Foreword by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Chicago: HAU Books; The University of Chicago Press [distributor], 2017. xxxvii, 473 pp. (Graphs, map, B&W photos.) US$40.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-9973675-6-0.
In this important volume, Mark Mosko presents a reinterpretation of some of the key tenets of Trobriand social organization, delivered as a direct challenge to much of the classic ethnographic analyses of this “sacred place” in anthropology’s canon. In particular, he revisits aspects of the observations and theories advocated by Bronislaw Malinowski and Annette Weiner, suggesting that in many respects they misunderstood or misrepresented Trobriand ideas about cosmology and exchange.
The introduction sets out Mosko’s mission to address two “puzzles” which have plagued previous analyses of Trobriand sociality: one relating to the ways in which magic is made effective (Malinowski’s theory being the power inherent in the words themselves), and secondly, the assertions about Trobriand matrilineality and ideas about procreation. Mosko is especially concerned with the relationship between magic and kinship, and centres his analysis around various instances of bwekawa (sacrifice), which he argues is the key to understanding how magic and kinship are intimately related. He uses the Levy-Bruhlian concept of participation and a modification of Marilyn Strathern’s new Melanesian ethnography (NME), with its focus on partibility and dividuality (a variant he describes as newborn Melanesian ethnography, or NBME), to assert that baloma (spirits) are animated beings who figure prominently as active agents in the daily lives of Trobrianders, making magic efficacious as recipients of reciprocal bwekasa sacrifices and being responsible for Trobriand origins and societal reproduction. He asserts that “[the] notion of kekwabu ‘images’ and peu’ula ‘powers’ or ‘capacities’ associated with them hold the key to unlocking the tie between magic and kinship and virtually all the additional beliefs and practices that follow from it” (15).
Although aligning the work in many ways with that of Eduardo Viverios de Castro, known for his theoretical insights regarding Amazonian “perspectivism” and alternate ontologies, Mosko’s approach is as much structural/functional, at pains to describe a total social system with all parts working harmoniously to keep the social machine running smoothly. He emphasizes the Durkheimian distinction between “sacred” and “profane” in Trobriand terms, with considerable attention to observances of kikila (ritual restrictions/proscriptions), which, like bwekasa sacrifices, he argues other ethnographers have ignored. Malinowski is at times presented as a straw man by foregrounding his earliest work, which in some cases Malinowski himself revised after subsequent investigations. Nonetheless, these new interpretations are certainly worthy of attention.
After basic theoretical and methodological approaches are outlined in the introduction, each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of the relationship between baloma and (elite) living Trobrianders. Each begins with an overview of the existing literature on the topic, before following with new interpretations based on Mosko’s field investigations. We are shown at various steps how sacrifice underpins Trobriand sociality and social organization and how Boyowa and Tuma reflect and influence each other, with a series of analogies to show how all social life in the Trobriands is an iteration of the base-body-fruit-tip metaphor that Mosko has utilized in earlier writings (e.g., “The fractal yam: botanical imagery and human agency in the Trobriands,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15, no. 4 (2009): 679–700). As he puts it, “Trobriand procreation ideas, sacrifice, taboo observance, marriage regulation, mortuary practice, chiefly organization, and all the rest, can be viewed as analogies or models of one another … the unfolding of social life, I suggest, amounts to a string of enacted analogies mutually propelling each other” (391). A small section of the concluding chapter directly addresses the influence of Christian conversion on Trobriand understandings of cosmology, but again these are reduced to so many analogies, wherein Christian beliefs are simply slotted into the pre-existing Trobriand worldview. This oversimplifies the complex relationship between Trobriand gulagula (customary knowledge and ways) and tapwaroro (the church), which has seen waves of conversion over more than a century, including a relatively recent and arguably more divisive revival movement.
This work is described as a collaborative endeavour with a core group of key interlocutors, including the “Paramount Chief” (as the title is usually glossed) of the Trobriands, Pulayasi Daniel, and several men in his close inner circle, with a “second and third string” of contributors (including women and non-chiefly Trobrianders) periodically offering insight and assistance. These are interlocutors who are largely educated in both “tradition” and the Western education system, and Mosko notes that research was undertaken in English, employing a translator where necessary. He justifies his lack of proficiency in the local language, stating that this does not negatively impact his research since most of his interlocutors are comfortable speaking English. He outlines his position as an adopted member of Tabalu dala, and behaving in all ways as guyau (chief). This, he argues, gave him privileged information denied to Malinowski and Weiner (who both spoke the Kilivila language), making his reanalysis more reflective of an authentic “Trobriand culture,” which is consistently referred to as an essentialized entity that can best be reflected by using information that often only chiefs are privy to. Indeed, the most troublesome aspect of the book is that Mosko presents the “Trobriand culture” as though what Malinowski described and the current moment are one and the same. It is portrayed as monolithic, timeless, and bounded, despite a brief acknowledgement in the concluding chapter that Christianity has intersected with Trobriand beliefs for a century, and cursorily mentioning the role of Western-imported government structures, which in many ways parallel, challenge, or duplicate the karewaga (authority) of the Tabalu chief and other traditional leaders, but all such interventions are quickly dismissed as inconsequential. This reification of “Trobriand culture” is reiterated in Mosko’s assertion in the concluding chapter that one must know and record what is “the culture” at some pure and authentic ethnographic moment as the entity against which one can measure the effects of social change. Trobriand “culture,” whatever it is, is more than what Tabalu and other high-ranking chiefs talk about (in English, to the ethnographer) on the verandah while eating their evening meal; it is not a moment frozen in time.
Mosko’s methodology of relying on long talks with chiefs results in descriptions and analysis which are more idealized than actual. In my own fieldwork in Kiriwina, I lived intimately for nearly two years with a family of tokai (commoners). I was never led to think of our shared meals (which we all, including my adoptive tama father, ate together and at the same time) as sacrifice. While it might be “ideal” that meals include protein (meat) along with vegetable foods (222), the realities of household economies most often do not allow for this, nor do most Trobrianders achieve the “rule” of including both seawater and freshwater when boiling food. Never have I seen a woman “cry as when grieving” or singing a funeral dirge when removing food from the family cooking pot to serve it (223). And despite prohibitions on stealing, described as a taboo as serious as that forbidding incestuous sexual relations (313), I heard of near-daily examples of food theft from family garden plots during times of scarcity. The argument presented here does not acknowledge nor make much allowance for exceptions, anomalies, differences in rank, and social change, a critique that Mosko has tried to address head-on but perhaps has not adequately achieved in practice. Chiefs and their inner circle may say this is the case, and certainly that is worth interrogating; but it seems worth noting the discrepancy between these “ideals” with life as it is actually lived. The analysis is based on what (elite, chiefly, mostly Omarakana-village-based) people say, not on what Trobrianders across a geographical and hierarchical spectrum do. This is fine, and acknowledged at the outset, but it results in something that is more intellectual exercise (however useful and thought-provoking that may be) than a reflection of Trobriand social realities.
Despite the above critiques, this is undoubtedly an important addition to the corpus not only of Trobriand ethnography, but to the discipline as a whole. It revisits many aspects of Trobriand social life that were perhaps previously underemphasized, such as the importance of the father’s dala in comprising a person’s identity. While arguably based on idealized and privileged reflections on terms, concepts, and cosmological patterns gleaned from primarily chiefly interlocutors, at the expense of the kind of ethnography that emphasizes lived experience and “the imponderabilia of actual life” (Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984[1922], 18), this is sure to be required reading for scholars of the Massim region and Melanesia/Oceania more broadly, as well as those interested in exchange, sacrifice, kinship, magic, and social organization.
Michelle MacCarthy
Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada