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Marriage Exchanges: A Melanesian Comment Author(s): Marilyn Strathern Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 13 (1984), pp.

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Ann. Rev. Anthropol. 1984. 13:41-73 Copyright ? 1984 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved

MARRIAGEEXCHANGES:A MELANESIAN COMMENT


Marilyn Strathern
Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra,ACT 2601, Australia

FINDING A SUBJECT MATTER


Levi-Strauss's (117, 118) captureof marriagesystems in terms of elementary continuesto hold us ransomto a certainconceptualizaand complex structures tion of the underpinning exchanges. "Marriage exchange"in its double sense refers to the flow of unions between exchanging social units and to other transactionswhich accompany marriage, such as bridewealth. These latter transactionsmay be an adjunct to the transferof rights in persons, or may facilitate long-termcycles of generalizedexchange. In substitutingreciprocity in things for reciprocityin persons, however, they are also seen to subordinate the exchange of spouses to encompassing structuresof general exchange relations (163), and eventually to promote a move towardcomplex structures (139; cf 84) where such exchange ceases to be of "structural" significance. Melanesia presents clear examples of units defining themselves through exchange, including the exchange of women (134). Yet Melanesia's place in TheElementaryStructuresof Kinship(118, Chap. 28) is not thatof the classic alliance systems but is akin to those intermediate types which relate to elementarystructures throughtheirmarriageprohibitionsandto complex ones throughthe characterof their alliance networks (117, 118a; see 34, 55, 63, 178). With some exceptions (e.g. 146a, 210), Melanesian societies in fact fit the few cases Levi-Straussskepticallyrefersto as defining theirmarriagerules not "intermsof kinship, but ratherin termsof social groupswhich may or may not give wives to or receive wives from one another" (117, p. 17). This entails a problem, as he intimates,namely whetherthe spanof the groupinvolved is part of or exogenous to the marriage"rule"itself; otherwise we are left with the tautology of groups defined as "wife-givers"and "wife-receivers. 41 0084-6570/84/ 1015-0041$02.00

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Melanesia becomes significant in this scheme as an area where "the exchange of wives is also associatedwith the prohibitionof cousins"(1 18, Chap. 10), a point taken up by Muller (139). "Sisterexchange," which is frequently reportedfrom Melanesia, can be subsumedunderthe generalphenomenonof reciprocity. With no implications for enduring alliance, such an exchange simply belongs to the "universalform"of marriage-persons are replaced so that for loss of rights in one, rights in another are gained. Levi-Strauss's principleof reciprocity(1 18, Chap. 5) embeds all marriageexchanges within a total circulation of rights, goods, and persons by prestation and counterprestation.I suggest that this familiarformulationleads to a second, and quite profound, problem to which post-Maussiananthropologyfinds itself heir. the The problem is that of understanding role of exchanges in items other thanpersons when these items arepartof or move in conjunctionwith transactions (such as marriage)conceptualizedas exchanges of persons. Squeamishness aside (170), folk models frequentlysuggest that persons, like things, are the subject of transactions. Melanesian men and women, for instance, may equate women with wealth as well as seeing them as a source of wealth. Anthropologicalaccountsborrowfrom such models (cf 124) in postulatingthat the subject matter of marriage exchange is the exchange of "women" (or "rights"in women's labor or reproductive capacity). Yet the Melanesian materialnow availableindicateswe cannotbe certainof this subjectmatterany more than we can accord intrinsic value to "women." Comaroffcomments that insofar as marriagepayments from a structuralist perspective"areconceived as elements within total exchange systems . . . they arenot in themselves [takenas] an independentobjectof theoreticalstatement" (31, p. 30). The criticism can be extended to the placing of persons as well as payments. If the subject matterof exchanges includes their mechanism [reciprocity in the sense of balance (209)], not merely as facilitatinga relationship but also as characterizinga type of relationship, then in a sense the actors' interestsas transactorsare presumed.Thus we hold that they will be bound to seek some kind of "balance"in their transactions.Comaroff follows Goody (68) in looking askance at such an "encompassinglogic of balancedreciprocity" with its furthertautologicalpremise of equationin the goods exchanged. Clearly this involves a presumptionof accountancy, as Leach (109) long ago noted; it also involves a presumptionof agency. That is, certain parties are presumed to have an interest in the outcome of the exchanges since their respective standing is defined by them. Conceptualizingthe flow of gifts as definitive of social relationshipsabsolves us of course from an economistic anxiety about the pervasiveness of "primitivecommerce," but leads, I think, into a neoclassical view of agency. Marriageexchanges, like otherexchanges, areregardedfrom the viewpoint of the exchangingpartners,a view which rests on a model of (active) subjects transactingwith (passive) objects.

MARRIAGEEXCHANGES

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Not simply by convention but often in explicit resonance with actors' formulations,marriageablefemales may be identified as the objects of male exchangepartners.The model is challengeableelsewhere (e.g. 101, 103), but seems prevalentin Melanesia (and note the Melanesia converse, that womanmarriage does not seem a possibility). Van Baal asked whetherhere women in the "marriagetrade" could be characterizedas objects or were "subjects willingly agreeingto behave as objects"(209, p. 71). The point is not trivial. It turnson the mannerin which debts are structured between persons, and leads away from the self-evident value of women (or women's attributes) objects as to be exchanged and toward the nexus of claims and debts between related persons. Women's lack of indebtedness(but strengthof claims) in relationto certain men makes them, as persons in Van Baal's account, an object of "independenttheoretical statement." In the same year Rubin called for a "politicaleconomy of sexual systems" (165, p. 177). She appeals to Leach (109) to justify widening marriage alliance to a general consideration of economic andpolitical structures.In doing this she againraises the questionof how far afield we may have to seek the "equivalents"for which women are received is only "for"the woman or exchanged, and whetherthe "equivalent" whetherit may be turned"into somethingelse" (165, p. 207). To abstractthe exchange of women from all other exchanges involving persons (in terms of sexual access, genealogical statuses, lineage names, and ancestors), is to have side-steppedour subjectof study. For Rubin this is the exact mechanism"by which particular conventionsof sexuality are producedand maintained" (165, p. 177). But there are two issues here. First, quite apart from the teleology of balancingequivalentsis the broaderquestionof whatelse shouldbe seen as part of a marriage: whatobjectsindeedarebeing "exchanged"? Second, who arethe subjects?For if we withdrawself-evident value fromthe transacted objects, we simultaneouslywithdrawself-evident motivation. If more things are going on in marriagetransactionsthan the exchange of women, then whom do we identify as the transactors? Rubin'scall to armshas been answeredby those who would follow seriously the "Weberian traditionof examiningculturalconstructsfromthe viewpoint of actors within the social system" (150, p. 12). Motivations are thus made manifest (30, 149)-a powerful way of tieing marriage transactions into economic and political arrangements (10). Recent work from Melanesia suggests we might be nudged in anotherdirection as well. Given the extent to which people there model social life on relations of "exchange," it is not thatthe region should yield special insight into marrigeas a form of surprising exchange. A politicaleconomist approach 70, 137) explicitly considersboth (cf the structuringof motivation (who are identified as the transactors)and the extent to which the constitutedobjects of exchange alreadyincorporaterela-

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whatactors tions (178). Thingsmove betweenpeople as encodedrelationships: with a thing is necessarilya relationwith othersin may visualize as a "relation" respect of such a thing. Apropos marriagetransactions,this holds for persons seen as exchangedquiteas muchas for otherobjectsof mediation."Value"(83) in neither case is self-evident. It is now some time since Riviere (160; also 144) showed thatwe could never as define "marriage" an isolable phenomenon. But I intend something a little different in suggesting that we cannot assume what the subject matter of marriage,and ipso facto marriageexchanges, might be. It is not so much that we arefaced with the impossibilityof devising a single analyticalclass (see 31), but thatwe are faced-"present in the minds of the people themselves"(118a, p. 17)-with actors' models. It is they who speak as though interactionwere predictatedupon "debts,"as though women were "wealthobjects," as though marriagewere an "alliance."In Melanesia we furtherencounterthe generally held suppositionthat people affect, influence, and create one anotherthrough exchanges"arethus exchangingmaterialitems. Whatwe analyze as "marriage situatedwithin specific theorieswhich actorshold aboutexchange as such. Our subject matter must surely be the manner in which we are to situate their theories within our analyses.

THE MELANESIAN CONTEXT


exchangesin Melanesia Two excellent syntheses(70, 163) have given marriage a new prominence(for a formerfate see 106). Partsof the areaare well served by thematicallyorientedcollections on marriagesystems (62), kin terminologies (33), political inequality(193); and on gender(20), initiation(80; also 1), and, most recently, theories of conception (88). Regional attentionhas been paid to the central Highlands (19), Vanuatu(2), and the Massim (111). Given the centralityof affinal relations to Melanesian institutions, almost every monograph speaks to marriageexchanges. Defining such exchanges narrowlyas marriagepayments, for example, might make a regionaloverview possible. My aim, however, is to open up the question of what "exchanges" involving and accompanyingmarriageare about(cf 41, 146). I do not aim for synthesis and do not even achieve a survey. It is impossible to define Melanesia in an uncontroversialmanner(see 26, correlations, 71), but since this accountis not concernedwith regional-cultural the matteris of little significance. It has been pointedout, however, that there may be an inadvertentbias in my choice of topics which fails to capturethe specific characterof Austronesian cultures in Melanesia (R. M. Keesing, personalcommunication).Whatdoes matteris thatwe are dealing with an area civilizations of South East Asia, of internaldiversitybut beyond the "literate" nowheresupportingcentralizedstates, with subsistenceandtradingcommuni-

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 45 ties placingemphasison the negotiationof relationships throughexchange, and with marriagearrangements lacking markedpreoccupationwith rank(cf 149) or with the negotiationof corporate property rights(cf 102, 105). It also matters the bulk of the materialon which I drawwas producedin the two decades that following the eclipse of "African models" (4, 104, 194) and noted for a developing self-consciousness about the distinctiveness of the region. of Ethnographers Melanesia will find my referencespatchy. Fiji is ignored; Irian Jaya, the Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago are underreprein sented. I sacrifice a sense of diversity for a certaindetail. More unfortunate my view is the sacrifice of propersocial contextualizationfor the data which follow. It has not been possible to distinguishthese accordingto theirsourcesin ritual practice, everyday behavior, myth, elicited "norms,"or whatever.

Cases Three Ethnographic.


Entry into the problematicdimensions of Melanesian marriageexchanges is providedby threecases. I pick the first (Tor) andthe last (Enga)ethnographies considered in Rubel & Rosman's synthesis (163), and an unrelated third (Kaulong). The Torof lowlandIrianJayaaredescribed(163, following 147, 148) as practicing sister exchange. Over time this becomes bilateral cross-cousin marriage(first cousins are marriageableunder certain circumstances)which producesa "dualorganization,"althoughthere are no namedmoieties. Until a woman has been returnedfor his wife, the bridegroomis in debt to his wife's elder brother.Traditionallythere is no bridewealthbeyond the small gifts he makes in the interim, but there are other items of exchange. Flutes belong to men tracingtheirconnectionsthroughwomen, anda fatherendows his son with a flute which then becomes the propertyof the son's flute-owning maternal line. Brothers-in-lawwho exchange sisters thus also give to each other's flute line. Indeed, Oosterwal (148) sees the flute as matchingthe life-giving properties of the women, though the social identity of donor and recipient shifts generationally. The bride-giver receives a bride for himself, his "matriline" heir (sister's son) receives a flute. Each named flute-owning group initiates boys into its men's house; we may regard the instruments as embodying life-giving capacitiesof a male kind. [Rubel& Rosmango on to considercases of sister exchange accompanied by the direct transfer of semen between moieties (Keraki),andby ceremonialsexual intercourse between intermarrying membersof sodalities which cross-cut women-exchanginggroups (Banaro).]
TOR

Their account of Highlands New Guinea Enga comes largely from Meggitt's work on the Mae (e.g. 132, 133, 135). Widespreadmarriage prohibitionsprevent the duplicationof unions. Wives are regardedas exogeMAE ENGA

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nous to the patrilinealclan body which utilizes affinal and matrilateral as ties roads for ceremonialexchange-both kin-focusedpaymentsto do with illness anddeathcompensationandfor large-scalete ("ceremonial exchange")cycles. Affines are a majorcategory of exchange partner,and unrelatedpartnersmay subsequently cement links through their children's marriage. Unrelated te are partners in any case reportedas behavingas thoughthey were related(135). [For the neighboring Tombema Enga, Feil refers to a "near positive set of marriageprescriptions"(48, p. 292), given the concentrationof marriages between te-making groups, and to exchange relations taking place only between men with an acknowledged female link.] Goodale (65-67) describesthe Kaulongof New Britainas living in hamletsassociatedwith the cognaticdescendantsof an originalclearerof the cultivatedwith otherhamletsmay employ affinal land. Exchange partnerships ties, althoughboth men and women make independentalliances. Marriageis not necessary for prominence in ceremonial exchange; on the contrary, Kaulongset up a conceptualantithesisbetween productive,exchange-oriented work and sexually based reproductionthroughmarriage.Marriedmen reside separatelyfrom the unmarriedwho are associated with the productivesocial center of hamlet activity. A person looks to a child or some kin substituteas a single replacementfor him or herself at his or hernatalhamlet. Marriedcouples are marginalized;the cognatic unit is seen to reproduceitself asexually.
KAULONG

An Analytical Problem
Apropros the three cases sketched here: what form do their "marriageexchanges"take?I startwith what appearsleast problematic.For the Mae Enga it would seem logical to extendout fromprestationswhich accompanythe setting up of marriage (betrothalgifts and bridewealth)to those consequent on it (life-time compensatorygifts to maternalkin). In nopprescriptivesystems of the Enga type, these emerge developmentally as underlying the one-way transformationof affines into consanguines [for the process in reverse or oscillation see (55, 138)]; paymentsto maternalkin are partof what transpires between affines. But should we see the te partnershipsas part of the same as bundle?Although "maternal" well as "affinal"kin so categorizedenterinto te partnerships,Rubel and Rosman suggest that the affine is the ideal type. I draw on J. Weiner's account (unpublished;also 98, 211) of the Foi crosscousin category to indicate two analytical choices. We could regardte partnerships as exploiting the transformativepossibilities of marriage, ties of consanguinityprovidinga base for expandingsocially significantconnections, or we could regardthe te as blocking transformation. The aggressive equality (cf 52) which accompanies ceremonial exchange emphasizes distance and hostility. Not only is te compared to death compensation (135), but actual

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 47 paymentsto maternal kin-compensation when misfortunebefalls theirsister's children(133)-are moreconcernedwith defininglife as combatinginjurythan as owing nourishmentto others. Te partnerships,then, are particularlybound up with marriageprestations Are unrelatedpartnersa between affines. What about the unrelatedpartners? kind of substituteaffine? But this switches both sets of terms:te for marriage for prestation,unrelatedpartner affine. If the system leads us to find analogies for roles as well as actions, then the idea of "marriage exchange"vanishes. It becomes an analog among analogs (213). Exchangesbetween Kaulongaffines lead into a differentimpasse. Innumerable taboos separatewife's from husband's kin, signaled at the inception of marriageby the couple's withdrawalfrom all social life (66). As husbandand wife reemerge,they makepaymentsto each set of kin to allow the one spouse to participatein activities at the other's hamlet. One-way gifts of shells thus removethe restrictionsstage by stage. Shells are also exchangedcompetitively and equally between the kin on each side (65). Similar equality is assertedin ordinary shell-for-shell transactions between exchange partners. In the Kaulongview all productivelaboris convertibleinto shells, and such partners give mutual evidence of their personal productivity. The unilateralgifts to remove affinal taboos thus appear as a negation of exchange: the spouse's sexual (anti-productive) union puts him or her into a domain characterized by one-way, not two-way, flow. The shell merely lifts a restriction,accordingto this account, and is not really in returnfor anything, not even for offspring. Childrenare "notconsideredproductsof humanefficacy, and arethereforenot productsto be symbolized within the many contexts where shells are found" (65, p. 24). Rather,the shells restorethe human, social personawhich was lost in the display of animal sexuality. A person reproduceshis or her social identity as a hamlet memberthrough asexual substitutionor "cloning"(67). By contrastwith the brother-sister tie, Kaulongmarriagecarriesfew productiveor generativeovertonesof a relational kind. Sexual activity in marriageis above all a means to self-replacement. This dramatic disjunction between marriage and "social" reproduction-in terms of the twin Kaulong goals of hamlet identity and personaldevelopment through productive activity-suggests we pause before assuming we know what marriageinvolves, even where women are exchanged for women (J. C. Goodale, personal communication). Tor present a case in point. The Tor evince not disjunctionbut conflation. Herebrothers-in-law reduplicate their connections. Not only do they marry one another's sisters, they endow one another'sflute lines. Such benefit as sisters bring is first directly reciprocated and then paralleled in a counterpartexchange of life-giving instruments.In an extended survey of societies concerned with homosexual procreation,Lindenbaum (121; also 223) observes thatrelationsconstitutedby

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by directsister exchange may be underwritten the exchange of male substance a such as semen, introducing dominanceorderingin antithesisto the equalityof womanwomen-exchange.Torcommunitiesby andlargepracticein-marriage; bestowal and flute-bestowalreplicateeach other in making the sources of life and initiator/father flute dualones-through mother/father the mother'sbrother giver. Tor marriagewould seem to have generativeconnotations.Yet the fact thata woman has been given for a woman (sister exchange) clearly neitherexhausts nor completes the gift bestowal Tor classify as generative.Brothers-in-laware engaged in a separate set of male transactions [a phenomenon elsewhere characterized as "double affinity" (121)]. Are we dealing with surrogate (between the flute-bestowing lines) or with an institutionwhich "marriages" process? Should makes marriagean insignificantpartof the total reproductive marriageand its exchanges be subsumed under the regenerativerole of cult of activity, as an aspectof (male) ritual,a preludeto or aftermath initiation?We are can surmisethatwheresame-sex male partnerships conceived heterosexually (men linked through women, as in the case of Mae Enga affines) then marriageas a heterosexualunion holds different symbolic possibilities from situations where (as among certain societies on the Papuancoast and in the homosexually. Toris interestPlateauareas)such relationsarealso constructed ing in that the "homosexual"identity of men belonging to the one flute line addresses itself not to sexual activity but to the circulationof an objectified life-source. Moreover, although"female"and "male"sources of fertility may be counterposedin the differentexchanges, each is activatedheterosexually: male and female spouses join in marriage and male and female flutes are coupled in ceremony. It has been customaryto interpretmale cult activity with sexual themes as of surrogate for or appropriator heterosexual and/or female fertility. Such heterosexualactivity not only as normarest interpretations on understanding (cf tive and "natural" 30), but as self-evidently "reproductive" 216, 219). (cf are Yet whatkindof transformation we dealingwith in marriage(a relation)and marriageexchanges (also relations)in respect to otherrelationssuch as initiatory entrance into cults where the initiatoris, say, an affine or matrilateral kinsman?There are no groundsother than a prioriones on which to ascribe a specific value to marriagethat is not already preemptedby the value which these other relations give to it. The life-cycle sequencing of Mae Enga exchanges constructsmatrilateral paymentsas consequentupon affinal ones; Kaulong expensively rebuildtheir social world after being marginalizedthroughmarriage;Tor bring us back to the elementary structurewhich inscribes affinity. If our analysis really does embed marriageexchanges within a wider universe of social exchanges, then we have to ask what it is that the exchanges produce. Kaulong may be rather

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 49 extremein the lengths to which they go to classify marriageas antiproductive. Tor would seem to hold that marriages are only partially productive: the circulation of substance effected by the exchange of Tor women has to be completedby the circulationof othersubstances.Enga use marriageas a model for nonkin exchange relations between unrelatedpartners. It would be our mistake to suppose that what women producehas an intrinsicvalue, and that what we witness here are men's social elaborationsupon it. This is not a mistake we can afford if interest is in the manner in which values are constructed. One would of course no more wish to take "women" as whole entities allocated by marriagerules than one would argue such entities derive from genealogically phrasedrelations(53, pp. 287-88; see 177). This would be the fallacy of interpreting designationof statusas classificationof individuals.We may also divest "women"of "essential"attributes.In Leach's words (109, p. 102), "the role of women in the total exchange system cannot be discovered fromfirstprinciples."If we accordno more self-evidentvalue to "women"than we would to the "wealth"which accompaniesmarriagearrangements, then the transactionsno longer appearas the controland disposal of these (self-evident) values. From this, enormous practical difficulties ensue. In analyzing exchanges which accompanymarriage,one needs to know also what the subject matterof marriageis in each case, andevidence often lies only in the exchanges themselves.

ASPECTS OF EXCHANGE:RECENT THEMES


Dependingon what one takes as the scope of "exchange"andthe delineationof Melanesianethnographies relationshipsby "marriage," entice one into a number of considerations.This section summarizessome recent avenues.

The Asymmetryof Affines


In certain areas, notably the Sepik (51, 52, 56, 58, 225; also 76, 159), exchanges between affines structurerelations of inequality and dominance. Indeed, relations of domination and subordinationmay characterizeinterregional communicationwhere tradingactivities involve women as well as men (58, 77). Affines may be differentiated prestationfromotherkin even where by there are no wealth exchanges as such (86). Wealthexchanges in "patrilineal" systems typically set wife-giving connections apart, construing them as an exogenous source of life (e.g. 15) which is never reducibleto its productsbut must always be acknowledged:transactedasymmetrymay come to be located in the mother's brother-sister'schild relationship(119, 146, 188, 211, 222). The outsider-sourcestatus of the mother/mother's brothercan be replaced or augmentedby that of a senior or an affinally related inseminatingmale (97,

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224), blood donor (119), or cult initiator (57, 95, 207). In "matrilineal" systems, on the otherhand, it is not life-sourceswhich tendto be exogenized (cf 13), but (paternal)labor, support, and productivity(7, 142, 215, 216). Although relations may be conceived in terms of rights and claims, as bridewealthinvolvement itself may be, such a formulabelongs to the rhetoric of kinship dependency and obligation ratherthanjural definition or juridical procedure. Asymmetries are constructedthrough the exchange of goods in terms of debts, frequently as a matterof incomplete reciprocity (175) or as explicit compensation (146, 190). Such systems lend themselves to the development of interregionaltradepredicatedon exchange of unlike for unlike (126, 140, 202). The use of affinal relations in trade brings one to the relationshipof "trade"and "exchange"(185; see also 58, 69, 77). Investigationsinto the connection between marriagepatternsand political enmities (e.g. 62, 107, 132) can be reexaminedin the extent to which people seek to perpetuatedifferences throughtradewith ecologically situatedothers (127) and throughceremonial exchange with politically defined others (187, 226).

Life-Cycle Payment and Gender Coding


Differences between the sexes generallyprovide a code for the conceptualization of difference as a ritualor political fact (with some exceptions, e.g. 5). A numberof societies discriminatesocial categories according to the rubricof internalsharingandexternalexchange (16, 29, 131, 175, 202, 211, 221, 222), the andthe gendercoding of mediatinglinks invariablyunderwrites conceptual divide. These idioms feed into those of shared substance. They become an aspect of theories aboutconception and the constitutionof persons (7, 11, 59; G. S. Gillison, unpublished;88, 152, 153, 221, 226) and the extent to which persons may be seen as the productof differentiatedothers (199). Exchanges kin, initiationandmortuary which centeron child growthpaymentsto maternal payments,as well as bridewealth,deal with the mannerin which differentiated substancescombine and flow. Bridewealth itself may be composed of "male" and "female" items, in referenceto the asymmetryof affines (40), and as constitutingdifferentiated bestowal of substance connections (16, 36, 152, 213). These may compel paymentsto maternal(e.g. 51, 146, 157) lifelong continuingand asymmetrical gifts often finalize the or paternalkin, culminatingin mortuary gifts. Mortuary series and thus "complete"the payments(28, 29, 158, 191). This can open the way for the marriageto be repeatedsubsequently(119), which may or may not be associated with permanentalliance relations between the intermarrying groups over the interveninggenerations(cf 15, 55, 119). Mortuarygifts can markedin also effect closure, so severing other claims, a process particularly those matrilinealMassim societies (but see also 138) where the kin group

EXCHANGES 51 MARRIAGE annuls or balances the productiverelations which the deceased enjoyed with othersin orderto regenerateitself (6, 7, 215, 218; also 39, 202). differentiated Categoriesof kin thus negotiate social identitiesthroughthe exchanges they set in motion (174). Critical affinal ties (e.g. with wife's brother) may be relocatedfrom the spouse's actualkin to personswho substitutefor them (108, 197). If indeed we were to take wealth items as festishized bodily substance (82, 121; cf 43, 216), we could account for the creativity attributedto such exchanges in linking kinship-definedpersons. Towarda deceased, clear alignments emerge between interestedcategoriesof kin, such as father'speople and mother's people (6, 202), who literally exchange items. Toward the young, transactionsbetween affines may include care of (15, 58) or things done to a child, as in initiationand pubertyceremonies (1, 59, 79, 80, 119, 206), which modify the person's previous makeup or reveal its condition (10). There is (72, 121). Sexual attributes often an obsession with male growth in particular or "transmitted" (59, 136, 172). may be redefined The relationshipof nurtureto identity has interested a numberof ethnographersthrough substance symbolism, not only in the link between territory andthe food grown on it (189), but in connectionsbetween blood and food, for instance (83); meat and semen (213); yams and sisters (cf 13, 22); flutes and yams (50, 51); and yams and semen (74). These are analogues, perhaps, of concerns which in other parts of the world link marriagerelations and the of "legitimacy"of offspring(e.g. 160). Yet in the same way as transformations (35, 196), products,like nurturers identitymay involve torture(207), nurturing may also have lethal properties(on menstrualblood, e.g. 22, 78). The lethal to propertiesmay be attributed blocked flow (129), i. e. incompletedifferentiation (and see 60); but the encompassment or combining of differentiated elements also leads to powerful images of androgyny (152; cf 44; 216) or pansexuality (59). The fact that a person is internally differentiated (as established by the exchanges deriving from his or her parents'union) may well have to be acted upon (35, 213), either to obliterate some elements or to ensure a balanced constitution. A person's constitutionhas consequences for his or her relations is with others. Parthenogenesis an image manygender-conscioussocieties hold before them (e.g. 59), in exchange terms a collapse of the distinctionbetween eating (sharing substance:self-generating)and circulatingwealth (generating relations with others). Where the former is associated with females and the latter with males (e.g. 198), the consuming, self-reproducingfemale may be depicted as cannibalistic(192). Hence negationof exchange has cosmological dimensions (13). Ingestion can be a metaphorfor reproduction(60), but the reproducing self has to be transformedinto reproducedothers. Processual imagery is evident in attention sometimes paid to excrement as transformed substance/wealth(40, 43, cf 59, 60).

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The three-corneredrelationshipbetween food and wealth and persons is explicit in many contexts, a triadwhich expands the dualismsof food/wealth, food/persons, and persons/wealth (29, 122, 189, 191, 226). However, J. Weiner (221) distinguishessystems based on male-substanceexchange, often combinedwith sisterexchange as in Tor, fromthose based on tracingout blood connections,often combined with bridewealthandpurificatoryrites as in Mae Enga. There is no equation between food and vital substance in the former systems;in the latter, however, food becomes a mediatorbetween persons, as wealthalso is. The significantpoint is thatit is exchangesbetweencategoriesof kin which insertagency into the process-which systemically differentiatethe procreation a gift of as (83) or construepaternal intentionsof wife/sister/mother on the productivity of brother-sister substance (29). Reciprocity also turns relations(22a, 121, 122, 155, 161, 219, 222). Thus genderprovidessame-sex, cross-sex coding possibilities (10, 89, 179, 213) for exchanges between the variousdifferentiated,and sometimes "opposed"(174), partiesto a marriage. Populationswhich define themselvesendogamouslymay "oppose"not gendertyped kinship substancebut (cognatic) kinship and (male) cult (89, 90; also 5; but see 138). That such constructionshave consequences for the mannerin which people (22) is shown in the occasional assimilainteractand managetheirtransactions tion of modernbankingsystems to life-cycle regenerativeritualconcerningthe sources of wealth (181, 182; but see 143).

Same-SexSubstance
Given thatfood, wealth, andpersonsmay all be seen to be constitutedby or to flow in certain relationships, a fourth term may be added: sex. An equation between food and sex, or more significantlythe actions of eating and copulating (114), is commonly made (e.g. 192, 205, 212). On Herdt's(82) suggestion thatmale sexual substancemay be objectified, even as wealth items frequently objectify female sexual substance, we can argue that categories of persons "pass around"sexual attributesamong themselves (223). Marriageexchange may be seen to complete the spouses' genderdefinition(7, 40, 160). Focusing on the sexual componenthere (ratherthanon parentage)drawsattentionto the pervasivenessof genital idioms (95). Social personaemay be sexed, a project which initiationritualoften takes upon itself in redefiningsexual identity. As we have seen, however, a.single gender need not be encompassing;thus male initiatesmay learnthattheirsexuality includesfemale elements, as throughthe female or bisexual image of flute or men's house (50, 59, 81, 125, 178). Male sexuality defined in encounterwith spirit-brides(10, 176) models relationsof alliance. Different emphasis may be placed on the potency of blood and of semen (221; 223 surveys the correlates of the concern with growth and decline

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 53 presentedin these images). In the same way as these substances apparently circulatein exchange, so personsexpendingthemselves (36, 82, 98) affect the show the kinds growthanddepletionof others(73, 136, 208). Such interactions of influences elsewhere constructed through the compelling nature of gift exchange (23, 141): contact and display forces others into response. Recent attentionhas been drawn to the dramaturgicmode in which same-sex male (79, 81, 82, 95,97, 98, identityis achievedthrough(male) homosexualnurture 121, 174; for a review see 82a). The "sexual"imageryhere should not prevent us, however, from comparisons with other same-sex constructions, as in or co-substance "brotherhood" "matrilineal" parthenogenesis.

Rules and Taboos


Recent work on kinship terminologies addressesthe definitive natureof exchange in relations between affines (15, 16, 40, 51, 100, 225; cf 34). The has questionof "rules"in marriagearrangements been revived (124, 146, 178; cf 159, the essays in 33, and especially 154), as has the role of "taboos"in are affinalrelations(e.g. 142, 175, 213). Conjugaltransactions also characterized by rules which speak to the spouses' influence on each other (10, 46, 54, 73, 78, 97, 226). This underlinesthe degree to which relations institutedby marriageareregardedas subjectto people's motivationand intention-it is not simply the products or benefits of marriage which receive symbolization (fertility, wealth) but how actors attachthese productsto themselves through theirown actions, includingcooking (74), hunting,anddancing;in pig-killing, men may be likened to birds reproductively nesting (114; cf 178, 214). Conversely, all-male analogs of sexual activity and reproduction(e.g. pigkilling and transactionsin general)can be opposed to the humanbirthprocess (166). In these rules and taboos, then, we encounterstatementsabout agency. with Access to the spiritworld may be througha male medium's "marriage" a spiritfemale (184). The conjunctionpromptscomparisonwith access through sacrifice involving mediating objects such as pigs, acts sometimes offering explicit comparison with affinal exchange (e.g. 123, 156, 178; M. Reay, personal communication).

Division of Labor
It is importantthat the division of labor between husband and wife and its organizationgenerally be considered part of marriagetransactions.I do not mean simply in terms of control of a spouse's labor power (cf 121), but as integralto affinal exchange based on perceptionsof differentiatedmale and female activity (see 12, 22b, 87). Damon (40) makes the case for a Massim society. Many of the matrilinealsystems are interestingin theirconceptualization of nurturant paternity(e.g. 8, 216; cf 142) in terms of productive labor which creates debt. "Groomprice" may mark the acquisitionof a husband's

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labor, "thehandof the man," in a matrilinealcontext (143), even as the "hand" of the wife is significantin certainpatrilinealones (120). Young (unpublished) describesa patrilinealMassim equationbetween men's laborand food. In this region "food"obtained throughproductive activity is an importantobject of exchange. The vulnerabilityof one spouse to the other, as a matter of-sometimes (91, mutual-pollution (45, 85, 128; but see 78) or sorcery/witchcraft/poison 98, 196), puts them in a transactionalrelationship.This transactionalquality may be prefiguredin betrothalor courtinggifts (40, 179) where the gift object of partakes the natureof the recipientwho thusbecomes dependenton the other for his/her identity or completion. The dependency between them may be or strengthening weakening;for example, where wives areheld to "grow"their husbands(10, 121), they sustain male growth itself as an outcome of transactions with differentiatedothers.

Products of Labor
by Wealthexchangeswhich accompanymarriage andlargeconsist of valuables andthe productsof labor(food, pigs) ratherthanthe meansof production(137, 183). Gardeningrights will be allocatedto the incoming spouse (e.g. 142), or he or she is "endowed"with stock (99, 196) or wealth (143), butkin groupsare not on the whole engaged in majorpropertytransfers.Unless magic is owned, is "inheritance" also of less significance at death than the finalizing of debt relations.Nevertheless, marriageslead to the institutingof households, andthe economically productivecharacterof these social units has received attention of two kinds. First, consider the natureof the rights one spouse gains to the other's labor [and with respect to affinal labor see (76)]. Where a husband is heavily involvedin horticultural work, as well as exchange, the productsof his energies betweenthe wife andherchildrenandhis own kin. Where tendto be distributed considerable laboring work falls on women, we often find its benefits are concentratedin the hands of the husband(and his kin). When such work is convertedinto wealth, in these lattersocieties questions arise as to the nature in of the wife's continuingclaims (47, 87, 91, 113) and women's participation the exchanges following marriage.Women are sometimes markedas visible actorsin bridewealth negotiationson this acount(49, 112, 145, 167, 183;butcf 92). facilitate the Secondly, there is the way in which household arrangements accumulationof wealth (63, 91, 137, 195). Only to a limited degree (in comparisonwith many non-Melanesiansystems) do seniors control the fortunes of juniors throughtheir manipulationof bridewealthvaluables (cf 137, 194); the controlof seniors emerges with more force where wife bestowal is a matter of debt and credit (158) and in cult and initiation contexts where

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 55 knowledge or rankis at issue (5, 93; see the essays in 2). Nevertheless, thereis renewed theoretical interest in the relationshipbetween production and exchange (38, 69, 122, 123, 137). Whetheror not "labor"is conceived as embodiedin valuableshad preoccupied recent discussions of the kula area (38, 110, 140, 218; also see 64, 91). as The circulationof "labor" distinctfrom "name"indicatesdifferentpossibilites for the creationof debt relations. "Ceremonial exchange"may be separated from affinal and other kin prestations, and the degree to which such politics become divorcedfromkinshipor remainlocked into it is discussed centrallyby Rubel & Rosman (163; see also 3, 151). Marriageexchanges may form the of basis for transformations value, facilitatingthe detachmentof objects from a kinship nexus (140) and perhaps feeding into rank (161). Elsewhere affinal relations remain an explicit context for exchange (e.g. 17, 21, 47, 48, 115, 116, 158, 167) and ceremony (174); they may promote indirect competition between (equal)clans competingin the size of theirindividual(unequal)affinal prestations (56). Relations with male partnersare sometimes compared to relations with female kin who come and go in marriage(114); occasionally there is an apparentdisjunctionbetween marital/affinalexchanges and other transactionsin wealth or food (131). interestedin "reciprocity" When attentionis drawnaway from transactors to the circulationof items themselves, it becomes clearthatexchangerelationsare over time. It has been suggested, notably by A. Weiner (216"reproduced" 218, 220), that we should look at mechanisms of regenerationas a totality. Affinal relations, she argues, are not to be understoodby focusing only on transactionsassociatedwith marriage,an argument made from the perspective "is as thatmarriage not perceivedby Trobrianders 'exchangeof women' "(216, p. 180; however, see 70, 109). The circulationof wealth and productscan be visualized as dissipatingand replacingand thus "reproducing" values attached to social identitiesand relationships(219). The embodimentof kinship values in wealth is arguedfor other areasalso (137). Before consideringthe implications of this for contexts in which we do encounterthe exchangeof women, it is illuminatingto turn to recent syntheses of some of the diverse materialpresented in this section.

TWO SYNTHESES
Explicit interesthas been shown in the mannerin which Melanesianceremonial exchange transactions not directly based on positive rules stipulating the exchange of women nevertheless display forms analogous to asymmetricor symmetricmarriagestructures.Thus cases have been made for analyzingsuch systems in termsof restrictedor generalizedexchangeprinciples(38, 48, 178, 209, 222; see also 42, 96, 146, 155, 210). Insofaras these can be reducedto the

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transactions(110, 141), differencebetween debt-cancellingand debt-creating actors' models of indebtednessare at issue. More concretely, it has been observedthatwhere sister exchange accompanies homosexual theories of male growth, then a restricted exchange of "women"is being combinedwith the generalizedcirculationof semen (63, 64). Bridewealthsystems evince a contrastbetweenthose based on unilateralsets of (e.g. 137, paymentsand those where reciprocitiesare met in counterpayments 146a). These two observationsraise questionsnot simply of the replicationof exchange structures,for which marriageexchanges may be paradigmatic,but connectionsset up throughmarriagesand of the relationshipbetween particular other cycles of dependency or regeneration. A systematicsynthesis of these issues is to be found in Rubel and Rosman's examination of Papua New Guinean material (163); they have since turned attention to island Melanesia (162, 164). Rubel and Rosman examine 13 societies in detail and suggest transformative sequences between their structures. Following Levi-Strauss,they takethreelevels of communication"distinguished by sets of rules which govern the circulationof women, goods and services, and messages" (163, p. 3). Analytical primacy is accorded the phenomenonof exchangeas such, so that"exchangesof goods andservices can be the basis for structures,even when exchangesof women between ... groups are prohibited"(163, p. 5). This allows Rubel and Rosman to draw out the or societal correlatesof exchange systems depicted as "restricted" "generalexchange in Papua ized"withoutbeing tied by the fact that(pace Tor)restricted New Guinea is usually representedin marriageterms by a "native model" of sister exchange ratherthan bilateralcross-cousin marriage(cf 139), and that generalized exchange is not usually enshrined in prescriptions concerning or cross-cousins (cf 51, 134; however, see immediatematrilateral patrilateral exceptions to 146a). Societies in southernBougainvilleareamongthe apparent this (e.g. 142, 146a, 162). Elsewhere, marriagewith first cousins is frequently prohibited, even where preferences are phrased in (classificatory) "cousin" crossterms. Yet parallelsto the long-termreciprocityspecified in patrilateral cousin marriage [delayed reciprocityover two generations (163)] have been discernedin a numberof marriagearrangements 9, 32, 64, 124, 158, 159, (see 171; cf 48). Two points arenotablein RubelandRosman'ssynthesis. First, variousrules concerning the exchange of items between kin groups, between men and ancestorsand so on, are held to speak to one or several underlyingstructures, but in each case a "dominantstructure" emerges most clearly expressed in the ritual of ceremonial exchange. In certain societies separatestructuresof exchange for goods and for women can be identified, one between named ceremonialexchange partnersand one between affines. They make the crucial general point that connections-including transformations-between mar-

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 57 riage-basedaffinalexchangesandotherexchangeshave to be investigated:they do not see the formeras simply determiningthe latter(on this also see 14, 40, 55, 161, 186). Second, while the notion of an exchange structure encompasses ratherthandependson the exchange of women, which then becomes a special are instance, marriagearrangements given a centralplace. The authorsprovide a most interestingaccountof what happensto relationsbetween affines under exchange regimes of different kinds. Rubel & Rosman categorize their 13 societies into those whose marriage arrangementsare based on the direct, reciprocal exchange of sisters; those where a prohibitionon marriagewith first cousins is combined with a subsequent renewal of the marriagetie throughdelayed exchange mechanisms of variouskinds; and those where extensive prohibitionsmean thatreciprocityin women can be applied only in general terms. It is noteworthythat, bar Mae Enga, all the societies they consider project an alliance model at some level. Thatis, social units definitively conceptualizethemselves as indeed "exchanging"women. We may addotherexamplesof self-defined"exchanges" between lineal units (18, 40, 98, 134, 158, 201, 225), family groups (204), or sets of individuals(15, 37, 44, 130) whereit may be the "roads" betweenthemthatare emphasized (21). The phenomenon has implications for the way one might extractmarriage"rules."It also leads into the issue of groupdefinitionthrough marriage. Closed circuitscreatedby marriagegoods being of a special currency(103, 143) are not a general featureof Melanesian systems, as Rubin (165) noted. Any closure is a function of debt-reckoning.The issue becomes the extent of shared liability. It is importantto rememberthat symmetricalmarriagewith "crosscousins"can be reconciled with asymmetrical classificatorypatrilateral relationsbetween immediateaffines (cf 40, 51, 61, 211, 225). More generally, if asymmetriesresolve into higher order symmetry, it can be arguedthat the "various forms of [classificatory] bilateral, patrilateral,and sister-exchange marriagebecome different expressions of a single underlying system of restricted exchange" [a point made apropos Highlands material (221, p. 21)]. "Matrilateral" specificationswhen they occur appearto operatewithin similar classificatory contexts (e.g. 57, 58, 61, 131, 180), sometimes with specific asymmetrical effect (58), sometimes symmetrical when transposed generationally (cf 159). One would wish to distinguish such arrangementsfrom those, usually involving small populations,where marriagewith classificatory but consanguinesappearsas a functionnot of "exchange" of "endogamy"(e.g. 25, 27). Ideologies with "cognatic"elements predictablystress closeness and distanceratherthan divergence in relationships(e.g. 24, 94, 173), reflected in the grading of ceremonial contributions. The positive marriagerule has always had particular theoreticalsignificance in thatthe elementarystructure therebyseen to accountfor its own reproducis

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tion. In categorizing marriageablepartners,it gives a descriptionof itself as enduringover time. More than that, the marriagerelation as a function of the as total social system is understood a sourceof regeneration a doublesense. It in disposes of humanfertility;and the rules which conjoin spouses also specify a set of relationspartyto the conjoining, which thus becomes a self-reproducing The model is apposite for systems with marriageclasses, where "structure." each "marriage" reproducesthe marriage class system itself (cf 203). However, the Melanesian material investigated by Rubel and Rosman, and other data cited here, do remind one of a problem. I leave aside the section analysis proposedby Cooper (34) for certainSepik societies to look at Melanesia more widely. Where prescriptionsdesignating immediatemarriageablekin are absent, we areleft with the questionof definingbetween what social units women arebeing "exchanged" when they areexchanged. The applicationof genealogical categories to group relations is not simply a matterof "classification"; the notion of "group"introducesan exogenous orderof organization.Nor is this intended to echo the empiricist debates of the 1960s (cf 177), but ratherto inquireaboutthe circumstanceunderwhich we can identify not just marriage but the operationof "exchange"itself. It has often been observed that sister exchange occurs in a wide range of marriagesystems, and for Melanesia, as Rubel and Rosman suggest, it should be taken as a manifestationof an exchange ideal ratherthan a matrimonial "rule"(also 134, 168). The point is supportedin the extent to which reciprocity in "sisters"(e.g. 201), or associated kin designates (61), is a coding after the of event ratherthana determination choice or of claims (55; cf 22b). The very level of "group" seen as an exchange agent may receive post hoc construction. The same phenomenonappearseven whereit is not "sisters" "cousins"who but are the subjects, or nieces and nephews the objects, of exchange (cf 98, 124, 225). When distant cross-cousins are specified, the marriagemay lock into other affinal prestationswhich have defined the intermarrying groups in the interveningyears (15, 22b, 51, 119). If the eventual offspring of an original exchange of sisters repeat the exchange, then "the logic of the system" (55) indicates bilateral cross-cousin marriage, even though no "preference"is necessarily stated. On similar grounds, Schwimmer (178) argues for such a preferentialrule. Rubel and Rosman show that repeatedsister exchange may or lead to dual structures moiety organization,whetheror not these are overtly recognized (cf 97). But here we have shifted, from actors' models of reciprocity couched in terms of exchange of specified personsbut appliedto heterogenous social units, to analytical modeling which assumes that marriage exchange reproducessocial units of a contingent nature. This seems an unavoidableequivocation. The issue is not whetherclose or distantkin are specified, which may cross-cutthe differencebetween immedi-

MARRIAGE EXCHANGES 59 ate and delayed return,but whetherthe specificationis categoricallydefinable (222). "Sisterexchange" appearsto be a special case where we do not know what degree of sister is relevant. Yet the grounds on which Muller (139) suggests thatdirectsister exchange was neglected by Levi-Stauss-it holds no "structural" interest-seem to apply to some of the Melanesiansystems which as employ other kin specifications of "marriageability" well (e.g. "cousin"), though I do not wish to argue that they are usefully analyzed as complex (but see 204). I would put the matterdifferently. Melanesians see themselves as theirsocial units throughthe exchangeof persons, but"exchange" regenerating conceptualized as "sister exchange" or whatever cannot offer a complete self-descriptionof the social units so involved. themselves through"marriage" Units reproducing analyticallyvanish under two circumstances. First, completed reciprocitypotentially terminatesrelationships-as in "discontinuous" exchange (118, Chap. 27; 169, 170)-so that to the debts which keep relationshipsopen have to be transferred spheres of relations other than the marriage itself (gifts to maternal or paternal kin, mortuary payments, affinal involvementin ceremonialexchange). Second, the marriage"rule"does not specify the unit of reproductionwhere the order of is These become defined by units seen as exchanging"persons" indeterminate. the marriagerelation (cf 109, 134, 177). criteriaother than It is the actors who make a connection between marriage arrangements (which generateoffspring) and the mannerin which groupingsand categories is endure(generatethemselves). This definitionof social reproduction one we often adopt in analysis. I would prefer to keep provisional the possible relationship between marriageand the reproductionof social units. Gregory's (70) synthesis to some extent meets the problem. Rather than seeing the flow of women as primarilyreplicatingor in counterpointto other exchanges, he analyzes this flow in relation to the reproductionof social "groups."These groups he understandsas in a prior sense constitutedby an interestin land (cf 109, 122). "Inclan-basedsocieties the exchange of women at marriageis, among otherthings, an exchange of productivelabourbetween clans" (70, p. 21). The flow of persons is evidence of the mannerin which localized groups replace themselves over time; it is also part of the wider a process of "consumptiveproduction,""concept derivedfrom Marx, by which the consumptionof things leads to the productionof persons. Gregory spells out the relationship between production as "an objectification process that convertspeople's labourenergies into things"and consumptionas a "personification process that permitsthe survivalof people"(70, p. 33). [This is also a premise of Modjeska's (137) analysis.] Debt-creatingexchange governs circulation in gift economies. Social relationsare specifically reproducedin the of which regulatethe transformation things into people and exchangestructures

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as peopleintothings.Thingsareunderstood theembodiment labor,applied of to resources as land,andtheunitswhichthusreproduce such themselves in are units. his account resource-based This modelis worked for severalPapua out New Guineasocieties[which overlap thosein (163)]. It admirably captures indigenous equations between basiccontrast between is persons, food, wealth,andsex. Gregory's "restricted reproduction" throughthe balancedexchangeof thing-giftsand restricted of and between exchange women-gifts groups, "delayed reproduction," is, that often combined the delayedexchangeof women-gifts, with an incremental of of exchange thing-gifts. "generalized" is (A exchange women-gifts accomof and of panied tributary by exchange thing-gifts clanorganization thenation and confederacy type of whichthereare few examplesin Melanesia.) The of circulation gifts thusdefinescertain orders: political-economic restricted with reproduction associated eldership balanced exchange, is and gift delayed with and reproduction bigmanship incremental exchange.He notesthat gift of fromtheperspective systems self-replacement, anddeath of birth giftsareas muchpartof "kinship a methodof consumption" personification as (the of as resources) the marriage gifts he concentrates upon. Nevertheless, these of as systemsare mosteasily grasped through analysis thing-gifts "symbolic for substitutes" women-gifts p. 70). (70, withpersons persons of of or Thequestion substitution, persons withgifts, to hasshadowed muchof my ownaccount thispoint.It is herethattheseveral so identified far come to a head. problems

THE METAPHOROF SUBSTITUTION


of In a number circumstances, of for categories personsact as substitutes for others-as in fostering adoption, example.Whenan adopting and parent roles in respectto a child, the processcan be seen as one takesover certain In another. someMelanesian thosewith person replacing societies,especially like smallpopulations Tor,marriage on arrangements turn men'sclaimsto may a disposeof specificwomen,typically sisterswill have "sisters"; manwithout to obtainor promise surrogate cf 130, 224). Clearly a sucha (180, 203, 204; persondependson havinghis claims embodiedin otherpersons.A strict on accountancy may be kept when a social unit is directlydependent the of number outgoingsistersfor the number incoming of wives. But to turna nonsister "adoption") a sisterfor the purposes meetingmarriage into of (by is of substitution turning from someoneelse's obligations a different process sisterintoone's wife. for Whenpeopletalk of a sisterbeingexchanged a wife, the transaction that fromsisters; mayentailtheproposition this affirms wivesaredifferent that the fertilitythey bringis exogenous,or on the otherhandthat it is being

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returned its source (andchildrenare sometimessent to meet marriagedebts). to If anything is matched, it is not from one person's point of view the objects (women) exchanged, but the mutualexchange intentionsof the partners.Thus where ceding women is seen as ceding an advantage,sister exchange may be said by the clans involved to equalize their strengths (M. Reay, personal communication).Each partneris out to realize a value for himself. I suggest that the embodimentof this value in persons frequentlyleads us astray. In relationto such embodiment,it is temptingto see evolutionarydirectionin the diversity of marriage arrangementsas exist in Melanesian. Thus sister exchangeis sometimestakento be a pristineformof marriage,since in termsof needs for wives and prohibitions on sisters, women flow with maximum economy. A glance at a case such as Tor, however, shows thatalthoughwomen are equalized, this is the start, not the completion, of balancingoperations[cf (168) but to the contrary(97)]. Any single alliance is merely a moment in a series of alliances, and matrimonial reciprocityis embeddedin totalprestation. But apartfrom that, marriagealone is not constitutiveof the Torbrother-in-law relationship. Tor idioms do not conceive of conjugal fertility as a sufficient Nurturederivedfrommarriage complementedby is conditionfor reproduction. which flows fromthe flutes. We may say thatTorwomen embodyideas nurture of "female"fertility;yet it is not women who are exchanged, nor their fertility as such, but particular life-bestowing powers relative to those manipulatedin other contexts. for Tor males, then, find no "substitute" theirsistersin theirbrides;relations with sister's children constitute a separatechannel of continuity. "Balance" concerns less the substitutabilityof the objects exchanged than the mutual indebtedness of the exchanging affines. And the value of the object, so to speak, is not to be read off from what the women "are," but from all the elementsin circulation[a pointBarth(5) makesaproposmetaphor transactional itself as analogic coding]. This has interestingimplicationsfor our approachto wealth items as substitutingin general for human values. It is conventionalwisdom to assume, perhapspromptedby Old Testament sacrifice, that in the beginning people had only themselves to dispose of, but that as society developed then people found substitutesfor the value they had for one another by transacting with items which materialized that value. "Wealth" became a mediator.Yet a moment'sreflectionshows thatsuchevents could only unfold if "people"somehow containedself-evident value, namely a value not already realized in artifactsor relations. Of all categories of social persons, however, that of "women" (marriageable,fertile females) presents itself to us Westernersas havingprecisely this self-evidentnature.We imagine thatthe necessity for groupsto perpetuatethemselves turnon theircontroland disposal of female fertility [or "sexuality"(219)] as a resource. Self-definition ("thefact of the rule") as the evolutionarymove from animal to social state is

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enshrined in what we see as the transformationof mating into marriage. Bridewealththus enters our accountsin the form of propositionsabout wealth items substitutingfor women, or for those aspects of or rights in respect to women under transaction. with countless metaphorsfor Melanesiacertainlyprovidesthe ethnographer the substitutabilityof women and exchange items (thing-gifts). Idioms of compensationor mediationare explicit (12, 48, 123, 125, 137, 146, 178, 190, as 192, 210). Such substitutionsmay be interpreted partof the wider equation evident as soon as one considers homicide combetween things and persons, pensation or mortuarygifts, or even childgrowth payments, often closely associated with bridewealth. And here we encounter a curious analytical situation. For exchanges based on childbirth or mortuaryrituals, analysis generallyattendsto the social relationshipsbeing establishedwith regardto the child or the deceased. Child-growthpaymentsmay be formulatedin terms of the "claims" of extra-descent group kin. However these, like indigenous metaphorsthat refer to persons being compensatedfor a death, we habitually treat as metaphor.In some cases the personificationof the deceased through gifts assembled at his or her funeralmay be explicit (e.g. 7; see also 191); but we takefor grantedthatit is aspectsof a social personabeing thusreconstituted. We do not imagine that such exchanges literally substitutefor the child or (he with deceasedin thatdonorsandrecipientscould performthe same transactions the bodies or the persons of these social entities as they do with the flows of wealth and objects making up the exchanges (but see 28). In the case of exchanges, however, exactly such literalistassumptionsappearin our marriage analyses. Melanesians may indeed "objectify"persons. Quite apart from sisters or daughtersbeing regardedas valuables, it is clear thatcaptives in warfareor the victims of head-huntingraids embodied value as trophies;women were given in homicide compensation(157), and Young (227) describeschildrencirculating in exchange. Moreover, societies which practiceboth sister exchange and routesto obtaining bridewealthprestationmay well presentthese as alternative are spouses (e.g. 37, 58, 157, 210). But such substitutions partof the mutually referentialassociationbetweenpersonsandwealth. [In this context, one would probably wish to distinguish situations exploiting the relationalcreativity of metaphor(personsand things are not identifiedbut simultaneouslysimilarand dissimilar) from situations where identity is contextually convenient-as for the children mentioned above (cf 5, 214).] Many of the transactionsaccompanying marriageexchanges, like any other exchange, take the metaphoric association axiomatically. constitutea person's A differentfactoris the extent to which the transactions multiplex social identity (137 citing 37). For such constitutiontherecan be no

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substitute. Exchanges that place persons in relation to differentiatedothers compose enduring asymmetries which cannot be bypassed or readjustedactual "possession" of a sister's child, in patrilinealsystems, for instance, would be no substitutefor the kind of relationshipwhich is promoted with sister's child apartfrom own child. Conversely, if paymentand/orritualserve to separateaspects of a person's origins (cf 146, 151, 216, 222), these origins can only be ignored-they cannotbe "balanced" thus collapsed into a state and of nondifferentiation. From this point of view, Lewis (119) points to associations of benefit with indebtedness in the mother's brother-sister'sson relationship. The asymmetryis not something that actors would wish to adjust. Levi-Straussreminds us (118, p. 485) that not just wives are gained through marriage exchangebutbrothers-in-law also, andthis remindsus in turnof those societies where such exchanges are seen as much in terms of reciprocity in wealth as reciprocityin women (e.g. 48, 92, 201). Thereis no simple sense in which bridewealth is a "substitute"for sisters/wives, any more than child payments replace a child. By the same token we cannot regardbridewealth wealth exchanges for what others accomplish societies as just "substituting" throughperson exchanges. Discussion of bridewealth prestations has had a long and sophisticated from the notion of the whole person as the history in unlocking "purchase" objectof transaction.It may well be, however, thatthe whole personstandsas a of of symbol for a "part" him or herself or for a "part" the values generatedby certain relationships. Analysis in this case should attend to the partibilityof persons so conceived and not simply to the symbolic representation these of "parts."Thus Lindenbaum(121) argues that bridewealth(the circulation of objectified substance)is the analyticanalognot of sistersin sisterexchange but of the accompanyingsemen or male-substanceexchanges in these latter systems that set up relationsbetween the transactingmen. I have noted the provocative observation (221, 222) that, in certain New Guineasystems with directsisterexchange, the fact thatwealth is no substitute for women is aligned with a similar nonequation between food and vital substance. In other words, we are dealing with the whole mannerin which objects have referenceto detachablehumanvalue (137). Godelier, also writing of a system which specifically denies that wealth can substitutefor women in marriage,asks: "thequestionarises whetherone knows underwhat conditions the principle of equivalence of life for life (for example, the life of a warrior killed in war againstlife of an enemy; or the life of a woman againstthe life of anotherwoman) is substituted the equivalenceof life or deathagainst labour by or against theproductof labour [i.e. things]"(64, p. 33, my italics;cf 38). This is an issue taken up comparativelyby Collier & Rosaldo (30). I extractfrom it the questionof how transactable items are created:the way in which items and

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attributesare conceived to be detachable from or attachableto donor and of recipient, as "parts" them, creates or cancels the debt between them (140, 213). We certainlycannotassume thatin some self-evident way "women"as such in presentthemselves as detachableand thus transactable the eyes of men. The is what it is the actorsareencoding in equatingwomen and interestingquestion We wealth and in their modeling of relationsas based on "reciprocity." might as well arguethatwealth items arebeing given value throughpersonificationas argue that women's value is being reckoned against wealth items. The creative detachabilityof Gawa canoes follows the productivityof clan women (140; cf 199). In the Massim generally, transactorsliken ceremonial to exchange partnerships marriage(23, 38). The complementaryconnotations of matchingunlike items is echoed in the procreativeconjunctionof "mother" and "father"ax blades on Sabarl (6). Highlands Mae Enga stress ratherthe of offsetting natureof wealth exchanges. Men separatethe reproduction clans (in ties tracedexclusively throughmen) from marriagerelations. Each union replicatesthe cleavage, andthereis palpablepoliticalenmitybetween intermarof rying groups. As far as the conceptualization "wealth"is concerned(cf 143), Mae emphasizeits definitiverole in meetingcompensationclaims. Wealththus moves against persons whose relationshipsto various categories of kin are constructedin terms of attachmentvulnerable to loss and extraction. Complementarityis down-played to the extent that Rubel and Rosman observe, "Whatis most strikingabout the Enga is the absence of any emphasis on the exchange of women" (163, p. 261). In Kaulong, like persons exchange like things, and exchange is not predicated on complementarityat all (67). The celebration of personal renown with a specifically differentiated throughwealthdoes not dependon partnership other. Given this form of reciprocity,there is no sense in which marriagecan symbolize exchange itself. But negativecases such as Kaulongare few. Where marriageis a figure within a field of exchanges, Melanesianobjectifications and personificationsof value raise a query against our conventional assumptions about the evolution of marriagesystems. If the partibilityof women is a subject of marriagetransactions,we could exchanges as defining what is detachableaboutmen, as in equally characterize the generalized circulation of semen or male fertility, and the release or retentionof agnatic substance(59, 152, 153, 172) or of the productsof male have value only in relationto one anotherand as they labor(38). Such "parts" move between actors, value thus being established as "a contingency of enchainedsocial relations"(M. Macintyre,personalcommunication;e.g. 57, 140, 161). In Levi-Strauss's original formulation(118, Chap. 28), marriage with bridewealth is held to give flexibility to all types of exchange, thus facilitating,for instance, the developmentof asymmetricsystems where wealth

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stores the values generatedby the passage of women to be used to gain other women. "Thesubstitutionof wife-purchasefor the rightto the cousin"(118, p. 471) in turnlays the groundworkfor supplantinga positive marriagerule with other arrangements lead to complex systems (cf 139). Once again, wealth that items are seen as providingopportunities controlandresourcemanagement for and for the development of less restrictivesystems than would be possible if people stood only for themselves (cf 58, 64, 121). Melanesia has providedus with an intriguing(thoughhardlynew) comment. If "women"are not the only items which circulate in marriageexchanges, what then is being conveyed in those aspects of their person seen as exchangeable? I would arguethat mensuration based on intrinsicvalue is possible only in a commodityeconomy of the Westernkindwhich symbolizes "goods"in general as having intrinsic value (70). Neither Melanesian persons nor Melanesian wealth objects are boundedentities of the commodity type (cf 144; also 177, 200). It is clear thatvegetative, comestibleidioms of "nurture" a largepart play in the Melanesianconceptionof identityandcontinuity. Sourcesof nurture are frequentlysplit between several relationships.Thus where semen is held to be nourishing, the "double affinity" of exchanging in-laws in some societies becomes in othersrelationsbetween initiatinggradesor moieties. Split sources of nurturereproducepartiblepersons-that is, persons composed of different elements and able to move in differentiatedrelationships. Insofar as gender codes these differences, systems may describe themselves as disposing of "men" in this way, "women" in that way (see 178). Melanesian "marriage exchanges" must be interpretedas structuringsuch "differences"in social relationships.Substantivelyrathervacuous, heuristicallythis conclusion may illuminate the analysis of particularcases. Such a conclusion at least avoids the fallacy of taking the substitutionof women by wealth as a move from concrete to abstractcontrol over people, supposingthat exchanges of wealth can substitutefor acts primitivelyaccomplished in concrete terms. Thus, "substitution"as contained in idioms of marriage exchange has to be taken for what it is: a symbolic process of metaphorbuildingwhichjuxtaposes andtransforms partsof personsandthings to create hierarchiesof value. As Collier & Rosaldo (30, p. 298) say, the "exchangeof women" is a metaphorfor social ordersof a particular type. We cannot assume how women's fertility will be valued any more than we can assume that marriage arrangementsconcerning women are fundamentalto processes of societal regeneration.We are broughtback to the significance of actors'(men's andwomen's) motivationsin a special way. It is themselves they are differentiatingand acting upon, and this interactionis a mark of being human, at least in some Melanesianeyes (e.g. 65, 123, 131, 213), before it allocates agency to one sex ratherthan the other. Harrisand Young make a germaneobservationin the context of criticizing

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Meillassoux's argument that "social reproductionis seen in terms of the reproductionof labour (that is, people), and this in turn is identified with controlover humanreproduction the means of thatreproduction: and women'5 p. 120). They assert, rather,that it is necessary to distinguish women's (75, laborfrom the productof that laborand from women's capacityfor biological reproductionbefore one can "begin to discuss whether specific male-female relations and specific social positions for women are crucial for social reproduction"(75, p. 121). They continue:"Inessence the argument mustdependon whetherone considers it possible to talk abouta fundamental relationwithin a social formationthathas to be reproduced the system to be reproduced" for (75, 122). In other words, can we always identify crucial relations that in p. "If themselves constitutesocial reproduction? . .. the forms of circulationin a far wider field than a given productiveunit must be taken into account for the of of understanding the reproduction thatsystem . .. then objects-the objects of exchange-become central to the analysis of social reproduction" (75, p. 122). Frameworksfor kinship analyses which turnon the allocationof women in marriageselect a particularrelation as critically regenerative. This selection hides the very difference between systems whose self-modeling sets up marriage exchanges as symbolically regenerative and those which eclipse or subsume marriageor deny it centralityin the reproductionof "society."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Melanesianistmembersof the researchgroupworkingon GenderRelations in the SouthwesternPacific at The AustralianNational University commented helpfully on earlier drafts;I thank A. Chowning, D. Gewertz, M. Jolly, R. Keesing, M. Macintyre,J. Nash, M. Reay, J. Weiner, and M. Young for this help. I much appreciatepermission from various authorsto cite unpublished work. A. Strathern R. Fardonhave been exogenous sources of inspiration and for some of the ideas in this piece; my debt to other colleagues should be
self-evident.

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