The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier

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СКАЧАТЬ Moon – two powers that govern the seasons and human destiny well beyond tribal frontiers. Of course, nowadays, the Baruya’s world also includes Europeans, the police, the army and the Administration – instruments of a new institution that is the state. Not forgetting the presence of a new god as well, Jesus Christ, and his adversary, Satan.

      One very important fact will now allow us to distinguish between the realities we designate by the terms ‘tribe’ and ‘ethnic group’, and to show that a shared culture is not enough – as Schneider and his disciples had advanced – to make a set of local groups, kin groups or others, into a society; that is to say, into a whole capable of representing itself to itself as such, and which must reproduce itself as a whole in order to go on existing as such.

      FROM TRIBE TO ETHNIC GROUP

      Let us therefore come back to the fact that, with the exception of a single group,15 all of the Baruya’s neighbours – Wantekia, Usarumpia, Bulakia, Yuwarrounatche, Andje, etc. – speak the same language and have nearly the same customs as the Baruya. All wear the same kinds of clothing, the same insignia; all say that their remote ancestors lived in the Menyamya area.

      In fact, the Baruya and their neighbours form the northwestern edge of a set of local groups that speak related languages and occupy a vast territory stretching from the high valleys in the north to a few kilometres from the shores of the Gulf of Papua in the south. Neighbouring tribes understand each other’s speech, but individuals from tribes located on opposite sides of this immense territory do not. According to linguists using glottochronology, all of these languages split off from a common trunk spoken in the vicinity of Menyamya, and their differentiation probably occurred over the span of a millennium. But it was not only the languages that diverged; the social structures also display striking differences.

      The northern groups, to which the Baruya belong, worship the Sun, emphasize the role of sperm in making babies, and initiate their boys by isolating them in men’s houses, where they engage in ritualized homosexual practices.16 The southern groups, on the other hand, emphasize menstrual blood, their initiations do not include homosexual practices, and they separate their young male initiates from their mothers and the world of women for only a short time.17 Yet in spite of these cultural and social differences, all of these tribes recognize a shared origin, which goes back to the Dreamtime of their mythic ancestors (wandjinia), a common origin attested by the clothing and the insignia worn by the men and the women, which are nearly identical in all groups.18

      But recognizing their common origins and their shared cultural identity does not stop these tribes from fighting each other, massacring their neighbours or seizing all or part of their territory – as the history of the Baruya themselves shows. This shared identity is also recognized by bordering tribes that belong to other linguistic and cultural groups. Moreover, some use derogatory terms, like kukakuka, to designate all of the groups living between Menyamya and the Gulf of Papua. Since Kuka means ‘to steal’ in Baruya, one imagines that the Baruya and their neighbours who share the same culture do not use a term for themselves or each other that evokes a society of thieves whose lethal raids once devastated enemy villages.19

      By ethnic group, I mean the whole set of these local groups – Baruya, Andje, Bulakia, etc. – that recognize each other as having a common origin, speak closely related languages, and share ways of thinking and living, that is to say, representations of the universe and rules of organization which show by their very differences that they belong to one tradition within which these differences appear as possible transformations.20

      It is important to stress that the fact that a Baruya or an Andje belongs to the same ethnic group and knows this does not entitle him (or her) to either land or a spouse, and does not give him any power or authority outside the boundaries of his own local group; neither does it keep the tribes belonging to this ethnic group from making war on each other. In short, the ethnic group is a social and cultural reality, but an ethnic group is not a ‘society’. Conversely, a territorial group such as the Baruya or the Andje does constitute a society. What makes the Baruya a society is first of all the fact that this group has an identity that is expressed by a ‘big name’, a single overarching name that subsumes the names of the particular groups (clans and lineages) and those of the individuals that compose them, and endows everyone with a specific all-encompassing identity they recognize and which is also recognized by the other territorial groups around them (who also have a big name, e.g. Bulakia, Andje, Wantekia, etc.).

      This big name always goes with a territory whose boundaries are known, if not respected or accepted, by the neighbouring groups and over which the group exercises a sort of sovereignty, in the two senses of the term. Sovereignty in the sense that the clans and lineages that make up the Baruya society thereby have the exclusive right to appropriate and exploit parts of this territory in order to extract the bulk of their means of existence. Sovereignty, too, in the sense that the Baruya do not give groups other than themselves the right to resolve the sometimes bloody conflicts that arise between their members. No outside intervention is accepted or requested, save in exceptional circumstances.

      So we see what makes the difference between an ethnic group, which is a social reality without being a society, and a ‘tribe’, which, on the other hand, is a society. The Baruya, the Wantekia, the Usarumpia, etc., speak the same language or closely related dialects, share the same culture and follow the same rules of social organization (sister exchange, male and female initiations, etc.). These facts attest that they belong to a single group of linguistically and culturally related populations, and it is this set of populations that we call an ethnic group, a social reality whose existence was recognized by these populations, who referred to it by a periphrasis: ‘those who wear the same ornaments as we’.

      What thus makes the Baruya, the Wantekia, etc., different societies within the same ethnic set is that each of these groups controls a distinct territory. Because they exploit the resources and extract the bulk of their material means of existence from it, this territory is therefore the first condition for the reproduction of the social groups that make up these societies, and therefore for the reproduction of the social relations that bind them together through marriage, initiations, ritual practices, solidarity in times of war, etc. For a society to exist (as a whole able to reproduce itself), there must be in addition to the ‘mental’ components of social life (representations of the universe, rules for organizing society, values, standards of conduct), a relation of social and material appropriation to the territory from which the group’s members draw a significant fraction of their material means of existence.21

      THE BARUYA ARE A SOCIETY, THE ANGA ETHNIC GROUP IS A COMMUNITY

      This whole that must reproduce itself as such and which constitutes a society consists concretely of a certain number of persons of both sexes and different generations, born into distinct kin groups, often having different social, ritual or other functions, but who exercise in common what could be called a sort of ‘sovereignty’ over their natural environment which ends as soon as they step outside their territorial boundaries. Because of this, all these individuals and groups have a common identity and carry a common name that is added to their personal names (these indicate the person’s lineage, sex, etc.). In addition, all these individuals and groups entertain a certain number of connected but distinct relations – of kinship, material or ritual dependence, subordination of one gender to the other, etc. – such that, for a society to continue to exist, not only must those who die be replaced by others, but the relationships between individuals and groups which characterize this type of society (relations shaped by the kinship system or by the existence of an initiation system) must also be reproduced. And, of course, just as individuals cannot – save in exceptional circumstances – stop producing and reproducing their social relations, neither can they avoid producing their material conditions of existence, which not only ensure their subsistence but also consist in producing or assembling the material conditions necessary for exercising kinship relations, performing initiations, making war, etc.

      Yet СКАЧАТЬ