Chapter 4

Are There Social Groups

inthe
New Guinea Highlands?
Roy Wagner
The study of man's social arrangements-his relationships with his
fellow man and how be conceives of those relationships-has tradition-
ally been the province of cultural anthropology. This does not mean that
social relationships and what people think of them are not important to
archeology and phYSical anthropology. It Simply means that society and
social relationships, rathe!' than man's physical constitution or the record
of his development through time, are a part of the basic subject matter of
cultural anthropology.
Cultural anthropology is almost as large and vaguely defined as an-
thropology in general. Since cultural anthropology can and does include
studies of everything from poetry to plowing fields, anthropologists have
often distinguished the study of social arrangements as social anthropol-
ogy, a particular sub field of cultural anthropology. This deSignation
tends to be misleading, for it suggests that the difference between social
anthropology and the other aspects of cultural anthropology is mainly one
of subject matter. In fact this is not so. social is
some vel)' special assumptions about the1IDportance. of society
-assumptions that are not necessarili shared by other cultural anthro-
pologists-.and it contains a large body of theory developed on those as-
tb.{)se are_and whether we are justified in
separating the study of society from the rest of cultural anthropology is
the subject of this chapteT'!n order to answer it, however, we shall have
to tum from this ambigUous and confUSing realm of definitions and ex-
amine the historical development of the concepts involved. After all, the
only excuse for recognizing some particular kind of anthropology at all
is that there is a body of theory that enables us to do that kind of an-
thropology.
95
96 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
In order to more fully understand social anthropology, we must first
attempt to answer some basic questions: What is the rationale for social
anthropology, the anthropology of sOciety? Where did its assumptions
come from and where did the questions and about these as-
sumptions come from?
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
In many respects the assumptions of social anthropology are the
legacy of Emile :Ourkheim, the brilliant French social thinker of the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Durkheim addressed himself to
man's moral and collective life-the forces and inBuences that hold hu-
man beings together, their "groupiness" in all of its aspects-as a phe-
nomenon for scientific investigation. His writings so exclusively empha-
sized the basic importance of the "social," the collective and moral as-
pects of human life, that it is easy to base a social determinism on them
or accuse Durkheim of "reifying" society-making society into a "thing."
What he achieved was the foundation for a science of social integration
focusing on how human associations and society itself, that most "per-
manent" of associations, are put together and what keeps them together.
Thjs cOllceIllFith "integration" was the rock upon which social antbro-

Following Durkheirn, the "problem" of society was taken up and de-
veloped by two distinct national traditions. In France Durkheim's col-
laborators and students founded a symposium for theorization around a
journal called the Annee Sociologique. Much of this work, especially that
of Durkheirn's nephew, Marcel Mauss, formed the groundwork for the
later structuralism of Levi-Strauss. But it was in EI!g!and, and wherever
else abroad that the influence of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown penetrated, _that
the descent theory had its first and most telling successes.
These successes were generally called functionalis?n (though Rad-
cliffe-Brown himself shied away from the title), and functionalism pro-
vided the theoretical core for the classical social anthropology that de-
veloped in England in the thirties, forties, and fifties of this century.
Functionalism was grounded in the notion that no matter how bizarre or
- peCliliartne--practices and of a people and regardless of,
how they had got that way, the important question was how
Furthermore, though there a great many ways in which they might
work or not work, there was always one more or less function,
that of something that the social anthropologists
always insisted was a "political" or "politico-jural" matter.
The "politico-jural" assumption was the contribution of a very sec-
ular and pragmatic British turn of mind to Durkheim's original problem.
And it was Radcliffe-Brown who chose the realm of jurisprudence, with
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Croups in the New Cuinea Highland3? 97
its fine distinctions and its painstaking adjudication of "rights," as a model
for thinking about the moral collectivities of society. Of course, the tribal
societies of the sort studied by Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard, Fortes,
Gluckman, and other social anthropologists did not have politics in our
sense, nor did they have laws, though many of them held courts and en-.
gaged in litigation. Furthermore, the emphasis on "rights" led naturally
to a consideration of rights of inheritance and a concern with
although .the property in question was in most cases valued precisely
because it was exchangeable for people, something that is almost never
true of property in our society.
anthropology gradually into a kind of game of heur-
istic pretending: concepg with a very broad base of acceptaQce apd un-
derstanding. in W estern "politics," c1aw," "rights," and "prop_
erty," were oftlibal peoples, with a sort
of implicit "as if" attached.to as theplar..ers in the game
kept the "as 1L-in mind, their. concepts to translate
the native customs into the kind of rational legal consistency that we
expect of our own institutions was.accepteg,; even though it cast the na-
in the unseemly roles of barristers and bewigged judges and
made their collective existence into a droll parody . of the Bank of
Englgnd.
However, the game could not be played in a vacuum. It was first of
all descriptive anthropology, and it had to come to terms with the cus-
toms of the people it described. And this is what the problems and con-
cepts of social anthropology are all about. If the Southern Bantu or the
Nuer or Tallensi did not have laws as such, then analogous collective
usages would have to be found to take their place. The analogies were
in fact drawn with the regularities (or as a later generation would call
them, "norms") that govern kin relationships, .and became ope
of turningJgns...hip into jurisprudence and corporate economics, the study
oC:descent_systems" and of the formed in tribal societies
by the. descent o( rigbts Social the
science of descent.gr.oups, and descent groups aridtnelr constitution came
to be crucial issues in accounting for the core fUI?-ctio'p:()fJ!ltegrating so-
ciety and keeping it The more emphatically the investigators
insisted on the importance of definitions, rationality, and their own con-
ceptions of law and property, the more substantial and strictly bounded
the groups became./They became, in short, much more like the con-
Sciously organized, planned, and structured groups of \Vestern society
in spite of a lack of any kind of evidence that natives actually thought of,
them in that waiTGroups" werea.function.oLour understanding.of what
were they of

The science of descent groups met its severest test in dealing with
98 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
the ways in, which native usages did not correspond to its theoretical ex-
pectations. 'L[here were..iIlStances where kinship fL<!tly contradicted
tk expectations of an institutional model of society-Jln the tribal so-
cieties that social anthropology chose as its subject ;;atter, such instances
were neither uncommon nor triviaL! The refinement of the so-called
"descent was accomplished through the ongoing effort of dealing
with such contradictions,; The beginnings of this are evident in the classic
papers of RadcliJfe-Brown reprinted in Structure and Function in Prim-
itive SOciety. They deal with the right of a southern Bantu youth to
"snatch" food and possessions belonging to uncle, nonnally
a member of a different descent group, and with the peculiar "joking"
and "avoidance" relations.hips found among many tribal peoples in which
participants engage in banter that seemingly violates the relationship or
avoidance that seemingly negates it. Radcliffe-Brown chose to interpret
all of these phenomena in terms of what he called "alliance or consocia-
tion." In the face of tensions resulting from the divergent interests of
different intermarrying groups, including conflicting claims on or expec-
tations of a single person, these inexplicably seryed
order and solidarity ("integrate the society" ) where
nothing else could. In the words of Radcliffe-Brown:
The alliance by extreme respect, by partial or complete avoidance, pre-
vents such conBict but keeps the parties conjoined. The alliance by jok-
ing does the same thing in a different way. (1965: 103)
The apparent antisocial character of "snatching" or joking and avoidance
relations could thus be explained by the necessity to integrate groups
themselves (ally them) into a larger social whole. Any evidence to the
effect that kinship usage did not have the effect of promoting group
solidarity could be explained away as building the solidarity as a whole
alliance.
descent groups defended itself against ethnographic
exceptions by assuming that 'society itself was just a bigger. and better
laws and.-lIl.eans of operation. It was not nec-
essary to stop believing in social groups or solidarity; all one had to do
was admit that solidarity was sometimes achieved indirectly. It was this
ingenious formulation by Radcliffe-Brown, snatching group solidarity
from the jaws of frivolous irrationality, that Meyer Fortes used as a
foundation for his theory of descent and filiation. To begin with, if the
"gescent" that anthropologists had been using as a kind of legal basis for
the constitution of groups the only p-Ijnciple in operation, then a
more general one had devised. This was "filiation," <! kind of two-
way of an individual with each of his parents.
Descent, figured through the mother 'or father, corresponded to what
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highland3? 99
Fortes called the "sqcially weighted"_QI1TI_pf filiation, whereas the other
kind, to those outside his-descenLgr9_1.!p, was
called "cQmplementarx filiation." The fonner provided the
"p<ili!ico-jural" basis [QLgroups, whereas a means for
interg-r.oup--alliance (though it was supplemented by such things as
ritual) .
At first Sight, this strategic maneuver by Fottes seems to
social anthropologists' dilemma of having solidly bounded descent-
grou-p C4iostitutions" and allOwing interests of the greater
whole at the same time. But the solution cost a certain amount of internal
contradiction, for what filiation gave with one hand it took away with
the other. It moved the theoretical center of gravity away from the
straightforward rationalism of Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown, so much
so that when later descent theorists such as Goody wanted to establish a
definition of the "corporate" descent group, they were obliged to invent
concepts like "shadowy claims" and "submerged rights" tQ. explain the
of complementary filiation These refer to weak claims on prop-
erty or rights in his mother's natal. group that a man can exercise by vir-
tue of the fact that "his mother might have been a man." If his mother
were a man, he would be in her group because of patrilineal inheritance
of "rights" (of membership). If the.. claims were clear-cut rath.e.r:Jhan
shadoYLy., aI).d jf the rights were to surface, then the boundaries of the
c9q2orate descent groups, which were fixed by precisely those kinds of
rights and claims, would be eroded and if this hap-
pened, social they
had conceived of them did not exist;.
suErrlergecI rights were simply a way of saying
that relatiQJls (of "aJliance or consociation") among groups were just not
as "real" as the groups This peculiar shadowy status was re-
served for eyerythin.g that moved between and media am n the .pard
boundaries of groups, including "ritual". (religion). Everybody knew
that deal,t with insubstanti,!l and supernatural like ghosts
and gods, whereas grou s involved substantial thin s like people and
cattle and homesteads. In this way the social to
I1)ake their groups solid and substantial. by sacrifiCing -the reality and sub-
stantiality of everything else.
But the s.hadowy world of rights and claims
I119Ying unaccountably between grou'ps still posed a m;ljor challenge to
the science of descent groups. Its very in-betweenness and insubstantial-
ity was provocative, and so a great deal of theoretical effort was devoted
to deriving some kind of justification from the realm of the insub-
stantial, which of course made it more necessary, more provocative, and
more important. Solidarity came to be antagonism,
100 Ethnclogy: Social Anthropology
rather than being defined in contrast to it, aru:lsociety was
understood in terms of antisocjetj'.
Gluckman's theory of "rih1als of rebellion,." reflected in many aspects
of African social life, marked a further step in this direction. Gluckman
maintained that the institutionalized public dramatization of a mock re-
bellion against the ruler enacted regularly in some African societies
served to strengthen the ruler's position. By setting up a sort of "false
negation" of the ruler's authority, a kind of collective political joking re-
lationship, and then overcoming the negation, the social order became
what it was by failing to achieve the opposite. 1J1e importance oLhis
theory lieS.Jn its reliance on contradiction as a basis for explanatiop. ak
though.Jirmly committed to the functional integration of society, it.Jti9-
dicative of a in the theoretical center of social
By now the W3. was for a sOFial anthr.o.pe-logy that addressed
itself largely to the r,ealm of ritual @d the "betwixt and between." This
is the course taken by two modem social anthropologists,
Victor TIn:n.er. In her book EQrity andJ)anger, If-ougl3$ stressed the
of contradictory or .aradoxical situations in-lmman so-
and related these to the notion of pollution . huilili?g on
Glu.cJanan., focused on the ritual process and the of transition
(liminality) between social and tibIal states. Although the social retains
its preeminence in the writings of both, their increasing relian,ce on the
contradictory corresponds with another important deJ2.arture:Jnstead.-of
iunctio.,!!al their comes to rEY-more and more
on and conceptualization as expressed
If this emphasis on contradiction and the "betwixt and between"
reduced the science of descent groups to a kind of absurdity with respect
to its former position, the interest in symbols and native
tion had a similar effect on the heuristic game of understanding
!;!.sages as jf they were Western institutions. We might conclude that so-
cial anthropology was teased into its opposite by the exigencies of deal-
ing with its subject matter. But by this time its opposite (in the sense of
its major emphases) had already come onJ.he scene in the form of Levi-
Strauss's "structuralism," and had prosecuted a' very successful running
debate with descent theory guidance of Edmund Leach and
Rodney Needham. .
the "opposiyL... of traditional
.1la.d.clilie-Brewnian it-addresses itself to the opp,osi-
tiC?JlS an ontra tions . . t . er-with an eye toward re-
solving them as a part of its thaalo its legal
Levi-Strausss work emerged from a
different tradition in anthropology that was founded by Durkheim's stu-
dents and fonowers in France who had developed a body of theory about
Ch. 4/ Are Tnne Social Group_ in the New Guinea HighlantUP 101
society alongtbe of work ratheLthan
legalist and They
wrote on the subjects of "primitive classification," dual organization, the
concepts of self and society, and on fonns of gift exchange. Perhaps the
best known of their works is Marcel Mauss's superb Essay on the Gift,
a book which, like Mauss himself, exercised a strong influence on Levi-
Strauss.
Qift qr reciprocity, is where begins.
Lt is where quu;tionalism ends for the structuralists, for recipz:.Qity be-
tween.incl;Mduals and betwe;ngrOllps is the structuralist answer
functionalistll-uesDon "'What integrates SOCtety?" Assuming the universal
presence and significance of reciprocity, structuralism took as its IJ).aj.Qr
prQbkm that of how society and its arts are conceptualized. Thus it
completely reversed the orientation .,
of _conceptualization for granted focused its attention on the prob-
lem of integration.
Beginning with Levi-Strauss's Les Structures Elementaires de la
Parente (The Elementary Structures of Kinship), published in 1949, the
social grouE took on a new and radically different aspect for some an-
thropologists. It was describe' tual ani. symbolic
rather than legal and materialist tenns. compounds,
and rights in rem and in personem, wups and grol!P- .structure were
basedyu dualities.;. right versus left, water as against land,
the above in opposition to the below, etc. [nstead of actuah ..
"on the gronnd," there were hypothetical units m.ODstnIcted ac-
cording to the roles taken in reciprocity-"wife-giY.frs," "w;fe-takers,"
"cycles" determined by marriage rules, and so on-social constructs of
the analyst devised to implement native ideology.
Since these constructs were intended to replicate something in the
native's "mind," rather than something a fieldworker could draw a map
of, like a compound, it would be inaccurate to call them "groups" in the
same sense as the constructs of social anthropology. And yet, in spite of
this increase in sophistication, were... no less "group..:-m
than the descent groups of British antbropolegy. The
maor d erence was that these descent rou s existed in the native's
imagination, less of w at Jh.ey-iooked like 00 the ground." They
were descent groups for preCisely the same reason that Radcliffe-Brown's
basic units were-because Levi-Strauss. the British anthropologists,
t.ok kin relationships to be the locus of '1aw" o!'flles" jn tribal
Characteristically, however, he did not begin with rules of inheri-
tance or the ownership of property, but rather with the incest taboo,
which he saw as the archetypical marriage-rule. It was from this taboo,
according to Levi-Strauss, that the "universe of rules" that constitutes
102 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
human society descended. And it was from the taboo, with its implied
necessity for reciprocity ("If I can't marry my sister I'll exchange her for
someone I can marry") that he derived . escent: "The p@-
tive aspect...Qf the prohibition is to initiate organization", (Levi-Strauss
1969: 43).
"Oraanization" turned out to be an inco oration of descent in all
forms and varieties ("patrilinea ," "matrilinea, and
so on), the exception that it was significant in conceptual rather
than in material terms .. And although this borrowing ortraditional ter-
minology may not have been necessary for a theory which needed groups
only as a kind of "anchoring" framework for reciprocal relations, Ol.der
rnd...organizatiou of some kind was necessary to structuraliSJl1, for it shar.ed
functjonalism the view that a culturSLor society represents a sys-
t
. d f k' d" "
, emlC or er 0 some In , a system.
Both British social anthropology and Levi-Straussian structuralism
take as their task the discovery of some kind of systemic order within
the subject culture, an order that they identify with the way in which
that culture "works" (functionalism) or is articulated conceptually (struc-
turalism). We have seen that social anthropology first attempted to dis-
cover this order within the data themselves, postulating the existence of
self-evident descent groups and the like, but gradually worked itself
around to the position that the basic problems were conceptual and in-
terpretational. Like structuralism, in other words, it came to acknowledge
the importance of building models of the "native system" and verifying
these as a mode of explanation.
This procedure amounts to observing something and then describing
it systemically or else contriving a system and then demonstrating that it
is "out there," or closely resembles what is "out there." In practice it
generally includes a bit of both. In either case, howev,er, it involves the
of an "order" on the part of the anthropologist,
one that is his of understanding. And so if we choose
to challenge this systemic mode of explanation, we can pose the question
of whether descent groups and their associated paraphernalia of social
order do in fact exist apart from the anthropologist's need to explain
things in terms of them. about tribal sOcie!l' that de-
resolution into the notion of "groups" a and
in.ruiequate description 0 somethin)4hat could better be

CHALLENGING THE "AS IF" ASSUMPTION
Our first step in trying to answer these questions must involve a frank
assessment of what we are looking for. For if we approach the matter
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highlaru:l8? 103
'th the outri ht intention of Bndin s or with an unanal zed as-
sumption that groups sort are es uman life
aEi., culture, then nothing wilJ keep. us from finding And if a frank
assessment is in order, then we must also be clear about what we mean
or expect in the way of groups. Do we mean the strict, empirical, and
material "corporate groups" of the social anthropologists, the genealogi-
cally based, flexible, inclusive social gradations of a segmentary lineage-
system, or the totally conceptual constructs of the structuralists? First and
foremost should try question of v/hy we neeQ..
,to explain social stl1!ctJlre by groups at,sll.
We live in a culture in which founding, joining, participating
grOlips js =-a:aewseFate:: and 2 he constitu-
tional charters of Qur nations are founded on a notion of a "social con-
tract," a conscious act or event of some kind which initiated the existence
of society. Citizens are members of colossal "descent Those
who are not "born to" them or within their clan territories must be "na-
turalized," much as children may be legally adopted by foster parents.
A society which emphasizes the citizen's duty to vote and bevigilant on
behalf of his country is certainly insisting on conscious participation. And
by making belonging to and participating in society conscious, this par-
ticular social form also makes it problematic. of reCDljt-
and (economics) problems, but
we take diem with us when we visit other with our tooth-
brushes and favorite novels.
Nations, societies, and groups are the social fonn or manifestation of
the reliance on order, organization, and consistency that pervades our
whole approach. to collective doing and understanding as an unquestioned
assumption. The suggestion. that our ideas of order, organization, and
consistency maybe open to critical review, or in the social realm that
groups may not be the most importartt consideration, appears to many as
a betrayal of our social and scholarly ethic. Yet all we are doing is chal-
lenging the "as if' of systemic anthropology, the attitude of the British
social anthropologists and French structuralists which says, "Let's assume
that the natives are like us so we can understand them." And we are
challenging this assumption in order to avoid an anthropological per-
spective that inadvertantly makes our own cultural assumptions a part
of "the way things are," the way in which all mankind thinks and acts .
.'\mhropclogi-s-ts.-, ve an ethical responsibilit to d al with other peo-
les and other corlceptual orIds on a aSlS of e ualit an mutua 1 y.
vVhen an anthropo agist sums up e ,I . and imaginations of his sub-
jects in a determinist "system" of his own contriving, trapping their fan-
cies and inclinations within the necessities of his own economies, ecol-
ogies, and logics, he asserts the priority of his mode of creativity over
104 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
theirs. He substitutes his own "heuristic") makin of rou s order or-
ganizations, an logics for the way in
9011ectivities. And it is this "native" mode of making society, rather than
its curious similarities to our notions of groups, economics, or consistency,
that compels our interest here. The understanding of this creativity per
se is the only ethical and theoretical alternative to those patronizing ef-
forts that would "civilize" other peoples by making over the remains of
their own creative efforts into hypothetical groups, grammars, logiCS, and
economies.
In there groups in the New Guinea High-
_ I am concerned not with what kinds of "groups" best describe the
local communal arrangements, but \.Yith the way in which the
--people there create themselves socially. The answers to this question
may help to tell us whether the "models" of the corporate group, the
segmentary lineage system, or the conceptual "structural" unit have any
particular relevance to the situation, and they may tell us much more.
We have aU sorts of of <kPning genealogical,
political, and so on, just as we have many kinds of definitions
for groups, insludingihose wen as marginal or nega-
tive that are not cQnstructs called "kindreds:' "quasi-
and "networks," but we have virtually no thorou.Eh-going alter-
nativeto the concept of is worse, we have
no set of criteria for determining when such a concept is applicable and
when it is not.
the notion of the g!:Qllp is our owq, the problem of finding sucF
<2,riteria rests with us. Since a deliberate collective f09!s, a sense of com;
mon artici ation and awarene s, (and of
motives for En m groups), criteria ought to emp@size..!his
Other means of grouping people on the basis of shared similari-
ties, whether they specify common or contiguous residence, economic or
ecological cooperation or involvement, genealogy, or political behavior,
can easily become devices for making groups out of people who would
never do it that way (or perhaps do it at all) themselves. A
.groups to the extent that, and.iP the way that, they ooncgivg of such
{hings; otherwise the anthro 010 'st sim 1 "has" the eO ,by foisting
his idea of" roups" upon t e
---How, then p e eo les of the New Guinea HiJ!b1ands crgate their
"facts" them? 12.2 they have
4< roblem of socie ." an a or
...onceive m a _way, ;which relates only indirectly to
'social grouprrrg? Can we learn to understand or simulate their creation of
social "facts" without making them pawns in a game of our own? One
way to attempt to answer these questions is to approach a specific people
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highlands? 105
from as many viewpoints as possible, with a certain naivete especially
regarding groups and systems, as a fieldworker might approach them. Let
us approach the Daribi, a people of the eastern NeVLGuinea Highlands
among whom I did fieldwork, in this way.
DARIBI SOCIALITY
If we could go back and visit Baianabo, the site at which I lived
during much of my first period of fieldwork (1963-65), in 1950 or so,
ten years before the Daribi people were "pacified" by the government,
we would find gardens and a small settlement there. You might not
recognize the gardens as such, for they would be of the "swidden" or
"slash-and-bum" variety, with dead, bare-limbed tree trunks standing
upright or lying about where they had been felled, covered with the
vines of sweet potato (the staple food). Nearby would be stands of
"second growth": fonner gardens in various stages of growing back to
bush, and perhaps also the clearings of new gardens being cut. Sur-
rounding all of this, on a broad, Hat volcanic plateau about 3,500 feet
above sea level, is a mature tropical forest, many of its white or gray
barked trees five or six feet in diameter at the base.
About four or five adult men live here with their families. The oldest
is a short man with graying hair named Bumhw\l.l We ask him who his
his <Chouse. people" are (a local idiom); he hesitates, muttering "my
house people," and then says "Weriai." Talking to him, we discover that
he was born at a place called Awa Page (he gestures off to the southwest),
among some people he calls "Nom," and then went to live with the
Weriai (except that now he qualifles this tenn and calls them "Kumbe")
at a place called Waramaru. Then his sister married at Peria, a large
complex of houses and gardens about a mile north of where we are
standing, and he moved here to Baianabo "to be near her."
It sounds as though we have stumbled into one of those situations
known often in social anthropology as a "special case," but actually this
kind of personal history is common among the Daribi. \Ve ask the other
men about their "house people" and places of birth, and it turns out
that they are 'Weriai" or "Kuru be," born at \Varamaru. Where do the
other vVeriai live? A few, it _turns out, live in a house just nearby, a great
many live at Waramaru, with the "Nom people" or "Sago people," and
others, many more, live with some people called the "Nekapo." Eventu-
1. I have written the Danbi terms cited here in a standard Latin orthography in
which each vowel is given its own distinctive sound (for instance e is pronounced like
our a in "gate," u like the 00 in "boot") and the r is lightly trilled. In general the
words are pronounced as they would be in Spanish. The apostrophe (as in mama')
indicates high tone, and the hook (as in Buruhwtl) denotes nasalization.
106 Ethnology; Social Anthropology
ally we discover that Waramaru is a good, hard day's walk to the west,
with many other peoples in between, and that the Nekapo people live
perhaps a half day's walk beyond that. Ii the Weriai are indeed "house
they are certainly spread over an chu of land-
scape; az:0 if some ljve with the Feria,.. others with the Sogo or Nek::wo,
seem to be uite well partitioned, too. Is this a " roup," a "trige,"
a non oca ized clanL' An whatever it may be, what is Kurube? Is it
perhaps another name for \Veriai? But before we get out copies of Notes
and Queries in Anthropology, the standard fieldworker's guide in situa-
tions like this, to search for an appropriate definition, we should remind
ourselves that we are deliberately not trying to play the "heuristic" game
of calling unfamiliar socialities "groups" in order to salve our sense of
explanation. A pat, group-centered definition just won't do, at least until
learned more about these
General tenns like ''house specific ones like Weriai,
Kurube, and Noru are part of the extensive and ever expanding means
that Daribi use to make social distinctions. The latter are called bidi wai',
"man-ancestors," and are characteristically based on the names of genea-
logical ancestors, though this is not always the case. Sogo, Weriai, and
Kurube are names very likely borne by actual forebears ("Kurube" was
developed from Kuru, said to be another name of the man called "We-
riat); Nom and Nekapo are probably not. Mama' Di'be and Huzhuku
Di'be ("light" and "dark" Dibe, respectively) distinguish the Di'be peo-
ple who live near the "light" river from those who live beneath the
"dark" mountain.
If we were absolutely committed to "finding" groups, it would be
no trouble to assume that these distinctions are or definitions
of concrete, bounded, and empirically existing fact that some
of them include others-\Veriai, Daie, Sizi, and others are said to be
Para, issue of certain sons of a man named Para, and Kurube were
Weriai living with Sago, Noruai were Weriai living with Nekapo, and so
on-could be taken a,s system," This
to a hierarchical arrangement of progressively mQff;Linclllsive
groups,. based on genealogical reckoning and standardized into levels
with corresponding labels, so that Para might be considered a phratry,
Weriai a clan, Kurube a subclan.
The hierarchical order necessary for such a model is certainly there,
implicit in the fact that the terms can be seen to include, exclude, or
contrast with one another. Yet, we would-be well advised to
Unctions at face valEe, as distinctions and not as
way that separate or-dist.ingu.ish..them..on the
basis of some criterion, and we cannot deduce from the conceptual dis-
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highlands? 107
tinctions an actual correspondence of the tenns with discrete and con-
sCiously perceived groups of people.
The tenns are names, rather than the things named They-differen-
tiate, saying "These are of the river, those are of the mountain," or "These
are the issue of Weriai, those of Daie," and they are not be-
cause of the way in which they describe something, but because of the
waf' in which they contrast it with others. In his masterful analysis of
"totem ism," Levi-Strauss concludes that "It is not the resemblances, but
the differences, which resemble each other" (1962:77). Thus although
\Veriai means 'olinded" in Daribi and Daie means "to be thoroughly
cooked," neither is intended literally; they are just names, and in this
capacity the content of one differentiates as effectively as that of the other.
names used.-!o_ distinctions, these terms are very flexible,
"PEa,,:' for example, is a contraction of pariga ("ribcage") and is some-
times used as a nickname indicative of laziness ("He is called 'ribs' be-
cause he lies on his ribs all day"). for this reason or some other,
the became associated with a to be the originator of a
great maIl- lines of paternal substance, a common bidi waf.
be used to distinguish all of these lines from other complexes like
N om or Dine, to distinguish some of them from parts of the latter (at
\Varamam, 'YVeriai called the Sogo people "Nom"), or to distinguish some
of the Para lines from others. 'Fhose who call themselves Sizi, vVarai,
Ogwanoma, or Siabe are often referred to as "Para" in contradistinction
to \Veriai, for instance, or Daie, although the latter are otherwise just as
much Para as they are.
There are good reasons behind these seeming irregularities. For one,
Daribi tend to use the broadest and least speCific terms possible in most
situations. For another, the Sizi, vVarai, and Ogwanoma peoples remained
behind at Boromaru, the traditional home of Para, while the other lines
moved away. But in spite of these, Para can scarcely be said to represent
a group, for it is impossible, given the range of usage, to determine which
of the applications is the "correct" one. Para is a __ ..
.q.J]..d .. thus m a
.
Such a device can be used very flexibly, now drawing this distinction;
now that, without ever being tied to a particular element or a bounded
definitional "domain." This "broad" or "hyperbolic" use of terms might
better be exemplified in the Daribi distinguishing of colors. \Vhen shown
a dark brown, green, or blue object, the Daribi will identify it as
huzhuku; when shown something that we would call red, scarlet, crimson,
or even light brown, they will call it mama'; our yellow or yellow-green
are seu.;a' to them. And yet in speaking of the fruit of the pandanus tree,
108 Ethnology: Social Anthropolcgy
most varieties of which are scarlet to dull rose, though one is mustard
yellow, they will refer to the former as huzhuku and the latter as mama'!
qJlalitJes ) __ turnout to be more
("color") values.
What are the social effects of this kind of usage? DrawiD,g..llound",
by .as .. a 59rt of

than in the..IIh
to be "groups" take on a continuous and almost
like our compel by
the arbitrary contrasts and distinctions of our clocks and calendars.2
The elicitation of social collectivities by indirect means is more than
a mere rhetorical device among the Daribi; it is a style or mode of crea-
tivity that pervades the whole range of their activities. A man who has
been wronged, for instance, will frequently rage and shout, deliberately
pushing his anger to the limit-and if he provokes an opponent into angry
rejoinder, so much the better. He is trying to elicit a collective response
in the fonn of conciliation, peacemakers who will arrange a negotiated
settlement of his grievances in the general interest (and to stop the
hideous racket!).
Names simply outline a mode of creativity whose most serious aspect,
in native terms at least, is that of the exchange of wealth. This exchange
in tum derives from a further use of contrast and distinction to elicit
social relationship-in this case the very basic one between men and
women. The men emphasize their "maleness" in opposition to the women
who assert their "femaleness'" in return, each drawing a "response," and
a complementarj aspect of the social whole, from the other. Women are
valued for their productive and reproductive capacities, the ability to
do female work and bear children, a creativity to which the men respond
by taking control of it. Control is achieved by negotiating "exchanges"
of women (as well as their progeny, their "products") in return for prod-
ucts and implements of male creativity-the axes used in gardening,
meat (including pigs) which is believed to augment spermatic fluid, and
pearl-shells that create the assertive male image. Such exchanges actually
constitute a "substitution" of male creativity for its female counterpart.
Every legitimate acquisition of a woman. and, since all human beings
are born of female creativity, every acquisition of a person must come
about through this kind of exchange. Accordingly, every Daribi has page-
bidi ("people at the base") who are entitled to receive male wealth in
2. It is scarcely surprising, in the light of this, that Leach and others have introduced
the concept of "social" Or "genealogical" time as an explanatory device. Even the
images chosen by Melanesians-'1ines" in Pidgin, "ropes" in many local idioms-
emphasize continuity rather than discrete groupiness.
Figure 4.1 A Daribi bride-price: pearlshelLs, axes, bushknives, shell jewelry,
and trade-cloth. (,."rf asi, 1968)
exchange for his custody or affiliation. Pagebidi include the brothers and
other close kin of a woman and the close maternal kin of a male or
unmarried girl. All people must be "paid for" in this way, and
..
Thus every exchange in which a woman or child is "acquired" by a
man amounts to an act of differentiation, a separation of wife from kin
or of child (and sometimes adolescent) from maternal kin, effected
through the giving of male wealth. And just as everyone has pagebidi,
who must be compensated in this way, so everyone also has be' bidi
("house people"), centering on the husband or paternal relatives, who
do the compensating. This distinction, plus the differentiating exchange
through which it is made, is in itself the most important consideration in
Daribi sociai life. In an important sense it is Daribi social life, for its con-
sequences and implications are respected regardless of other factors and
Figure 4.2 A Daribi bride standing next to members of the "groom's party"
who are wearing their traditional attire: cassowary plumes, white shells, faces
and bodies blackened with soot. (Masi, 1968)
circumstances. Be' bidi must always be kept distinct from pagebidi, so
that even if closely related people decided to marry (as they sometimes
do), their relatives-even if they all live in the same house (as they
sometimes do )-would a \ ~ e to subdivide into these two categories for the
occasion. Moreover, in this or any other instance, the be' bidi are abso-
lutel:' forbidden to share any of the meat given by the latter to others.
Daribi themselves say that they marry the sisters and daughters of
those to whom they "give" 'meat, and may not marry among those with
\vhom they "eat" (or "share") meat. Thus the explicit distinction drawn
in an:' exchange is one between those who share meat or other wealth and
those who exchange meat or wealth. Every such act and distinction draws
a bOllnchr:'. But since the distinction itself occupies the central focus,
this boundary is actually more significant than the things it differentiates.
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highlands? III
It may, for instance, come to pass that some people who have fonnerly
identified with each other now want to intennarry; this will be condoned,
though it may be inconsistent with earlier relationships, provided that a
suitable and clear-cut differentiation is made among them.'
As in the case of names, the specific (definitive or descriptive) con-
tent of the things referred to (the social "units," the categories be' bidi
and pagebidi) is left implicit: what is made explicit is the distinction
that separates or differentiates them. Hence just as names may be said to
"elicit" social collectivities in the act of distinguishing them, so the ex-
changes that allocate rights to a woman or child can be seen to elicit
specific instances of be' bidi and pagebidi. By virtue of the restrictions
that must accompany such exchanges, every exchange will create its own
social circumstances in this way. Even though one does not "start out'''
"YitE_groups, since these are
aJways
Eeople as be' bidL9-nd It is
app-eMs insonJ::l:eteJ.arm.-wher.ev.ex_Jne_..right-.dist.i.nctionLare
What we might want to call the "pennanent" SOciality exists as an
associational context flowing from one such ad hoc occasion to another.
Except for the ongoing restrictions regarding the sharing and non-
sharing of the continuing gifts of meat that follow marriage and the birth
of children, which tend to "freeze" the distinctions and categories, the
groupings are no more completely consistent with one another than those
elicited by naming. Nodes of people appear, in varying degrees of in-
formal inclusiveness which I have termed zibi, and community
(Wagner 1967), based on the overlapping of sharing restrictions. (Since
male reproductive fluids are believed to be increased and augmented by
meat, a father and his children are automatic "sharers of meat.") And
yet these by no means fonn a rigid hierarchy, an organization for the
proper sharing and exchanging of meat. A clan is made up of consituent
zibi, all of which tend to cooperate in sharing and speak of their mutual
association in this way, but it is not unheard of for them to intermarry
and thus "exchange." A community is made up of clans that have, in
most cases, intennarried, and thus exchanged with each other; neverthe-
less they speak of their association as one of "sharing meat." Consistency
is not always maintained from one nodal "level" to another, and therefore
any attempt to put together the whole as a "system" or "order" is invari-
ably compromised.
us
crately .. Terms like
"community" may be helpful ways of referring to these asso-
ciational groupings, provided that we keep in mind they have generally
denoted fairly "unintentional" associations of this kind and that we do
I
112 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
not try to make them into representations of our own corporations and
consciously sociopolitical bodies. They are ..
without ... is_w.hy-_people.have to make
distinctions themselyes, thouglL..Q_course.."in-the-,act-oLmaking.the
the sOciality. In this respect __ ___
of our Western fonns, where peopie make-thegrQupsJh[Qugh
deliberate participation and thereby the "class" and dis-
tii1CtlOfis:------ .----------_ .. -- ._,r.". - .-- .. -._-.... - ._-" .
It IS somewhat pointless, in tribal societies, to ask where the groups
themselves are, for they never really materialize. What we see in the
fonn of a village or a communal gathering is just a close approximation,
an ad hoc representation of an abstraction, one that "will do" for the
situation. thing, and its elicita-
tion resembles the concept of "deficit spending"; people draw boundaries,
compel, and elicit, and the relationships take care of themselves.
EFFECTS OF WESTERN CONTACT
fb;:st Jelt q.strong.pQli-
to were administrators, faced with the task
of building an interface between the native's "institutions" and their own,
and intent on resolving a confuSing array of names and settlements into
groups that could serve as the final (local) constituents in a political
chain of command. They were heirs of a self-conscious "colonial" tra-
dition, and many of them had taken courses in "the of descent
groups" .. " .. l)o\V native
Fas suppose'd to be .. And 'fney:als'o had explicit instructions
as to how to deal with groups: in each (named) local group a leader, or
TultuI, was appointed, and each Tultul was entrusted with the safe-
keeping of the "village book," in which census records were entered.
Presented with a bewildering chaos of scattered homesteads and over-
lapping names, ...

They may have enlisted the help of the people themselves in doing
this, bringing together all people identified by the' same name (if there
weren't too many) and ignoring any contradictions they could not handle,
for they were content to -let the boundaries of the group take care of
themselves. In any case, the people, who had been living in single-story
or double-story longhouses (housing anywhere from 2 to 60 people)
scattered among their shifting garden-Sites, were obliged to abandon the
traditional pattern and settle in nucleated villages. (This concept was
completely new to Daribi, who still use the word be', nouse," in refer-
ence to these complexes.) a reorg,anization into
control and _Eolicy throughout Papua-New
... _- -
Figure 4.3 Be'bidi: Tua people in their sigibe', a two-story longhouse (1963).
Men lit;e on the upper fioor, women on the lower.
Guinea. Various reasons have been given for it: it is said to make the
people easier to census, for example, and to be more healthy than aborig-
inal arrangements. But in fact it has one overriding advantage which
removes the most important ambiguity facing these
"groups" visible to people bpml,)p
in anvQtfie"i:...wav.- _.-.--- _ ... _ ... --
........
Most of the villages at Karimui were formed in 1961-62 (Russell
et al. 1971 :83), though a few stragglers were living in the traditional
pattem as late as 1969. By late 1963, when I first arrived at Karimui,
villages were a characteristic part of the local landscape; the natives
were in fact living in these clusters, regardless of \\'ho made them. But
is this suffiCIent rcason to them as groups? The question is not
an easy one to answer, and a good ans\\'cr requires our consideration of
the evidence. Let us take a close look at the resettlement of
Weriai people.
The patrol officers who encountered the Weriai in the middle 19505
were probably bewildered by the scattering of these people. In order to
straighten things out-and incidentally strengthen the potential local
labor force-they requested that all the \Veriai relocate at Baianabo.
(This was not as extreme as it might sound; the Kurube people claimed
they were "coming slowly" to Baianabo any\vay, and this kind of "slow
motion" was actually highly characteristic of such demographiC move-
ments.) In about 1960, all of the Weriai people from Waramaru, as well
as a number who had recently settled at a place called had
joined people in a single two-story longhouse at Baianabo.
A number of other Weriai from Nekapo had moved into similar houses
on an adjoining tract of land, called Sonianedu. .
Shortly afterward, the Weriai were prompted by the government
(with the strong urging of a fundamentalist mission) to construct rows
of Western-style single family dwellings, or '1ine houses." These were
abandoned by 1966 because they were nuisances and health hazards,
but the people never went back to the highly concentrated longhouse
occupation that predominated before Western contact. Thus the "village"
Figure 4.4 A view of Kurube (settlement C) in 1964. Although the "line
houses" are falling into disrepair, the grass has been cut and the road ditched
in anticipation of a visit by the Patrol Officer.
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highland8P 115
_ Garden
o 1
2
_ Second growth
Statute Miles
Figure 4.5 The Baianabo-Sonianedu region, 1968.
as it appeared in 1968 took the fonn of a straggling line of houses, with
noticeable "nodes" of concentration, scattered for a half mile along a
cleared track that is locally known as "the big government car road"
(Fig. 4.5). The nodes or settlements (designated A through D in Fig.
4.5) probably represent people who would share the same longhouse
under precontact conditions.
The people themselves have no general term for these settlements;
though they may be referred to as be', this word is more often used in
connection with actual houses, and the usage is thus ambiguous. Further-
more, although settlement A is often spoken of as Kilibali be', B as No-
ruai be', and either C or D (or both) as Kurube be', any of these names
may be used in reference to the village or complex as a whole. Sometimes
the term Weriai is applied to the whole complex, but this is seldom done
within the Village itself. More commonly the complex as a whole is
simply not referred to at all. vVithin it, terms like Kilibali, Noruai, and
Kurube can be used to draw distinctions, though these characteristically
do not take account of the small but noticeable flow of people from one
settlement to another. Indeed, settlements C and D, which were formed
by the splitting of a larger settlement since 1006, have not yet found an
effective verbal means of differentiating themselves: members of each
call their own "Kurube" and improvise a name for the other on the spot.
A glance at the actual distribution of houses (Fig. 4.6) shows that
the nodes themselves are not very distinct. For one thing a number of
people who might otherwise live in A and B spend most of their time in
116 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
14
8<::>
A
<:::> 11
c
0
8
Native house, with no. of inhabitants
Mission building, etc.

Figure 4.6 Houses and settlements at Baianabo-Sonianedu, 1968.
smaller houses located in their gardens. But even on the map there is
the curious anomaly of the house marked x. It seems to sit exactly in
the middle, between C and D. There is a very good reason for this. Of
the two men who live there with their families, one is closely related to
the people of D, but he obtained his wife by stealing her from the most
powerful man in D. The other man is related to the people in C, but he
has been looking after the aged mother of his housemate as well as some
of the men in D. If we speak of discrete "groups," it is difficult to decide
what affiliation to assign these people, but fortunately, for them at least,
the problem never comes up.
These "acculturated" settlements are no more literally and delib-
erately constituted groups than the more scattered ones that existed
before government control. They blend together as a continuous sociality
which seems to cry out for the distinctions that effectively elicit it. It
is a socigJjlY-__ to __ with)t (whlch is
a way of it.LEnd it will ..
wherever choose If this particular
form seems to be adapted somewhat to the white man's notion of society,
it is only because the people themselves were under a strong to
; make it look like that. They Western-style
. -------" '" . - -_. . --
Ch. 4/Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highlanth? 117
clothing, which originated partly because outsiders wanted them to dress
like Westerners. This does not mean, however, that they wear their
clothes in the way that Westerners do, treat them the way Westerners
do, or think of them in that way.
Nevertheless, if w...e lQ9_k_at_the. people in a certain way, ignoring or
..they will look like \Vesterners. _.Sim-
ilarly, social lifejna certain way, we will
or jural the native sociaHty iSI}.ot
however, but rather the outcome of
indirect .ityvill take_on a different appearance with every
We have been examining the actual
layout of the houses on the ground, and have found it to be only vaguely
representative of "grouping." If we choose to differentiate the settlements
according to the customary native distinctions (Table 4.1), we find that
approximately 80 percent of the residents can be aSSigned to a Weriai be'
-about 40 percent each for Noruai and Kurube (ignoring the fact that
the latter actually comprises two nodes, or be'). But if we undertake an
investigation of the paternal ancestry of the male household heads (re-
membering that they are "automatic" sharers of meat with their offspring
and hence also with their own fathers), we find a rather different situa-
tion (Table 4.2). Only about half of the people are vVeriai be' bidi in
Table 4.1 Collective identities at Baianabo-Sonianedu (1968)
according to place of residence
T errns of Reference Number of People Percent of Total
Kilibali
settlement A
in garden houses
Total
\Veriai
Noruai
settlement B
in garden houses
Total
Kurube
settlement C
settlement D
house X
Total
Total
Grand total
33
13
46
83
13
96
42
37
13
-
92
-
188
234
14.1
5.6
19.7
35.4
5.6
41.0
17.8
15.8
5.6
39.2
80.2
99.9
118 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
Table 4.2 Collective identities at Baianabo-Sonianedu (1968) according to
genealogical identification of male head of household
Terms of Reference
Para
Weriai
Kurube
Noruai
Total
Yao
Total
Nekapo
Kilibali
Noru
Dogwaro-Hagani
Sogo
Total
Masi
Yasa Masi
Maina
Total
Grand total
Number of People Percent of Total
60 25.7
59 25.2
119 50.9
4 1.7
--
123 52.6
67 28.6
28 11.9
10 4.3
-
38 16.2
3 1.3
3 1.3
-
6 2.6
234 100.0
this respect, Noruai and Kurube each accounting for approximately 25
percent of the total, whereas most of the remainder are not even identi-
fied as Para.
These discrepancies are the direct result of a naive and literal-minded
approach to phenomena that are elicited indirectly by their creators.
Although accurately documented, they suffer from a certain misplaced
focus; right answers to the wrong problem. If brought to the attention
of a native they certainly would not trouble him very much. While resi-
dence and the sharing of meat with one's be' bidi are crucially important
considerations to the Daribi, neither is employed as a program for the
deliberate formation of groups as such-they are not parts of a consistent
effort at building society and"will not show the kinds of consistency that
we expect when we assume that they are.
Discrepancies of this kind show up very often in the anthropological
literature on the New Guinea Highlands, and because most of the writers
dealing with the area have shared a faith in the necessity of groups, the
discrepancies are often introduced as evidence of an important problem.
Because the highlanders do not seem to pay much heed to what are as-
sumed to be "dogmas of descent" they are said to be "pragmatists," or it
Ch. 4/ Are There Social GroupS in the New Guina HighlaruU? 119
is assumed that the ureal" dogmas are those of residence (de Lepervanche
1967). And yet it would seem to be the anthropologists, rather than the
natives (to judge from the statistical records), that have brought dogmas
onto the scene. .. ..
assumption .of'Joose a certain strategic or plia}}le
(Pouwer -1960 f-'
ment for having your errouns theoretically and eatinO' them Rracrmatically.

on the part of Melanesians (Held 1951, "Vagner 1972), or postulated a
conception of society itself as a flux (vVatson 1970) as I have done here.
Clearly if capable, experienced administrators, armed with a United
Nations mandate and .303 rilles, have not been able to rearrange these
people into Western-style groups, we would be asking rather
too much of scholars by expecting them to do so with pen and ink and
definitions. The problem is misplaced if we imagine "grouping" (that is,
the deliberate construction of society) as a task of the native when it is
actually our own. It is our job to account for the discrepancies, not the
native's, since they are not discrepancies to him. It is also our job to ex-
plain just why they should be regarded as discrepancies, or as irrelevant,
for in determining what our initial assumptions and problems will be, we
also determine what kinds of evidence will be relevant and admissible.
CONCLUSION
For many people, it is far easier to assume the existence of groups
than to try to understand the subtleties of how the natives conceptualize
their sociality. "Groups" and "SOciety" form a kind of modern shorthand
idiom for certain social phenomena; they exist as part of the "subject
matter," as "facts," for those who believe in them or need them. The
question of whether such facts exist wherever they have been postulated,
however, whether "the social" exists as an objective level of phenomena,
is a matter of which theory we elect to follow. We have a habit of con-
fusing the ways in which we study phenomena, the theories through
which we understand them, with the phenomena themselves. Thus we
speak of "the chemistry of the body," "the biology of human reproduc-
tion," "the ecology of a forest," talking about the world (quite under-
standably) in the ways we have come to know about it. .
Models are ways of making (or, as the language of science would
have it, of "discovering'") the various phenomenal '1evels," by creating
the characteristics in terms of which we perceive them-the science of
descent groups is a set of models for making social interaction into de-
scent groups, The analyst may have certain predispositions as to how he
would like to make the world of his investigation in this way, or he may
want to try to work on several '1evels," but once he has committed him-
120 Ethnology: Social Anthropology
self to a certain model, his conclusions are to a certain degree prede-
termined.
The issue of social groups and their "reality" mayor may not be a
significant one, depending on what kind of anthropology one is interested
in. But the implications of what the anthropologist does when he assumes
the existence and the necessity of groups are essential matters for all
anthropologists to consider. They suggest that we are creators no less than
the peoples we study, and we must take heed of our own creativity as
well as theirs. To put it somewhat differently, the assumption of creativity
puts the anthropologist on a par with his subjects; the native, too, is an
"anthropologist," with a "working hypothesis" of his own regarding his
way of life. And regardless of how we wish to put that way of life
together, we must come to terms with its own "theory" as a matter of pro-
fessional and ethical obligation.
This kind of science, which treats a subject matter of the same order
of phenomenal existence as its own hypotheses and conclusions, is a com-
parative latecomer. When it finally arrived on the scene, all of the more
established disciplines had already developed a notion of "science" based
on the "determined" nature of its subject matter. The idea of nature as a
mechanistic (or behavioral) system with a precise, determinate and uni-
formitarian constitution made it possible to conceive of an "exact science"
whose job it was to know or predict that order. This gave scientists an
ideal of absolute certainty that was scarcely shaken by Einstein's "theory
of relativHy" or Heisenberg's indeterminancy principle, for however
indeterminate nature might ultimately be, its indetenninancy and rela-
tivity could be measured iTl an exact way and made into a principle.
Taking (believing, proving, verifying) the model to be identical (or
very nearly so) with the subject matter amounts to the "style" of making
phenomenal reality under the impression that one is discovering or pre-
dicting it.
But an anthropology that is under obligation to consider every cul-
tural operation (whether action or experience, whether its own or its
subjects') as an act of creativity can iII afford the luxury of attributing
"reality" value to any of them. For this is precisely the decision that
removes them from consideration as relative and creative acts. If the
anthropologist is fallible the native cannot be infallible; if the native is
fallible then anthropology stands to gain little indeed from the adoption
of a detenninist ideology.
SELECTED READINGS
Glasse, M. and 1vfeggitt, 1v1. J., eds., 1969, Pigs, PearlshelZs, and Women:
Marriage in the New Guinea Highlands. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Pren-
tice-Hall.
Ch. 4/ Are There Social Group. in the New Guinea HighlandsP IJ1
A collection of eleven short papers dealing with marriage in various
highlands societies, with an Introduction by Mervyn Meggitt. This book
invites theoretical as well as ethnographic comparisons among the dif-
ferent viewpoints and societies represented.
Leach, E. R., 1966, Rethinking Anthropology, London School of Eco-
nomics Monograph in Social Anthropology No. 22. New York: Humani-
ties Press Inc.
This collection of provocative essays may seem dlfHcult to the be-
ginner, but it is an excellent way of experiencing firsthand the impact
that Leach and his structuralist colleagues bad on the world of British
social anthropology. Beginning with a valuable general introduction,
Leach goes on at some length to discuss his structural interpretation of
some classical functionalist problems and winds up with an excursion
into symbolic anthropology.
Levi-Strauss, C., 1963, Structural Anthropology, tr. C. Jacobson and B.
G. Schoepf. New York: Basic Books.
A collection of essays on a broad range of subjects,subdivided into
sections corresponding to Language and Kinship, Social Structure, Magic
and Religion, Art, and Problems of Method and Teaching. This book
presents Levi-Strauss at his most approachable and comprehensive level,
and its essays do a lot to explain some of the more difficult aspects and
implications of his mode of theorization. An interested reader might want
to supplement this book with Claude Levi-Strauss by Edmund Leach,
New York: Viking Press: 1970, Modem Masters Series, a more ambitious
attempt to present Levi-Strauss's line of theoretical argument in a sys-
tematic (though often heavily biased) way.
Mauss, Marcel, 1954, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in
Archaic Societies, tr. I. Cunnison. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.
An anthropological classic that has had a profound influence on
modem thinking, this book is extremely readable and abounds in ethno-
graphic examples. The reader might like to supplement this book with a
more modem treatment of the subject, "On the Sociology of Primitive
Exchange," by Marshall D. Sahlins, in ASA Monograph No.1: The Rele-
vance of Models for Social Anthropology, ed. M. Banton, New York:
Frederick A. Praeger: 1965.
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 1965, Structure and Function in Primtive Society.
New York: The Free Press.
This classic of social anthropology brings together various approaches
by its author that figured prominently in the development of a functional
"science of descent groups." Much that is implicit elsewhere in the writ-
ings of the British social anthropologists owes its origins to the essays
collected in this volume.
Schneider, David M., 1965, "Some Muddles in the Models: Or, How the
System really Works" in ASA Monograph No.1: The Relevance of
Models for Social Anthropology, ed. M. Banton. New York: Frederick
A. Praeger.
An analysis and clarification of the two dominant bodies of theory in
social anthropology, "descent theory" and "alliance theory," with par-
ticular attention to the crucial conceptual differences that separate them.
Although somewhat advanced, the exposition is clear and forceful enough
to repay dose reading and careful attention with some real inSights into
a significant theoretical crisis.