Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. xiii, 241 pp. (Figures, maps, photos.) US$34.95. ISBN 978-0-8265-1875-0.
The Trobriand Islands were once described by Annette Weiner as “one of the most sacred places in ethnography” (13). Trobriand Islanders figured centrally in the classic works of Bronislaw Malinowski, who held them up as exemplars of “primitive man” in mirrored opposition to Western society. The irony is that the Trobriand culture differs in significant ways from other parts of Papua New Guinea (PNG): the institution of paramount chiefs, an unusually rich tradition of magic and mysticism, elaborate memorial ceremonies dominated by massive exchanges of banana leaf bundles and skirts between women, and a remarkably positive attitude towards pre-marital sex, among other things. Paradoxically, the cultural extremes of Trobriand society may make it a better candidate for the examination of comparative issues than other more “normal” Melanesian societies. Regardless, for almost a century, the Trobriands have inspired some of the most sophisticated and influential ethnography—while triggering equally fierce debates—in the anthropological canon. Katherine Lepani’s superb new book very much follows in this august tradition.
Islands of Love, Islands of Risk deals with topics at once new and familiar. It is primarily a study of how Trobrianders have understood and responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly to outside interventions intended to educate and protect the population. The Papua New Guinea (PNG) population as a whole has exceptionally high infection rates for sexual transmitted disease and is thus highly vulnerable to HIV. Given the inadequacies of the medical system in remote rural areas, estimates of how many people in the Trobriands have HIV are “highly speculative.” In contrast, the “discursive presence” of HIV/AIDS is pervasive due to effective awareness campaigns, particularly the village birth attendants program, which reaches most women of child bearing age at the village level (31). Drawing upon ethnographic observation as well as individual and group interviews in 23 villages across four of the six Trobriand Islands, Lepani provides the first full-length monograph examining both the execution and reception of HIV/AIDS interventions and information campaigns in a rural Papua New Guinea community.
Making sense of how Trobrianders have responded to HIV takes Lepani into territory first explored by Malinowski in Sex and Repressions in Savage Society (1927) as well as Weiner’s feminist reappraisal of the 1970s and more recent writings on gender and relational personhood. The depth of the ethnographic record allows an unusual degree of insight into how gender roles and sexual practices have changed over the past century. (Remarkably little!) She provides a particularly revealing review of the long history of government interventions in response to sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the Trobriands, dating back to the establishment of a venereal treatment clinic in 1905. Lepani’s main concern, however, is the ethnographic present of 2000-03. She writes a fine-grained account of gendered agency through the life cycle, moving from the considerable sexual freedom of youth through the complementary responsibilities of women and men in birth and child rearing and the multifold exchanges that constitute the reproduction of clan-based personhood. Lepani’s sensitive description of Trobriand attitudes towards sex, however, will no doubt attract the most interest. Trobriand sexual culture, she notes, is unique in PNG in terms of the enthusiastic validation of premarital sex with multiple partners (102). Yet Trobriand sexual practices and desires are very much cultural productions: regulated in terms of how partners are selected as well as the essential roles played by love magic and exchanges. “Young people,” she observes, “represent their sexual freedom as a process of decision making that involves careful discernment and studied selection, not careless abandon” (127).
Given such cultural orientations, Trobriand Islanders have been unusually receptive to certain aspects of HIV/AIDS awareness and medical interventions. Unlike elsewhere in PNG, they do not attribute the pandemic to a vengeful Christian God; and from the paramount chief on down there is a general acceptance of the need to use condoms to protect oneself from STIs. While multi-partnering in general and a growing trend of older married men bribing young women for sex leaves the Trobriand population increasingly vulnerable, Lepani finds hope that those affiliated with AIDS in the future will find compassionate care within their extended families. For the most part, however, she documents mismatches between the intentions of HIV interventions and the local reception. To some degree, these are practical. Boxes of condoms often sit locked up in government offices until they become useless because officials are awaiting permission or lack access to networks to distribute them, for instance. At a deeper level, however, there is an ontological divide between the Western understanding of disease vectors through individual behaviour and the Trobriand conception of serious illnesses and accidents as the consequences of moral breaches of collective morality—an understanding that, for now, places the invisible but highly dangerous condition of HIV infection into the class of sovasova, chronic illness resulting from clan incest. At a more fundamental level, there is a serious mismatch between the moral assumptions of HIV awareness discourses that portray sex as dangerous and an individual responsibility and a culture which celebrates sex in the context of collective well-being. The running theme of the book is that a truly effective HIV intervention must be built upon “a foundation of respect for both the commonality and diversity of human sexual desire and experience” (133). She demonstrates just how challenging this is to accomplish even with the best intentions.
Lepani brings a quiet authority to this complex study. She has long experience with HIV awareness campaigns and was the principal author of the National HIV Prevention Strategy in PNG. She is also a member, through marriage, of the Trobriand community. While addressing a dark and difficult topic, the ethnography presents a positive, compassionate and intimate portrait of contemporary life in the Trobriands. Drawing effectively on personal vignettes, the text is wonderfully evocative, accessible and engaging. It is an important book that will be of considerable interest to specialists studying cultural responses to HIV around the world. Yet it is at the same time an engaging introduction to a contemporary Melanesian society that I enthusiastically recommend for undergraduate teaching.
John Barker
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 660-662