Anthropology of History. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020. 320 pp. (B&W photos.) US$49.00, ebook. ISBN 9781003131601.
In this ethnography of the Fuyuge people of Papua New Guinea, Hirsch sets forth to “show that Fuyuge […] historical experience, historical understanding and ideas of historical change can only be grasped through knowledge of their cosmology” (xii). Change lies at the heart of this book, and Hirsch effectively unsettles the dichotomy continuity/change framing much of the existing literature. The premise of the argument is that “Melanesian ways of life have always been inherently subject to change” (22), hence colonialism brought about just another set of transformations, captured with the felicitous formula “continuity of continuous change” (19). Local cosmology functions as a symbolic mechanism capable of reworking novelties into a familiar scheme that maintains Fuyuge lands at the centre of the world. The book rests on two ethnographic pillars: tidibe—at once creating force and narratives we might gloss as “myths”—and the gab ritual. It is through these that Hirsch unfolds Fuyuge cosmology for the reader.
As detailed throughout the book, tidibe (at times personified, at times not) shaped the Fuyuge physical and social environment during his mythical journey, remaining an immanent force that is “the ultimate […] source of all […] transformations” (88). Similarly, tidibe narratives explain the origins and social significance of objects and practices, and also account for changes. For instance, Fuyuge perceive that their own agency in the ancestral past opened the path for the arrival of the Catholic missionaries and patrol officers in the area. Their presence led to the imposition of a new “law” (sets of rules and consequent social conduct), similar to the social norms established by tidibe itself. Since it was tidibe that made the presence of colonial agents possible in the first place, the changes engendered during the colonial period are not perceived as exogenous. A prominent place in this ethnography is also given to gab rituals, since one “is always happening or on the horizon in Fuyuge lands and people are continually moving from their hamlets and villages to a ritual village” (93). The detailing of various aspects of gab rituals serves two main purposes: on one hand, it reaffirms how changes introduced in the ceremonial practices are accounted for by the same logic that traces back all changes to tidibe. On the other hand, these descriptions convey local notions of “ritual efficacy” and thus open a window into Fuyuge agency in dealing with the present-day world.
The practical implications of such agency can be grasped when considering Fuyuge claims that missionaries concealed the biblical stories that point to a common descent of white men and Fuyuge people. For instance, the biblical story of Cain and Abel is recounted in a tidibe narrative set in a Fuyuge landscape. One of the two siblings, who will become the ancestor of white people, tricked his brother and left the Fuyuge lands, carrying away knowledge of the written word. Hirsch questions the interpretation that “Fuyuge have transformed the biblical story into a tidibe narrative that echoes Fuyuge experience of being less powerful than white people due to lost techniques and capacities,” highlighting how instead, “from the Fuyuge perspective, this myth has always been known” and indeed “[t]he capacities possessed by white people originate on Fuyuge lands” (166). This distinction is key in the economy of the argument. The difficulty arises when Fuyuge people are not able to engender a reciprocal relation with outsiders, like the Catholic missionaries who lived in a materially and socially separated space from most Fuyuge. Another such instance is the mythical link created with the Mekeo people living on the coast, who successfully established themselves as suppliers of betel nuts in the remunerative Port Moresby market. Once again, the origin of betel nuts is traced back to the tidibe past and, as such, coastal betel nuts are today incorporated into gab rituals. Yet, this “…posed a dilemma. How was it possible they were excluded from this lucrative market given that everything had been placed on their lands by the creator force?” (203). Such an aporia, in my view, highlights some of the limits of Hirsch’s approach.
Ancestral Presence sits comfortably within the so-called New Melanesian ethnography, which draws, at the analytical level, a radical ontological difference between Melanesians and Westerners. If, as Hirsch argues, “what the emphasis on shared social realities obscures are the long-standing historical differences” (29), it is also true that those “shared social realities” constitute the very terrain where Fuyuge struggle to form the desired reciprocity with the outside world. The issue of commensurability looms large and becomes problematic when the analysis shifts toward “history.” With assertions such as “[t]he Fuyuge have history but not according to the conventions of Western History” (43), in my view, the ontological distinction reaches its analytical limit and ceases to be productive. Fuyuge cosmology’s capacity to subsume change posits challenges to any historian who sets to write a history that incorporates local perspectives, but it is a historical product itself. It is important that we do not confine our work to only archival sources and strive to incorporate local knowledge and views, but we also have to recognize that local perspectives are as “partial and ideological” as the “historical narratives produced according to the dictates of [Western] History” (214).
Ancestral Presence is a rich, insightful, and enjoyable ethnography, and Hirsch makes important contributions to the field. By showing how continuity and change are not necessarily mutually exclusive, Hirsch meaningfully intervenes in key ongoing debates within the anthropology of Melanesia. While this work rests within an ethnographic tradition the limits of which I sketched above, it undoubtedly expresses this tradition at its best. Mention must be also made of the convincing ways in which Hirsch resorts to comparison, opening new paths to potentially fecund regional studies. This book merits a wide audience.
Dario Di Rosa
The University of the South Pacific, Suva