement with no regard for the other's position nor by the attempt to make the

58



other your mirror image in every conceivable respect. Of course the West has

problems that yams will not solve, but the abstract image is at least a prod to

enlarging toward Dumontian "completion" our senses of equality and similarity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Early versions of some parts of this argument were presented to the Melanesian seminar

at the University of California at San Diego and I thank Karen Brison, Stephen Leavitt,

Fitz Poole, Theodore Schwartz and Donald Tuzin for their comments on that occasion.

Douglas Caulkins first set me to looking at problems of egalitarianism. More recently,

discussions with Sandra Bamford, Fred Damon, Dan Jorgensen, Bruce Koplin, Susan

McKinnon, Peter Metcalf and Roy Wagner were instrumental in developing various of

the ideas that have gone into this paper. I wish to thank them, along with Tom Biolsi,

John Bowen, Miyako Inoue, David Knowlton, Martha Kohl, Seena Kohl, Chris

Lehmann, Anne Waters, and Mary Waters for their comments on earlier drafts. I owe

especial thanks to Karen Brison, Michael Gottfried, Bruce Koplin, Stephen Leavitt, and

Rose Passalacqua for reading the manuscript more than once and for helping me make

many improvements. Michael Roberts and several anonymous referees for Social

Analysis made suggestions that helped me improve the argument and clean up many

stylistic infelicities. I also want to thank Liz Waters for contributing to this paper

intellectually and helping with many of the pragmatic chores that went into getting it

into print. To my knowledge, none of the people mentioned above agree with the totality

of the argument proffered here and so no one should hold anyone but me responsible for

either the argument as a whole or for the errors that remain.

NOTES

1. While he explicitly states that Melanesian societies do not fit his model, James

Woodburn is one anthropologist who has, in the midst of the general mood of

skepticism, ventured to both highlight and theorize the notion of an 'egalitarian society'

(1982: 446). Readers of his Malinowski lecture (Woodburn 1982) will no doubt see

some similarities between his discussion of what qualifies "immediate-return" hunter

gatherer societies as egalitarian and the models of egalitarian societies presented later in

this essay. His work differs from the project to be developed here in two important

senses. First, he does not use an explicit theory of value such as that provided by

Dumont and thus his model applies only to an extremely limited range of societies in

which, he claims, no empirical inequalities can develop in any realm. Second, his model

of equality is founded on notions of independence, autonomy and freedom of choice

which are based, I will argue, on a Western individualist version of equality that does

not at all exhaust the possible scope of the concept. More will be made of both of these

points as this essay progresses.

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2. This assertion is made despite Needham's (1987:143) claim that in Dumont s case

"what was taken for a challenging theory turned out to be rather specious and incoherent

rhetoric." I, at least, do not feel compelled to take Needham's dismissal especially

seriously for two reasons. (1) The tone of his entire account suggests that he is

determined, in quite rhetorical fashion himself, to present Dumont in the worst possible

light and find nothing of value in his work. (2) (And this is the more interesting reason)

Needham, like many of his British colleagues represented in the collection Contexts and

Levels (Barnes, De Coppet, Parkin 1985), construes Dumont's work primarily as a

contribution to the kind of classification studies (dualist or other) that have been so

influential in British anthropology since the late 1960's. The next section of the present

essay argues that Dumont's anthropology has to be seen as a far broader effort, at least

in its ambition.

Howell's (1985) essay in the above mentioned volume, a pioneering effort to argue

that equality can be a paramount value in the Dumontian sense, shares in the general

construal of Dumont as primarily a theorist of classification. Her treatment of equality

as a value thus differs greatly from that developed here.

3. One is reminded here of Barthes' (1972) definition of "ideology" as a second order

semiotic system.

4. While it is beyond the purview of this essay, in a more purely theoretical or

intellectual-historical mood one would want to set Dumont's model of totalities

structured by value side by side with Levi-Strauss' (1963:312-13 and esp. 333) concept

of the "order of orders." Levi-Strauss' notion of a set of rules that govern the relations

between orders is a model which needs the Dumontian concept of value to give it its

specific form in each individual case - that is, values are what shape the order of orders.

For example, power may have its own structure in Indian society, but its relationship to

other orders of social life is controlled by the value of holism and its expression in the

domain of religion.

5. The obverse is of course also true - the existence of types of social relationships based on equality does not render a society egalitarian. In a series of recent papers

Flanagan (1988, 1989) and Flanagan and Rayner (1989) quite rightly point out that

anthropologists have ignored many types of social relationships in which people work to

create equality. But analyzing particular social relationships is not analyzing societies.

The relative neglect of values in the approach of these articles leads to a focus on the

heterogeneity of types of social relationships in every culture which finally forces the

claim that we should dispense with the distinction between egalitarian and

"inegalitanan" societies (Flanagan 1988:176-177). Dumont's program is built around

stressing rather than collapsing distinctions of this sort and the claim here is that an

understanding of how values structure the relationships between different elements (e.g.

types of social relationships) makes such distinctions productive. The rationale for an

approach which makes these sorts of distinctions central is implicit throughout this essay and is developed most fully in its conclusion.

6. There is another kind of evidence for the claim that Dumont recognizes that the West

is more properly characterized as "individualist" rather than "egalitarian." This evidence

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is circumstantial, but it is plentiful enough to render its presentation useful. Except for

sections 4 and 5 of Homo Hierarchicus (sections which I do not find particularly clear or

cogent), there is little sustained discussion of equality in Dumont's work - discussions

which begin with equality very often end up being about individualism. It is also true

that in Homo Hierarchicus Dumont considers the place of individualism in India through

his discussion of renunciation. Thus he pursues in regard to individualism his project of

discovering how 'universal' features are modified by their subordination or

superordination in various ideologies. Nowhere in Dumont's work is there a similarly

detailed consideration of the shape of equality in a non-individualist culture (and he

rejects the chance to undertake such an exercise in his response to Beteille 1986 - see

Dumont 1987). This suggests that Dumont is much more concerned with individualism

than with egalitarianism in his studies of the West, a suspicion confirmed by the sea

change undergone by the title of Homo Aequalis, which metamorphosed into From

Mandeville to Marx in translation, any reference to equality having been removed.

Beteille (1986:123) has correctly said of that work that it "turned out to be more on

individualism than on equality." Even the glossary that accompanies Essays on

Individualism, which includes entries for individualism, holism and hierarchy, leaves out

the fourth term of the famous quartet. Throughout his corpus then, Dumont has shown a

tendency to focus on individualism at the expense of equality when talking about

Western ideology.

7. This is an appropriate place to enter an important caveat concerning the scope of this

section of the present essay. Massive amounts of ink, not to mention blood, have been

spilled over Western ideas of individualism and equality. There is no attempt made here

to catalogue let alone analyze all of the subtleties that various arguments about

individualism and equality have produced, which would in any case lead us towards a

very different type of essay. Instead, the goal here is to present a cultural analysis of the

conceptual resources available in more or less articulate forms to most Westerners that

aims to elucidate how the value of individualism renders arguments for equality complex

and often contradictory. For this task, the four types of equality outlined by Turner

represent a collection of those versions of equality most frequently discussed in

contemporary Western culture. Similar lists could be produced from the work of many

authors. From within anthropology, for example, Flanagan and Rayner (1988:13) pick

up versions of the first three equalities on Turner's list (ontological equality becoming

"moral equality" in this case) and label them the "three great equalities." The absence

from their pantheon of equality of outcome, which is however discussed by Flanagan

(1988:166) in his individual contribution to the volume, is a circumstance which can be

partially explained by the analysis presented in the following portion of this essay.

8. Contemporary debates within feminism over the question of "equality-versus

difference" constitute an arena in which the fracturing of the concept of equality through

its subordination to individualism renders matters exceptionally complex and the

outcome of arguments disquietingly unpredictable. Joan Scott (1988: chaps. 8,9), from

whom I have taken the formulation "equality-versus-difference," demonstrates with

exceptional clarity the stakes in these arguments. While the issues are too complex to

61



summarize here, I would point out that Scott s (1988:172-173) claim that "equality

versus-difference" is an untenable opposition can be supported in a novel way by the

analysis undertaken here. For this opposition consists in nothing more than placing one

aspect of equality in contradiction with another aspect of that same conception.

Arguments for equality work most gracefully when they can move from assertions about

ontological equality through calls for equality of opportunity and condition to demands

for equality of outcome. Yet under an individualist ideology articulated through the

valuation of difference such a logical progression is disallowed and the two ends of the

argument are put into conflict. From the point of view developed in the analysis of this

essay, Scott's (1988:174-5) call for us to collapse the opposition by understanding

"differences as the very meaning of equality itself' looks distressingly familiar and

neither promises to go far toward diagnosing the root of the difficulties that beset these

debates nor seems likely to make the concept of equality more workable. The

Melanesian versions of equality and similarity discussed below may be of some help

here. Scott's careful delineating of how issues of similarity and difference get tangled

up and provisionally worked out in practice are, however, essential reading for anyone

concerned with the leading edge of arguments surrounding equality in the contemporary

West. I thank Anne Waters for directing me to Scott's work.

9. Of course, different cultures within the Western tradition evidence variations on the

basic ideological scheme presented here. Gullestad (1986) and Kapferer (1988) present

interesting ethnographic materials bearing on these issues from Norway and Australia

respectively.

10.1 owe my understanding of this point to a discussion with Roy D'Andrade about his

unpublished work on American cultural models of equality. However, this point can be

confusing is several ways. First, as both John Bowen and Seena Kohl have pointed out

to me, Western models of friendship certainly do involve the ideal of equality within

interpersonal relationships. Gullestad's (1986) work also highlights the importance of

similarity between related individuals, this time in the marital relationship (though she

displays a bit of typical individualist thinking when she worries over how a growing valuation of similarity will effect the also highly valued institution of romantic love).

What needs to be recognized here is that in friendship and marriage people are looking for similarity in a relationship that they have already exercised their liberty in choosing. One exercises the right to differ in individually choosing friends and partners with whom

one will try to enforce a relationship of similarity. Furthermore, these relationships are

typically seen within Western culture as "private" and as evidence that the private domain of liberty is provided for by the state. A second point: the concern that exists to

achieve similar rank, as in "keeping up with the Joneses," implies no relationship with

anyone - it asks only to be ranked similarly from some transcendent viewpoint such as

that afforded by society in general.

11. A recent article by Iteanu (1990), one of Dumont's foremost colleagues, bears

interestingly on the issue of relationalism versus holism, although its conclusions differ

from those reached here. The crux of the difference between Iteanu's argument and my own is that he claims that there is a social whole in Melanesian societies, or at least in

62



Orokaiva society, and that it is constituted by the ritual system. All elements of the

culture receive their definition and value through their relationship to ritual. There are

two reasons to defend a relational interpretation in the face of this argument. First,

Iteanu tells us that what rituals produce is relationships (1990:35ff). Because he seems

to define the range of ritual very broadly, and because many types of exchange seem to

be included in ritual, and because "from the general point of view of society each

element may simultaneously have several distinct [relational] identities when considered

in reference to various different rituals," it appears to be the case that the relationships

created in ritual are more important than any overall structure of relationships defined by

rituals or by a hierarchical relationship between rituals (1990:38). Second, the "events"

which give rise to rituals are "expressed through social persons" and social persons are

created by relationships (1990:42). Thus the ritual system depends upon the existence of

social relationships just as fully as social relationships depend upon rituals - and how

then is one to decide where the whole lies. (If this point is not accepted, it seems to me

that Iteanu's analysis becomes just a version of arguments about the transition from

nature to culture which makes the argument that culture = the ritual system = the

whole.)

I am in no way disputing the importance of ritual systems, but I am not sure what is

gained by equating them with "the whole." In keeping with the Dumontian program of

emphasizing difference at the expense of similarity, I have tried to work without

assuming an indigenous concept of the whole in Melanesia. I am not convinced that the

whole is an important indigenous concept generally in Melanesia (though it might be for

the Orokaiva). Dispensing with the concept of the whole in this analysis of Melanesia is

bound to be controversial in Dumontian circles, but it is a strategy encouraged by

Dumont's remarks on Melanesia quoted at the beginning of this section.

12. Woodburn (1982:446) also draws on Forge's article, as well as on an article by

Burridge (1975) to which I will later refer, in his discussion of Papua New Guinea. He

reads them as presenting models of a "competitive" egalitarianism which, he implies, is

less fully egalitarian than the "non-competitive" egalitarianism he has been describing.

The argument here, however, is that the crucial feature of Papua New Guinea

egalitarianism is its relationalism, the way it is used to reckon the value placed on

relationships, not the competitiveness which is merely a feature of its relationalism (see

also McDowell, 1990). Woodburn's tendency to utilize an individualist conception of

equality, mentioned in an earlier footnote, here leads him to miss the significance of

Melanesian versions of egalitarianism by focusing only on its competitive rather than its

relation-building quality.

13. The analysis of leadership in Melanesia has recently been complicated and

reinvigorated by Godelier's introduction of the distinction between big men and great

men (Godelier 1986; Godelier and Strathern 1991). The debates surrounding this

scheme have greatly enriched the classificatory and comparative possibilities available to

analysts of particular societies, but they have not cast into doubt the existence of at least

some societies where leadership is of the stereotypical big man type discussed here. My

intention is to show how the large scale prestige generating exchanges associated with

63



classical big manship can exist within an encompassed position in societies where

equality is the paramount value. It is important to demonstrate this because these

exchange systems are generally understood to be profoundly inegalitarian. I am not, of

course, suggesting that all Melanesian societies are best characterized as being led by

big men. In a latter section of this essay I analyse in detail the place of equality in

Kalauna, Goodenough Island, which is perhaps best characterized in its current condition

as a great man, rather than a big man, society (Young, forthcoming:4-5 and fn. 3, and

Liep 1991). 14. Read's (1959) seminal discussion of "strength" and "equivalence" was an early

impetus to the argument of this essay.

15. The formula "inequalities between men generated by their relationships to women"

allows us to make a final observation on affinal and matrilateral inequalities. Notice

that these relationships are all three part ones - two men (or groups of men) related

through a woman (or women) - and not the two party relationships that are the paradigm

of Melanesian relational equality. Perhaps the logic of equivalence here fails because it

is not applicable to three party relationships.

16. Forge's arguments point toward the fundamental use Strathern (1988) has recently

made of the distinction between cross-sex and same-sex relationships. While I cannot

pursue this here, it is possible that a recognition of the indigenous import of this

distinction would allow us to take further steps in the analysis of Melanesian

egalitarianism.

17. Unless otherwise noted, all citations in this section are to Young's works.

18. In an important forthcoming paper entitled "From Riches to Rags: Dismantling

Hierarchy in Kalauna" Young gathers together data about the various sorts of rank in

Kalauna society and considers the ways in which the egalitarian ethos is maintained in

the face of these contradictory tendencies. In very many respects the analysis there

accords well with that offered here and I have thus left out here accounts of several

areas, such as that of marriage and affinity, where the analysis I would offer would be in

essence the same as that provided by Young. The reader is referred to that paper for a

wider consideration of the contexts in which equality and inequality come into conflict in

Kalauna. I thank Michael Roberts for making Young's paper available to me.

19. For a somewhat similar interpretation of the institution of fofofo see Young 1985:187.

20. The inuba of abutu contests are also referred to as kaiwabu, (1971:191). But it is

clear from Young's ethnography that it is the kaiwabu of festival climaxes to which the

term primarily refers, and I have thus not introduced the term or institution until we

were in a position to analyze it in its fullest form.

21. After I had formulated the analysis presented here and had already adopted the stone

monument metaphor, I came across Young's (forthcoming: 10) statement that "[i]ndeed,

the kaiwabu appear to emulate Vinuma ("Mute-Woman"), a mythical heroine of

manumanua, the immobile, desire-less, stone-like [emphasis added] grandmother without orifices, whose sealed body contains malia, abundance...."

64



22. Young (forthcoming: 11) makes a similar point, though not set in the theoretical

context of Clastres' work, when he notes that "what is being expressed [by the kaiwabu

at the festival climax] is an enactment of rank, theatrical and histrionic, as in a school

drama in which children don purple robes and cardboard clowns and play kings and

queens...".

23. The expression of this part of my argument from the acting Kalauna leaders' point of

view was engaged purely for the purpose of clarity of exposition. Since what is being

explicated is the logic of an emotion it makes sense to trace it out from the point of view

of an acting subject. But it is as a cultural representation that unuwewe serves most

forcefully to assert the value of equality over inequality. In that sense, I also imagine

that the egalitarian logic of umcwewe is available to all who have an image of it, and not

only to the leaders' whose dark privilege it is to imagine their own power as they

entertain thoughts of how their ancestors unleashed unuwewe in its full force.

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equality as a value: ideology in dumont, melanesia and the west

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