What Gifts Engender, Chapter 3. TWEM: Personal Exchange Partnerships

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Journal Title: What Gifts Engender

Volume: Issue: MonthNear: 1986 Pages: 62-116

Article Author: Lederman

Article Title: (Chapter 3) Twem: personal exchange partnerships

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What gifts engender Social relations and politics in Mendi, Highland Papua New Guinea

RENA LEDERMAN '" Department of Anthropology, Princeton University

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3 Twem: personal exchange partnerships

''If I depended on my own hand alone, I would be nothing· I would have no name '' [Mendi big-man] ' ·

Strictly speaking, twem is not a kinship term. 1 One may call "twemol" a person whom one has met while traveling far from home, and with whom one has shared a smoke: One need only request a pearl shell or some other valuable from the other, and the other need only agree to give it. One may also refer to or address as "twemol" one's mother's or spouse's relatives and one's siblings' or children's in-laws, although there are also more specific terms of address for all these people. But one does not call a clansman "twemol."

As part of a compound verb, twem is used with (for example) the conjugated stem verb for "to speak" (twem kopu) meaning "to request" an item or generally ''to talk twem. '' People said that twem itself refers to exchange ~the. cir~ulation or. the giving, receiving, and replacing of things (samtin; lkam lgo m Melanesian pidgin). Ryan (1961: 66) defined twem adequately as a "delayed gift-exchange between individuals, signifying a more or less permanent socio-economic relationship. " 2

The significance of the Southern Highlands

Through the work of Mervyn Meggitt (1974), Andrew Strathern (1971), and others (e.g., Bulmer 1960, Rappaport 1968), Highland ceremonial exchange systems are almost as well known as the Trobriand kula and Northwest Coast potlatch exchanges with which they are sometimes compared. Based on research undertaken during the 1950s and 1960s, this ethnographic literature emph~sized clan ~estivals and prestations, and not individual exchange partnerships. Addressmg problems that had emerged from research in Africa and elsewhere, the initial phase of research in the Highlands was in any case at 62


Plate 4. Kelom gives her exchange partner some one-kina coins during a mortuary ceremony, as her young daughter watches.

least as concerned with group structure, leadership, and human ecology as it was with exchange per se. For the most part, large-scale clan prestations were studied as a means by which men became leaders and groups demonstrated their political viability. Some ethnographers studied exchange festivals as control mechanisms in ecological systems (Rappaport 1968; Meggitt 1973).

Much of this early research was carried out in the northern part of the central Highlands, from east of the Chimbu (now Simbu Province) to the vast Enga region in the west. This area includes some of the densest Highland populations. 3 Throughout this region, ceremonial exchange is predominantly the business of clans (although recent research has raised questions about this picture; see Feil 1984). In Mae Enga and Melpa (Mount Hagen) societies to the west, clans coordinate or sequence their prestations into ''chains'' - spectacularly long ones in the Mae tee system - such that pigs and other wealth are passed from group to group over the course of several months in a pattern that recurs frequently during individual lifetimes. In the societies to the east, such as Chimbu (Brown 1972) and Kuma (Reay 1959), clan festivals take the form of periodic distributions of pork or vegetables and items of value. Each group plans its own festival individually, and although food and wealth are redistributed widely, no enchained sequences of distributions are formed. In all these societies, clansmen often act as "supporters" of big-men. At ceremonial exchanges, big-men count wealth assembled for a distribution and

64 What gifts engender

make speeches in which they present an account of the historical background of the prestation and an interpretation of its significance for the political relationship between clans and tribes. Big-men from donor groups formally give the wealth to the recipient group's big-men who may redistribute it to their clansmen or else organize its further movement to other groups.

During the 1970s, the empirical focus of Highlands research changed. Research was conducted in the Southern Highlands, long neglected owing to its inaccessibility, with a few exceptions (Glasse 1968; Ryan 1961). Whereas some of this work has now been published (see, for example, Josephides 1983; Leroy 1979a,b; Sillitoe 1979; A. Strathern 1979a, 1980),4 much of it is unpublished (e.g., Langlass 1974; Wormsley 1978) or is currently in progress. This geographical change of focus occurred at a time when, after a decade of discomfiture with "African" -style social structural models, analyses of Highland sociality began to reflect a widespread anthropological shift of confidence from descent theory to theories of exchange (e.g., Rubel and Rosman 1978; see also Befu 1977; Kuper 1982; Schneider 1965- all of whom survey the literature).

As it happens, societies in the southern part of the Highlands are different from those in the north, and particularly suited to this shift in analytical perspective. Robert Glasse's work on the Huli (1968), delineating their "cognatic" kinship system, was an early hint of the difference. Paul Sillitoe's ethnography of the Wola ( 1979) is perhaps the most extreme statement of the analytical shift. Whereas the study of exchange in the northern Highlands was primarily part of the study of collective group action, Sillitoe's approach to exchange among the Wola is explicitly individualistic.5 We appear to have to choose between two anthropological models: a structural model in which exchanges are carried out by people in the names of groups and serve collective ends (themselves constituted in other ways as well) and a market-style model of social behavior or action in which exchanges are undertaken by people in their own names as they pursue their individual "self-interest" (constituting a social order by the by). But Andrew and Marilyn Strathern's extremely useful controlled comparison of the Melpa (in the Mount Hagen area, in the northern Highlands) and the Wiru (in Pangia, in the Southern Highlands Province east of Mendi) shows explicitly that the emerging regional contrast is not simply a function of theoretical bias (see A. Strathern 1978a, 1979a, 1980; M. Strathern 1980). Andrew Strathern (1978a: 80) has described the Wiru pig kill and contrasted it to Hagen moka proceedings in the following way:

Individual donors from all over the village now converge one after the other on the recipients. Carrying legs of pork on their heads the donors rush forward and slap the legs down in front of a particular recipient, either chanting a stylized cry or ... in silence .... Each donor shouts to his own individual recipient, and the resulting clamour makes it very difficult to pick out individual words. The effect is very far removed from that of the public speech-making at the conclusion of the moka, when all the emphasis is on corporate statements about relations between groups and there


is much stress on people forming an audience and listening properly. At Wiru pigkills no audience or set of spectators as such gathers at all.

In Wiru, Wola, and other Southern Highland societies, dyadic relationships between individual affines and exchange partners sometimes appear to be more important, within the context of ceremonial exchange, than corporate groups. In fact, a number of these societies are not organized into centralized, bigman-dominated clans but, rather, appear radically decentralized relative to the societies of the northern Highlands (Kelly 1977; Schieffelin 1976). Even relationships between "brothers" appear to be primarily dyadic in Wola society according to Sillitoe's account (rather like relations between brothers and sisters in Mendi). Nevertheless, the Mendi and at least some of their neighbors are comparable to the northerners in terms of the intensity of garden production, population density, and degree of interest in exchange. These facts complicate the already exceedingly intricate task of Highland ethnographic comparison at the same time as they suggest certain transformational

patterns. ~l For the present argument a choice between individual-centered and social

structural models of analysis is beside the point because the Mendi culturally mark both groups and personal networks. For this reason, Mendi society is an important variant in the "family" of Highland political economies. In Mendi both individual exchange partnerships and corporate clan relations express structural principles that shape the political economy and account for some of the moral tone of social life. This duality makes itself felt concretely during formal prestations: Valuables may be displayed in a long line and counted by prominant leaders, as in Mount Hagen, and then, a few hours later, they are publicly distributed by individual donors to individual recipi- , ents with all the "clamor" of a Wiru prestation. An analysis of Mendi soci- ' ality that explores the articulation of personal network and corporate relations may facilitate the development of a more inclusive comparative understanding r,\ .,

of Highland societies because here it is almost as if counterpoised anthrop~: , logical models appear together in the actors' reality. ~.--'

The articulation of twem and sem

In Chapter 2, I discussed aspects of the relationship the Mendi have with one another as members of one sem or clan. Among others of its characteristics, sem is a "property" relation: that is, it defines relationships between people in terms of conventions concerning their rights in and control over resources, products and wealth. Generalized reci?roc.ity. with~n the group .expresses. thel solidarity of clan members. As a rubnc wtthm whtch ceremomal prestat10ns I are organized, clans arguably both constrain and depend on the tempo of ! garden work; similarly, they both affect and are affected by the regional dis- · tribution and flow of wealth. . ... .-


Discovering network relationships

An analysis of intra- and intergroup relationships is necessary for an understanding of production and exchange in Mendi, as it is in many other Highland societies. But in Mendi (and probably at least a few other Highland societies: see, in particular, A. Strathern 1969a, 1978a) it is not sufficient. In their preparations for clan festivals and prestations, the Mendi do not depend on local productive efforts - "their own hands" - alone. A man cannot fully meet his obligations to his own clan brothers simply by tending gardens and looking after a herd of pigs. Some of the items he needs - most especially pearl shells and nowadays money - can only be obtained through exchange. When a clan is preparing for a festival, members of the same subclan do help each other if they can. But because they are each expected to contribute valuables to a joint display, these items are not obtained predominantly from within the group. Many valuables are obtained by clan members individually from their affines and other personal exchange partners - twem partners -belonging to other clans within and outside of their tribe. The success of large-scale clan prestations presupposes that clan members will be able to draw in this way on the resources and the productive capacities of members of other groups.

However, to view the articulation of network and group simply as a meansend relationship will not do. Such a perspective would indicate little about the cultural character of either, and would even misconstrue their functional relationship. An alternative picture is made possible by paying special attention to a different source of data than we have studied in the past. As empirical background for the present work, detailed consideration was given to the ways in which relationships with exchange partners manifest themselves .not only in the context of formally organized (mostly clan-sponsored) events but also in informal, everyday settings in which their particular structure is more visible. This required keeping track of some number of people's daily exchanges: activities that take place in people's houses and houseyards and that are not dramatic or marked by fanfare. While neither big-men nor other participants make clarifying speeches about these things, nevertheless quotidian discourse and action manifests the expectations and responsibilities of exchange partners. A study of such sources suggests that the twem relationship expresses a social ethic and a pattern of exchange distinct from (and not just in the service of) those of clanship.

Twem and the circulation of wealth

My analytical approach to the question of the relationship between sem and twem may best be demonstrated by contrasting it with that of D' Arcy Ryan (1961), whose early study of "gift exchange" in Mendi provided a basis for


my own. In his study, Ryan did not pay special attention to Mendi twem partnerships. In keeping with the then contemporary anthropological emphasis on corporate groups, Ryan's focus was on marriage, death payments, and other ceremonial exchange events as expressions of the political relationship between clans. But twem partners are referred to throughout his doctoral dissertation, and in a brief section on twem, he says, ''It permeates every aspect ofMendi life" (1961: 66). In this section, he relates twem perceptively to the

circulation of wealth:

It is a feature of the Mendi economy . . . that goods used in exchanges (with the exception of pigs) are never hoarded. Pearlshells, for example, may remain in the possession of one man for a week or two at a time while he is amassing them for an important payment; but with this and one or two other exceptions, ... exchange goods are in a state of constant and rapid circulation.

The rate of turnover of valuables is not quite as rapid as Ryan suggested; people may hold on to shells for months and even years. But he was right to point out the importance of the rapid circulation of wealth in Mendi.

Ryan (1961: 65-6) implied that a functional, or causal, relation holds between circulation and twem transactions:

It follows [from the fact of the rapid circulation of wealth] that when a subclan requires contributions for an intergroup payment, its members seldom have the goods to hand, so that they must be acquired from outside the group. The principal means of doing this is through the institution of individual exchanges known as twem.

In other words, Ryan argued that twem is occasioned by intergroup events, and is necessitated by the (preexisting) pattern of wealth circulation. Ryan did not explain the pattern of Circulation itself, however.

In contrast with Ryan's approach, I will argue that although networks are a l functional means of obtaining wealth for clan displays, they cannot be re-duced to this. Networks do not simply serve exogeno~s end~; rathe~, they / have a social logic of their own. Indeed, the pattern of crrculat10n, whtch for Ryan was a given, is itself at least a partial function of their social logic. Like J those of the clan, twem relationships are mediated in part by the products of labor. The process of maintaining these relationships affects the intensity of exchange (and at least indirectly, of garden production). Specifically, it is likely that the reproduction of partnerships and the development of personal networks creates a relatively high and steady demand for wealth (despite regional fluctuations in the scheduling of formal ceremonial prestations). That is, although one may need twem partners because of the rapid circulation of wealth, that pattern of circulation is also a defining characteristic of twem relationships, just as the short-term accumulation of wealth, in preparation for collective clan prestations, is an express10n (and not just of function) of clan solidarity. Rapid circulation is one of the central values in terms of which twem relationships are created and reproduced. Twem partners have, in effect,


joint rights to one another's wealth except those items already "spoken for": promised privately to a particular person or for a specific public prestation.

Formal contrasts and practical ambiguities

Besides their distinctive patterns of circulation, sem and twem contrast in other ways. Sem relationships imply a centralized organization even in Mendi where big-men are not always center stage. But a person's twem relationships are organized as an ego-centered network; looked at from the perspective of the society as a whole, in which each person is the center of his or her own network, this structure is radically decentralized. Each person's array of twem partnerships is unique, only partially overlapping with that of his or her fellow clan members or spouse. Then again, despite the empirical fact that twem relations are continually and systematically reproduced as an element of social structure by means of marriage, they are culturally conceived of as ephemeral because they are ego-centered and not inheritable. They therefore contrast with clan relations. While clans are observed to wither away or to be created anew, they are nevertheless culturally understood to endure as corporate entities.

Access to the two relationships is governed by different rules. Whereas clan membership is in part inherited from one's father or mother, exchange partnerships are not thought of in this way (in contrast with exchange partnerships elsewhere in New Guinea- see Rubel and Rosman 1978). Instead, exchange networks are often based around (but not limited to) a core of affines - relationships one creates rather than inherits. While clans, as exogamous groups, are based on relationships between people who cannot intermarry, exchange networks are based on relationships created through marriage. Whereas the sem relationship is exclusive, twem is broadly inclusive: clans are basically male institutions but even unmarried girls may have twem partners.

Wealth mediates both sem and twem relationships, but it does so differently in each case. Twem partners circulate wealth (rather than accumulating it in preparation for prestations). That is, exchange partnerships are sustained by the differential need partners have for valuables, whereas the relationship between clansmen is reinforced by joint projects, by common need. Sem and twem relationships also contrast in terms of conventions concerning how they are each maintained in the absence of material wealth exchanges (as we shall see).

Despite these contrasts, clan and network relations do not always manifest themselves in distinct contexts. They are not neatly separated as in "spheres of exchange'' but are usually conjoined. Indeed it may be for this reason that Ryan interpreted twem as a functional means for staging clan events, rather than as expressing a distinct structural principle. As I have noted, the same exchange valuables (e.g., pigs, pearl shells, and money) mediate each of


these relationships; sometimes in the same social situations and acts of exchange. Whereas particular kinds of formal events highlight one or the other structural principle (marriage ceremonializing twem; of tenga foregrounding sem), all are the practical product and expression of both of them to some extent. Equally, the informal events of daily life as when twem partners sit together in private discussion while they share a meal produce personal partnerships at the same time as they make clan events possible.

Finally, as I discussed in Chapter 2, one's twem partners and those one calls "brother" or "sister" are not necessarily mutually exclusive groups of people. Since tribes are composed of a number of neighboring, intermarrying clans, some fellow tribe members (who occasionally act together in a solidary fashion) may also be affines and twem partners. This fact is not only a problem for analysis, but also for everyday social interaction. People sometimes become embroiled in disputes due to misunderstandings and disagreements concerning one another's intentions and the appropriateness of the roles each has adopted in particular contexts. The ambiguities are compounded in relationships between men and women because of the peripheral role of women in clan affairs. Husbands and wives act very much like twemol; in contrast, clan sisters may act like "brothers" - as when the latter support one another privately with gifts given paeme - but their relations of solidary identification with fellow clan members are idiosyncratic and do not generally extend to people outside their subclan or to all occasions of "brotherly" support.

The relationship between twem and sem

How then are twem and sem related? As I have stated, twem is not simply a technical means by which goods are assembled for clan prestations, nor is making solidary groups the privileged finality of social action. As we shall see, the ideology of clan solidarity is not so obviously "hegemonic" in Mendi as it is in Mae Enga, Melpa, and other northern Highland societies. Neither are twem and sem simply complementary (although they can be). J'hey,are also st:ructurally..contradictory-, 1'heneed--to satisfy ones obligations to fellow agnates by accumulating valuables is not always easilyreconciled with the demands of exchange partners for the same Heins. Anyun.derst<mding of exchange and production in this society hlUSt takeinio' account the problematical way in which these two relationships artic~ate.

Such an understanding requires more than a sociological analysis of exchange. The contradictions I am referring to are not simply a technical function of, say, the supply of wealth, but are the expression of a cultural system. Although the present discussion situates sem and twem in practical contexts of social action, and explores their sociopolitical implications, it depends on an understanding of their cultural and moral construction. Just as a fully adequate understanding of clanship requires learning about Mendi notions of shared


substance and of time, an understanding of twem requires learning about indigenous concepts of the ''person''; these sets of ideas form a system in which the meaning of each is defined in relationship to the others. Highlands anthropologists have long been concerned with the ways in which Highlanders conceptualize the social character of individual behavior, and particularly the tension between individual autonomy and ambition on the one hand and social solidarity and continuity on the other (e.g., Read 1955, 1959; M. Strathem 1981). In Mendi (as elsewhere; see Brown and Buchbinder 1976; Strathem 1982), this tension is culturally constructed in terms of gender distinctions, "maleness" and "femaleness" providing multiple and ambiguous interpretive possibilities to be read variously by different social agents - against their social experience in a political field of play.

The complex articulation of twem and sem will be considered in Chapters 5 and 6 in an extended discussion of the major practical contexts of gift exchange. For the moment, however, let us suspend consideration of many complexities and focus on the twem relationships themselves, as we focused on clan organization in Chapter 2. Exchange partnerships will be described from the perspective of the individual's life cycle in the following three sections. After that and a brief discussion of some cultural aspects of twem, the etiquette of twem relationships will be outlined - that is, the social rules, tacit and explicit, by means of which people construct and reproduce partnerships. The last section of this chapter presents some details concerning the structure

of networks themselves.

Twem and the life cycle

~endi, unmarried people may develop exchan_ge ne~works . . T? some.e~tent (more so for women) their early exchange relatiOnships exphcttly ant1c1pate their active roles in their own marriage gift distributions. But their involvement in exchange before marriage also demonstrates that exchange networks are not simply a function of marriage.

Personal networks before marriage

Throughout their childhood, girls mostly receive gifts, notably from their agnates. 6 They are favored with choice cuts of pork at pig kills. Senior women in their own subclan may give them small gifts (often money these days) and show concern for their welfare. When their clan sisters marry, they receive pigs as part of the marriage payment which they may themselves look after. People say that it is not right for a woman to have nothing and to therefore be of no account. A woman ought to have pigs of her own to look after before she marries, they say, and she ought to bring these pigs with her when she moves to her husband's place after her wedding. Some big-men systemati-

7l Twem: personal exchange partnerships

cally cultivate father-daughter relationships with girls in their clan - speaking on their side in disputes and courts, giving them pork when pigs are killed and piglets from litters when a sow farrows, renting headdresses for them during parades so that they may participate, and so on. Such gift giving and attention is undertaken with an expectation of an ongoing gift relationship with the young woman after she marries.

Chapter 4 will discuss the implications of women's involvement in gift exchange for the understanding of gender constructions and male-female roles. In the present discussion, expectations concerning young women are significant for what they imply about the status of young people generally. They may embark on autonomous exchange careers outside of marriage, using valuables given to them without explicit solicitation by fellow clan members of both sexes notably, bridewealth gifts from clan sisters (especially a category of gift called nopae, which will be discussed).

Table 3.1 summarizes information concerning a number of unmarried men. It indicates the numbers and caretakers of pigs that fourteen men owned at the time of questioning. It also indicates the source of the first shell and first pig each man received. It supports these men's general assertions concerning the importance of the marriages of their subclan sisters as a source of wealth. Informal inquiries among unmarried women yielded similar results: They commonly received their first pigs from female agnates, as well as from parents and others in their group.

Unmarried men receive shells and pigs as nopae, or paeme (unsolicited), from their sisters. They receive matrilateral funeral payments (kowar) when their sisters' chi1dren die. Occasionally they may receive a shell when a corporate prestation is made to their group; sometimes they receive a pearl shell directly from someone in the other clan during a public ceremony, but more frequently their clansmen redistribute a shell to them afterward. They receive informal gifts, also unsolicited and that they do not have to repay directly, from their parents, from their mother's relatives, and from neighbors who are members of other clans in their tribe. For example, one boy helped his mother look after her brother's sow. Later, when the sow farrowed, its owner gave him one of the piglets.

Generally, young people's "first transactions" tend to be dyadic gift-debts or gift-credits contracted when they planned to contribute to marriages and kowar, or in the course of establishing partnerships (see Table 3.2). Young men generally do not themselves sponsor public prestations. They receive items when the main recipients redistribute wealth to members of their group. Usually the first prestation a man sponsors is his marriage payment to the family of his prospective bride. 7 Before that, young men help their fathers when the latter sponsor a prestation, and they help other young men in their clan when the latter prepare to get married. In order to contribute, they obtain wealth by requesting it explicitly from fellow clan members or their siblings'

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

Mortuary Clan Marriage prestation presta- Total

Saon11 prestation (kowar) tionc reported a

No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %

23 Senkere men• 683 51 433 32 160 12 72 5 1348 100 20 Senkere women• 376 49 315 41 58 8 13 2 762 100 43 Men and women 1059 50 748 35 218 10 85 4 2110 100

aThe contexts in which partnerships were initiated are reported. All those informants whose exchange partnerships are described in Tables 3.4 ff. are included, but only those partnerships for which data on first transactions were recalled by informants (see note d). bSaon is a personal, dyadic gift obligation (see text). <Clan prestations include ol tenga, ol ombul, and other events sponsored in the names of clans. aThe total number of partnerships reported here is less than that reported on Table 3. 7 and omits partners for whom the contexts of first transactions had been forgotten. On average, male informants forgot this detail for 11% of their partnerships and female informants forgot it for 10% of theirs. 'These persons appear in Tables 3.4 through 3.12 as well. See Appendix B for details.

affines (thereby contracting a gift-debt), or they offer shells and pigs previously obtained unsolicited from their married sisters and others.

But one does not have to be married in order to be able to sponsor a public prestation; unmarried men do act as sponsors occasionally. Anga, the young man referred to as M20 on the tables in this chapter, cosponsored a kowar in 1979 in honor of his father's father's death. His mother and father also collected shells and money for the kowar, but Anga claimed that his "name" was on it too, that he was not just helping them. Because of his preparations for the kowar, he had a greater than average number of active exchange relationships for a man his age (see Table BA in Appendix B). These were mostly with people in his mother's brothers' clan (in whose place he lived, along with his mother and her husband) and in his father's clan. Most of the personal gift-debts for which Anga claimed responsibility were his alone, and did not coincide with those of his parents. According to him, a total oftwentyeight pearl shells had passed through his hands during the previous two years, of which he had been able to save ten for the prestation.

When he was asked whether this kowar was not actually his father's affair, since it honored his father's father (a man he himself had never known), Anga said no. He explained that he wanted people to know that he had also been responsible for making the payment because he was concerned about his rep-


utation (or "name": imbi). He said that he often plays cards for money and that he has had nothing to say when, during arguments, someone has insulted him with the accusation that he ''eats'' all his card winnings himself. Whereas previously he had only given private gifts to his friends, now he wanted to be able to say that he had sponsored a public prestation. As he explained, this would wipe out the insults he had suffered by demonstrating to everyone who heard tell of it that he was not a child who simply consumes things, but a man with the ability to distribute wealth in his own name (see the coming section "Persons and Things").

The preceding example suggests that marriage itself is a necessary indication neither of a man's level of exchange activity and number of exchange partners nor of his social status. Among the Mendi (as among the nearby Enga and the Huli), bachelorhood is not an entirely negative status; it can even be a positive choice for reasons entirely apart from exchange. Sapo, an old man who lived in the men's clubhouse of the most prominent big-man of the community, claimed that when he was young he had been too busy fighting in tribal wars to marry. 8 Many men pointed to Sapo as an example of the Mendi adage that if a man wishes to live a long life, he should avoid close contact with women. While Sapo and the younger bachelors around Senkere were not prominent in the community, their bachelorhood was not specifically to blame. At Kuma, in the northern part of the Suolol tribal territory, there lived a bachelor, about fifty years old, with a regional reputation as a big-man. He drew on the affines of his brothers as well as on his mother's relatives and on the affines of sisters for exchange partners. Like other adult bachelors (see Table 3.1), his pigs were looked after by his brother's wives and other related women. He explained that he had remained unmarried all his life because of a dream he had had long ago in which his father's ghost had told him that bachelorhood would be the key to his success at exchange and to his reknown as a leader.

The significance of marriage

Although a person may acquire new twem partners for many reasons, typically the most important single context for building up an exchange network is marriage.9 Before marriage, a person's twem exchanges are mostly with affines of members of his or her own subclan and with members of other local clans within his tribal alliance or neighborhood. Upon marrying, people acquire affines of their own, a fact of significance both to individuals and to their group.

A young man's father and subclan brothers encourage him to select a bride when they know he has received wealth he can himself contribute to the wedding prestation. Once a man agrees that be will get married, be tries to accumulate the shells he receives subsequently from weddings of clan sisters,


kowar, clan distributions and so on, rather than giving them away as gifts. His brothers avoid borrowing valuables from him, knowing that be is trying to save them. He also actively solicits gifts from his existing exchange partners or tries to convince others to replace wealth be had earlier given them. He may also initiate new partnerships in his search for wealth. In most of the cases on which I have information, the grooms contributed at least as much to their own marriage wealth exchange as their fathers or other main supporters contributed.

Grooms expect their agnates to support them with pearl shells, pigs and money given paeme. Their parents and siblings, and other members of their own subclan, are their most important supporters, although their sisters' husbands are occasionally also significant. Typically, members of other local subclans and clans whom the young man considers friends or exchange partners also help out. Each of these people may tell him that they have something for hiin when they first hear that he plans to get married, but sometimes they unveil their gifts only when the young man finally invites a woman's family to his place to inspect the bridewealth be will offer them.

Marriage wealth prestations begin with an initial display in the groom's houseyard, to which members of a woman's family are invited. The latter discuss their ne_~s_:_ho:w mU.ch . we.a1th they require to satisfy all the people who consider the1lls~l:V~~£l_()s~_t()_thep_ro_spective bride or otherwise deserving of some of the bridewealth. This reflects something of the extent of the bride's relationships with members of her family, the kinds of obligations she has accumulated and the interest of members of her family in establishing ongoing exchange relationships with her and her new in-laws after she is married. In addition, marriage is an exchange in Mendi, involving a substantial r~turn payment from the bride's"peop1i.Hothe groom's. Some contributors on the groom's side, especially his parents and lineage brothers and sisters, give pig:f wttb the understanding that they will be reciprocated. Therefore, part of the prenuptial negotiations concerns the size and number of return pigs (mok moke) to. be given by the bride's family to that of the groom.

If the wealth on both sides is found acceptable, the man's people bring their pigs, pearl shells, and money to the woman's place the next day. She formally distributes the gifts to her family in the ceremonial ground. This formal, public distribution (koma tumawe) marks the beginning of the trial period during which the woman lives in the man's place, often in his mother's house. However, it is only the first part of the marriage exchanges (collectively known as inikap). Sul>_~equently, over a two- to four-month period, the groom and his family give tlieondeliToney;-s~eiTsa.n:d.occasiolll1lly m()re pigs .. in a steady ~~am,all part of a payment called ank kos. The term meansto retrace (or cover up} one's steps, referring to the fact that the woman, prohibited from engaging in garden work during this period, spends much of her time traveling between her new and old communities conveying additional wealth to


members of her family. Ank kos wealth is generally at least equivalent in value to the wealth distributed formally in the public distribution. 1° Finally, a last payment called kirop is made to the parents of the bride.

In one case, a Pulumsem man of twenty-three or so (M15 in the tables in Appendix B; these tables contain information concerning all persons referred to in the text by means of code names: M#, F#) was encouraged by his older brother and his elderly father, Tasupae (M19), to think of marriage after he was given two pearl shells as part of a distribution that Suolol as a whole received. 11 All told, his inikap amounted to fifty pearl shells, nine pigs and K382 (1K = $1.47). Ofthis the groom himself contributed five pigs (56%), thirteen shells (26%), and K60 (16%). Nine of the twenty-three people who helped him (or 39%) were members of his subclan. They contributed the rest of the pigs ( 44%, or four out of the nine pigs), nineteen pearl shells (or 36%), and K12 (3% of the money), all paeme. His two sisters and one sister's husband's brother contributed another six pearl shells (12%), also paeme. The remaining contributions were from ten members of other Suolol clans - people the young man considered twem partners and whose contributions he figured he would have to repay later on. Five of the twenty-three contributors (or 22%) were young unmarried men.

This young man was fairly typical. He had no great access to modem wealth, since he had never worked extensively for wages. As his father was quite old, his older brother - who was not a big-man, but simply a respected ordinary nian - acted as his main supporter. In another case, Kone (M12 in tables in Appendix B) married after returning from a stint of wage work on the coast of Papua New Guinea. His total inikap payment included five pigs and four cassowaries, fifty-five pearl shells, and K1 ,046. Of this, he himself contributed three cassowaries (purchased with his wages), five pearl shells (9%), and K700 (or 67% of the money). Thirteen members of his subclan, including his mother and one father's brother's wife, contributed twenty-three pearl shells ( 4 2%), the rest of the money (K346), all the pigs, and one cassowary. Of this, his mother contributed KlOO, one pig, and two shells of her own. His father was the other major contributor, giving K200, four pigs, and five pearl shells. Two pearl shells were contributed by a sister and her husband; three more shells from three members of the same clan; and the rest (eleven pearl shells, or 20% of the shells) were from eight twem partners of the young man: members of other clans within Suolol whom he would repay subsequently. Finally, of his twenty-six contributors, five (19%) were unmarried men.

Information concerning young men's pig holdings (see Table 3.1) and concerning their exchange partnerships (see M20-M23 in Table B.4 in Appendix B) and examples of particular marriages support qualitative statements the Mendi make about young men's ability to contribute to their own inikap. Other observations that I shall describe in Chapter 4 similarly confirm local


assertions about the control brides have over the distribution of parts of the marriage payment.

What is the character of the parties to an inikap distribution, and of the relationships and obligations resulting from it? In Chapter 2, I discussed how contributions by clansmen were an exemplification of solidary intragroup relations. Here, we see that this solidary support is but one factor making a man's marriage possible, as he also depends on his twem relationships for wealth. The people who come together briefly to contribute to a man's bridewealth display, and who are the recipients of a woman's wealth distribution, are subsets of the kin of the woman and the man; they include both some of the agnates of each and also people who belong to a number of other clans. Briefly crystallizing parts of the bride's and the groom's networks, the marriage ceremony initiates formally the possibility of the interpenetration and interconnection of the participants' networks.

The marriage prestations do not move between clans or groups. Moreover, these prestations themselves do not join the groom's supporters and the bride's recipients together- not even as individuals. The participants may know who among a young man's agnates and friends contributed which pig or pearl shell and who among the bride's relatives received those gifts. These particular people do not, however, become exchange partners as a result of the distribution. The exchanges are simply between the bride and groom, and between each and his or her own network. They do not represent an exchange between their respective clans, and certainly not one between their networks (which have no collective existence).

Thus, Nopas gave his subclan brother Wange a shell when Wange married Aku; when, in the formal wedding wealth distribution, Aku gave that shell to her brother Toli, no relationship was established between Nopas and Toli. Rather, Nopas had fulfilled Wange's expectations about brotherly behavior, and Wange subsequently contributed a shell when Nopas married. The pearl shell helped initiate Wange's marital relationship with Aku (which may, from one point of view, be considered an exchange partnership). Finally, with the shell, Aku was able to repay her brother Toli for gifts he had given her in the past; she was also able to express her desire for his support in the future, as well as her interest in helping him with his own exchange projects. Exchange relationships were created between Wange and Aku, and were reinforced between each of them and their respective networks of kin and exchange partners. Nothing more was established by the wedding distribution itself, however much more was made possible as a result of it. Subsequently, the husband and wife each became a link for the establishment of more widely ramifying exchange connections between each of them and the other's kin and even between particular relatives on each side.

Husbands have no part in the decisions that determine who in the woman's group will receive parts of the marriage payment. Therefore, if a woman and


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

Affinal transactions and the development of networks

r·· Although exchange relationships are not established directly between the hus, band (or his network of kin and exchange partners) and his wife's relatives as

a result of the formal marriage transactions, they are quickly established afterward. Especially if a major event is being planned by the newly married man's clan, he is expected to contribute on a scale he was not expected to match prior to his marriage. He is considered to have an untapped pool of gift-credit available in his new affines, and is expected to make use of it:

Wange commented that ever since his recent marriage to Aku, he has had a lot on his mind. He has many new twem partners now, and many new gift obligations. He pointed out that, because he is married, he has had to rent parade headresses for two of his brothers' children as well as for himself, and he has had to buy sweet potatoes in order to feed his wife's relatives when they come to visit (since his wife had only just begun to do garden work, and his brothers' wives were not being as generous to him as they had prior to his marriage). Before, he said, all he really had to think about was getting fed and finding headresses and paint for himself at parade times. He compared his married state to being "jailed."

( Once married, men establish exchange relationships with their wives' rei-• 1 atives by requesting items from them directly (i.e., without using their wives

J ! as intermediaries); and women may request valuables from their fathers or \brothers. A man's brothers may, similarly, ask for things from his wife's \family or from the woman herself. When they repay the gift, they try to do so with an increment over the value of the items they received, such as by returning a shell of better quality than that borrowed, a pig that is larger than the original pig, or, for example, K46 for a K40 gift. The increment is considered nopae: "for the body" of the bride. Nopae is expected whenever the husband or his brothers transact for the first time with anyone among the wife's relatives who has not, up until then, received part of the inikap. People cite postmarital nopae gifts which may be given even decades after the wedding ceremony as among the most common ways of initiating twem relationships.

Like those of the Melpa moka system of ceremonial exchange, nopae gifts embody a "principle of increment" (Strathern 1971). Together with other


categories of incremental return gift, they occur in marriage exchanges, in exchanges associated with death (e.g., individually or group-sponsored kowar and group-sponsored ol tenga), and in the Pig Festival (mok ink). Prestations associated with death (kowar being the most common; also ol tenga, ol ombul) are even referred to as "moka" in the Melanesian pidgin spoken in Mendi. 12

Whereas kowar and ol tenga have competitive aspects, they differ from moka in other respects (see Chapter 5); the nopae gifts of marriage are different from moka exchanges because they do not involve an alternating disequilibrium and long-term dyadic symmetry. They are systematically asymmetrical: from a male perspective, the rules of affinal exchange distinguish between partnerships with "wife-givers" and with "wife-takers." That is, in the marriage context, nopae is given only to the bride's people, and not to those of the groom. From a female perspective, one gives nopae to one's agnates and their spouses. A similar pattern of nopae gifts is also observed in the mok ink. Nopae gifts may be related to marriage gifts in other parts of the Southern Highlands (e.g., A. Strathern 1980). Although incremental gift repayments are not a necessary part of all twem exchanges (compare Ryan 1961: 67 where he provides a secondary definition of twem as "borrowing at interest"), they do structure and motivate the flow of wealth in networks. We shall consider the meaning of this incremental gift further in subsequent chapters.

Some men marry and subsequently have little or nothing to do with their wife's relatives. One member of the Senkere community had married two women during the early 1960s, both of whom had eloped with him. An inikap payment was made afterward to each of their families (mostly by members of his subclan), but the man apparently never had much interest in traditional exchange activities and consequently had hardly any contact with either of his wives' people. He has worked occasionally as an interpreter in Mendi town and has picked tea in the Western Highlands Province; when in the village, he spends his time playing cards, discussing community affairs, and helping with local preparations for festivals and displays. His transactions are mostly with fellow clansmen and with a few maternal and unrelated twem partners.

Just as it is possible in Mendi to become a big-man while remaining a

1 bachelor, it is also possible to be married and engage in exchanges without tapping one's wife's relatives for wealth. Two minor big-men in the Senkere community had not transacted with their wives' relatives for years because of disputes of one sort or another. They compensated by emphasizing other parts of their networks, such as their maternal and sister's husband's kin. In another case, the death of a wife and the move of her closest clansmen to a distant locality after a dispute in their place caused relations between Konduko (M 17 in tables in Appendix B) and his twem partners to end. While his performance at exchanges had suffered, it was still respectable, and during 1979 he was in the process of extending his twem relationships among unrelated people he had met during a stint of work in Mendi town. 13


The size and structure of networks are determined in a general way by gross facts of the life cycle and are qualified by a person's particular involvement. An exchange network waxes and wanes over the course of a lifetime, depending on how active a person is in organizing and participating in ceremonial prestations and how conscientious that person is in maintaining relationships through visits and food sharing during periods when no debts are outstanding between partners.

When a man grows old, his exchange partners tend to put off his requests for gifts and for repayments. He is less vigorous and cannot maintain relationships with partners in distant communities. His mother's relatives and many of his older partners among his wife's people will have died. Old men may have fewer exchange partners than they had before their marriages, whether or not they are still married.

For example, Tasupae (Ml9 in tables in Appendix B), an old widower whose monthly transactions were followed during 1978-9, lived with a married son of about forty. When he was younger he had had two wives and a reputation for making kowar. Now, his twemol in his mother's clan were all dead, and his mother's sister's people (with whom he had transacted after making a kowar to them in honor of his mother's death many years ago) live in Tambul (in the Western Highlands Province), too far away for him to visit. He told me that many of his twemol in his second wife's group had died, and when his first wife (the mother of the son with whom he now lives) died, her relatives began to exchange only with her son. Duimg 1978-9, all his requests for the repayment of gifts - two of which were more than five years outstanding were unsuccessful. Likewise, he was unable to satisfy most of the partners who came to him for gifts. He was not able to contribute wealth when his youngest son (M15) got married in 1978 (see above), nor did he kill any pigs in his own name at the Senkere mok ink in 1979.

Old men who are not widowed appear to fare somewhat better. For example, Wendo (M16), another old man married to a woman (F13) of similar age, was still spry and had contracted a number of gift-credits and gift-debts during the past three years, all with the mok ink in mind. Like Tasupae, Wendo's visits to exchange partners during the study period yielded no returns, and no one made any requests for wealth from him. Instead, he cultivated a garden of market vegetables that his wife or his clansmen's wives sold for him in Mendi town. With nopae pearl shells his daughter gave him and his market earnings, he acquired a pig in 1979 which, with four others his wife looked after, he planned to kill during the mok ink.

Old women, even when widowed, seem to maintain independent exchange careers at least as well as old men. For example, the widow Koyma (Fl4) derived an income by performing ritual cures on men suffering from menstrual pollution, and also both on men who had bad luck attracting wealth in twem exchanges and women who had failed to attract suitors. In addition, her


sons' wives sold vegetables for her in town. She took pride in being able to live on her own and relied for firewood and for garden fence mending on boys from the neighborhood, whom she rewarded with gifts of money and pearl shells. She was still able to look after a few pigs, and made gifts of the rest: five of them were due to be repayed just before the mok ink. She contributed two pigs, a pearl shell, and K40 when her son's son married in 1979.

Peren (F9), another old widow, had had a reputation for being a "bigwoman" (ten koma) when her husband was alive. During 1977-79, she lived with one of her married sons and appeared to direct much of his exchange work. She no longer traveled far to visit her twemol, but transacted in pigs, pearl shells, and money, mostly with people who came to visit her and her son. Her main concern appeared to be to amplify her son's reputation, although she contributed to the marriage wealth of her former husband's agnates in her own name and insisted that she herself was responsible for making good her own gift-debts.

The contraction that takes place in the networks of elderly people presages their eventual dissolution at death. It expresses tangibly the loss of autonomy experienced in old age. Kowar (mortuary prestations) repair only indirectly the disconnections created by death; ultimately each person makes his or her own network anew, and that achievement of social connectedness is lost when he or she dies.

Persons and things

I have been discussing the "developmental cycle" of exchange networks emphasizing, with important qualifications, the centrality of marriage. I shall tum shortly to a more detailed consideration of the development of individual partnerships- how they are created, maintained, and terminated- in the section "Twem Etiquette". But first, a discussion of more basic issues is necessary. In preceding sections, I have referred to wealth and to exchange without addressing directly how either is understood in Mendi. More particularly, I have not discussed what twem gifts themselves engender and reproduce. While such questions concerning culturally constituted relations between persons and things are addressed concretely throughout this work, they are complex and deserve special attention.

/~/ v

D'Arcy Ryan wrote that the "sole function" of wealth in Mendi "is the establishment of economic credits which enable [a person] to contribute to his clan's ceremonial payments" (1961: 69). I will argue that this is not the case. Wealth and its exchange have social determinations and effects other than] those associated with corporate events: "credits" - saon, or twem gifts - are also social ends in their own right, constituting a nexus of obligation and feeling distinct from that of clanship. As the next sections will show, wealth circulates as much to enable a person to expand and maintain a network of


partners as it does to strengthen clans, many transactions taking place simply to maintain good relations with a partner. And the functional complexity of wealth parallels its cultural complexity. The various kinds of wealth employed by the Mendi (primarily pigs, pearl shells, and money) are not clearly differentiated contextually; they are not distinguishable as mediators of different types of social relationships, nor do they circulate in separate spheres of exchange, nor is each associated with a different type of social actor. Wealth

Ubjects themselves are therefore symbolically ambiguous. Indeed, each partcular item stands primarily for its own history of social linkages, and only

.,/,;· ccasionally for a transcendent social meaning. Consequently, it makes more ense to approach the meaning of wealth through an analysis of the social

relations it articulates than it does to proceed the other way around.

Twem as a wealth-mediated social relation

Twem can be thought of as an exchange relationship, or (like sem) as part of a system of distribution (see, e.g., Gudeman 1978) and a kind of "property" relation: in any case it defines relations between people in terms of rules about their rights in and control over resources, the products of labor, and other items of value in the culture - rules about their culturally specific "needs" and "wants." In a general way, then, twem (and sem) relations are like market relations in a commodity economy (in the sense of Marx 1967 [1867]): both

\are social relations mediated by items of value. But whereas market relations i are ideologically represented as relations between persons and things ("pri! vate" property) or simply between things (price), the material and social di-

~ l mensions of twem relations are inseparable in Mendi consciousness: twem is more than its material transactions. ,... From a cross-cultural vantage, twem is most clearly viewed as a social /relationship. Twem gifts create long-term friendships that are maintained even fin the absence of transactions; and when a gift is outstanding between part{ ners, the quality of their social contact affects the recipient's obligation to ! repay (as will be described in the next section, "Twem Etiquette"). By highlighting the social relational character of twem, my intention is to avoid a

reductive analysis framed abstractly in terms of "material" constraints and "utilitarian" ends. It is also to obviate the analytical opposition between "exchange" and "production" already called into question by formulations like Maurice Godelier's (1972, 1977) in which kinship is a "relation of production," like Annette Weiner's (1980) in which a focus on "reproduction" has subsumed that of "reciprocity"; or like those of neo-Ricardians (Gregory 1982; Gudeman 1978), who emphasize the systemic relativity of production, distribution, and consumption. My intention is to ask questions about structures of power, a focus associated with production-centered analyses and basic to an understanding of the reproduction and transformation of social rela-


dons, while at the same time to listen for culturally real, local social categories that exchange-centered analyses make audible (at least for the New Guinea Highlands). This strategy is also applicable to the study of social relations constituted in market exchange (which, however, are not my concern here; besides Marx 1967 [1867] see, e.g., Polanyi et al. 1957; Baudrillard 1975, 1981; Dumont 1976; Sahlins 1972, 1976; Douglas 1979). Generally, "economic" facts are everywhere culturally constituted and historically specific. People do not confront the intrinsic character of objects (nor even of their own "objective" needs as physical beings). Instead, they experience objects and needs in terms of rules and meanings which their own actions in social situations may reinforce or modify (see, e.g., Sahlins 1981; Wagner 1981).

My goal here is to understand the specific cultural character of Mendi social relationships and of the things given value in them. Twem exchanges engender social relations of a particular sort: a matrix of social obligation distinct from sem relations on the one hand and (in present-day Mendi) commodity relations on the other. The challenge is to describe their distinctive characteristics and to understand their articulation in a meaningful totality, in lived experience. 14

Twem gifts (saon)

Material exchanges between twemol are not culturally construed simply as utilitarian ends. The twem gift stands actively and tangibly for a multistranded social relationship; it is a necessary - but insufficient condition of sociality outside of sem. The Mendi interpret twem gifts as signs of active social commitment. One requests wealth from people assuming the responsibility to replace the object at a later date in order to establish a relationship that one expects will persist, or else to meet an obligation to a partner with whom one has a history. Giving gifts in response to requests for wealth initiates or maintains a relationship meant to endure. Whether from the giver's or the recipient's perspective, particular exchanges are conventionally understood not as isolated, temporally bounded acts not as "transactions" in the narrow sense- but as moments in an ongoing, reciprocal relationship, a pact concerning the sharing of risks and resources. 15

Shortly we shall come to a detailed description of the social conventions or etiquette of twem relationships. The focus on conventional rules is appropriate in that while twem relationships have tacit constraints and possibilities, they are also explicitly negotiated and created anew by individuals during their own lifetimes. The conventions of twem are a topic of everyday conversation and conscious strategizing. In these respects, relative to twem, sem relationships are "givens" in everyday individual experience, the rules whereby they are reproduced being comparatively tacit (but see Chapters 4 and 6).


With respect to wealth exchanges in particular, twem relationships involve specific requests (twem kopu, to ''talk twem,'' meaning to ''request [wealth]''), and direct repayments of gifts on specific dates. They therefore differ from the relatively diffuse and generalized reciprocal obligations clan members observe with respect to wealth exchange. This contrast is encapsulated in a distinction between categories of gift associated with "brothers" and with twemol. Whereas the characteristic form of gift exchange between clan members is the valuable given ''paeme" (unsolicited, for no specific repayment) as a kind of generalized reciprocity (Sahlins 1972: Chapter 5), the characteristic twem gift, saon, is given according to rules of balanced or direct (if delayed) reciprocity. Saon is the closest Mendi term for "gift" in Marcel Mauss's (1925) sense. One's saon is a social "credit" - something one has given that the recipient has an obligation (under conditions I will describe in the following section) to reciprocate later on. Repaying a gift (saon lupu; the verb stem lupu [literally "to hit"] being used in diverse compound verbs of action) entails replacing it with an item of a type and value deemed by the parties to be at least equivalent to the original gift. It does not necessarily involve replacing like with like (e.g., a shell for a shell; compare, e.g., Ernst 1978; Gregory 1982b; Kelly 1977).

Chris Gregory (1982b: 19) notes that gifts create "debt." Although his terminology "gift-credit," "gift-debt" - is a useful shorthand for indicating the "direction" of gift transactions, I have avoided debt/credit language as much as possible in my analysis of Mendi exchanges. This decision derives from substantive characteristics of the exchange system itself. First, as the foregoing references to saon, nopae, and unsolicited (paeme) gifts imply, there are many kinds of gifts in Mendi, each entailing a different sort of social obligation between giver and receiver. Debt/credit language tends to cover over these differences.

Second, debt/credit language implies that the donor the "creditor" in a particular transaction - has privileged control over the object given relative to the recipient. Questions of control allude to the structure of power implicit in particular relations of exchange, a concern in studies of gift exchange since Mauss's classic work (see Sahlins 1972: Chapter 4; recently there has been some discussion about whether labor power is alienated in the gift economies of Papua New Guinea, see Damon 1980, 1982; Feil 1982; Gregory 1980, 1982a, 1982b; Modjeska 1982; Strathern 1982c; for relevant cautionary comments concerning the analysis of the allocation or "distribution" of social ~·

\! wealth, see Gudeman 1978). In some gift systems, donors may, indeed, have '' il privileged control or special rights of access over special categories of objects; ~ for example, in the case of individually owned kula valuables in Milne Bay :J (kitoum; see Damon 1983) or home-produced pigs in some parts of the High- J lands (Feil 1984). But this is not so in other systems. :; ~ In the Mendi case, the objects circulating in twem networks are a kind of ~~

'1


joint property. Whereas control over wealth exercised in systems of ''private'' J /

property is exclusive (i.e., ownership specifies as much who does not control l the disposition of a thing as who does; see, for historical examples, Thompson j I976), control over twem gifts is inclusive that is, a matter of "if I have,1' you all do," (or perhaps: "what's yours is mine"). Acceding to a request for wealth from someone with whom one has not yet transacted amounts effectively to expanding the number of people having rights to valuables any of them may come to hold. 16

-

This expansion is, moreover, an explicit cultural value, a corollary to the value placed on generous and rapid giving (what Gregory calls "maximizing outgoings"). The rapid circulation of wealth, as I noted at the beginning of the chapter, is the sine qua non of twem relationships, and an important dimension of contrast with sem. The more widely wealth circulates, the more people are included in a network, the more wealth is in turn available to each and the "richer" - the more socially empowered to give - any one person is. Therefore, with respect to twem gifts, debt/credit language would obscure the fact that the rights in, or control over, valuables exercized by the parties to a transaction are formally equivalentY

The meaning of wealth

In Mendi, the meaning of exchange objects such as pigs and pearl shells", V"' d_erives from their contexts· of use. Unlike in societies in which particular/ categories of valuable are assoCiated with particular sorts of transactions, as in spheres of exchange (see e.g., Ernst 1978), or with particular sorts of sociall actors, as in men's and women's wealth in thv~Qd Islands (see Weiner 1976) •. the meaningo_f' c~tt!g?~ies ?~~ealt~i~ ~ITI~ig~~s in Mendi, since the I same Items are used by ali categones of so'cfal·<CCtors - men and women, ; ( ordinary men and-big-meii _: to articulate distinctively different kinds 'of so- l ' cia! relationships (see also-G6delfefT97U:-Ttius, while peari shells have a I "male" connotation, women transact with them: in fact, one intrafemale ex:J change (kaolo) specifically involves pearl shells (see Chapter 4). They are, moreover, thought of as "productive" -as having the reproductive capacity to "beget" (ingiyupu; karim in Melanesian pidgin) other shells in exchange

~d. mediate both sem and tw~m relat~onships. Althoug~-~~er.e _i~--~?.•n:~~s?-l ct~.o._1l~etween.wol!l:~f!l:lllcl pig§. byvtrtueofthe ffivtston ona15. or, wome11 mj Mepdi-do-not h11ve-the overarching rights to the pigs they care for that, for example, Tombema women do (Feil1978). · . ·

In some instances (and perhaps more commonly in the past), particular\· pearl shells acquired an objective social status as symbols. Here and there, \ ~,J_J'l. men own valuable pearl shells that they now treat as heirlooms. These shells\ S'p.,t have become mnemonic records of historical events involving the past alii- \ ances of clans. Whereas the stories associated with each of them involve the


actions of named individuals, the significance of those actions for the fort f · h"di unes o g~oups IS emp asize . ndeed, the shells are now mostly held out of cir-

culatiOn be~ause the purpose with which they were most clearly associated _ that of sealmg warfare alliances between clans - was subverted with colonial rule and the subsequent creation of the Papua New Guinea nation.

, (...... More ~sually t?ese da~s, pearl s?ells and pigs have a predominantly cir

,/ l cumstantlal_ meanmg a~~~Il!_~~~he~r-~-~~~~r h!_§tQr!~~~!e.~c;il_<!Qge. In this l.' re~ard, th~Ir charactenstlcs as Objects serve well. Unlike paper money or ~ns, particular ~earl shells and pigs are unique and recognizable. It is pos

SI lefor an attentive observer at a prestation to recognize individual pigs and ev~n shells he or_ she has seen before and therefore to know some portion of their exc~ange. history. As a result, these things become identified with the con~exts ~n W~Ich _they are given and received. The following example will clanfy th~s pomt; It al~o has a bearing on preceding references to the value the Mendi accord the circulation of wealth:

Nare req_uested a pearl shell from his twem partner Wal Paid. He needed a pearl shell of a particular value: the sort that might exchange for K40 in Pap!la New Guinea currency. But not any K40 shell would do. Wal Paki showed him one K40 pearl shell, but he w~s unable to accept it because it had been part of a recent marriage pay~ent to whtch he had contributed. A young man from Nare's place, Wange had mamed Aku, a woman from Wal Paki's place. Nare had been one of a score of men and _women who had given Wange pigs or pearl shells to give to his bride and her family.

Paki had received the K~O shell when Aku redistributed the marriage wealth. Even though Nare had not contnbuted the particular pearl shell Paki showed him (it had been Wange's), Nare said that is might as well have been his since it was part of a payment to whic? he ha_d contr!?uted. He said, "I would be ashamed to take back a shell that I ~ad given thts way. If he took it, people would talk and he would get a bad reputatiOn.

Paki had not realized that ~are ha? been among those who had helped Wange. After Nare ~efused the ~hellt~ questiOn and explained why, Paki brought out another shell of eqmvalent quality whtch he had received in another context. This one Nare accepted. '

In this c~se, _a pearl s?ell had been given in a marriage exchange, the purpose of which IS ~o r.amtfy _and expand exchange relationships. If a marriage lasts, then the bnde s family typically uses the marriage wealth in funeral payment~, other marriages, and in transactions with their personal exchange partners ~n other clans. If Nare had taken the pearl shell that Paki had first ?ffered htm, he would have closed a social circle. Nare called such behavior mc~stuo~s, comparing it to marrying a woman from one's own clan. To act m this way rather than to extend social connections outward would have b~e~ ?f as little use to Nare as it would have been to Paki. It would have dimimshed Na~e's r~pu~ation, making him "small." In the proper course of events, wealth IS redistnbuted. The Mendi believe that the social reinvestment of wealth produces, or "begets," more wealth and that a reinvestment bene-

S7 Twem: personal exchange partnerships

fits all parties to the transaction. Situations similar ~o the o?e descri~ed abo:e ere observed involving pigs and even money, particular b1lls of which, wh1le

:dividually not distinctive, are still redistributed (socially invested) rather than hoarded or returned to their source.

rwem and the social ''person''

There remains, however, the question of what twem relations "are," or what ·t means when people engage (or not) in them. Why one bothers to transact ~ith twem partners at all strikes to the core of Mendi cultural constructions in a way few other things do.

A provisional answer has already been suggested in the preceding discus-sion of circulation and in the situation just described. It can best be developed by contrasting twem with sem. If se~ pr_inciples c~nstitute s?cial ~elatio~shipsl projected backward in time, twem pnnc1ples constitute relattonsh1ps projected outward spatially. If sem constitutes a kind of sociality understood to transcend the personal, a relation of identity (between fellow clansmen) by means of which the individual comes to represent something larger than himself, twem constitutes a kind of sociality thr?ugh wh~ch a ~ultura~ly specifi~ sort of .!OJ

"person" is itself constructed. Twem 1s a relationship of d1fference (m prac-tical terms, the differential need for wealth among twemol) by means of which the individual himself or herself is enlarged, embodying and empowered by a l unique network of social linkages he or she creates. In other words, whereas twem and sem relationships together have to do with the construction of sociality in Mendi, ~~m.it!l~JLQ_as__t{) d()_\\'i.th_~~l:ll!J>.~_rs_gn_b_QQ.Q. It is the cultural ../ basis of a Mendi's sense of personal autonomy (whatever its functional con- )} f" texts). (For a related discussion pertaining to a somewhat different ethnographic case, see the excellent paper by Marilyn Strathern [ 1981] on the Melpa distinction between "self-interest" and "social good"; see also Andrew Strathern 1979a.)

How people talk about personal performance during public exchange ceremonies demonstrates this most clearly. Personal ambition is expressed in the desire to "make one's name big" (imbi ondasen ko). It is a pervasive concern, especially of men, and it is accomplished either by sponsoring a ceremonial distribution (as in the case of Anga [M20] ) or by contributing in one's own name to corporate prestations. Kowar and marriages are typically sponsored by one or more individuals in their own names (i.e., these events are spoken about, e.g., as "Nare's" or "Kiluwa's and Onge's" and not "[the sem onda] Suolol's"). Other death compensation prestations fol tenga, ol ombul) and the mok ink are generally sponsored in the names of groups, even though individual reputations are also made in them. Unlike the more politically centralized Highland societies to the north - in which ordinary men act as supporters of big-men, who make prestations in their own names and in


the names of their groups - in Mendi, fellow clansmen act as one another's supporters reciprocally during small-scale events; during large corporate prestations each displays wealth in his own name. Therefore, in Mendi when bigmen sponsor prestations, or when they contribute to clan displays, they do not necessarily have any more access to the wealth controlled by their fellow clansmen than do any of the latter. How then does anyone make a name for himself in Mendi?

As Nare told me (see this chapter's epigraph), mobilizing wealth and becoming a big-man are only partially matters of what Andrew Strathern called "home production" and are at least as much matters of "finance" (Strathern 1969a): ''If I depended on my own 'hand' alone, I would be nothing; I would have no 'name'." Specifically, one is able to give wealth "in one's own name" in Mendi by virtue of one's twem relationships. In his account of his interaction with Wal Paki, Nare suggested that short circuits in one's twem network transactions are not simply foolish in a practical sense but are actually shameful and damaging to a person's reputation. That is, while personal reputations are explicitly made by using exchange networks as a means for mobilizing wealth for prestations, they rely implicitly on the elaboration of networks and the wide circulation of wealth in them.

That personal status and autonomy are functions of twem relationships is also reflected in the following interpretation of community history. This account, presented by Eko, a forty-year-old Mesa big-man, at his house in Ponea (a Kurelka locality near the Molsem place, Kombal; see Map 2.1), concerns the origins of a decade-old intratribal conflict between himself and another prominant man from Kombal, Uan. Eko's comments appear to contradict those of Nare, cited above, but in fact are quite consistent with them:

"I secured forty-eight pigs and displayed them tied to stakes in Ponea koma . ... 'You repay these pigs and you are a real man [i.e., a leader],' I said to him. I wasn't helped by my brothers or fathers or sisters or mother's people. I displayed only my own pigs. I showed them to him and said 'you reciprocate those and you are a real man.' I said 'you mustn't ask around to others for pigs. You must secure them from your own house.' But this man had no pigs; I think he's a 'rubbish man' or something. He requested pigs from the Komballeader Aepe and others [similarly] in his own clan, and secured the pigs that way. He got forty-eight like that .... Then I got up and went with the man from up there [Wepra], Sakma [a Pulumsem leader], and the Wepra line [Kurelka]. We all got together and decorated ourselves and went to look the pigs over at Kombal. We went to Kombal and I said [to Uan and his clansme~] 'you are our women [or wives]!' I said 'the pigs I displayed, I didn't obtain by callmg out to my brothers or to my mother's people or to my sisters. I got them from my own house. But you: you called out and obtained other men's pigs, so I think you are my woman.' I spoke to him like that. The others said 'you bested him! Uan obtained pigs from other men. He is your woman,' they said.''

In this comment, Eko apparently states clearly that he achieved his victory by virtue of home production, acquiring forty-eight pigs by dint of household labor- "by his own hand," to use Narc's phrase. Now, in Mendi anyway,


this is an extraordinary number of pigs for any individual to mobilize; certainly, no one (including Eko himself) came anywhere near that during the Suolol mok ink of 1979, when the demand for pigs and wealth generally was great throughout Suolol. Whereas more pigs may well have been available for competitive individual displays within Suolol during the late 1960s, to have produced forty-eight pigs at home would, in any case, have required quite a bit of female l~bor. The most pigs I s~w ~ne woman caring for at a time in Mendi (this, w1th the help of an energettc mne-year-old daughter) was about fifteen. All the more extraordinary, Eko was not yet married at the time of his competition with Uan.

However, when I inquired more closely about the particular pigs he had mobilized for the display, it turned out that many of them had in fact been acquired from twem partners outside of his own subclan. In fact, when he said that he had not asked for help from his brothers and other relatives, what he meant was that no one had cosponsored the prestation with him. That is, he himself had been responsible for repaying the pigs he had displayed or, in the case of pigs that his mother and other female relatives had looked after for him for some time, he himself was responsible for compensating these women for their labor with pearl shells (a kind of gift called mok yari). Uan, on the other hand, had accepted active help from, in particular, his clansmen, whom he was under no conventional obligation to repay. As Eko told it, and as others recalled the event, Dan's clansmen had, in effect, cosponsored the display with him, assuming some of the responsibility for repaying the pigs. In summary, the account illustrates a mode of evaluating individual performance in terms of its autonomy, where autonomy means being personally responsible for giving and repaying wealth (transacting in the twem style). What one acquires from one's twemol represents, vis-a-vis one's clan, acreative effort all one's own.

It should be clear that this sort of personal autonomy is quite unlike the abstract concept of "individualism" or "self-interest" on which, for exam-ple, Western neoclassic economic theory is based (Dumont 1976). Personal autonomy takes its meaning in Mendi from a specific system of meaningful distinctions and relations: those associated with social network and corporate group. That is, personal autonomy is a function of involvement in twem re~ lationships and is defined in opposition to clanship. What differentiates a man from his "brothers" is his unique network. This source of social support .../ enables a man to act apart from his clansmen, and even to compete with them in the accumulation of wealth for group ceremonies.

Twem etiquette

In this discussion of the "etiquette" of twem relations I shall outline the conventional expectations in terms of which individuals create, maintain, and dissolve their personal exchange partnerships in practical situations. This dis-


cussion takes as given that people never act in tenns of the conventions of twem sociality alone; those conventions always exist in relation to the conventions of clanship. In any case, the application of social conventions to concrete situations of action is probably never straightforward. It involves creative and interested interpretations of the appropriateness of particular rules to particular situations. With their interpretations, people make and remake the very situations in which they find themselves together, repositioning themselves relative to others. Because the application of conventions may reflect divergent individual interests within a sociopolitical order, it may entail negotiation and conflict. Bearing in mind these cautions, a focus on the details of twem is nevertheless in order, for while much has been written about the sociality created by means of corporate groups in the Highlands, network relationships there are as yet poorly understood. 18

Initiating and maintaining relationships

Although the primary sense of twem partner is a spouse's relative or affine, the relationship does not require a marriage connection. As I have already demonstrated, affinity creates the possibility but not the necessity of twem relations. One does not make exchange partners of all of one's affines and kin. Regardless of their kin connection, any two people who have occasion to share food or a smoke meeting at the house of a mutual friend or relative, or meeting on the government roads or in town - may become exchange partners. All that is necessary is that one person request an item and that the other agree to give it.

The repayment of an initial gift between new exchange partners should be quick (within a month or so) and generous. If there happens to be a marriage connection between the two, then the incremental value of the repayment over the original gift is considered nopae (no matter how long after the wedding it is given). If the original gift was a particularly good pearl shell, then the increment may be a way of expressing appreciation for this, and is called poralu. One may give incremental repayments simply to encourage one's new twem partners to give future gifts as readily as they did the first one. One attempts to build a reputation for generosity since this is one way of attracting wealth and exchange partners.

When one repays what one owes and thereby completes a transaction, one's relationship to one's exchange partner is not over. People keep at least some of their partnerships for a lifetime, although partnerships vary in their frequency of activity. For average partnerships, years may elapse between gifts. During periods of transactional inactivity, other kinds of interactions may take place. Depending on where partners live in relationship to each other, they may visit each other when they are traveling to other friends, to the market, or elsewhere. They may occasionally help one another with housebuilding,


llecting firewood, or garden clearing, or they may simply eat together and c~are information periodically, especially if they are neighbors. 8

This sort of interaction communicates the desire of both parties not to forget ch other. It has substantive value itself as a source of information and also

~other social connections. It may even lead indirectly to a transaction. For ~xample, a Senkere man received a large pig from a twem partner of his because, he said, he had slept the night at the man's house and the latter's wife was moved by this act of closeness and trust. Since the two live relatively close by, neither had had occasion to spend a night at the other's house (as partners visiting distant friends might). The pig was given both in appreciation of a new closeness and because the donor knew his friend wanted one (even though he had had no intention of making a direct request).

Another Senkere man, Nare, undertook a four-hour walk to the place of one of his twem partners, in order to rent a feather headdress for his son from one of his partner's fellow clansmen who had several beautiful ones. When he arrived, he stopped to rest and to visit with his partner, who, knowing that the Senkere community was preparing to stage its pig kill soon, told Nare that another of his fellow clansmen had a large pig he wished to sell for K480. Nare asked his partner for a loan of K200 right then, and sent word back to Senkere (via a young man who had accompanied him on his trip) to two of his own fellow clansmen, who put up most of the rest of the money.

In many cases partnerships currently inactive in terms of wealth exchange are kept up by means of reciprocal gifts of pork. Even active partnerships can be damaged if one partner forgets to give the other pork on the occasion of his group's Pig Festival. The special importance of pork gifts in maintaining twem partnerships is reflected in the tension and anxiety, and very careful planning and butchering, associated with the distribution of meat from even a single pig. 19 Just as in the cases described above, pork gifts can also become occasions for wealth transactions:

Alcome and Kongume were active twem partners when they both were young. When, they each married, their partnership became inac~ive. For ~ore _than twe?tY years (from about 1956 until1978), their only transactions consisted m pork gifts on the occasions of major and minor pig kills in their respective communities. In 1978, Kongume's group held a major pig kill and as usual he invited Alcome to come and to share pork with him. On that occasion however Kongume asked A leo me for K20. Kongume's wife had unexpectedly receive~ a pig that momi~g from o~e of her relatives which she said that Kongume could kill If he could reciprocate wtth a ceremo~ nial payment [mok ya ri: see Chapter 6] first. He was short br K20 but wanted to kill the pig and thereby augment his distribution of meat. Thus his request to Alcome.

Requesting, giving, and repaying gifts

While a substantial number of any person's exchange partnerships may for long periods be inactive with regard to wealth exchange but maintained by


other means, active partnerships involve mutual giving of valuables and filig~ee of corequisite actions. The Maussian triad of obligations - to give, . rec~Ive, and to re~ay - obscur~s anoth~r conventional difference among the vanous forms of g1ft exchange m Mend1: twem relationships are .· tically initiated and maintained by requests, whereas sem relationship are produced by means of unsolicited giving.

~equesting wealth. No matter if two partners take turns at requesting Wealth . or If requests come more frequently from one of them, in either case, recipi. ent~ and do~ors recognize a series of obligations to each other, not all of . which are duectly related to the transaction itself. When making a request each partner has an obligation to communicate information concerning his

0;

her requireme~ts. Potential recipi~nts are expected to tell their partners why they need the Item they are requestmg. They may be indirect concerning what exactly they want, discussing their needs and projects more generally first in hopes that_ their .partner will offer them what they want without their having to ask for It straight out. In any event, donors have the right to know how an item they give will be used, and they often ask if they are not told first. One ~an explained this practice to me by saying that a donor may be held responSible for any deaths that resulted if his partner uses his gift to obtain the services of a sorcerer. Indeed, episodes in the oral history of the Senkere area support this judgment (see Tasupae's story in the section "Individual Action Collective Responsibility" in Chapter 2). An aspect of their culturally consti: tuted "inalienability" (Mauss 1925; Gregory 1982) - or their situational character as common property - gifts appear to link donor and recipient together temporarily in mutual identification. Another explicit reason offered for this practice was that one should not ask for wealth unless one has a specific use for it, such as a gift to repay or a mortuary payment to make. But alth~u~h starting a twem relationship is not itself usually acceptable as an explicit reason for requesting wealth, one can always come up with some re~son for making a request if one wants badly enough to initiate a partnership With a person.

Requests are often made in the presence of observers. Transactions between twem partners are personal and basically dyadic in terms of the decision to give an item and the responsibility to repay it, but they are not secret or private. In fact, there are systematic reasons why gift transactions may be made known to people other than the direct participants. As one man said to explain his own actions, it is acceptable to ask one's wife's father for a pearl shell or other thing in his men's clubhouse where several men may be sitting, as th~ observers are likely to be affines who received something from one's marnage payment and who have an interest in one's well-being. If one's wife's father cannot meet the request, the others might well offer to help. If the others present happen not to be relatives, they are not expected to respond, although one of them might, taking this opportunity to expand his network.

On the other hand, if one goes to a twem partner's house to ask for a gift


ayment of wealth one previously gave, one might also choose to or the rep h' · b f wait until others leave before ma~ng a request: Tthit~ ts not ecbau~~ od :

· f shame with respect to givmg or requestmg ngs per se, u ts u ree::;g :cit practice of discriminating among exchange partners in a system to e ognizes no such discrimination explicitly. People appear not to rank tbatrec · 'lb d' I t different types of requests for wealth: Gtfts tha~ wtl e use m c an pres a-. not given priority over those that wdl be used to meet personal bODS are . . h

han e obligations. But people do make chOices about whtch partners t ey :~1 gi! their wealth to. Even though it is not quite proper, .people may refuse a request for pearl shells they have on hand and grant It when a favored

r asks. Nor is it right to grant a request to one person when others, to ~:~ one already has obligations, are present. Thus when. a_ ~endi wai~~ to speak with a partner privately about a loan or ~ rep~yment, tt 1~ m recogmtwn of the ethics of preferential treatme~t for specml_ fne~ds. One IS con~erned to avoid provoking jealousy, an emotion the Mendi beheve to b~ a maJor cause

f · kness and death, and a motivation for sorcery. Preferential treatment of 0 SIC . · · t

e exchange partners is a common fact of life, but smce It ts contrary o wm . w the explicit conventions of exchange, it tends to be a pr:~ate ~att~r. .

Giving wealth. For their part, donors have an exphcit obligatiOn ~o g~ve 1 abies they have on hand when their exchange partners ask. The obhgatwn

va u · · · h t th to give wealth on hand reflects the sense that partners ha:~ Jomt ng ts o e valuables any of them has received. A donor cannot legttlmately hold on to wealth for no particular reason any more than a recipient can reasonably request an item without a specific purpose in mind. Conventionally, one can refuse a request if the valuables one is holding have already been spoken for -that is, promised to another partner, a son's wedding, a ko~ar (II_Iortuary payment), or a clan display. In practical sit~~tions, people revtse their promises as their interests (in all personal and pohttcal senses) change. They sometimes give away valuables they were saving for a group prestation to a twe~ partner with an urgent request, and they sometimes renege on personal obligations in favor of a pressing clan event.

Donors are not expected to reveal where they got the item they are giving, and it is impolite to ask. Donors may or may not offer ~he i~formation, but recipients frequently learn something of the source of an ttem.m the_course of the transaction. For example, partners may have to consult wtth their spouses if the transaction concerns pigs the latter had acquired earlier:

Onge received a pig from Tekopiri as an initiatory payment for an ol t~n.ga (warrelated death compensation payment) which Onge's group would be g1~mg to Tekopiri's. Onge learned that the source of Tekopiri's pig was the _latter's wife. He had accompanied Tekopiri to the latter's wife's house to get the pig, and had been present during the couple's discussion.

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


the source of the item. One does not typically go with one's twem partners in.· search of valuables for oneself or for them. People are not expected to have extensive knowledge of their own exchange partners' twemol.

There are some exceptions to this generalization. In former times, when traveling was more dangerous, people occasionally accompanied their partners when the latter had to go a long distance. Also, when a person is expecting to receive a large ceremonial payment, his exchange partners sometimes go with him to ensure he uses the wealth to repay them (or else, to receive some of the wealth as a gift). While twem partners do not usually go together in search of valuables, they do at times link some of their partners up with others. This practice has important implications, and I shall return to it.

Repaying wealth. When a transaction takes place, the donor may or may not specify how and when he or she wishes to be repaid. The donor might specify that a repayment is expected just before a major prestation for which his group is preparing or when her son is preparing to get married. In other cases, no context for repayment is set until sometime after the transaction has been completed.

Repayments themselves depend on social conventions concerning the ongoing interdependence - and the basic equality - of the donor and the recipient during the period when a gift is yet unreciprocated. Most important among these conventions, partners are expected to stay in touch with one another. Recipients ought to visit to eat and talk with their donors from time to time, and if they both live in the same community, they ought occasionally to chop firewood or do other favors for them. Donors are also expected to visit the people to whom they gave valuables. They are also expected to help their recipients; failure to do so has a bearing on the latter's obligation to repay the debt, as the next example shows:

Kone gave Wer K200 in 1976, to be repaid as part of a kowar from Wer and others to Kone and his brother. During the period when the obligation was still outstanding, Wer became sick and was unable to repair his fences or do other work. Later Wer complained that Kone had neither visited him during the time he was sick nor offered to help Wer' s wife by mending her garden fences. As a result of this poor behavior, Wer said he was not sure that he would make the kowar after.all. [The issue was finally resolved late in 1979.]

Such situations did not often develop during the period of fieldwork, but people commonly alluded to them in our discussions about exchange practices. These heightened expectations concerning mutual social involvement specifically during times when wealth is outstanding between two twemol are significant. They reveal a concern with maintaining a certain balance between the social or moral aspect of twem relationships and their material aspect.

Visiting and respecting general social obligations to one's partners are necessary to ensure the meeting of gift-exchange obligations. A woman may use her donor's visit as an opportunity to repay a gift earlier than had been agreed


to, or she may send the donor back after reassuring him that his obligation is remembered. A visit is always an occasion for the exchange of information about each other and about events in the partners' respective communities. Either partner's avoidance of the other may be taken as a sign of an intention to default or more generally of not thinking of the other. The relationship is equal in this sense.

Even more so; their mutual visits enable each to borrow still other items from the other. Thus, if Tuant borrowed a pig from Nondis on one occasion, Nondis may borrow a shell from Tuant before the original gift is replaced. In such an instance, the pig and the shell do not cancel each other out even if they have the same exchange value since each was borrowed in a particular context, and must be repaid in the manner agreed upon in that context. Such reciprocal saon are ubiquitous between exchange partners. They are another aspect of the structural equality of twemol, and another reason why our (almost inevitable) use ofterms like "debt' and "credit" is misleading.

Although people should visit twemol to whom they have given valuables, they should not request repayment before the date agreed upon; even after that date, they should not press their recipient too hard or too frequently for repayment. One woman claimed that if her twem partners do not repay her quickly, she visits them frequently to ask them about their intentions. She reported that she tries not to express anger or impatience but explains her own current need for the items she previously gave and asks her partner to treat her well. Requesting repayment from a partner too insistently may cause the latter to avoid one in the future. In that event, one will not receive anything from the person, nor will the person make any further requests. In fact, if an item is pursued too forcefully, its recipient may even threaten not to repay it.

Failure to repay a twem partner's saon, and lackadaisical or inadequate repayments, are generally considered shameful. How well one meets one's gift obligations is central to one's reputation in exchange and to one's ability to accumulate and hold on to exchange partners. Ideally, one ought to repay saon before one is asked explicitly to do so, and one ought to be prepared to repay quickly once a request is made. Certainly one ought to meet any deadlines for repayment to which one has previously committed oneself.

Many people have rather conscious strategies for the deployment of valuables, enabling them to prepare for requests for the repayment of things they owe and to keep track of their exchange "accounts" - all without the benefit of written bookkeeping procedures. One common strategy is to organize short "chains." For example, if Kelom receives an item from Yal, which she gives to Walipa, she prefers to wait until Walipa repays her before herself repaying Yal. If, however, Yal requires a repayment at a time when Walipa cannot repay Kelom, then Kelom must be prepared to request an appropriate item for Yal from some other of her exchange partners; she might even have to contract a new exchange obligation.


Several persons questioned about these matters noted that if one develops a reputation for quick repayment, others will want to give one things. If one is lax, people will say that they have no pearl shells or pigs when one asks for them. I was told that to become a big-man, one must always have valuables on hand to give and one must always try to repay bad pearl shells with good ones.

Dissolving partnerships

Of course, people often fall far short of one another's expectations, big-men included. Young people are more explicit about their ploys for delaying the repayment of gifts:

Two teen-aged men told me about their tactics for handling exchange partners. They admitted that they often borrowed from "old women" in the community and then worked hard to avoid them: running off in the opposite direction whenever they heard one of the women coming towards them on village paths. One of the youths reported that he owes K20 to his brother's wife. When he cannot avoid her, he says he purposely talks too much and too fast to prevent her from asking him about the money!

Adults may also become overwhelmed by the requests of their twemol for the repayment of valuables, and may treat them in ways that do not conform to the ideals outlined above. Table 3.3 indicates some of the reasons why informants no longer transact with people whom they used to count as twem partners. The rea.<;ons differ somewhat for male and female informants. Men tend to terminate partnerships for reasons having to do with clan events and clan relationships a bit more frequently than women do. Both men and women tend to stop interacting with their partners predominantly for reasons having to do with personal exchanges. This is not surprising, as twem exchanges are generally more frequent occurrences than clan events and disputes are. 21

Men and women terminate partnerships at about the same rate, although women have fewer exchange partners than men do overall. While it is unclear from these data whether big-men tend to drop a smaller or greater proportion of their partnerships relative to the proportion dropped by ordinary men, one leader asserted that he followed a deliberate policy of trying to stay on good terms with all persons with whom he had transacted. Maintaining partnerships when one lives more than a couple of hours' walk away from one's partner is a problem, especially for old people and for women. More will be said about the nature of dropped partnerships in the last part of this chapter.

Terminating partnerships is not necessarily a definitive or irreversible process.

22 If one or the other party is dissatisfied with the adequacy of a repay

ment, for example, he or she may simply stop responding to the other person's requests for valuables and not make any requests back. The two may drift apart without formally announcing that they will not see each other again.

88 8_ --


But they may take up their partnership again if one of them makes an effort · to set things straight:

A widower in his late forties, Konduko (Ml7) was once married to a woman of Keperop (a subcl~ associated with Yansup in the Upper Mendi community of Angamanda). Sometime around 1970, the leader of another Yansup subclan in Angamanda died and people accused the Keperop of being responsible for killing him by means of sorcery. As a result of these accusations, five of Konduko's wife's brothers left Angamanda and moved to Kaupena, in lalibu, about three hours by car from Senkere in the next Provincial district.

Subsequently, Konduko's wife died. Her brothers were too far away to come mou:n he~ deat? with him and so Konduko figured that this meant that his exchange relatiOnships With them were over. In 1978, however, a relative of Konduko's wife died in Kaupena, and her brothers sent word to Konduko to come to the funeral. As a result of this, Konduko thought that perhaps the relationship might rekindle. [See also the section "Affinal Transactions and the Development of Networks," earlier in this chapter, and note 14.]

When one's exchange partners refuse to repay a gift or repay it inadequately, one may tell them that one is displeased and warn them that one will not transact with them again. Apart from this personal dyadic sanction, there are more powerful and more public ways to express one's displeasure (and perhaps to affect a partner's behavior).

First, people may let others know how their exchange partners behave. People's own experiences in exchange and other people's reputations as twem partners are topics of gossip both for men and for women. As I have described, requests for shells, pigs, and other items are not generally hidden. Observers may be present when two people sit down together to discuss a transaction. People know in a general way who has given what to whom, and they follow the details of activities and plans of those agnates and neighbors to whom they are close. Agnates and neighbors may occasionally put one another in touch with one another's affines and other partners. Therefore, members of a community have numbers of exchange partners in common. If a partner treats one of them poorly, others in the community may learn about it. As a result, inadequate repayments occasionally cost a person more than a single partnership.

The second way in which errant exchange partners are brought into line is through joint action on the part of those who gave them valuables. I was told that in former times a man's donors would occasionally attempt to prevent him from killing his pigs at clan prestations, seizing the opportunity afforded by these public contexts to confront him with their personal dissatisfactions and demand payment. Even today, part of the special tension associated with pig kills comes from the thought that some of one's exchange partners will show up disgruntled and create a scene. Nowadays too, people may take their complaints concerning unreciprocated gifts to the district court:


In one case, a woman had a disagreement with her husband and subsequently came to her brother's house in the Senkere community to live l]ntil the dispute was resolved. If the dispute could not be resolved, the woman and her brother asserted, no divorce would be possible until her husband repaid the saon of members of her clan. She and her brother knew who had given him wealth, smce she had been present during some of the transactions and her brother had been responsible for putting his agnates in touch witli his sister's husband (as well as some of that man's brothers).

This discussion of the knowledge that the Mendi often have of each other's exchanges is not meant to suggest that everyone seeks to know everything about everyone else in Mendi communities. As I described them earlier, the Mendi explicitly value minding one's own business and believe that even one's own brothers' foibles are "their own affair." Nevertheless, the workings of the exchange system, and in particular the methods by which people attempt to control one another's behavior, depend on the tacit fact of the generalized knowledge I have been describing. One learns of the significance . of such knowledge in contexts when it is deliberately restricted (e.g., the practice of disguising preferential treatment of some partners). One also learns about such knowledge when it is called out of hiding that is, when exchange etiquette has been breached and this knowledge is used in ways that encourage people to the respectable standard.

"Roads," "searches," and the logic of twem relationships

The last case, cited above, leads us into a final set of points concerning the social character of twem relationships. These have to do once again with the way in which wealth mediates social relationships and with the rationale of personal transactions between exchange partners. They most clearly demonstrate that network relationships cannot be understood only as a functional means of facilitating clan festivals, but must be interpreted instead as a form of sociality in their own right.

The mutual obligation twemol recognize goes beyond giving one another any wealth on hand and not already promised for some specific purpose; it is more active than that. When a person does not have an appropriate pig, pearl shell or other item for his twemol, he does not always simply send the person away. If he wants to hold onto the partner, then he will find ways of drawing on his network in order to find the requested item. One way or the other, he strives to give his partners access to valuables.

Roads and searches. When one has no appropriate valuables on hand, two common alternatives exist that have important implications for our understanding of exchange in Mendi. First, as the preceding case implied, one can introduce one's exchange partners to one's neighbors and agnates who may have the item being sought and may wish to establish an exchange relationship


with. the person themselves. Like marriage, this action extends exchange connections by creating new "roads" on which valuables may travel: it expands the networks of felJow clan members and of twem partners alike. Such connections may be made in an indirect way, as well:

Enk gave Al~ome K~OO, for which he required a pig of equal value in repayment. Alcon:e obta~ned a ptg. from one of his other exchange partners to repay the debt but Enk dtd not like the ammal. Alcome found another pig worth K260 which Enk accepted, but then Alcome had to collect K40 to make up the difference between the value of th~ money he had originally received and that of the pig Enk had accepted. He asked his clan brother Nare for the money. Nare did not have K40 on hand but obtained it from his twem partner Karia, and gave it to Alcome on the condition that the latter be responsible for repaying Karia himself. As a result, Alcome and Karia became twem partners themselves even though they had never interacted before Nare brought them together.

Second, exchange partners may tell each other that although they do not h~ve a requested item on hand, they will be able to obtain it shortly from a thrrd partner. I call this behavior a "search" (I do not know a specific Mendi term for it). That is, not having the money on hand, Nare could have told Alcome that he would find K40 for him, which Alcome would have then owed to Nare. Nare could have himself obtained the money from Karia, and assumed the responsibility for repaying him himself. Unlike the creation of new "roads" of exchange, "searches" do not expand anyone's network. Nevertheless, "searches" are interesting. Nare would have accepted theresponsibility for repaying a gift in order to give a gift. He would not have invested wealth he had on hand, nor would he have created a saon, a giftcredit on which he could later draw.

The point of this common practice appears to be internal to the social logic of exchange network relationships themselves, which demands that wealth circulate rapidly. The motivation, on an individual level, is to be a good exchange partner: to satisfy and even to outdo the expectations of one's partners as to one's ability to provide them with valuables. The practical effect of this motivation, and of the internal logic of network exchanges, is that people are not satisfied merely with generously giving valuables they have on hand that they have not already allocated. What they do not themselves have, they try to find elsewhere, incurring gift-debts along the way. Although, as I noted earlier, people like to construct small chains of exchange, they often act as if it is more important to respond quickly to a request than to keep their "accounts" in order. They request gifts in order to give or to reciprocate gifts. They comb their networks for idle wealth and direct it to where it is currently needed.

In the event that one's exchange partners do not have a requested item on hand, a search precipitates searches on the part of some of these people, thereby affecting the distribution of wealth in their networks. Ultimately an


appropriate item will be found and directed, ~ink by link, to the person who ade the "initial" request (although there ts no real end to the process).

~hus, wealth is kept in circulation; it is channeled to where it i~ neede~ along overlapping networks in an utterly decentralized, b~t syste_mattc, fash10n.

In circulation the dialectical character of wealth ts manifest - a polysemy the Mendi themselves recognize, and sometimes overtly exploit in political discourse. Pigs, money, and pearl shells pass through innumerable hands, now satisfying personal obligations between twem partners, no':" demonstr~ting brotherly solidarity, and periodically playing a role at pubhc cerem~mes as well. None of these ends is final, and thus all acts of exchange are bastcally ambiguous.

In this sense, "searches" and other aspects of twem action are not accurately viewed as means of preparing for group events. The Mendi do not give gifts just to have credits to draw on when it b~comes n~cessary for them to contribute to their clans' ceremonies. Ceremomal prestatlons may well be the "pivot of all interclan relations," as Ryan (1961: 69) wrote, but they do not account for the sort of relations with which I have been concerned here. In fact an accumulation of personal gift obligations, as a result of network excha~ges, may even inhibit as easily as it may facilitate participation in clan prestations. Giving gifts implies trust but entails risk. The people to whom one has given wealth may not be able to reciprocal: wh~n on~ has nee~ !or the items again. And, especially in the case of prestat10ns mvolvmg t?e kdhng of pigs (before which one is expected to repay affinal debts), a surfett of such obligations may interfere with one's contribution in clan events.

The logic of twem relations. Classical political economists su~~ as Adam Smith, whose way of thinking still informs Western presupposttlons about these things,23 assumed that social wealth varies with the development of the division of labor, itself entailed in an original human propensity to exchange. Smith (1937 [1776]: 22) elaborated:

When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exc.hanging that sull?lus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above hts own consumptiOn, for sue~ parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. Everyma~ thu~ lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society Itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.

By this logic, the rationale for exchange in Mendi is opaque. How are we to understand Nare's assertion (in the chapter epigraph) that he cannot depend on his own "hand" alone in an agrarian system in which everyone bas access to land and produces the same products (that is, a system in which the division of labor is not elaborated beyond the household)?

Exchange in Mendi is not necessitated by the specialization of production. Culturally constituted and explained in terms of intergroup politics and per-

I I 1'

,, . I

''

li

i '

I·. rl I! I ,II,


sonal reputation and now "thoroughly established" as a social given, ex- · change is necessitated by a regionally and individually differentiated demand · for things that everyone produces (or alternatively, for things like pearl shells and money, which most people do not really produce, but which everyone has). The differential need for wealth from individual to individual is the result of a unique covergence of demands on each of them coming from their clansmen and exchange partners.

In any case, things resting idly in a person's house are of no value. They acquire their value when they are used to articulate and express different kinds of social relationships, whether that involves the repayment of a personal gift or a contribution to a formal clan prestation. Both searches and roads make sense in a system in which wealth has social value in circulation. Searches, in particular, redistribute wealth more rationally within and ~etween exc~ange networks. A search communicates the demand for wealth widely; the pomt of this practice is to move or transport wealth to where it is needed for transactional or display purposes (where it makes an individual or group "name," or mediates a social relationship). As a complement to searches, the point of creating new exchange roads is to expand other people's networks and to articulate them more closely to one's own. This articulation ensures that searches will be successful, and that wealth will ultimately be found so long as enough people repay the gifts they are given and give away valuables that they will themselves need at a later date.

Insofar as they create value, it may be useful to treat searches and other network practices as a kind of work. 24 The net effect of exchange work - this wide communication of the demand for valuables - may be to keep the level of demand relatively high and constant: not what one would expect if one attended only to the temporal patterning of clan ceremonial exchange (which is characterized, in Mendi, by occasional large-scale events and long periods of relative inactivity).

Finally, the logic of twem exchange has implications for the kind of control individuals exercise over things. People do not own things in Mendi culture in the way "private" property is owned in a commodity economy, that is, as an exclusive "holding" and with a goal of productive accumulation. Access to things is not exclusive as it is in systems of "private" property: When an individual has something in Mendi, this does not imply that others do not have it, so much as it specifies an open-ended set of people who share a claim on it. What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours; from an ego-centered viewpoint, you have a claim on the valuables held by any of your n:'emol and they have a claim on valuables you are holding. Moreover, we~lth ~s not held or accumulated as such in Mendi. Since people have an obhgatton to exchange - whether jointly with their agnates during clan festivals or reciprocally with people in their networks all the time - no one holds wealth for very


long. People control the allocation of the valuables they are given, but they must pass them on if they are to realize their value.

The right to control the disposition of wealth is widely distributed in Mendi. Almost anyone- male or female, young or old- may assume the responsibility for repaying an item obtained from an exchange partner or agnate. Everyone is "in between," to pirate Marilyn Strathern' s ( 1972) phrase. Everyone conveys valuables between exchange partners or between an exchange partner and a fellow clan member. Men introduce their clan brothers to their sisters' husbands or wife's father, and they obtain items from the one in order to give to the other. Men obtain items from their sisters in order to give to their wives, and women obtain items from their husband's sisters to give to their own male and female agnates, and so on. We will return to this point in the next chapter, for it has a bearing on our understanding of the social position of Mendi women.

The structure of exchange networks

From one perspective, networks are ephemeral because they are ego centered. Each person builds up a roster of partnerships over his or her lifetime, but these partnerships are not bequeathed to members of the next generation. Networks are dissolved upon the death of their creators, their potential for wealth mobilization dissipated. The development of social inequality may thereby be dampened; while individuals can build up large networks and thereby gain access to much wealth, they do not establish wealthy "dynasties."

From another perspective, networks are not ephemeral but are systematically reproduced (particularly in the context of marriage) and are part of the social structure. As such, their equalizing character qualifies the implicit hierarchy of clan organization. This section outlines some regularities concerning twem networks, as social structures. 25

The expansion of networks

We have seen how the social logic of network relationships demands the continual circulation of valuables. The Mendi attempt to accommodate their exchange partners' and fellow clan members' requests for items by giving them things they have on hand. But, as a result, people often do not have many unallocated valuables in their possession when their partners visit them. When, as is common, it is not possible simply to give what is in one's house, one requests things from another exchange partner, from a member of one's clan or from an acquaintance with whom one has not previously transacted. Alternatively, one may put individual partners in touch with others in one's network who have what they want.

l04 What gifts engender

That is, maintaining existing partnerships depends, at least partly, on the expansion of exchange networks. As was noted in the preceding section, creating new exchange linkages (roads) expands networks. And a search of one's network for wealth may precipitate new linkages. In the course of a search, a man's twemol may introduce him to one of his or her other partners. A man might also request wealth from his affines and others whom he has met before but with whom he has never actually transacted. New partnerships often begin with personal transactions, the purpose of which (from the perspective of the· recipient) might be to maintain an older partnership by giving or repaying a gift, and (from the viewpoint of the donor) might be to begin a new partnership.

So, the expansion of networks is itself not strictly the result of moka-style "competitive" exchanges, wherein repayment necessarily involves a "principle of increment'' (Strathern 1971). The Mendi begin new partnerships just to repay one valuable with its equivalent. Personal networks in Mendi may have a tendency to expand throughout a person's vigorous adulthood even in the absence of any need to repay a gift with an increment. It is not a matter of contracting two new debts in order to repay an old one "with interest" (compare Ryan 1961: 66; I will have more to say about incremental repayments in Chapters 5 and 6).

Networks also expand in response to the need to contribute to public events and to formal clan prestations. These are important motives for the expansion of networks (see the case of Anga in the section "Personal Networks Before Marriage," earlier in this chapter). But both participation in and sponsorship of kowar and clan prestations like ol tenga depend on a preexisting and wellmaintained network and not on the ability to initiate new partnerships before and during those events.

New partnerships are begun simply to keep up with the demands of existing partners. Partners' needs are never so predictable, nor is their ability to give (or to make repayments on time) so perfect, that one can neatly match up all one's existing gift-debts and gift-credits. Only rarely does B request a pig from A to give to C, repaying A only when C repays. More often Arequests a repayment from B before C repays B, and the latter requests an appropriate valuable from D in order to meet A's demand. Occasionally, this requires initiating a new partnership. The process of acquiring new partners in order to satisfy older ones proceeds until a balance is achieved between the desire people have to participate in personal and group exchanges and their ability to handle the demands made on them by increasing numbers of partners.

According to their own personal exchange histories, 26 big-men consciously and systematically expand their networks throughout the period during which they are building and trying to maintain their reputations as organizers of clan displays. During this period, big-men tend to initiate new relationships when they need valuables rather than simply requesting them from existing part-


ners. They also spend much of their time doing exchange work and simply visiting their partners (although, as I noted earlier, they are not necessarily better than other people at holding onto particular partners). Ordinary people do not expand their networks quite as systematically as big-men do. They appear to prefer to transact with people with whom they already have exchange relationships. Nevertheless, they too expand their networks, in spite of themselves, for the reasons given above.

As a result of this process of expansion, people typically have networks that exceed their immediate needs for wealth. That is, a list of the people with whom any person has outstanding saon constitutes only a subset of their total exchange network (a subset I will refer to as an "active" network). At any one time, a large proportion of a person's network is "inactive" with respect to wealth exchange. The inactive portion constitutes a kind of insurance protecting against shortfalls of wealth that occur from time to time within the active portion of the network, accommodating the loss of active partnerships due to death or disputes, and making it possible for one to respond to an occasional extraordinary need for large amounts of wealth.

Tables 3.4 and 3.5 summarize information concerning the sizes of the individual exchange networks of twenty-three men and twenty women in the Senkere community (see Tables B.4 and B.5 in Appendix B for more detailed information). These tables describe informants' active networks and total networks (distinguishing numbers of male and female exchange partners in each) and indicate the percentage of the total network active during 1978-9. Table 3.6 compares active and total networks.

By ''total networks'' I mean all those clan members, affines, other kin, and unrelated people with whom informants have transacted in the past and reported as still part of their network.27 "Active" partnerships are a subset of total networks including all those agnates, affines, other kin, and unrelated people with whom informants had gift obligations outstanding as of May 1978, as well as all those with whom informants transacted during the study period (May 1978 to February 1979).28 Frequently, the people with whom informants had unreciprocated gift obligations in May were the same people who had given or received short-term gifts during the ten-month study period. That is, information concerning people's active networks indicated who were informants' most important clan supporters and exchange partners, with whom they transacted most frequently. Whereas a person may transact two or more times a year with his or her most important partners, many partnerships remain inactive for long periods of time, with transactions occurring only once every five or ten years. 29

Active partnerships constitute about 57 percent of total networks overall: 61 percent for men and 51 percent for women. 30 The range in both cases is wide (see Tables B.4 and B.5 in Appendix B). For men, between 42 and 82 percent of their networks were active; for women, between 16 and 91 percent

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

Male partners Female partners and supporters and supporters

Average partners Informants Total Percentage Average Total Percentage Average Total per person

Men (n=23) 753 82 33 164 18 7 917 40 Women (n=20) 292 67 15 143 33 7 435 22

Total (n = 43) 1,045 77 24 307 23 7 1,352 31

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

Table 3.5. Total exchange networks (including "active," inactive, and "terminated" partners and agnates) of43 men and women

Male partners Female partners and supporters and supporters

Total Average partners Informants Total Percentage Average Total Percentage Average network per person

Men (n=23) 1,237 82 54 273 18 12 1,510 66 Women (n=20) 564 66 28 285 34 14 849 42 Total (n = 43) 1,801 76 42 558 24 13 2,359 55

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

~ 109 Twem: personal exchange partnerships

a were active. These figures are not necessarily positively correlated with the <!.)

e !'-- general level of exchange activity in which a person engages. The big-men in & ~v:; "' the sample that is, those major leaders with regional reputations as ol koma

-~ (see especially Ml, and then M2) and outspoken men who were well re-

~ ~ spected locally (M3, MS-9) did not activate a larger proportion of their s::: "' 00 ""· o_ total networks than did ordinary men. 31 In fact, they appeared to activate a E-< = N

smaller proportion. The same is true of the most active women.

'0 ~ These facts do not tell us about the quality of particular partnerships, that a <!.) <!.) is, the ease with which each partner makes valuables accessible to the other 3 ~ ~ ·ii !'-- \() N

-"" "' and the content of the personal friendship. The big-man Pua (M2), whose oo:lEg ~~ C';, E-< S<E~ - active network constitutes only 50 percent of his total network, has a large

number of big-men among his active partners who can provide him with pigs,

~ pearl shells, or money just about whenever he asks for them. Just as impor-a tant, he has a large number of people in his active network with whom he is

t: 8 very close. Even though they are not big-men, they make special efforts to "' tE 00 \()

~ \0 \() \()

accommodate his needs, making them reliable sources of valuables. But Kone :;!

'"t:! (Ml2), an ordinary man, activates more than 80 percent of his network in t: <::l

-.,; order to get the things he needs; he has a smaller proportion of exchange ~ s~ "" \()

00 partners who are regularly able to respond to his requests for valuables. Con-~ IS "' 0~ !'-- 00 \()

E-< = NN \()

~ <!.) .... versely, Kone himself is not always a reliable exchange partner, whereas Pua ~~ ~ c.& seems always to be able to make available the valuables his partners are seek-

~ <!.) Q.. <l.l • ing. It may be less common for ordinary men to activate a small proportion c;j :::1 > "' <:> 8 "' ·,e ~ ~"" 6 of their networks and still maintain adequate participation in the life of the ~ ._.'0

~a \0~

"' ""' a -- "" community. For example, Ipa (M13), who keeps only 47 percent of his net-t:

~ work active, is quite inactive in exchanges. Some big-men keep a relatively ~ ~ large proportion of their networks active perhaps because they have fewer '-' a t'i partners who are big-men or who are otherwise reliable sources of goods. ] ~ "! Big-men and ordinary men may be different in terms of the quality of their -N 00 "" ~ \0 If) If) "0 partnerships. They are also quite different in terms of the absolute numbers ~ = o::l

li:! ~ of both their active and total exchange partnerships. Olonda and Pua, the two ·~ "" main big-men in the Senkere community, had more than 50 percent more c;;J2 ~$ 0 </)

..Sl ..!:l partners in their total networks (and in their active networks as well) than did t:: 0~ N, \f"l 00 ~ "' E-< ~ . 5 ~ .... E-< the next closest man. Tenpuri and Epopil (Fl and F2), the two women most

"' ... ~ ·= active in exchanges (and among the most prominent in the community) had .e.. = 0 irs:: "' ~ "'= <l.l •

<"> N If) ~ well over two times more partnerships in their total networks than did the next > "' "'

<!.) </)

~~ If)~

~- closest woman in the sample and more than 60 percent more partners in their s e;;-g t---N ~ .... ::g o::l <::l active networks. The absolute size of networks appears to have a lot to do ~ (;>

-~ ~ with the quantity of wealth a person can amass at any particular time. 32

.:; 0 = t o::l

::0:: N ~ 0.. (;;11"" >< The composition of networks ;!) N C: ~ <Ll

'.ci ~

11 '--' II 8 "" ~ ~ ~ U'}

The foregoing tables give some indication of the expandable character of ex-<l.l ~ <!.) ... '-'s 3 ~ ~ <.8 = 0 change networks, but they do not indicate how networks are structured in = ~~ &; ~ E-< - terms of various types of relatives. Table 3.7 and 3.8 summarize the structure


Table 3. 7. Structure of the networks of 23 men

Male informants Exchange partners (n=23)

Nopae-receiving partners Maternal

Total 251 Percentage 17 Average 10.9

Affinal (own; clansmen's) Total 408 Percentage 27 Average 17.7

Nopae-giving partners Clanswomen; related through clanswomen


Clansmen-partners" Total 456 Percentage 30 Average 19.8

Unrelated partners Total 126 Percentage 8 Average 5.5

Total network Grand total 1,510 Average 65.7

Note: See Table B.6 for further information. "Nopae gifts are reciprocal and optional with this category of partner.

of the total networks of the same forty-three people (see also Tables B.6 and B.7 in Appendix B). ,

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


Table 3.8. Structure of the networks of20 women

Female informants Exchange partners (n=20)



Clansmen; clansmen's affines Total 229 Percentage 27 Average lL4

Nopae-giving partners Affinal (Hand his clan, including S, D)


Clanswomen; related through clanswomen" Total 155 Percentage 18 Average 7.7

Unrelated partners Total 49 Percentage 6 Average 2.4

Total network Grand total 849 Average 42.4

Note: See Table B.? for further information. "Nopae gifts !Ire reciprocal and optional with this category of partner.

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

To tabulate this information is misleading insofar as it encourages one to think of relationships as static and mutually exclusive. Particularly with re-

" ~~------------------------------------------------------------------_. .... __________________________________________________________________ __


gard to affines who are members of one's own tribe and clan members who . are also twemol, an individual may be considered either a fellow group member or part of one's network, in different contexts. Moreover, the contexts themselves are ambiguous: Different people sometimes interpret the same context in contradictory ways. The tables, with their putatively exclusive categories of person, summarize information obtained by means of a formal interview (itself a highly ambiguous social context) in which informants were asked to list all their exchange partners, even those with whom they did not currently have a saon outstanding. The first seven informants interviewed (M2, 3, 5, 12, 15, and 18; see Appendix B) grouped their lists spontaneously and explicitly in terms of the categories distinguished in the tables; for example, "Pipna amtia polowa" (first I will do [my] mother's line), followed by a list of names of people related to the speaker through his mother (including the mother's sister and her affines). Thereafter, other informants were prompted to do the same.33 Questions concerning why particular exchange partners were included in one category when they could have been included in another were not pursued within the context of this interview.

With these serious cautions in mind, the information summarized in Tables 3.7 and 3.8 is in accord with informants' qualitative statements concerning how networks are constructed. For both men and women,. their spouse's relatives and their own fellow clansmen are quantitatively their most important kinds of partners. But whereas for men their spouse's relatives (to whom men give incremental gifts) constitute a smaller proportion of their networks than do their fellow clansmen, for women the emphasis was reversed: their clansmen (to whom women give incremental gifts) constitute a smaller proportion of their networks than do their spouse's relatives.

Most of the cases that appear far off the average can be explained with reference to personal history (again, refer to Tables B.6 and B.7). For example, Anga (M20), to whom I referred earlier as a young man bent on improving his reputation by means of a kowar (funeral) payment, has an inordinate number of mother's relatives in his exchange network. This is largely explained by the fact that he lives with his mother's people, who are to him what their father's relatives are to the other young men in the sample: M21, M22, and M23. Whereas 67 percent of Anga's network is made up of his mother's people, between 21 and 26 percent of the networks of the other young men were matrilateral. While about 10 percent of Anga's network are male agnates, the figure is between 32 and 39 percent for the other three youths. Second, partly because he was planning to sponsor a kowar, Anga had expanded his network rapidly during the previous couple of years, whereas the other young men had not. He expanded his network to include people closest at hand. Therefore, his number of matrilateral exchange partners is large even compared with the usual number of agnatic supporters cited by people living agnatically. The low proportion of partners related through his


Table 3. 9. Structure of terminated partnerships of 23 men

Male informants (n 23)



Affinal (own; clansmen's) Total 95 Percentage 40 Average 4.1

Nopae-giving partners Clanswomen; related through clanswomen


Clansmen-partnersa Total 31 Percentage 13 Average 1.3

Unrelated partners Total 20 Percentage 8 Average .9

Total terminated Grand total 240

10.4

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

female agnates can also be explained with reference to his atypical residence. Anga had not kept in touch with his clan sisters as he might have done had he been living with his father's people.

Tupal (M18), a bachelor in his thirties, has a relatively large number of "unrelated" exchange partners because he has worked extensively and traveled outside the Mendi Valley and because he has made an effort to compensate for a lack of affines.

Needless to say, the five men with the smallest proportions of wives' relatives in their networks (Ml8, M20-23) were all unmarried during the study period. It might be noted that the two widowed men included in the sample Tasupae (Ml9), who was quite old, and Konduko (M17), who was in his forties both had a respectable proportion of wives' relatives in their networks. As I noted earlier in the discussion of Konduko's situation, widowers


Table 3.10. Structure of terminated partnerships of 20 women

Exchange partners


Total Percentage Average

Clansmen; clansmen's affines Total Percentage Average

Nopae-giving partners Affinal (Hand his clan, including S, D)

Total Percentage Average

Clanswomen; related through clanswomena Total Percentage Average

Unrelated partners Total Percentage Average

Total terminated Grand total Average

Note: See Table B.9 for further information.

Female informants (n=20)

49 38

2.4

32 25

1.6

15 12 .7

28 22

1.4

4 3

.2

128 6.4

aN opae gifts are reciprocal and optional with this category of partner.

are not dependent on their wives as active intermediaries to maintain their affinal relationships.

Terminated partnerships

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

l15 Twem: personal exchange partnerships

Table 3 .11. Terminated partnerships in relation to total networks of23 men

Exchange partners

Maternal Terminated Total Percentage

Affinal (own; clansmen's) Terminated Total Percentage

Clanswomen; related through clanswomen Terminated Total Percentage

Clansmen-partners Terminated Total Percentage

Unrelated partners Terminated Total Percentage

Total terminated Total network Percentage

Male informants (n=23)

59 251 24

95 408

23

35 269

13

31 456

7

20 126

16 240

1,510 16

the different categories of exchange relationship. It appears that maternal relatives are the most problematic category of exchange partner - while they are more plentiful than "unrelated" partnerships, they are still not numerous themselves and are dropped relatively frequently. This may be an indirect reflection of the fact that the inheritance of exchange partnerships is relatively unimportant in Mendi.

Here too, men and women differ in emphasis. Of all their twemol, men are most likely to drop their wives' relatives. These relationships are difficult because they are governed by complex rules for the repayment of gifts by the husband. For men, matrilateral death payments are a frequent context for alienating their mother's relatives. Of all their exchange partners, women are most likely to drop their mother's relatives and often for logistical reasons.

Whereas the preceding two tables showed the relative proportion of terminated partnerships in each relationship category, Tables 3.11 and 3.12 compare terminated partnerships with total networks. They show that men and


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

Exchange partners

Maternal Terminated Total Percentage

Clansmen; clansmen's affines Terminated Total Percentage

Affinal (Hand his clan, including S, D) Terminated Total Percentage

Clanswomen; related through clanswomen Terminated Total Percentage

Unrelated partners Terminated Total Percentage

Total terminated Total network

Female informants (n 20)

49 127 39

32 229

14

15 289

5

28 155

18

4 49

8 128 849

15

women terminate partnerships at an equal rate (15 to 16 percent of their total networks). Combining figures from male and female informants, 29 percent of matrilateral partnerships were terminated, whereas for other categories, the combined percentage terminated was between 9 and 16 percent. The tables detail some differences between men's and women's networks.

Throughout this discussion, we have been treating women as active parties in exchange along with men. It is to a more detailed consideration of some of the differences between men's and women's participation that we now turn.

4 Gender ideology and the politics of exchange

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

Introduction

Antagonism between the sexes, and a separation of their respective domains of activity, are-pervasivefaets oflife-iilHfgnlandsocietjes. Many ethno]raphers have noted the importance of gender symbolism in Highland ideology; as I indicated in Chapter 2, Mendi idioms concerning social solidarity an1 continuity emphasize the male role. Men are the predominant actors in ritual I and public political meetings in Mendi, as elsewhere in the Highlands. A , cording to available accounts, Highland men are predominant in excJlange a· well.

In the most thorough analysis of Highland women's social role, Marilyn Strathern (1972) argued that women in the Hagen area are primarily producers and that men are transactors in a system in which men devalue production in relation to exchange. Women argue that their work raising pigs ought to give them the right to a say in the disposition of the animals. But men deny that women's work gives them this right. Even though women's participation in the vaunted sphere of exchange is active and committed - unlike for women referred to by anthropologists working elsewhere in the Highlands it is not independent or autonomous.

This follows from the fact that women have no legitimate means of enforc-

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What Gifts Engender, Chapter 3. TWEM: Personal Exchange Partnerships

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Transcript of What Gifts Engender, Chapter 3. TWEM: Personal Exchange Partnerships