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

DEBBORA BATTAGLIA-Mount

Holyoke College

It is a quiet tribute to Audrey Richards that to the year of her death and beyond, pieces of the matrilineal puzzle-the problem of the masculine position within matrilineal ideologiescontinue to emerge as salient topics in ethnology. Originally, of course, the matter was conceived in functionalist terms. Richards spoke of it as the problem of combining recognition of descent through the woman with the rule of exogamous marriage (1970[ 19501:246)in groups where males are socially and politically dominant. Yet, interpreted more broadly as a problem in cultural valuation and the reproductive value attributed to masculine and feminine labor, there begin to emerge more clearly the models in terms of which people conceive their strategies for social action; models that also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. Among the Sabarl of Papua New Guinea, the puzzle is expressed in notions of paternal nurture and how to formally acknowledge it; their solutions referred to the mortuary rituals and exchanges that dominate political life. This essay, which is part of a growing body of discussion on modes of valuation among matrilineal Austronesian-speakingpeoples, explores the Sabarl solution for what it may contribute to a broader understanding of gender- and age-based symmetries and asymmetries more generally. The Sabarl are a dialect group within the Saisai (Eastern Calvados Chain) language area of the Louisiade Archipelago, part of the southern Massim culture area of Milne Bay Province. They number approximately seven hundred people, living in villages and scattered hamlets along the beaches of three main islands. Most Sabarl belong to one of three major matriclans, and residence is virilocal. The Sabarl cultivate sago primarily, and yams in swidden gardens. But the soil i s in many cases poor and water scarce, necessitating some subsistence voyaging during the lean months. These follow a lively growing season that features communal fishing, interisland political trade voyaging, and exchange feasts honoring the dead. Although Sabarl individuals have had historical encounters with the kula area (see Battaglia

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

Copyright 0 1985 by the American Anthropological Association

0094-0496/85/030427-15$2.00/1

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1983a1, the epicenter of ceremonial exchange in this area is the interisland mortuary complex called segaiya. The term in its generic use refers to series of ritual and exchange feasts that follow the death of individuals and feature dramatized interactions between the paternal and maternal kin of the deceased and the latters affines. As we shall see, it is within the activities of death that the cultural meaning and . . . organizational power (Traube 1980:llO) of affinity are focused and revealed. Marilyn Strathern has recently observed that many of the matrilineal systems [of the Massim] are interesting in their conceptualization of nurturant paternity . . . in terms of productive labor which creates debt (1984:53). She cites specifically Weiners work on Trobriand reproduction (1980) and Damons recent study of Muyuw kinship and exchange (1983). The Sabarl show some attributes of both the Trobriand and Muyuw systems (as do the Tubetube, who differ in other ways from all three; see Macintyres important 1983 study). For example, like the Muyuw the Sabarl do not distinguish cross-cousins by gender and expressly prohibit cross-cousin marriage. Like the Kiriwina they feature womens artifacts (bulk wealth or palo) in mortuary exchanges and emphasize the asymmetrical father-child relationship symbolically. Indeed, asked why mortuary feasts are so important to them, the Sabarl, like the Kiriwina, say, We feed our father. However, the Sabarl offer a picture of elaboration, beyond anything we currently know from the northern Massim, of the ritual symbolism of paternal nurture and the central problem it addresses: namely, the termination of paternal substance within a matrilineal social system, and the attendant need to construct a continuity. Thus, as paternal substance in one form (for example, in the blood) terminates, other forms (for example, objects and food) are brought to substitute for it, as they must, in order for paternity to be acknowledged as making a difference to social viability. This substitution can be seen to be in the interest of the greater global order (Valeri 1980) wherein clans exchanging women are considered symmetrical (never explicitly stated by the Sabarl, this is given by the system) as well as of reducing the particular asymmetries of wife-givers and wife-takers (expressed by the Sabarl in myth and explanations of rituals and exchanges). Since exchange and not ritual symbolism is the focusof Weiners and Damons analyses, the Sabarl material will also perhaps demonstrate the appropriateness of examining the latter more closely, and (eventually) the two together, across cultures.

giving from the heart

It is not a new argument that ambivalence in parenuchild relationships constitutes the core of peoples relationshipsto the ancestors (see, for example, Goody 1962; Gough 1958) and as such i s a central element in mortuary events. In many matrilineal societies the ambivalence is intensified by the functional split in identity of the senior male parent into father and mothers brother. In addressing this ambivalence, the problem for the Sabarl seems to be to honor the role of the father (tarnad as originator and sustainer of life, while remaining dutifully respectful of the mothers brother (notau). As we shall see, their solution is intriguing-namely, to bestow upon the genitor a future not automatically guaranteed within the system: a legitimate future, beyond death, for his socially constituted paternal identity. At the base of parenuchild ambivalence are nurture expectations determined by gender, generation, and clan. Sabarl children expect to be nurtured or fed by ascendant-generation females of their own maternal clan (for example, a mother or mothers sister), and from ascendant-generation males (for example, a mothers brother) they expect the chance of earning gifts of nurture. But from a father and other patrilateral kin, gifts of nurture are never expected. Rather, they are always viewed as acts of pure generosity-giving from the heart (henunuwana)-which children feel morally obliged to acknowledge. Relationshipswith the ancestors and the roots of the mortuary complex begin here, with the constructed relationship between

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fathers and children: fathers earning superiority by initiating nurture out of kindness and love. This relationship undergoes a twist in the course of the developmental cycle, as male children especially begin to turn the direction of giving back toward their fathers through intervivos gifts called powon. They do this, as we shortly discuss in more detail, with the help of their mothers, on one level to establish a claim on postmortem inheritance, but on another to express otherness to their fathers as affines. Because powon is different from expressing gratitude, even in conflict with it, the relationship takes on ambivalence. Acknowledging paternal nurture is at least as important as any gesture for economic gain, and moreover it is vulgar to act as if the two are related. However, there is no instituted path available to children for expressing gratitude to their fathers directly. Instead, they must turn to their fathers sisters children, who are also competitors for their fathers property. This ambivalent giving in the name of gratitude takes the form of a ritualized feeding relationship between the cross-cousins (nubaiu), who call each other my father (tamau) or my child (natu). Fathers are fathers sisters children, and children are mothers brothers children. The relations should be assigned very early in life. Once they are in place, these generational terms come to cover or obviate (yabo) the more general term cross-cousin, covering, in other words, a symmetrical relationship with an asymmetrical one. Thus, the father-child relationship is not embedded in the kin-term system (as it is in the Trobriands), nor is it gender-specific. It is rather as if an asymmetry derived from kindly thoughts were laid upon a problematical, conflictual equality, to be lifted off at some significant moment. The moment comes when the children are buried by their fathers. In other words, this is an essential relationship in cultural terms: a pact between the living and their undertakers.A child without a father to arrange such things is an orphan in the Sabarl view. The dependence of all persons on the generosity of patrilateral kin is eventually recognized by the assignment of a father (male or female) who calls them my child, and it is the actual fathers responsibility to arrange this with one or more of his sisters. The perfect arrangement matches a child of one opposite sex sibling with a child of the other by order of birth. However, in practice, sibling sets are the operating units, where siblings act interchangeably the roles of father-again, regardless of sex (see Figure 1). The ritual exchanges between cousin fathers and children consist of gifts of young coconut (bwaku) or bones (titiwa), and counter-gifts called mortuary feast (segaiya). If children fall seriously ill, their fathers present them with a young coconut to make them light and healthy again. The soft green coconut flesh is said to represent bones that are not yet hard, not yet fully grown: the skeletal core of the child which is formed at conception by

AL
titiwa titiwa

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

cousin (nubaiu)

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semen, and the leaddry (keve) part of the body-the part that physically endures after death. These gifts of bones may come to include cooked ceremonial foods, especially sago-coconut pudding (moni), and occasionally a stone axe blade ftobwatobwa), the primary currency of the area, as children grow older. The pudding symbolizes semen and is regarded as the richest of all ceremonial foods. Axe blades are said to add grease to the food-adding, metaphorically, that is, another product of semen bestowed upon children in the womb by their fathers: the grease or fat which makes the blood thick and the body plump and warm. The primary objects of mens wealth among the Sabarl, procured by them in the debt-based system of political exchange, axe blades thus represent a concretization of productive masculine energies, which fathers invest in themselves through their cousin children (see Battaglia 1983b for further discussion of conception and axe blade symbolism).2Certain absences are notable here: namely of yams and other things associated with the productivity of women and the leaddry feminine products of womens blood-human flesh especially. All gifts to make children strong at times of illness are products of masculine efforts. Ultimately they are passed along to the childrens maternal kin to invest on their behalf. Thus, on one level, a gift of bones is a statement of paternal responsibility for the development of children, as well as a bid for whatever material appreciation that concern might inspire. But it is also a pledge that the ritual father will act as custodian of the bones-the physical rernains-of the child, by digging the grave and preparing the corpse when the time comes. If the child recovers, appreciation is expressed by presenting counter-gifts called segaiya to the father. The segaiya prestations of a recovered child typically take the form of future food such as puppies (for those who eat dog), young fruit or palm trees, and the like. In addition the child may host a non-exchange feast (sulili) for his or her cousin father. More than expressing thanks, these gestures convey a promise from children and their kin that their fathers concern, as well as their future services as undertakers, will be rewarded with cooked food and axe blades and formally honored at future mortuary feasts-a point we return to shortly. Bones, then, refer to the artifacts of paternal nurture-the beginning and end of the physical person and the endowments from paternal kin. As a masculine, lean/dry component of the body, they also represent invulnerability to decay, relative at least to their feminine lean/ dry counterpart: the flesh of the body produced by the mothers blood. Prestations of segaiya, meanwhile, reference the occasion when bones will be transformed into greasy sago-coconut pudding (rnoni)and ceremonial axes and in this form be reclaimed by the paternal clan.3 As grease or fat in the human body is said to complete the person, giving segaiya is a gesture of adding the extra energy which brings a child to potential. Thus the interactions of cousin fathers and children not only extend the rudiments of exchange beyond the natal home, but mark the beginning and end of a persons public life. They are, concretely, what paternal commitment amounts to in the way of survival insurance. We see that the titiwa-segaiya exchanges involve on the one hand reciprocity-the linear exchange of things of equivalent value as initiated by the father-and eventually a cyclical process of replacement. Reciprocal exchanges of coconut for future food occur during the childs lifetime. Replacement occurs at the childs death, when cooked food and axe blades replace his promises. It is interesting that this transactional arrangement is modeled as if (unnaturally) children predecease their fathers. If things actually go otherwise and a persons father dies before him, or if a father-child relationship lapses or is never established, a fatherless child will be assigned a ritual father posthumously, often as a way of paying off some unrelated debt to the patrilateral kin. If this occurs it is much to the delight of the new father, who receives the usual amount of valuables merely for standing in. However, the father-child relationship is important to understand in another sense,
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namely, for its effect of upstaging the global order of matriclan symmetry which forms the environment of affinal exchanges at marriage and at death. In local terms once again, the asymmetry covers symmetry, substitutingfor it a ritually constructed continuity based on the temporary asymmetries projected in giving from fathers to ~ hi l dren.~ The background for understandingthis licensed takeover of descent by patrilateral kin lies in the relationship of junior persons to senior ones generally, and the giving that expresses the respect of juniors during the lifetimes of both.

giving to show respect

As mentioned earlier, it is common for siblings of either sex to act interchangeably the role of father in carrying out the numerous tasks of segaiya. Likewise, children of either sex are given the same ritual treatment at death. If formalized giving between persons actually separated by generation is significantly less gender-blind, it i s because the problems it addresses in giving are the problems of males within the social system. Like ritualized giving from cousin fathers to their children, giving time and things to respected seniors involves people in a process which amounts to investing in their future selves. They do this by lending labor and valuables to senior males-to their mothers brothers and fathers especially-with the expectation of receiving in return more than they have given. This kind of calculated giving from junior persons to senior males is what we have already spoken of as powon: inter-vivos lending with interest. Powon is central in giving to show respect. There i s among the Sabarl (and unlike Muyuw) a special bond between mothers brothers and sisters children, and particularly the male children who will inherit the mothers brothers place in the social structure. A nephew is called by his MB my first (nogama) and calls his MB my man (notau). During his uncles lifetime a nephew works to gain his uncles respect, showing respect by laboring in his uncles gardens and sago groves, and giving material support to his uncles projects in the form of powon. When the uncle dies, his nephew (gama) represents his interests and his clan at his mortuary feast, in effect replacing him at his funeral. The nephews reward i s recognition, expressed in material forms during exchange, of his elevated place in the clan. Thus, by showing respect for his mothers brother, and as an adult loaning him valuables to use in exchange, a sisters son is investing indirectly in himself. An example is Desalles powon (see Figure 2). Desalles senior uncle (A) dies. Desalles younger uncle (B) asks Desalle for powon in the form of one axe blade, in order to exchange with As widow (C) during segaiya. Because the request i s to powon (that is, this is an intervivos loan), B should return it with considerable interest, for example, five to one, sometime during his lifetime and without being asked. If, however, Desalle is short an axe blade and not able to wait for the repayment with interest, he can ask B to return his powon, but will not

Figure 2. Powon for axe blades.

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expect any interest, regardless of the interval. If B dies before repayingthe powon, the debt falls to Bs children ( )a d D- n to Desalles cousin child-who must repay even more interest than their father would have (for example, ten axe blades to one). They do so out of respect for Desalle as their fathers replacement. In another scenario (see Figure 3), Desalles mother (A) asks him for an axe blade to powon on his behalf. His mother (A) then gives the axe blade to her brother (B) when he asks for her help with an exchange, stating that she eventually wants garden land for Desalle in return. We see that in the larger symbolic scheme of things, the system works a transformation of sago into bones, through the medium of axe blades. Giving an uncle help in the sago groves; giving him axe blades, the traditional tools for felling sago palms, out of respect, is here transformed into giving from the heart to the uncles children in the form of bones. In effect, the young coconut signals a shift from a pre- to a postmortem time frame for the return on the gift: a shift to a time in the future when bones will be further transformed into sagococonut pudding and axe blades (see below). Again in symbolic terms, the grease and energy of reproductive and productive labor are returned to the fathers clan, this being the part of the child for which the father is responsible. In this way the uncle-nephew relationship artificially continues, but with a positive shift in attitude, beyond the death of the uncle. Meanwhile, with regard to garden land, which is the rightful inheritance of nephews, the return is merely helped along the appropriate path by powon and directed toward one nephew rather than another. The process assures that gifts from the senior man to one of his own children (for example, to his nephews ritual child) are eventually returned to the nephew as segaiya after the childs (his childs) death. But there is one obstacle in this patrilineal detour: namely, that gifts from fathers to their offspring may be legitimate returns on powon from the children, and as such transferred to them permanently. The detour, in other words, may well become an alternate path to a different destination. In contrast topowon for gardens and sago, powon between children and fathers, which locks descent into a patriline, usually involves investing in residence land and almost always involves mothers as agents. For example, Desalles mother (A) gives one of his axe blades to her husband (Desalles father, C) and his siblings when they ask for help, to secure Desalles rights to residence land the siblings or their own children might otherwise claim when C dies. This stakes out motherchild custodial rights over residential property until the mother dies, at which point further prestations may be made by the children to the fathers siblings or their children (their father cross-cousins) to finalize the transfer. The arrangement also formally introduces respect into an otherwise sentiment-basedrelationship-traces of the uncle-nephew pattern of powon. Whether powon is for objects or for land of one kind or another, death sets the final time limit for calling in the debt. This occurs in the very early stages of segaiya. In other words, it is

Figure 3. Powon for land.

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not a debt transferable beyond the duration of the mortuary feasts for the debtor, that is, beyond his active memory as the feasts represent it. As with other asymmetrical exchanges, and particularly where incremental return and self-gain are a feature of the operation, powon is viewed as an obstruction to resolving tensions between clanic groups (the stated aim of segaiya). In short, we see that since the bones given to a child may ultimately be used by him to powon his own father and mothers brother for the different types of essential resources they control, father-child giving in effect initiates a process that results in the descent of all the valued things a child inherits from male relatives during his or her lifetime. Furthermore, the process is characterized symbolically as a natural extension of what the father builds in the wornb-and not merely as a contrivance. This naturalized paternal continuity is built on the structure of cross-cousin symmetry, yet works through the dynamic asymmetry of uncles and heirs, fathers and children to separate residence and garden land (cf. the Trobriands, where both are controlled by the father)-to separate the father and the uncle in the man. Axe blades, circulating through him, have the reverse effect of consolidating his underlying identity as male nurture provider and bridging the gap between his and his sisters children (see Figure 4). The paradox is that cousin fathers (givers)are simultaneously children (receivers)vis-ivis other cross-cousins.The titles used during mortuary feasts reiterate the point. Ritual fathers are called feast eater (tohan segaiya) at the feasts for their children and the children are referred to as sago-coconut pudding (no rnoni). In the person of the heir, in other words, a patriline lurks: father and child in one. Nonetheless, the father in a person dies for good at the death of his child. There comes a time in the series of feasts when the father is recompensed and the partnership is dissolved; when he or she is reduced to a child to be one day eaten by his or her own cousin father, as in myth the first mortal ancestor dies for good and the children he or she has fed upon live on forever. The important point is that father-child relations cannot be understood by looking at the death of a single person, but must be seen as a movement back and forth between nurturing and consuming, feeding and eating, through time and through the younger generation of persons who are laterally connected. This said, we can now turn to placing asymmetrical exchange relationships in context of the greater support system.

Figure 4. The titiwa-segaiyalpowon system.

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giving to support
For the Sabarl, all matriclans are created equal. Then, at marriage, things change. One clanic group becomes indebted to another for the gift of a wife, and it falls to the groom to express his groups indebtedness by giving a ceremonial shell necklace (bak) to the bride and, it is said, her mother. This prestation, called wisebua, legalizes the marriage. As recently as 20 years ago, huge wisebua prestations of yams from the labor of the husband and his kin (often helped by his wife) were presented to the wifes mother and siblings, and after they were dead, to the wifes elder siblings, at least on good harvest years. Nowadays, if harvest-time gifts are made at all, they are privately given without fuss. However, large-scalewisebua in the form of a canoe should still be given by the husband if he hopes to claim enduring rights to his childrens productive energies. The husband either organizes to build the canoe himself (usually with the help of friends, whom he arranges to feed and supply with tobacco and betelnut), or else purchases it over time in a series of payments to the manufacturers. These canoe-purchase transactions, involving large-scale prestations, returned with increment are referred to as leau. As indicated by the term, which has historical roots in competitive incremental giving between the leaders of sometimes hostile places, the value of the canoe is considered to be greater than the sum of things given, and is closely tied to prestige. In this case, the future value to the groom lies in his childrens labor, also in the use that his wifes people will make of the canoe for finding valuables and pigs to support him in political exchange when he needs it. For as well as legalizing the marriage and establishing paternity rights, wisebua launches a lifetime of affinal support between the two groups. The acceptance of a wisebua necklace pledges the two groups to provide one another with services or help (labe) and material support (muli) without being asked to-that is, as needed, more or less in the spirit of Mausss pure gift. The arrangement is such that relations based on mutual support are built up over time. Because neither side requests the support, neither side is even temporarily denigrated by accepting it, or elevated in the giving. On one level, then, we can see also how the death of one or another spouse would freeze the give and take and throw one matriclan group into the superior position of kin vis-3-vis affines. If the husband dies first, which is thecultural expectation, the wife-givers return to relative parity with wife-takers. The widow is expected to return her marriage necklace as an appeasement offering or soh to her husbands kin, particularly if she plans to remarry. This solu is her final muli, expressing her plea for release from future social and economic obligations to her husbands kin. The widows of men who have given wisebua lavishly during their lifetimes often remain unmarried as a result, even with the salutory return of the necklace. Rarely, however, does a man amass the number of things or offer the services required to replace with objects and food future persons from the matriclan while his wife is still of child-bearing age. In fact, even legendary Sabarl husbands (the most famous, called Kankan, left five widows) seem to have achieved little more that the sentencing of elderly women to lifetime roles as living memorials. If a wife dies before her husband, his kin are at a greater disadvantage. When a widower offers solu in the form of yet another necklace, he is recognizing his continued indebtedness to his wifes kin. If he has given enough wisebua, he takes control over his children and ultimately benefits from their productive energies. However, if he should later remarry, he will not only be expected to give wisebua to his new bride and in-laws, but another necklace to the family of his former wife, as a kind of penalty. This gift for the taboo (for death-time) (segabgabula) is his final muli. In practice, it often takes the form of continued service or gifts to her maternal clan as stipulated by them (see Figure 5). Muli given as support in segaiya and the equivalence it expresses and establishes over time can be viewed as an iconic image of the leveling a man undertakes to achieve within his life-

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Marriage:

Husband dies:

Wife dies:

Remarriage:

Figure 5. Muli.

time. In a sense, men who marry are taking on the mothers of their wives and taking on also the challenge of proving (to the extent their natures allow) their power to waylay matrilineal reproduction. And so the potential i s given for the edge to be taken from the wife-giving rnatriclan and for symmetry to prevail. Paradoxically, a new reproductive circle, involving paternal and maternal matriclans both, takes shape in the process. As much as any kind of interclan tension, it is rnuli and labe, expressed through food and objects, which are on display during a segaiya. Minimally, sisters are expected to support their brothers with yams and brothers to support their sisters with sago whenever these siblings participate in a segaiya. At this time, the yam support is extended by brothers to their spouses, and sago support is extended by sisters to their spouses as affinal support. Thus, for example, if a married man dies, his sister and other clan females will provide the base-level yam support for his segaiya, while his widows brother as affine will provide the sago support. in a system where all of the traditional feast foods are divided, like the human body, into

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categories of leaddry and greasylsweet, yams and sago are the archetypically lean/dry foods of segaiya and the sina qua non of feeding large numbers of visitors. Their exchange value within segaiya lies in their bulk. Cooked, yams and sago are a part of every feast; raw, a feature of bulk exchanges between clanic groups. Yams are closely associated with the spirits of the properly buried and honored dead (balorna), who foster produce growth from matriclan villages beneath the gardens of the earth. People speak of their yams as the gardens children. Sago, meanwhile, is the quarry of marginal swamps, which are haunted by roaming spirits of the dead not properly buried or revered (piwapiwa): homicides, accident victims, and the like. Both yams and sago come in masculine and feminine forms. Furthermore, as leaddry foods in substance, they constitute, respectively, the basic feminine and masculine foods of segaiya (cf. Damon 1983:307), just as flesh and bones are regarded as the basic leaddry, feminine and masculine substances of the human body. They are said to be completed and complemented (gaba) by the greasyhweet foods of segaiya: the pigs and coconuts that are products of masculine labors and that likewise come in masculine and feminine forms. Coconuts are picked by men and boys from small plantations behind their property at the village fringes or scattered in coveside patches around various islands. On Sabarl they are scarce, to the extent that pigs are fed with only the shredded leavings of meat leached of oil. However, a shortage of coconut in sago-based dishes is not a serious embarrassment and coconuts (like firewood and water which are also in short supply) are taken more or less for granted. They are nonetheless significant within segaiya. The nuts are associated with human heads-more particularly the heads of ancestors -and out of respect are never punctured through the indented eyes at the end. The meat is likened to brains; the milk (which has no ritual or practical use within segaiya) with mothers milk; the cream from the meat i s likened to semen. Furthermore, the stench of a burning husk is said to smell like dead bodies, and their use as lids for pots of ceremonial foods is a pervasive reminder of their appropriateness for the occasion. Pigs, meanwhile, alone among ceremonial foods, are consumed at feast-time only and regarded as wealth items analogous to unit-value objects such as axe blades and necklaces. As such, the gift of a pig as rnuli creates a debt which must be cleared on a future occasion, as does the gift of pork parts during the feasting. Pigs are the quintessentially masculine expressions of affinity: literally grease for interisland political trade with partners traditionally established by men through their fathers. As husbands and wives ideally have their fathers matriclans in common (this actually happens about a third of the time), this means that pigs articulate two clanic groups and the coordinated efforts of junior and senior males; they furthermore embody the common identity of the two groups as affines vis-a-vis the dead. Thus to produce a pig within segaiya is an act of personage (in Leenhardts terms), constituting social identity relationally. Although women in the Saisai area own and manage pigs (as they do other masculine items of wealth), even sponsoring exchange feasts in their own names, sailing in search of wealth (lobutu) is still associated with men and the deep-sea space over which they claim mastery in ritual, myth, and actuality. Furthermore, in the Sabarls most important myths, featuring the monstrous first ancestor who brought mortality to the world, the monster is often depicted as a rampaging pig which meets its end at the hands of trickster children. In the myths the children are devoured but escape from the monsters body as eternal balorna. However, the monster dies for good, just as the paternal bloodline terminates in a matrilineal system. Affines in everyday life inherit the problems of this termination. It falls to them to restore the pig during segaiya, to reassert an affinal presence in honor of its patrilateral point of reference. Pigs are a mandatory part of every segaiya series. Though not always included in every feast within the series, a prestation of pig by the affines formally opens the first feast; the last feast is ritually closed by the death of one of the dead persons own pigs at the hands of his clansmen.

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This is important. First, the framing of events in these terms defines the limits of the public performance of interaction between kin and affines. Also, with the slaying of the pig (which incidentally has spent its last night inside the dead persons house), that part of the deceased child which is a paternally constructed product is publicly finished. In former times and less frequently today, this process of finishing the memory would end, in the case of men, in the destruction of his house: the edifice constructed by affinal males on his own fathers land. This is where the importance of durable object counterparts of paternal nurture comes into focus, as we shortly discuss. This translates within the exchange and ritual action of segaiya as an emphasis on the individualistic, masculine components of the event. Although both leaddry and greasyhweet foods should balance one another in a healthy body composed of like elements, people feel they are running on leaddry most of the time. What the feasts of segaiya uniquely offer the Sabarl is the masculine plus of extra greasyhweet foods. Yet it is worth noting that like the surplus of fat on a baby, this grease-the security measure of life-is conceived as a benefit available to everyone, regardless of sex. , The lean/dry foods are talked of as support for the pigs; what the affines supply in general is support for the kins sponsorship. In other words, Sabarl categories of leaddry and greasy/ sweet are more basic than gender divisionsand, furthermore, may be used to blur or compromise gender-based divisions of such things as work and play. It is resonant with this philosophy that the division of labor that underlies food support is by no means straightforward. Indeed, the Sabarl are renowned for working sabsabarl: men doing womens work and women mens. Nonetheless, the more traditional pattern of work (from which the Sabarl are renowned for their deviation) is for men to work the sago groves and women the yam gardens. In addition, the stereotypic expectation is that men will sail in search of durable, individually constituted trade relationships and the unit-value objects that concretize them, while women stay at home with other women and children, manufacturing continually the countless, ephemeral accoutrements of domestic life. The surplus wealth (bigibigii of male and female labors, when it appears on the scene of a segaiya, upstages the basic foods entirely. Pigs we have talked about briefly as the artifacts of constructed relationships on the paternal side. The object counterparts of pigs, representingthe masculine mode of production through appropriation, are stone and shell valuables (gogomwau): the ranked, unit-value axe blades, necklaces, and shell-spatulae sought by men. The axe blades predominate at death as the necklaces and spatulae do at marriage. Axe blades are procured from paternally linked trading partners; the necklaces and the beads for spatulae are gifts from senior women of the clan and figure in segaiya only in the early stages as soh. Also featured at certain feasts is bulk wealth or palo: things traditionally manufactured by women and described as too numerous to count. Bulk wealth consists primarily of coconut leaf skirts (waliJ,pandanus sleeping mats (lam), and fancy coconut leaf baskets (tiltil), but also includes imported clay and enamel pots, ceremonial wooden platters, and store-bought utensils, plates, cloth, and occasionally money. These are items associated with the domestic realm (where money is needed for school fees). Bulk wealth is presented in womens exchanges as jumbled piles representing the undistinguished products of many womens labors. Bulk wealth is viewed as support for the axe blades as (according to the Sabarl) women support men, clanic groups support individuals, and yams support pigs. Divisible and perishable, like the children of the matriclan, like the yams of matriclan gardens, it represents, in effect, female substance and vegetable produce rendered artificial, rendered politically useful within segaiya. Their counterpart in marriage exchanges are the red shell necklaces, procured by senior women through their female children and reinvested in their sons. The difference, of course, is that women do not manufactureshell necklaces, and are therefore only co-managers

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

the bones are harvested

However, our subjects here are the individualistic, masculine exchanges and the solution they pose to the matrilineal puzzle within segaiya. Moreover, in the final analysis, it is the tally of the unit-value objects featured in these exchanges to which people refer in representing the scale of the feast-and the renown of the deceased-to themselves and to others. Special recognition of paternal contributions to the person i s expressed and confirmed in rituals where paternally linked objects and foods are featured items.5 Paternal participation in segaiya begins with undertaking services for the bones of the dead. If nothing else, a body must be buried, and patrilateral kin are the culturally prescribed undertakers (cf. Traube 1980). In the course of preparing the corpse and eventually burying it, the ritual father (segaiya eater) is exposed to powerful doses of pollution. Appreciation of his dangerous work is expressed at the first funeral feast. In a small-scale ritual, the father offers spoonfuls of cooked food to the kin of the deceased, who politely refuse him, instead feeding him with his own spoon and tucking utensils and money into his pockets as well. The event marks the point at which giving is publicly turned in the direction of the paternal clan, advancing the proceedings toward the feast of Sago-Coconut Pudding or Moni, where the father is lavishly feted. During the Moni, whatever the fathers clan contributed over the years solidifies, or better yet matures, into object wealth. The feast itself is opened by the ritual fathers presentation of five axes to the maternal clan heir, inside the house where the dead person lived and where his body was laid to rest before burial. The axes are named for the services the father performed as undertaker. The axes-with their wooden handles described as bones-are the skeletal harvest of what in the Trobriands and elsewhere would be exhumed remains. The same axes are later propped up against one another by the heir to form a corpse of the honored dead, and the corpse is urged with magical spells to reproduce more axe blades (see Battaglia 1983b). Then a significant substitution occurs. The axe corpse is disassembled by the maternal clan heir, who exchanges them for five of his own. These axes are renamed for five ritual foods they are said to complement by metaphorically adding grease. The food, which features the pudding for which the feast i s named, is supplied by close male and female kin of the widowed spouse, and it i s displayed in the sacred exterior space of the dead persons house. The widowed spouse is seated alongside it, covered in skirts and basket caps and surrounded by other bulk wealth objects. It is the responsibility of the spouses brother to prepare the sago-coconut pudding. (If the deceased had never been married the job falls to his or her own maternal kin.) Only men are allowed to prepare ceremonial pudding. The process involves transforming the red, leaddry womans pudding base of sago and water into a bright-white, greasy mans pudding by adding coconut cream, then stirring the mixture with a ceremonial paddle. The paddle, which is carved from red mwadawa wood (a bastard teak), stirs the red and white mixture as, it i s said, a phallus stirs the red and white bloods of women and men to produce a child. When in the next phase of ritual action the father approaches the widowed spouse to collect what is due, he or she matches an axe blade to each of the five corpse blades before removing them, eventually taking away the additional valuables which are propped up around both persons and food, collecting also the polluted baskets worn as caps, the capes, and the other bulk wealth . In effect the widowed spouse offers up the artificial products of his or her clan in exchange for release to engage in the reproduction of children-which the father afterwards frees the spouse to do. It is in this form that the father is repaid for services and generosity-that is,

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

conclusion
With this background on segaiya foods and objects and the exchanges which give them meaning vis-a-vis social and cultural continuity, we are now in a position to get some distance on the theme of paternal nurture as the Sabarl perform it within segaiya. We have observed that men as brothers produce the bare bones, as it were, of Sabarl society when they make leaddry sago for sisters and mothers, standing to inherit a wisebua necklace for their efforts. Indeed, the traditional style of bundling sago into husband/wife pai rsal so said to be like testicles-may be seen as a reference to the power of masculine labor to construct the framework of reproductive partnerships. Men symbolically mark the potentiation of their reproductive reach when they complete in segaiya the process begun in the groves: transforming leanldry sago into greasy/sweet sagococonut pudding for their sisters and, on another level, transforming patrilateral relations into pigs and axe blades-as it were, adding the fat to the feast. In these terms, the segaiya feast and ritual series can be thought of as a person performed: its flesh provided by maternal clan hosts and its bones and fat by affinal males. In a parallel process, the haunting of unsettled sago grove spirits are symbolically laid to rest in the bellies of the living. The theme of male potentiation is summed up in the act of feeding the sisters husbands father, which ideally is an act of feeding ones own fathers clan. This translates on the sociological level as a man coming into a position of strength when his sisters husband dies. (One suspects this is only partly because his sisters yam-producing labors for him and his wife will continue, but his sago-producing labor on her behalf will be reduced.) Ultimately, then, by giving sago pudding to his sisters husbands father, he is returning to his own fathers clan a mature version of the bones given him. The picture regarding symmetry and asymmetry is all the more clear for the fact of the action taking place within a single generation. To summarize from the point of view of a male ego, he i s from the start and forever a dependent child vis-a-vis his fathers clan. This is acknowledged by the part he plays in titiwa-segaiya exchanges early in life, and in his efforts to turn the tables by giving powon to his father through his mother as he grows older. At this point he also begins to recognize his dependence on women of his own clan for bridewealth-a dependence acknowledged by his labors in the sago swamps and his efforts to strengthen his relationship with his mothers brother, again with gifts of powon. He moves from a point of dual to ternary dependence at the marriage either of himself or his sister, when his labors are further divided by his wifes clans demands. When he starts thinking of children, the additional gift of a canoe states his bid for a shift in the balance of power between him and his wifes people. If his sisters husband should die, his dependency will be reduced. However, if his wife predeceases him, he returns to parity with her kin only at the point that he chooses to remarry-indebting himself to yet another set of relations. In short, although Sabarl cross-cousins do not marry, a persons father and child will be members of his fathers clan. Even without marrying into ones own fathers clan (although this happens almost exactly as often as not) one i s keeping things in the family through death exchanges begun in childhood. What in the Trobriands is accomplished through cross-cousin marriage is accomplished here through fathers and children. The paternal clan receives pudding from its nurture investment in the childs wifes brother and it receives axe blades from its nurture investment in the child-exactly as if the child had married into his own fathers clan.

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We also see the emergence of gender at the core of alliance-based giving, not as the result of a process of sibling separation by gender-based labor (as Damon reports for the Muyuw), but rather as a process of sibling coordination and the articulation of distinctive spheres of contribution. Yet, as a code for the conceptualization of difference as a ritual or political fact (Strathern 1984:50), gender is pervasive though not always dominant regarding the process of acknowledging paternal nurture: a process in which the splitting of males into fathers and uncles, juniors and seniors, is in fact central. Specific issues raised here cry out for systematic cross-cultural comparison. These include the centrality of the female in the sphere of biologic and sociologic regeneration (particularly in the context of mortuary rites), the point in constructing an artificial mode of ranking (or collapsing rank) by gender and age, the manufacture and transmission of symbolic substance and its classification as natural or cultural, the weighting of reproduction and reciprocity within exchange systems. Overall, we seem to be encountering among the Sabarl what Giddens has called the coordination of movement in time and space; the coupling of a multiplicity of paths ( 1 979:205), not all of which are gendered. In the final instance, and in their own terms, the challenge for the Sabarl lies in the practical and balanced negotiation of the paths of life, as brought by death into focus and meaning.

notes
Acknowledgments. I would like to thank Marilyn Strathern for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for her always selfless support and wisdom; also Fred Damon, Edward Schieffelin, Roy Wagner, Annette Weiner, and the anonymous A readers for their insights, encouragement, and constructive recommendations. To this might be added groups farther afield. For example, there are striking similarities between the Sabarl and the Barok of New Ireland, for whom paternal nurture is valued over any other kind (Wagner, personal communication). However, within the Massim, it is important to note some illuminating differences between the Muyuw and the Kiriwina, particularly regarding cross-cousins. First, there i s the Trobriand cross-cousin marriage preference and the Muyuw cross-cousin marriage proscription. It seems that Muyuw cross-cousins (nubie), who are not distinguished terminologically by gender, avoid any relationship in everyday life and redefine it as a gender-specific sibling relationship if they happen to live in close proximity. In folklore and myth, the relationship is used to elaborate symbolic themes of similarity and difference-the latter, we assume, more importantly. That the cross-cousin relationship is contentless in ritual and in everyday life is also interesting for the absence it indicates of any ritualized action of bridging between the cousins. Indeed, Damon argues that the process of circulating valued resources-a process derived from the separation of ascendant-generation brothers and sisters through their different kinds of work-serves the continued separation of their children. By extension, paternal nurture is a very separate process from maternal nurture, with fathers, for example, virtually displacing mothers brothers within the system. Darnon goes on to suggest that in the Trobriands, distinguishing cross-cousins by gender is homologous with more elaborate gender differentiation in the area of things, womens wealth providing the most obvious example. Weiner, meanwhile, focuses on the Trobriand trick of marrying into ones fathers clan through a cross-cousin and thereby channeling the flow of exchange onto ones own clan through ones fathers (Weiner 1976:52). In this way clans bond and, people say, they feed their father (Weiner, personal communication). The trick is legitimized by terminology for male egos (FZD= tabu = preferred partner), but is not available to female egos marrying their MBS (tabu),so that again we find gender splitting has an effect on the circulation of persons and things at the cousin level. This also suggests that the reciprocal categories of tama or father (FZD) and latu or child (MBC), used by both sexes, define a relationship more about generational than sibling separation. This difference is an important one, as it reveals an embedded principle of asymmetry at the level of primary Trobriand kinterms. Trobriand marriage exchanges, which form concretely a symbolic bridge across cousins, define the difference even further. lThis is a classic instance of food as well as wealth mediating relations as part of the system of tracing out blood relations (Strathern 1984). Note that the pudding and axe blades given as part of a fathers gift of bones are thus anticipatory symbols, of which there are many in connection with segaiya. What we are seeing, in psychological

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terms, i s prospective imagination writ large as a cultural process, 4For more on the principle of symbolic obviation, see Wagner 1979. SWagner(1985) discusses the ternary nature of role differentiation in central and southern Massim mortuary exchanges, contrasting this to the binary mourning roles of the Trobriands and DEntrecasteaux, and pointing to resulting differences in the direction and content of focal exchanges as oppositional ones between these two areas. It is important to note his argument that these differences relate to differences between hard wealth objects in the central and southern areas, which characteristically circulate and require at least three agents, and relations of domestic production, which are characteristically dual.

references cited
Battaglia, D. 1983a Syndromes of Ceremonial Exchange in the Eastern Calvados: The View From Sabarl Island. In The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. E. Leach and 1. Leach, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983b Projecting Personhood in Melanesia: The Dialects of Artefact Symbolism on Sabarl Island. In Man (NS) 18:289-304. Damon, F. 1983 Muyuw Kinship and the Metamorphosis of Gender Labour. In Man (NS) 18:305-326. Giddens, A. 1979 Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Goody, 1. 1962 Death, Property and the Ancestors. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gough, K. 1958 Cults of the Dead Among the Nayars. journal of American Folklore 71 :446-478. Leenhardt, M. 1979[1947] Do Kamo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Macintyre, M. 1983 Changing Paths: An Historical Ethnography of the Traders of Tubetube. Ph.D. dissertation. The Australian National University. Richards, A. I. 1970[1950] Some Types of Family Structure Amongst the Central Bantu. In African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde, eds. London: Oxford University Press. Strathern, M. 1984 Marriage Exchanges: A Melanesian Comment. Annual Review of Anthropology 13:41-73. Traube, E. 1980 Affines and the Dead: Mambai Rituals of Alliance. In Biidraaen tot de taal-. Land-en Volkenkunde: Dee1 136, le Aflevering. pp. 90-1 15. Valeri, V. 1980 Notes on the Meaning of Marriage Prestations among the Huaulu of Seram. In The Flow of Life. J. Fox, ed. pp. 178-192. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wagner, R. 1979 Lethal Speech. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1985 The Conversion of Conversions: Internal and External Exchange in the Massim. Submitted for publication. Weiner, A. 1976 Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1980 Reproduction: A Replacement for Reciprocity. American Ethnologist 7:71-85.
I Y

Submitted 26 january 1985 Accepted 7 March 1985 Final version received 15 April 1985

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