“we feed our father”- paternal nurture among the%0dsabarl of papua new guinea

8/4/2019 we feed our father- paternal nurture among the%0DSabarl of Papua New Guinea

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we feed our father: paternal nurture among theSabarl of Papua New Guinea

DEBBORA BATTAGLIA-Mount Holyoke College

It i s a quiet tribute to Audrey Richards that to the year of her death and beyond, pieces of thematrilineal puzzle-the problem of the masculine position within matrilineal ideologies-continue to emerge as salient topics in ethnology. Originally, of course, the matter was con-ceived in functionalist terms. Richards spoke of it as the problem of combining recognition ofdescent through the woman with the rule of exogamous marriage (1970[19501 246) n groupswhere males are socially and politically dominant. Yet, interpreted more broadly as a problemin cultural valuation and the reproductive value attributed to masculine and feminine labor,there begin to emerge more clearly the models in terms of which people conceive their strat-egies for social action; models that also facilitate cross-cultural comparison.

Among the Sabarl of Papua New Guinea, the puzzle i s expressed in notions of paternalnurture and how to formally acknowledge it; their solutions referred to the mortuary ritualsand exchanges that dominate political life. This essay, which i s part of a growing body of dis-cussion on modes of valuation among matrilineal Austronesian-speakingpeoples, explores theSabarl solution for what it may contribute to a broader understanding of gender- and age-basedsymmetries and asymmetries more generally.

The Sabarl are a dialect group within the Saisai (Eastern Calvados Chain) language area ofthe Louisiade Archipelago, part of the southern Massim culture area of Milne Bay Province.They number approximately seven hundred people, living in villages and scattered hamletsalong the beaches of three main islands. Most Sabarl belong to one of three major matriclans,and residence i s virilocal. The Sabarl cultivate sago primarily, and yams in swidden gardens.But the soil i s in many cases poor and water scarce, necessitating some subsistence voyagingduring the lean months. These follow a lively growing season that features communal fishing,interisland political trade voyaging, and exchange feasts honoring the dead.

Although Sabarl individuals have had historical encounters with the kula area (see Battaglia

Among matrilineal peoples in Papua New Guinea, power symmetries and asym-metries, with their bases in indigenous models of gender and generation-basedrelations, are often revealed n the way paternal nurture s conceptualized and theway people act in relation to it . In the case of the Sabarl, these relations are markedin paths of symbolic action and embodied concretely in the movement of ritualfoods and objects featured in affinal exchanges. The ritual action and exchangescene is especially elaborate and circumscribing at death, when the contributionof males to the reproductive process i s formally acknowledged. The position ofmales within the matrilinealsystem s examined here n relation to the larger themeof societal and cultural continuity. [ceremonial exchange, matrilineal systems,mortuary symbolism, Papua New Guinea]

Copyright 0 1985 by the American Anthropological Association0094-0496/85/030427-15$2.00/1

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fathers and children: fathers earning superiority by initiating nurture out of kindness andlove.

This relationship undergoes a twist in the course of the developmental cycle, as male ch il-dren especially begin to turn the direction of giving back toward their fathers through inter-vivos gifts called powon. They do this, as we shortly discuss in more detail, with the help oftheir mothers, on one level to establish a claim on postmortem inheritance, but on another toexpress otherness to their fathers as affines. Because powon is different from expressing grat-itude, even in conflict with it, the relationship takes on ambivalence. Acknowledging paternalnurture is at least as important as any gesture for economic gain, and moreover it i s vulgar toact as i f the two are related. However, there is no instituted path available to children for ex-pressing gratitude to their fathers directly. Instead, they must turn to their fathers sisters chil-dren, who are also competitors for their fathers property.

This ambivalent giving in the name of gratitude takes the form of a ritualized feeding rela-tionship between the cross-cousins (nubaiu), who call each other my father (tamau) or mychild (natu). Fathers are fathers sisters children, and children are mothers brotherschildren. The relations should be assigned very early in life. Once they are in place, these gen-erational terms come to cover or obviate (yabo) the more general term cross-cousin,covering, in other words, a symmetrical relationship with an asymmetrical one. Thus, thefather-child relationship i s not embedded in the kin-term system (as it i s in the Trobriands),nor is it gender-specific. It i s rather as if an asymmetry derived from kindly thoughts were laidupon a problematical, conflictual equality, to be lifted off at some significant moment. Themoment comes when the children are buried by their fathers. In other words, this i s anessential relationship in cultural terms: a pact between the living and their undertakers.A childwithout a father to arrange such things i s an orphan in the Sabarl view.

The dependence of all persons on the generosity of patrilateral kin is eventually recognizedby the assignment of a father (male or female) who calls them my child, and it i s the actualfathers responsibility to arrange this with one or more of his sisters. The perfect arrangementmatchesa chi ld of one opposite sex sibling with a child of the other by order of birth. However,in practice, sibling sets are the operating units, where siblings act interchangeably the roles offather-again, regardless of sex (see Figure 1 .

The ritual exchanges between cousin fathers and children consist of gifts of youngcoconut (bwaku) or bones (titiwa), and counter-gifts called mortuary feast (segaiya). Ifchildren fall seriously ill, their fathers present them with a young coconut to make themlight and healthy again. The soft green coconut flesh i s said to represent bones that are notyet hard, not yet fully grown: the skeletal core of the child which i s formed at conception by

titiwa titiwa

AL

cousin(nubaiu) cousin(nubaiu)Figure 1 . Father and child cross-cousins.



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semen, and the leaddry (keve) part of the body-the part that physically endures after death.These gifts of bones may come to include cooked ceremonial foods, especially sago-co-conut pudding (moni) ,and occasionally a stone axe blade ftobwatobwa), the primary currencyof the area, as children grow older. The pudding symbolizes semen and i s regarded as therichest of al l ceremonial foods. Axe blades are said to add grease to the food-adding, met-aphorically, that is, another product of semen bestowed upon children in the womb by theirfathers: the grease or fat which makes the blood thick and the body plump and warm. Theprimary objects of mens wealth among the Sabarl, procured by them in the debt-basedsys-tem of political exchange, axe blades thus represent a concretization of productive masculineenergies, which fathers invest in themselves through their cousin children (see Battaglia1983b for further discussion of conception and axe blade symbolism).2Certain absences arenotable here: namely of yams and other things associated with the productivity of women andthe leaddry feminine products of womens blood-human flesh especially. All gifts tomake children strong at times of illness are products of masculine efforts. Ultimately they arepassed along to the childrens maternal kin to invest on their behalf.

Thus, on one level, a gift of bones is a statement of paternal responsibility for the devel-opment of children, as well as a bid for whatever material appreciation that concern mightinspire. Bu t it i s also a pledge that the ritual father wi ll act as custodian of the bones-thephysical rernains-of the child, by digging the grave and preparing he corpse when the timecomes. If the child recovers, appreciation i s expressed by presenting counter-gifts called se-gaiya to the father.

The segaiya prestations of a recovered child typically take the form of future food suchas puppies (for those who eat dog), young fruit or palm trees, and the like. In addition thechi ld may host a non-exchange feast (suli l i) for his or her cousin father. More than ex-pressing thanks, these gestures convey a promise from children and their kin that their fath-ers concern, as well as their future services as undertakers, wil l be rewarded with cookedfood and axe blades and formally honored at future mortuary feasts-a point we return toshortly.

Bones, then, refer to the artifacts of paternal nurture-the beginning and end of the phys-ical person and the endowments from paternal kin. As a masculine, lean/dry component ofthe body, they also represent invulnerability to decay, relative at least to their feminine lean/dry counterpart: the flesh of the body produced by the mothers blood. Prestations of segaiya,meanwhile, reference the occasion when bones will be transformed into greasy sago-co-conut pudding (rnoni)and ceremonial axes and in this form be reclaimed by the paternal clan.3As grease or fat in the human body i s said to complete the person, giving segaiya is a gestureof adding the extra energy which brings a child to potential. Thus the interactions of cousinfathers and children not only extend the rudimentsof exchange beyond the natal home,but mark the beginning and end of a persons public life. They are, concretely, what paternalcommitment amounts to in the way of survival insurance.

We see that the titiwa-segaiya exchanges involve on the one hand reciprocity-the linearexchange of things of equivalent value as initiated by the father-and eventually a cycl icalprocess of replacement. Reciprocal exchanges of coconut for future food occur during thechilds lifetime. Replacement occurs a t the childs death, when cooked food and axeblades replace his promises.

It i s interesting hat this transactional arrangement i s modeled as if (unnaturally) childrenpredecease their fathers. If things actually go otherwise and a persons father dies beforehim, or if a father-child relationship lapses or is never established, a fatherless child willbe assigned a ritual father posthumously, often as a way of paying off some unrelated debt tothe patrilateral kin. If his occurs it i s much to the delight of the new father, who receives theusual amount of valuables merely for standing in.

However, the father-child relationship i s important to understand in another sense,j

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namely, for its effect of upstaging the global order of matriclan symmetry which forms theenvironment of affinal exchanges at marriage and at death. In local terms once again, the asym-metry covers symmetry, substituting or it a ritually constructed continuity based on the tem-porary asymmetries projected in giving from fathers to ~h il dren.~

The background for understanding his licensed takeover of descent by patrilateral kin liesin the relationship of junior personsto senior ones generally, and the giving that expresses therespect of juniors during the lifetimesof both.

giving to show respectAs mentioned earlier, it i s common for siblings of either sex to act interchangeably he role

of father in carrying out the numerous tasks of segaiya. Likewise, children of either sex aregiven the same ritual treatment at death. If formalized giving between persons actually sepa-rated by generation s significantly less gender-blind, it s because the problems it addresses ingiving are the problems of males within the social system.

Like ritualized giving from cousin fathers to their children, giving time and things torespected seniors involves people in a process which amounts to investing n their future selves.They do this by lending labor and valuables to senior males-to their mothers brothers andfathers especially-with the expectation of receiving in return more than they have given. Thiskind of calculated giving from junior persons to senior males is what we have already spokenof as powon: inter-vivos lending with interest. Powon is central in giving to show respect.

There i s among the Sabarl (and unlike Muyuw) a special bond between mothers brothersand sisters children, and particularly the male children who wil l inherit the mothers brothersplace in the social structure. A nephew is called by his MB my first (nogama) and calls hisMB my man (notau).During his uncles lifetime a nephew works to gain his uncles respect,showing respect by laboring in his uncles gardens and sago groves, and giving material supportto his uncles projects in the form of powon.

When the uncle dies, his nephew (gama) represents his interests and his clan at his mortuaryfeast, in effect replacing him at his funeral. The nephews reward i s recognition, expressed inmaterial forms during exchange, of his elevated place in the clan. Thus, by showing respect forhis mothers brother, and as an adult loaning him valuables to use in exchange, a sisters soni s investing indirectly in himself.

An example i s Desalles powon (see Figure 2). Desalles senior uncle (A ) dies. Desallesyounger uncle (B) asks Desalle for powon in the form of one axe blade, in order to exchangewith As widow (C )during segaiya. Because the request i s to powon (that is, this is an inter-vivos loan), B should return it with considerable interest, for example, five to one, sometimeduring his lifetime and without being asked. If, however, Desalle i s short an axe blade andnot able to wait for the repayment with interest, he can ask B to return his powon, but wi ll not

Figure 2. Powon for axe blades.



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expect any interest, regardless of the interval. If B dies before repaying he powon, the debt fallsto Bs children (D)-and to Desalles cousin child-who must repay even more interest thantheir father would have (for example, ten axe blades to one). They do so out of respect forDesalle as their fathers replacement.

In another scenario (see Figure 3) , Desalles mother (A) asks him for an axe blade to powonon his behalf. His mother (A) then gives the axe blade to her brother (B) when he asks for herhelp with an exchange, stating that she eventually wants garden land for Desalle in return.

We see that in the larger symbolic scheme of things, the system works a transformation ofsago into bones, through the medium of axe blades. Giving an uncle help in the sago groves;giving him axe blades, the traditional tools for felling sago palms, out of respect, i s heretransformed into giving from the heart to the uncles children in the form of bones. Ineffect, the young coconut signals a shift from a pre- to a postmortem ime frame for the returnon the gift: a shift to a time in the future when bones wi ll be further transformed into sago-coconut pudding and axe blades (see below). Again in symbolic terms, the grease and energyof reproductive and productive labor are returned to the fathers clan, this being the part of thechild for which the father is responsible. In this way the uncle-nephew relationship artifi-cially continues, but with a positive shift in attitude, beyond the death of the uncle. Meanwhile,with regard to garden land, which i s the rightful inheritance of nephews, the return i s merelyhelped along the appropriate path by powon and directed toward one nephew rather than an-other.

The process assures that gifts from the senior man to one of his own children (for example,to his nephews ritual child) are eventually returned to the nephew as segaiya after thechilds (his childs) death. But there i s one obstacle in this patrilineal detour: namely, thatgifts from fathers to their offspring may be legitimate returns on powon from the children, andas such transferred to them permanently. The detour, in other words, may well become analternate path to a different destination.

In contrast topowon for gardens and sago, powon between children and fathers, which locksdescent into a patriline, usually involves nvesting n residence and and almost always involvesmothers as agents.

For example, Desalles mother (A ) gives one of his axe blades to her husband (Desallesfather, C) and his siblings when they ask for help, to secure Desalles rights to residence landthe siblings or their own children might otherwise claim when C dies. This stakes out mother-child custodial rights over residential property until the mother dies, at which point further pres-tations may be made by the children to the fathers siblings or their children (their fathercross-cousins) to finalize the transfer. The arrangement also formally introduces respect intoan otherwise sentiment-based relationship-traces of the uncle-nephew pattern of powon.

Whether powon i s for objects or for land of one kind or another, death sets the final timelimit for calling in the debt. This occurs in the very early stages of segaiya. In other words, i t i s

Figure 3 . Powon for land.

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not a debt transferable beyond the duration of the mortuary feasts for the debtor, that is, beyondhis active memory as the feasts represent it. As with other asymmetrical exchanges, and partic-ularly where incremental return and self-gain are a feature of the operation, powon i s viewedas an obstruction to resolving tensions between clanic groups (the stated aim of segaiya).

In short, we see that since the bones given to a child may ultimately be used by him topowon his own father and mothers brother for the different types of essential resources theycontrol, father-child giving in effect initiates a process that results in the descent of all thevalued things a chi ld inherits from male relatives during his or her lifetime. Furthermore, theprocess i s characterized symbolically as a natural extension of what the father builds i n thewornb-and not merely as a contrivance. This naturalized paternal continuity is built on thestructure of cross-cousin symmetry, yet works through the dynamic asymmetry of uncles andheirs, fathers and children to separate residence and garden land (cf. the Trobriands, whereboth are controlled by the father)-to separate the father and the uncle in the man. Axe blades,circulating through him, have the reverse effect of consolidating his underlying identity as malenurture provider and bridging the gap between his and his sisters children (see Figure4).

The paradox i s that cousin fathers (givers) are simultaneously children (receivers)vis-i-vis other cross-cousins. The titles used during mortuary feasts reiterate the point. Ritual fath-ers are called feast eater (tohan segaiya) at the feasts for their children and the childrenare referred to as sago-coconut pudding (no rnoni). In the person of the heir, in other words,a patriline lurks: father and child in one.

Nonetheless, the father in a person dies for good at the death of his child. Therecomes a time in the series of feasts when the father i s recompensed and the partnership sdissolved; when he or she i s reduced to a child to be one day eaten by his or her owncousin father, as in myth the first mortal ancestor dies for good and the children he or shehas fed upon live on forever. The important point is that father-child relations cannot beunderstood by looking at the death of a single person, but must be seen as a movement backand forth between nurturing and consuming, feeding and eating, through time andthrough the younger generation of persons who are laterally connected.

This said, we can now turn to placing asymmetrical exchange relationships n context of thegreater support system.

Figure 4 . The titiwa-segaiyalpowonsystem.



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giving to supportFor the Sabarl, all matriclans are created equal. Then, at marriage, things change. One clanic

group becomes indebted to another for the gift of a wife, and it falls to the groom to express hisgroups indebtedness by giving a ceremonial shell necklace (bak) to the bride and, i t i s said,her mother. This prestation, called wisebua, legalizes the marriage.

As recently as 20 years ago, huge wisebua prestations of yams from the labor of the husbandand his kin (often helped by his wife) were presented to the wifes mother and siblings, andafter they were dead, to the wifes elder siblings, at least on good harvest years. Nowadays, i fharvest-time gifts are made at all, they are privately given without fuss.

However, large-scale wisebua in the form of a canoe should still be given by the husband ifhe hopes to claim enduring rights to his childrens productive energies. The husband eitherorganizes to build the canoe himself (usually with the help of friends, whom he arrangesto feedand supply with tobacco and betelnut), or else purchases it over time in a series of paymentsto the manufacturers. These canoe-purchase transactions, involving large-scale prestations,returned with increment are referred to as leau.

As indicated by the term, which has historical roots in competitive incremental giving be-tween the leaders of sometimes hostile places, the value of the canoe s considered to be greaterthan the sum of things given, and i s closely tied to prestige. In this case, the future value to thegroom lies in his childrens labor, also in the use that his wifes people will make of the canoefor finding valuables and pigs to support him in political exchange when he needs it. For aswell as legalizing the marriage and establishing paternity rights, wisebua launches a lifetime ofaffinal support between the two groups.

The acceptance of a wisebua necklace pledges the two groups to provide one another withservices or help (labe) and material support (muli) without being asked to-that is, asneeded, more or less in the spirit of Mausss pure gift. The arrangement i s such that relationsbased on mutual support are built up over time. Because neither side requests the support,neither side i s even temporarily denigrated by accepting it, or elevated in the giving.

On one level, then, we can see also how the death of one or another spouse would freezethe give and take and throw one matriclan group into the superior position of k in vis-3-vis af-fines. If the husband dies first, which i s thecultural expectation, the wife-givers returnto relativeparity with wife-takers.

The widow is expected to return her marriage necklace as an appeasement offering or s o hto her husbands kin, particularly if she plans to remarry. This solu i s her final muli, express-ing her plea for release from future social and economic obligations to her husbands kin. Thewidows of men who have given wisebua lavishly during their lifetimes often remain unmarriedas a result, even with the salutory return of the necklace. Rarely, however, does a man amassthe number of things or offer the services required to replace with objects and food futurepersons from the matriclan while his wife i s still of child-bearing age. In fact, even legendarySabarl husbands (the most famous, called Kankan, left five widows) seem to have achieved lit tlemore that the sentencing of elderly women to lifetime roles as living memorials.

If a wife dies before her husband, his kin are at a greater disadvantage. When a widoweroffers solu in the form of yet another necklace, he i s recognizing his continued indebtedness tohis wifes kin. If he has given enough wisebua, he takes control over his children and ultimatelybenefits from their productive energies. However, i f he should later remarry, he wil l not onlybe expected to give wisebua to his new bride and in-laws, but another necklace to the familyof his former wife, as a kind of penalty. This gift for the taboo (for death-time) (segabgabula)i s his final muli. In practice, i t often takes the form of continued serviceor gifts to her maternalclan as stipulated by them (see Figure 5) .

Muli given as support in segaiya and the equivalence it expresses and establishes over timecan be viewed as an iconic image of the leveling a man undertakes to achieve within his life-

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Marriage:

Husbanddies:

Wife dies:

Remarriage: 0

Figure 5. Mul i .time. In a sense, men who marry are taking on the mothers of their wives and taking on alsothe challenge of proving (to the extent their natures allow) their power to waylay matrilinealreproduction. And so the potential i s given for the edge to be taken from the wife-giving rnatri-clan and for symmetry to prevail. Paradoxically, a new reproductive circle, involving paternaland maternal matriclans both, takes shape in the process.

As much as any kind of interclan tension, i t i s rnuli and labe, expressed through food andobjects, which are on display during a segaiya. Minimally, sisters are expected to supporttheir brothers with yams and brothers to support their sisters with sago whenever these sib-lings participate in a segaiya. At this time, the yam support i s extended by brothers to theirspouses, and sago support i s extended by sisters to their spouses as affinal support. Thus, forexample, if a married man dies, his sister and other clan females will provide the base-levelyam support for his segaiya, while his widows brother as affine wil l provide the sago support.

in a system where all of the traditional feast foods are divided, like the human body, into



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categories of leaddry and greasylsweet, yams and sago are the archetypically lean/dry foodsof segaiya and the sina qua non of feeding large numbers of visitors. Their exchange valuewithin segaiya lies in their bulk. Cooked, yams and sago are a part of every feast; raw, a featureof bulk exchanges between clanic groups.

Yams are closely associated with the spirits of the properly buried and honored dead (bal-orna), who foster produce growth from matriclan villages beneath the gardens of the earth.People speak of their yams as the gardens children. Sago, meanwhile, i s the quarry of mar-ginal swamps, which are haunted by roaming spirits of the dead not properly buried or revered(piwapiwa): homicides, accident victims, and the like.

Both yams and sago come in masculine and feminine forms. Furthermore, as leaddry foodsin substance, they constitute, respectively, the basic feminine and masculine foods of segaiya(cf. Damon 1983:307), just as flesh and bones are regarded as the basic leaddry, feminine andmasculine substances of the human body. They are said to be completed and comple-mented (gaba) by the greasyhweet foods of segaiya: the pigs and coconuts that are productsof masculine labors and that likewise come in masculine and feminine forms.

Coconuts are picked by men and boys from small plantations behind their property at thevillage fringes or scattered in coveside patches around various islands. On Sabarl they arescarce, to the extent that pigs are fed with only the shredded leavings of meat leached of oil.However, a shortage of coconut in sago-based dishes i s not a serious embarrassment and co-conuts (like firewood and water which are also in short supply) are taken more or less forgranted. They are nonetheless significant within segaiya. The nuts are associated with humanheads-more particularly the heads of ancestors -and out of respect are never puncturedthrough the indented eyes at the end. The meat i s likened to brains; the milk (which has noritual or practical use with in segaiya) with mothers milk; the cream from the meat i s likenedto semen. Furthermore, the stench of a burning husk i s said to smell like dead bodies, and theiruse as lids for pots of ceremonial foods is a pervasive reminder of their appropriateness for theoccasion.

Pigs, meanwhile, alone among ceremonial foods, are consumed at feast-time only and re-garded as wealth items analogous to unit-value objects such as axe blades and necklaces. Assuch, the gift of a pig as rnul i creates a debt which must be cleared on a future occasion, asdoes the gift of pork parts during the feasting.

Pigs are the quintessentially masculine expressions of affinity: literally grease for interis-land political trade with partners traditionally established by men through their fathers. As hus-bands and wives ideally have their fathers matriclans n common (this actually happens abouta third of the time), this means that pigs articulate two clanic groups and the coordinated effortsof junior and senior males; they furthermore embody the common identity of the two groupsas affines vis-a-vis the dead. Thus to produce a pig within segaiya i s an act of personage (inLeenhardts terms), constituting social identity relationally. Although women in the Saisai areaown and manage pigs (as they do other masculine items of wealth), even sponsoring ex-change feasts in their own names, sailing in search of wealth (lobutu) s still associated withmen and the deep-sea space over which they claim mastery in ritual, myth, and actuality.

Furthermore, in the Sabarls most important myths, featuring the monstrous first ancestorwho brought mortality to the world, the monster i s often depicted as a rampaging pig whichmeets its end at the hands of trickster children. In the myths the children are devoured butescape from the monsters body as eternal balorna. However, the monster dies for good, justas the paternal bloodline terminates in a matrilineal system. Affines in everyday life inherit theproblems of this termination. I t falls to them to restore the pig during segaiya, to reassert anaffinal presence in honor of its patrilateral point of reference.

Pigs are a mandatory part of every segaiya series. Though not always included in every feastwithin the series, a prestation of pig by the affines formally opens the first feast; the last feast i sritually closed by the death of one of the dead persons own pigs at the hands of his clansmen.

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This i s important. First, the framing of events in these terms defines the limits of the publicperformance of interaction between kin and affines. Also, with the slaying of the pig (whichincidentally has spent its last night inside the dead persons house), that part of the deceasedchild which is a paternally constructed product is publicly finished. In former times andless frequently today, this process of finishing the memory would end, in the case of men, inthe destruction of his house: the edifice constructed by affinal males on hisown fathers land.This i s where the importance of durable object counterparts of paternal nurture comes intofocus, as we shortly discuss.

This translates within the exchange and ritual action of segaiya as an emphasis on the indi-vidualistic, masculine components of the event. Although both leaddry and greasyhweet oodsshould balance one another in a healthy body composed of like elements, people feel they arerunning on leaddry most of the time. What the feasts of segaiya uniquely offer the Sabarl is themasculine plus of extra greasyhweet foods. Yet it i s worth noting that like the surplus of fat ona baby, this grease-the security measure of life-is conceived as a benefit available toeveryone, regardless of sex., The lean/dry foods are talked of as support for the pigs; what the affines supply in generalis support for the kins sponsorship. In other words, Sabarl categoriesof leaddry and greasy/sweet are more basic than gender di vi sionsand , furthermore, may be used to blur or com-promise gender-based divisions of such things as work and play. It i s resonant with this philos-ophy that the division of labor that underlies food support i s by no means straightforward. In-deed, the Sabarl are renowned for working sabsabarl: men doing womens work and womenmens.

Nonetheless, the more traditional pattern of work (from which the Sabarl are renowned fortheir deviation) i s for men to work the sago groves and women the yam gardens. In addition,the stereotypic expectation i s that men wil l sail in search of durable, individually constitutedtrade relationships and the unit-value objects that concretize them, while women stay at homewith other women and children, manufacturing continually the countless, ephemeral accoutre-ments of domestic life.

The surplus wealth (bigibigii of male and female labors, when i t appears on the scene ofa segaiya, upstages the basic foods entirely. Pigs we have talked about briefly as the artifacts ofconstructed relationships on the paternal side. The object counterparts of pigs, representing hemasculine mode of production through appropriation, are stone and shell valuables (gogom-wau): the ranked, unit-value axe blades, necklaces, and shell-spatulae sought by men.

The axe blades predominate at death as the necklaces and spatulae do at marriage. Axeblades are procured from paternally linked trading partners; the necklaces and the beads forspatulae are gifts from senior women of the clan and figure in segaiya only in the early stagesas s oh .

Also featured at certain feasts i s bulk wealth or palo: things traditionally manufactured bywomen and described as too numerous to count. Bulk wealth consists primarily of co-conut leaf skirts (waliJ,pandanus sleeping mats (lam), and fancy coconut leaf baskets(tiltil),butalso includes imported clay and enamel pots, ceremonial wooden platters, and store-boughtutensils, plates, cloth, and occasionally money. These are items associated with the domesticrealm (where money i s needed for school fees). Bulk wealth is presented in womens exchangesas jumbled piles representing he undistinguished products of many womens labors.

Bulk wealth is viewed as support for the axe blades as (according o the Sabarl) womensupport men, clanic groups support individuals, and yams support pigs. Divisible and perish-able, like the children of the matriclan, like the yams of matriclan gardens, it represents, ineffect, female substance and vegetable produce rendered artificial, rendered politically usefulwithin segaiya. Their counterpart in marriage exchanges are the red shell necklaces, procuredby senior women through their female children and reinvested n their sons. The difference, ofcourse, is that women do not manufactureshell necklaces, and are therefore only co-managers



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of them. Exchanges of bulk foods and objects by collectivities of women run throughout theseries of feasts.

the bones are harvestedHowever, our subjects here are the individualistic, masculine exchanges and the solution

they pose to the matrilineal puzzle within segaiya. Moreover, in the final analysis, it i s the tallyof the unit-value objects featured in these exchanges to which people refer in representing hescale of the feast-and the renown of the deceased-to themselves and to others.

Special recognition of paternal contributions to the person i s expressed and confirmed inrituals where paternally linked objects and foods are featured items.5 Paternal participation insegaiya begins with undertaking services for the bones of the dead. If nothing else, a bodymust be buried, and patrilateral kin are the culturally prescribed undertakers (cf. Traube 1980).In the course of preparing the corpse and eventually burying it, the ritual father (segaiyaeater) i s exposed to powerful doses of pollution. Appreciation of his dangerous work is ex-pressed at the first funeral feast. In a small-scale ritual, the father offers spoonfuls of cookedfood to the kin of the deceased, who politely refuse him, instead feeding him with his ownspoon and tucking utensils and money into his pockets as well. The event marks the point atwhich giving is publicly turned in the direction of the paternal clan, advancing the proceed-ings toward the feast of Sago-Coconut Pudding or Moni, where the father i s lavishly feted.

During the Moni, whatever the fathers clan contributed over the years solidifies, or betteryet matures, into object wealth. The feast itself is opened by the ritual fathers presentationof five axes to the maternal clan heir, inside the house where the dead person lived and wherehis body was laid to rest before burial. The axes are named for the services the father per-formed as undertaker. The axes-with their wooden handles described as bones-are the skel-etal harvest of what in the Trobriands and elsewhere would be exhumed remains. The sameaxes are later propped up against one another by the heir to form a corpse of the honoreddead, and the corpse i s urged with magical spells to reproduce more axe blades (see Battaglia1983b). Then a significant substitution occurs. The axe corpse i s disassembled by the ma-ternal clan heir, who exchanges them for five of his own. These axes are renamed or five ritualfoods they are said to complement by metaphorically adding grease.

The food, which features the pudding for which the feast i s named, i s supplied by close maleand female kin of the widowed spouse, and it i s displayed in the sacred exterior space of thedead persons house. The widowed spouse i s seated alongside it, covered in skirts and basketcaps and surrounded by other bulk wealth objects.It i s the responsibility of the spouses brother to prepare the sago-coconut pudding. (If the

deceased had never been married the job falls to his or her own maternal kin.) Only men areallowed to prepare ceremonial pudding. The process involves transforming the red, leaddrywomans pudding base of sago and water into a bright-white, greasy mans pudding byadding coconut cream, then stirring the mixture with a ceremonial paddle. The paddle, whichis carved from red mwadawa wood (a bastard teak), stirs the red and white mixture as, it s said,a phallus stirs the red and white bloods of women and men to produce a child.

When in the next phase of ritual action the father approaches the widowed spouse to col-lect what i s due, he or she matches an axe blade to each of the five corpse blades beforeremoving them, eventually taking away the additional valuables which are propped up aroundboth persons and food, collecting also the polluted baskets worn as caps, the capes, and theother bulk wealth .

In effect the widowed spouse offers up the artificial products of his or her clan in exchangefor release to engage in the reproduction of children-which the father afterwards frees thespouse to do. It is in this form that the father i s repaid for services and generosity-that is ,



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the corpse of the dead charge and the reproductive energies invested in the person through-out his or her life are restored to the paternal clan in the usable, easily redistributed form of axeblades and ceremonial food.

conclusionWith this background on segaiya foods and objects and the exchanges which give them

meaning vis-a-vis social and cultural continuity, we are now in a position to get some distanceon the theme of paternal nurture as the Sabarl perform it within segaiya.

We have observed that men as brothers produce the bare bones, as it were, of Sabarl societywhen they make leaddry sago for sisters and mothers, standing to inherit a wisebua necklacefor their efforts. Indeed, the traditional style of bundling sago into husband/wife pa irsalsosaid to be like testicles-may be seen as a reference o the power of masculine labor to con-struct the framework of reproductive partnerships.

Men symbolically mark the potentiation of their reproductive reach when they completein segaiya the process begun in the groves: transforming leanldry sago into greasy/sweet sago-coconut pudding for their sisters and, on another level, transforming patrilateral relations intopigs and axe blades-as it were, adding the fat to the feast. In these terms, the segaiya feast andritual series can be thought of as a person performed: it s flesh provided by maternal clanhosts and its bones and fat by affinal males. In a parallel process, the hauntingof unsettledsago grove spirits are symbolically laid to rest in the bellies of the living.

The theme of male potentiation i s summed up in the act of feeding the sisters husbandsfather, which ideally is an act of feeding ones own fathers clan. This translates on the so-ciological level as a man coming into a position of strength when his sisters husband dies. (Onesuspects this i s only partly because his sisters yam-producing labors for him and his wife willcontinue, but his sago-producing labor on her behalf will be reduced.) Ultimately, then, bygiving sago pudding to his sisters husbands father, he is returning to his own fathers clan amature version of the bones given him.

The picture regarding symmetry and asymmetry i s all the more clear for the fact of the actiontaking place within a single generation. To summarize from the point of view of a male ego, hei s from the start and forever a dependent child vis-a-vis his fathers clan. This i s acknowl-edged by the part he plays in titiwa-segaiya exchanges early in life, and in his efforts to turn thetables by giving powon to his father through his mother as he grows older.

At this point he also begins o recognizehis dependence on women of his own clan for bride-wealth-a dependence acknowledged by his labors in the sago swamps and his efforts tostrengthen his relationship with his mothers brother, again with gifts ofpowon. He moves froma point of dual to ternary dependence at the marriage either of himself or his sister, when hislabors are further divided by his wifes clans demands. When he starts thinking of children, theadditional gift of a canoe states his bid for a shift in the balance of power between him and hiswifes people. If his sisters husband should die, his dependency wi ll be reduced. However, ifhis wife predeceases him, he returns to parity with her kin only at the point that he chooses toremarry-indebting himself to yet another set of relations.

In short, although Sabarl cross-cousins do not marry, a persons father and child wil l bemembers of his fathers clan. Even without marrying into ones own fathers clan (although thishappens almost exactly as often as not) one i s keeping things in the family through death ex-changes begun in childhood. What in the Trobriands is accomplished through cross-cousinmarriage i s accomplished here through fathers and children. The paternal clan receivespudding from its nurture investment n the childs wifes brother and it receives axe blades fromits nurture investment in the chi ld -exact ly as if the chi ld had married into his own fathersclan.



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We also see the emergence of gender at the core of alliance-based giving, not as the resultof a processof sibling separation by gender-based labor (as Damon reports for the Muyuw), butrather as a process of sibling coordination and the articulation of distinctive spheres of contri-bution. Yet, as a code for the conceptualization of difference as a ritual or political fact(Strathern 1984:50), gender i s pervasive though not always dominant regarding he process ofacknowledging paternal nurture: a process in which the splitting of males into fathers and un-cles, juniors and seniors, i s in fact central.

Specific issues raised here cry out for systematic cross-cultural comparison. These includethe centrality of the female in the sphere of biologic and sociologic regeneration (particularlyin the context of mortuary rites), the point in constructing an artificial mode of ranking (o r col-lapsing rank) by gender and age, the manufacture and transmission of symbolic substance andits classification as natural or cultural, the weighting of reproduction and reciprocity withinexchange systems.

Overall, we seem to be encountering among the Sabarl what Giddens has called the co-ordination of movement in time and space; the coupling of a multiplicity of paths( 1 979:205), not all of which are gendered. In the final instance, and in their own terms, thechallenge for the Sabarl lies in the practical and balanced negotiation of the paths of life, asbrought by death into focus and meaning.

notesAcknowledgments. I wou ld like to thank M aril yn Strathern for her comments on an earlier draft of thispaper and for her always selfless support and wisdo m; also Fred Dam on, Edw ard Schieffelin, Roy Wagner,Annette Weiner, and the anonymous A readers for their insights, encouragement, and constructive rec-ommendations.To this might be added groups farther afield. For example, there are striking similarities between theSabarl and the Barok of Ne w Ireland, for who m paternal nurture is valued over any other kind (Wagner,personal comm unication).Howe ver, withi n the Massim, it is important to note some illum inatin g differences between the Muyu w

and the Kiriwina , partic ularly rega rding cross-cousins. First, there i s the Trobriand cross-cousin marriagepreference and the M uy uw cross-cousin m arriage proscr iption . It seems that M uy uw cross-cousins (nubie),who are not distinguished erminologically by gender, avoid any relationship in everyday life and redefineit as a gender-specific sibling relationship if they happen to liv e in close proximity. In folklore and myth,the relation ship is used to elabora te sym bolic themes of simila rity and difference-the latter, we assume,more importantly. That the cross-cousin relationship is contentless in ritual and in everyday life is alsointeresting or the absence it indicates of any ritualized action of b ridging between the cousins. Indeed,Dam on argues that the process of circulating valued reso urces-a process derived from the separation ofascendant-generation brothers and sisters throu gh their differen t kinds of work-serves the continu ed sep-aration of their children. By extension, paternal nurture i s a very separate process from maternal n urture,with fathers, for example, virtua lly displacing m others brothers within the system.Darnon goes on to suggest that in the T robriands, d istingu ishing cross-cousins by gender is homologouswith more elaborate gender differentiation in the area of things, wom ens wealth prov iding the mostobvious example. Weiner, mea nwhile, focuses on the Trobriand tric k of marrying int o ones fathers c lanthrough a cross-cousin and thereby chann eling the flow of exchange onto ones ow n clan thro ugh onesfathers (Weiner 1976:52) . n this way clans bond and, pe ople say, they feed t heir father (Weine r, per-sonal communication). The trick i s legitimized b y terminology for male egos (FZD= tabu= preferredpartner), but is not available to female egos marrying theirMBS (tabu),so that again we find gender splittinghas an effect on the c ircu lat ion of persons and things at the co usin lev el. This also suggests that the recip-rocal categories of tama or father (FZD) and latu or ch ild (MBC ), used by both sexes, define a rela-tionship more about genera tional ha n sibling separation.This difference i s an important one, as it reveals an embedded princ iple of asymmetry at the level ofprimary Trobriand kinterms. Trobriand marriage exchanges, which form concretely a symbolic bridgeacross cousins, define the difference even further.

lThis i s a classic instance of foo d as we ll as wealth m edia ting relations as part of the system of tracingout bloo d relations (Strathern 1984) .Note that the pu dding and axe blades given as part of a fathers gift of bones are thus antic ipato rysymbols, of which there are many in connection with segaiya. What we are seeing, in psychological



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terms, i s prospective imagination writ large as a cultural process,4For more on the principle of symbolic obviation, see Wagner 1979.SWagner 1985) discusses the ternary nature of role differentiation in central and southern Massim mor-tuary exchanges, contrasting this to the binary mourning roles of the Trobriands and DEntrecasteaux, andpointing to resulting differences in the direction and content of focal exchanges as oppositional ones be-tween these two areas. It i s important to note his argument that these differences relate to differences be-

tween hard wealth objects in the central and southern areas, which characteristically circulate and re-quire at least three agents, and relations of domestic production, which are characteristically dual.

references citedBattaglia, D.1983a Syndromes of Ceremonial Exchange in the Eastern Calvados: The View From Sabarl Island. InThe Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange.E. Leach and1. Leach, eds. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.1983b Projecting Personhood in Melanesia: The Dialects of Artefact Symbolism on Sabarl Island. InMan (NS) 18:289-304.Damon, F.1983 Muyuw Kinship and the Metamorphosis of Gender Labour.InMan (NS)18:305-326.Giddens, A.

1979 Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Lon-Goody, 1.1962 Death, Property and the Ancestors. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Gough, K .1958 Cults of the Dead Among the Nayars. journal of American Folklore 71 :446-478.Leenhardt,M.1979[1947]Macintyre,M.1983 Changing Paths: An Historical Ethnographyof the Traders of Tubetube. Ph.D. dissertation. The

don and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.

DoKamo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Australian National University.Richards, A. I.1970[1950] Some Types of Family Structure Amongst the Central Bantu. In African Systems of Kinshipand Marriage. A. R . Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde, eds. London: Oxford University Press.Strathern,M.1984 Marriage Exchanges: A Melanesian Comment. Annual Review of Anthropology 13:41-73.Traube, E.1980 Affines and the Dead: Mambai Rituals of Alliance. In Biidraaen tot de taal-. Land-en Volken-Ykunde: Dee1 136, le Aflevering. pp. 90-1 15.Valeri, V.1980 Notes on the Meaning of Marriage Prestations among the Huaulu of Seram. In The Flow of Life.Wagner, R.1979 Lethal Speech. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.1985 The Conversion of Conversions: Internal and External Exchange in the Massim. Submitted forWeiner, A.1976 Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives n Trobriand Exchange. Austin: University

1980 Reproduction: A Replacement for Reciprocity. American Ethnologist 7:71-85.

J. Fox, ed. pp. 178-192. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

publication.

of Texas Press.

Submitted 26 january 1985Accepted 7 March 1985Final version received 15 Apri l 1985


“we feed our father”- paternal nurture among the%0dsabarl of papua new guinea

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