ANT 2 - Instructions for Final Research Paper
This assignment requires students pick a topic, formulate a research question and conduct
fieldwork to investigate their topic. Students will work with their TAs to develop an appropriate
final paper project and time will be put aside in section to assist students on their papers
including discussion about fieldwork methods (such as interviews, participant observation, etc.).
Alongside fieldwork, students will also be required to select appropriate literature to support
their argument.
Successful papers will have a central argument supported by evidence that is written in a clear
and thoughtful manner. Papers must meet the requirements indicated below – papers that do not
meet these requirements will be penalized.
General Requirements:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Students must use at least two readings from class and a total of five sources.
Students must work with their TAs to select an appropriate final paper topic.
Students must conduct fieldwork and use this empirical data in their final paper.
Standard formatting: 1 inch margin and 12 point Times/Times New Roman font and
printed in black ink. 6-8 double-spaced page essay (number the pages).
Do not submit a cover page instead include the following on the first page. First page:
Name, Class, Section/TA, Date and Title (single spaced, top left).
Bibliography: Citations can follow any academic citation rule but must be consistent. If
unsure consult TA or: http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/instruc/research/cites.php
Turn in Final Paper in class.
Each paper must be a well organized with a thesis and well-supported argument.
IMPORTANT: Papers are due in class on March 3 (Tuesday). Emailed papers will not be
accepted. Students who turn in their paper late will be penalized ½ letter grade per day until the
final exam. No papers will be accepted after the final exam. Out of fairness to all students there
will be no exceptions granted to these rules unless documented emergency.
REMEMBER: You are being asked to write an academic paper. If you need assistance
identifying the correct resources to use please consult with your TA. Students must cite all works
used but are not required to cite lecture. Students will be instructed how to use empirical data.
All students are required to adhere to the UC Davis Code of Academic Conduct.
ANT 2 – Narrowing and Focusing Exercise
For your final paper you will be expected to conduct research on one of four topics that focuses
on how culture or one’s cultural background shapes his/her experience, understanding, and
perception of one of the following areas:
1) Immigration/Refugees, 2) Urban Space, 3) Media, 4) Medicine or Healthcare.
These are very large topics. This exercise will help you narrow the topic while thinking about the
best method(s) to use for your research.
NAME
Circle one of the four topics above.
1) Identify one to two problems, or things you find interesting, about your topic.
2) Write a short description of what interests you.
3) Write down a brief description of how you could investigate the answers in #1 and #2 with
anthropological methods.
4) What is the most appropriate ethnographic method for this paper; why?
5) Indicate your chosen method then briefly describe how you will use your method: ex. if
interview, who will you interview; write down 2-4 questions.
Article 4
Eating Christmas in
the Kalahari
Richard Borshay Lee
The !Kung Bushmen’s knowledge of
Christmas is thirdhand. The London
Missionary Society brought the holiday
to the southern Tswana tribes in the early
nineteenth century. Later, native catechists spread the idea far and wide
among the Bantu-speaking pastoralists,
even in the remotest corners of the Kalahari Desert. The Bushmen’s idea of the
Christmas story, stripped to its essentials, is “praise the birth of white man’s
god-chief”; what keeps their interest in
the holiday high is the Tswana-Herero
custom of slaughtering an ox for his
Bushmen neighbors as an annual goodwill gesture. Since the 1930’s, part of the
Bushmen’s annual round of activities
has included a December congregation
at the cattle posts for trading, marriage
brokering, and several days of trancedance feasting at which the local Tswana
headman is host.
As a social anthropologist working
with !Kung Bushmen, I found that the
Christmas ox custom suited my purposes. I had come to the Kalahari to
study the hunting and gathering subsistence economy of the !Kung, and to accomplish this it was essential not to
provide them with food, share my own
food, or interfere in any way with their
food-gathering activities. While liberal
handouts of tobacco and medical supplies were appreciated, they were
scarcely adequate to erase the glaring
disparity in wealth between the anthropologist, who maintained a two-month
inventory of canned goods, and the
Bushmen, who rarely had a day’s supply
of food on hand. My approach, while
paying off in terms of data, left me open
to frequent accusations of stinginess and
hard-heartedness. By their lights, I was a
miser.
The Christmas ox was to be my way
of saying thank you for the cooperation
of the past year; and since it was to be our
last Christmas in the field, I determined
to slaughter the largest, meatiest ox that
money could buy, insuring that the feast
and trance-dance would be a success.
Through December I kept my eyes
open at the wells as the cattle were
brought down for watering. Several animals were offered, but none had quite the
grossness that I had in mind. Then, ten
days before the holiday, a Herero friend
led an ox of astonishing size and mass up
to our camp. It was solid black, stood
five feet high at the shoulder, had a fivefoot span of horns, and must have
weighed 1,200 pounds on the hoof. Food
consumption calculations are my specialty, and I quickly figured that bones
and viscera aside, there was enough
meat—at least four pounds—for every
man, woman, and child of the 150 Bushmen in the vicinity of /ai/ai who were expected at the feast.
Having found the right animal at last,
I paid the Herero £20 ($56) and asked
him to keep the beast with his herd until
Christmas day. The next morning word
spread among the people that the big
solid black one was the ox chosen by /
ontah (my Bushman name; it means,
roughly, “whitey”) for the Christmas
feast. That afternoon I received the first
1
delegation. Ben!a, an outspoken sixtyyear-old mother of five, came to the
point slowly.
“Where were you planning to eat
Christmas?”
“Right here at /ai/ai,” I replied.
“Alone or with others?”
“I expect to invite all the people to eat
Christmas with me.”
“Eat what?”
“I have purchased Yehave’s black ox,
and I am going to slaughter and cook it.”
“That’s what we were told at the well
but refused to believe it until we heard it
from yourself.”
“Well, it’s the black one,” I replied
expansively, although wondering what
she was driving at.
“Oh, no!” Ben!a groaned, turning to
her group. “They were right.” Turning
back to me she asked, “Do you expect us
to eat that bag of bones?”
“Bag of bones! It’s the biggest ox at /
ai/ai.”
“Big, yes, but old. And thin. Everybody knows there’s no meat on that old
ox. What did you expect us to eat off it,
the horns?”
Everybody chuckled at Ben!a’s oneliner as they walked away, but all I could
manage was a weak grin.
That evening it was the turn of the
young men. They came to sit at our
evening fire. /gaugo, about my age,
spoke to me man-to-man.
“/ontah, you have always been square
with us,” he lied. “What has happened to
change your heart? That sack of guts and
bones of Yehave’s will hardly feed one
Article 4. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari
camp, let alone all the Bushmen around
ai/ai.” And he proceeded to enumerate
the seven camps in the /ai/ai vicinity,
family by family. “Perhaps you have forgotten that we are not few, but many. Or
are you too blind to tell the difference between a proper cow and an old wreck?
That ox is thin to the point of death.”
“Look, you guys,” I retorted, “that is
a beautiful animal, and I”m sure you will
eat it with pleasure at Christmas.”
“Of course we will eat it; it’s food.
But it won’t fill us up to the point where
we will have enough strength to dance.
We will eat and go home to bed with
stomachs rumbling.”
That night as we turned in, I asked my
wife, Nancy: “What did you think of the
black ox?”
“It looked enormous to me. Why?”
“Well, about eight different people
have told me I got gypped; that the ox is
nothing but bones.”
“What’s the angle?” Nancy asked.
“Did they have a better one to sell?”
“No, they just said that it was going to
be a grim Christmas because there won’t
be enough meat to go around. Maybe I’ll
get an independent judge to look at the
beast in the morning.”
Bright and early, Halingisi, a Tswana
cattle owner, appeared at our camp. But
before I could ask him to give me his
opinion on Yehave’s black ox, he gave
me the eye signal that indicated a confidential chat. We left the camp and sat
down.
“/ontah, I’m surprised at you: you’ve
lived here for three years and still haven’t learned anything about cattle.”
“But what else can a person do but
choose the biggest, strongest animal one
can find?” I retorted.
“Look, just because an animal is big
doesn’t mean that it has plenty of meat
on it. The black one was a beauty when it
was younger, but now it is thin to the
point of death.”
“Well I’ve already bought it. What
can I do at this stage?”
“Bought it already? I thought you
were just considering it. Well, you’ll
have to kill it and serve it, I suppose. But
don’t expect much of a dance to follow.”
My spirits dropped rapidly. I could
believe that Ben!a and /gaugo just might
be putting me on about the black ox, but
Halingisi seemed to be an impartial
critic. I went around that day feeling as
though I had bought a lemon of a used
car.
In the afternoon it was Tomazo’s turn.
Tomazo is a fine hunter, a top trance performer… and one of my most reliable informants. He approached the subject of
the Christmas cow as part of my continuing Bushman education.
“My friend, the way it is with us
Bushmen,” he began, “is that we love
meat. And even more than that, we love
fat. When we hunt we always search for
the fat ones, the ones dripping with layers of white fat: fat that turns into a clear,
thick oil in the cooking pot, fat that slides
down your gullet, fills your stomach and
gives you a roaring diarrhea,” he rhapsodized.
“So, feeling as we do,” he continued,
“it gives us pain to be served such a
scrawny thing as Yehave’s black ox. It is
big, yes, and no doubt its giant bones are
good for soup, but fat is what we really
crave and so we will eat Christmas this
year with a heavy heart.”
The prospect of a gloomy Christmas
now had me worried, so I asked Tomazo
what I could do about it.
“Look for a fat one, a young one…
smaller, but fat. Fat enough to make us /
/gom (‘evacuate the bowels’), then we
will be happy.”
My suspicions were aroused when
Tomazo said that he happened to know
of a young, fat, barren cow that the
owner was willing to part with. Was
Tomazo working on commission, I wondered? But I dispelled this unworthy
thought when we approached the Herero
owner of the cow in question and found
that he had decided not to sell.
The scrawny wreck of a Christmas ox
now became the talk of the /ai/ai water
hole and was the first news told to the
outlying groups as they began to come in
from the bush for the feast. What finally
convinced me that real trouble might be
brewing was the visit from u!au, an old
conservative with a reputation for fierceness. His nickname meant spear and referred to an incident thirty years ago in
which he had speared a man to death. He
had an intense manner; fixing me with
his eyes, he said in clipped tones:
2
“I have only just heard about the
black ox today, or else I would have
come here earlier. /ontah, do you honestly think you can serve meat like that to
people and avoid a fight?” He paused,
letting the implications sink in. “I don’t
mean fight you, /ontah; you are a white
man. I mean a fight between Bushmen.
There are many fierce ones here, and
with such a small quantity of meat to distribute, how can you give everybody a
fair share? Someone is sure to accuse another of taking too much or hogging all
the choice pieces. Then you will see
what happens when some go hungry
while others eat.”
The possibility of at least a serious argument struck me as all too real. I had
witnessed the tension that surrounds the
distribution of meat from a kudu or
gemsbok kill, and had documented many
arguments that sprang up from a real or
imagined slight in meat distribution. The
owners of a kill may spend up to two
hours arranging and rearranging the piles
of meat under the gaze of a circle of recipients before handing them out. And I
also knew that the Christmas feast at /ai/
ai would be bringing together groups that
had feuded in the past.
Convinced now of the gravity of the
situation, I went in earnest to search for a
second cow; but all my inquiries failed to
turn one up.
The Christmas feast was evidently
going to be a disaster, and the incessant
complaints about the meagerness of the
ox had already taken the fun out of it for
me. Moreover, I was getting bored with
the wisecracks, and after losing my temper a few times, I resolved to serve the
beast anyway. If the meat fell short, the
hell with it. In the Bushmen idiom, I announced to all who would listen:
“I am a poor man and blind. If I have
chosen one that is too old and too thin,
we will eat it anyway and see if there is
enough meat there to quiet the rumbling
of our stomachs.”
On hearing this speech, Ben!a offered
me a rare word of comfort. “It’s thin,”
she said philosophically, “but the bones
will make a good soup.”
At dawn Christmas morning, instinct
told me to turn over the butchering and
cooking to a friend and take off with
Nancy to spend Christmas alone in the
ANNUAL EDITIONS
bush. But curiosity kept me from retreating. I wanted to see what such a scrawny
ox looked like on butchering and if there
was going to be a fight, I wanted to catch
every word of it. Anthropologists are incurable that way.
The great beast was driven up to our
dancing ground, and a shot in the forehead dropped it in its tracks. Then,
freshly cut branches were heaped around
the fallen carcass to receive the meat.
Ten men volunteered to help with the
cutting. I asked /gaugo to make the
breast bone cut. This cut, which begins
the butchering process for most large
game, offers easy access for removal of
the viscera. But it also allows the hunter
to spot-check the amount of fat on the
animal. A fat game animal carries a
white layer up to an inch thick on the
chest, while in a thin one, the knife will
quickly cut to bone. All eyes fixed on his
hand as /gaugo, dwarfed by the great carcass, knelt to the breast. The first cut
opened a pool of solid white in the black
skin. The second and third cut widened
and deepened the creamy white. Still no
bone. It was pure fat; it must have been
two inches thick.
“Hey /gau,” I burst out, “that ox is
loaded with fat. What’s this about the ox
being too thin to bother eating? Are you
out of your mind?”
“Fat?” /gau shot back, “You call that
fat? This wreck is thin, sick, dead!” And
he broke out laughing. So did everyone
else. They rolled on the ground, paralyzed with laughter. Everybody laughed
except me; I was thinking.
I ran back to the tent and burst in just
as Nancy was getting up. “Hey, the black
ox. It’s fat as hell! They were kidding
about it being too thin to eat. It was a
joke or something. A put-on. Everyone is
really delighted with it!”
“Some joke,” my wife replied. “It was
so funny that you were ready to pack up
and leave /ai/ai.”
If it had indeed been a joke, it had
been an extraordinarily convincing one,
and tinged, I thought, with more than a
touch of malice as many jokes are. Nevertheless, that it was a joke lifted my
spirits considerably, and I returned to the
butchering site where the shape of the ox
was rapidly disappearing under the axes
and knives of the butchers. The atmo-
sphere had become festive. Grinning
broadly, their arms covered with blood
well past the elbow, men packed chunks
of meat into the big cast-iron cooking
pots, fifty pounds to the load, and muttered and chuckled all the while about
the thinness and worthlessness of the animal and /ontah’s poor judgment.
We danced and ate that ox two days
and two nights; we cooked and distributed fourteen potfuls of meat and no one
went home hungry and no fights broke
out.
But the “joke” stayed in my mind. I
had a growing feeling that something important had happened in my relationship
with the Bushmen and that the clue lay in
the meaning of the joke. Several days
later, when most of the people had dispersed back to the bush camps, I raised
the question with Hakekgose, a Tswana
man who had grown up among the
!Kung, married a !Kung girl, and who
probably knew their culture better than
any other non-Bushman.
“With us whites,” I began, “Christmas is supposed to be the day of friendship and brotherly love. What I can’t
figure out is why the Bushmen went to
such lengths to criticize and belittle the
ox I had bought for the feast. The animal
was perfectly good and their jokes and
wisecracks practically ruined the holiday
for me.”
“So it really did bother you,” said
Hakekgose. “Well, that’s the way they
always talk. When I take my rifle and go
hunting with them, if I miss, they laugh
at me for the rest of the day. But even if
I hit and bring one down, it’s no better.
To them, the kill is always too small or
too old or too thin; and as we sit down on
the kill site to cook and eat the liver, they
keep grumbling, even with their mouths
full of meat. They say things like, ‘Oh
this is awful! What a worthless animal!
Whatever made me think that this
Tswana rascal could hunt!’”
“Is this the way outsiders are
treated?” I asked.
“No, it is their custom; they talk that
way to each other too. Go and ask them.”
/gaugo had been one of the most enthusiastic in making me feel bad about
the merit of the Christmas ox. I sought
him out first.
3
“Why did you tell me the black ox
was worthless, when you could see that it
was loaded with fat and meat?”
“It is our way,” he said smiling. “We
always like to fool people about that. Say
there is a Bushman who has been hunting. He must not come home and announce like a braggard, ‘I have killed a
big one in the bush!’ He must first sit
down in silence until I or someone else
comes up to his fire and asks, ‘What did
you see today?’ He replies quietly, ‘Ah,
I’m no good for hunting. I saw nothing at
all [pause] just a little tiny one.’ Then I
smile to myself,” /gaugo continued, “because I know he has killed something
big.”
“In the morning we make up a party
of four or five people to cut up and carry
the meat back to the camp. When we arrive at the kill we examine it and cry out,
‘You mean to say you have dragged us
all the way out here in order to make us
cart home your pile of bones? Oh, if I
had known it was this thin I wouldn’t
have come.’ Another one pipes up, ‘People, to think I gave up a nice day in the
shade for this. At home we may be hungry but at least we have nice cool water
to drink.’ If the horns are big, someone
says, ‘Did you think that somehow you
were going to boil down the horns for
soup?’
“To all this you must respond in kind.
‘I agree,’ you say, ‘this one is not worth
the effort; let’s just cook the liver for
strength and leave the rest for the hyenas.
It is not too late to hunt today and even a
duiker or a steenbok would be better than
this mess.’
“Then you set to work nevertheless;
butcher the animal, carry the meat back
to the camp and everyone eats,” /gaugo
concluded.
Things were beginning to make
sense. Next, I went to Tomazo. He corroborated /gaugo’s story of the obligatory insults over a kill and added a few
details of his own.
“But,” I asked, “why insult a man after he has gone to all that trouble to track
and kill an animal and when he is going
to share the meat with you so that your
children will have something to eat?”
“Arrogance,” was his cryptic answer.
“Arrogance?”
Article 4. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari
“Yes, when a young man kills much
meat he comes to think of himself as a
chief or a big man, and he thinks of the
rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We
can’t accept this. We refuse one who
boasts, for someday his pride will make
him kill somebody. So we always speak
of his meat as worthless. This way we
cool his heart and make him gentle.”
“But why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked Tomazo with some heat.
“Because you never asked me,” said
Tomazo, echoing the refrain that has
come to haunt every field ethnographer.
The pieces now fell into place. I had
known for a long time that in situations
of social conflict with Bushmen I held all
the cards. I was the only source of tobacco in a thousand square miles, and I
was not incapable of cutting an individual off for non-cooperation. Though my
boycott never lasted longer than a few
days, it was an indication of my strength.
People resented my presence at the water
hole, yet simultaneously dreaded my
leaving. In short I was a perfect target for
the charge of arrogance and for the Bushmen tactic of enforcing humility.
I had been taught an object lesson by
the Bushmen; it had come from an unexpected corner and had hurt me in a vulnerable area. For the big black ox was to
be the one totally generous, unstinting
act of my year at /ai/ai, and I was quite
unprepared for the reaction I received.
As I read it, their message was this:
There are no totally generous acts. All
“acts” have an element of calculation.
One black ox slaughtered at Christmas
does not wipe out a year of careful manipulation of gifts given to serve your
own ends. After all, to kill an animal and
share the meat with people is really no
more than Bushmen do for each other every day and with far less fanfare.
In the end, I had to admire how the
Bushmen had played out the farce—collectively straight-faced to the end. Curi-
ously, the episode reminded me of the
Good Soldier Schweik and his marvelous
encounters with authority. Like Schweik, the Bushmen had retained a
thorough-going skepticism of good
intentions. Was it this independence
of spirit, I wondered, that had kept
them culturally viable in the face of
generations of contact with more
powerful societies, both black and
white? The thought that the Bushmen
were alive and well in the Kalahari was
strangely comforting. Perhaps, armed
with that independence and with their superb knowledge of their environment,
they might yet survive the future.
Richard Borshay Lee is a full professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. He
has done extensive fieldwork in southern Africa, is coeditor of Man the Hunter (1968)
and Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers (1976), and
author of The !Kung San: Men, Women, and
Work in a Foraging Society.
Reprinted with permission from Natural History, December 1969. © 1969 by the American Museum of Natural History.
4
PICK FROM THE PAST
Natural History, August-September 1966
Shakespeare in the Bush
An American anthropologist set out to study the Tiv of West
Africa and was taught the true meaning of Hamlet.
By Laura Bohannan
Just before I left Oxford for the Tiv in West Africa, conversation turned to
the season at Stratford. “You Americans,” said a friend, “often have
difficulty with Shakespeare. He was, after all, a very English poet, and one
can easily misinterpret the universal by misunderstanding the particular.”
I protested that human nature is pretty much the same the whole world
over; at least the general plot and motivation of the greater tragedies would
always be clear—everywhere—although some details of custom might have
to be explained and difficulties of translation might produce other slight
changes. To end an argument we
could not conclude, my friend gave me a
copy of Hamlet to study in the African
bush: it would, he hoped, lift my mind
above its primitive surroundings, and
possibly I might, by prolonged
meditation, achieve the grace of correct
interpretation.
It was my second field trip
to that African tribe, and I
thought myself ready to live in
one of its remote sections—
an area difficult to cross even
on foot. I eventually settled
on the hillock of a very
knowledgeable old man, the It was my second field trip to that African
head of a homestead of some tribe, and I thought myself ready to live
hundred and forty people. in one of its remote sections—an area
difficult to cross even on foot. I
eventually settled on the hillock of a very
knowledgeable old man, the head of a homestead of some hundred and
forty people, all of whom were either his close relatives or their wives and
children. Like the other elders of the vicinity, the old man spent most of his
time performing ceremonies seldom seen these days in the more accessible
parts of the tribe. I was delighted. Soon there would be three months of
enforced isolation and leisure, between the harvest that takes place just
before the rising of the swamps and the clearing of new farms when the
water goes down. Then, I thought, they would have even more time to
perform ceremonies and explain them to me.
I was quite mistaken. Most of the ceremonies demanded the presence of
elders from several homesteads. As the swamps rose, the old men found it
too difficult to walk from one homestead to the next, and the ceremonies
gradually ceased. As the swamps rose even higher, all activities but one
came to an end. The women brewed beer from maize and millet. Men,
women, and children sat on their hillocks and drank it.
People began to drink at dawn. By midmorning the whole homestead was
singing, dancing, and drumming. When it rained, people had to sit inside
their huts: there they drank and sang or they drank and told stories. In any
case, by noon or before, I either had to join the party or retire to my own
hut and my books. “One does not discuss serious matters when there is
beer. Come, drink with us.” Since I lacked their capacity for the thick native
beer, I spent more and more time with Hamlet. Before the end of the
second month, grace descended on me. I was quite sure that Hamlet had
only one possible interpretation, and that one universally obvious.
Early every morning, in the hope of having some serious talk before the
beer party, I used to call on the old man at his reception hut—a circle of
posts supporting a thatched roof above a low mud wall to keep out wind
and rain. One day I crawled through the low doorway and found most of
the men of the homestead sitting huddled in their ragged cloths on stools,
low plank beds, and reclining chairs, warming themselves against the chill
of the rain around a smoky fire. In the center were three pots of beer. The
party had started.
The old man greeted me cordially. “Sit down and drink.” I accepted a large
calabash full of beer, poured some into a small drinking gourd, and tossed
it down. Then I poured some more into the same gourd for the man second
in seniority to my host before I handed my calabash over to a young man
for further distribution. Important people shouldn’t ladle beer themselves.
“It is better like this,” the old man said, looking at me approvingly and
plucking at the thatch that had caught in my hair. “You should sit and
drink with us more often. Your servants tell me that when you are not with
us, you sit inside your hut looking at a
paper.”
This morning they wanted to
The old man was acquainted with four
hear a story while they drank.
kinds of “papers”: tax receipts, bride price They threatened to tell me no
receipts, court fee receipts, and letters.
more stories until I told them
The messenger who brought him letters
one of mine. . . . Realizing
from the chief used them mainly as a
that here was my chance to
badge of office, for he always knew what
prove Hamlet universally
was in them and told the old man.
intelligible, I agreed.
Personal letters for the few who had
relatives in the government or mission
stations were kept until someone went to a large market where there was a
letter writer and reader. Since my arrival, letters were brought to me to be
read. A few men also brought me bride price receipts, privately, with
requests to change the figures to a higher sum. I found moral arguments
were of no avail, since in-laws are fair game, and the technical hazards of
forgery difficult to explain to an illiterate people. I did not wish them to
think me silly enough to look at any such papers for days on end, and I
hastily explained that my “paper” was one of the “things of long ago” of my
country.
“Ah,” said the old man. “Tell us.” I protested that I was not a storyteller.
Storytelling is a skilled art among them; their standards are high, and the
audiences critical—and vocal in their criticism. I protested in vain. This
morning they wanted to hear a story while they drank. They threatened to
tell me no more stories until I told them one of mine. Finally, the old man
promised that no one would criticize my style, “for we know you are
struggling with our language.” “But,” put in one of the elders, “you must
explain what we do not understand, as we do when we tell you our stories.”
Realizing that here was my chance to prove Hamlet universally intelligible,
I agreed.
The old man handed me some more beer to help me on with my
storytelling. Men filled their long wooden pipes and knocked coals from the
fire to place in the pipe bowls; then, puffing contentedly, they sat back to
listen. I began in the proper style, “Not yesterday, not yesterday, but long
ago, a thing occurred. One night three men were keeping watch outside the
homestead of the great chief, when suddenly they saw the former chief
approach them.”
“Why was he no longer their chief?”
“He was dead,” I explained. “That is why they were troubled and afraid
when they saw him.”
“Impossible,” began one of the elders, handing his pipe on to his neighbor,
who interrupted, “Of course it wasn’t the dead chief. It was an omen sent
by a witch. Go on.”
Slightly shaken, I continued. “One of these three was a man who knew
things”—the closest translation for scholar, but unfortunately it also meant
witch. The second elder looked triumphantly at the first. “So he spoke to
the dead chief saying, ‘Tell us what we must do so you may rest in your
grave,’ but the dead chief did not answer. He vanished, and they could see
him no more. Then the man who knew things—his name was Horatio—said
this event was the affair of the dead chief’s son, Hamlet.”
There was a general shaking of heads round the circle. “Had the dead chief
no living brothers? Or was this son the chief?”
“No,” I replied. “That is, he had one living brother who became the chief
when the elder brother died.”
The old men muttered: such omens were matters for chiefs and elders, not
for youngsters; no good could come of going behind a chief’s back; clearly
Horatio was not a man who knew things.
“Yes, he was,” I insisted, shooing a chicken away from my beer. “In our
country the son is next to the father. The dead chief’s younger brother had
become the great chief. He had also married his elder brother’s widow only
about a month after the funeral.”
“He did well,” the old man beamed and announced to the others, “I told
you that if we knew more about Europeans, we would find they really were
very like us. In our country also,” he added to me, “the younger brother
marries the elder brother’s widow and becomes the father of his children.
Now, if your uncle, who married your widowed mother, is your father’s full
brother, then he will be a real father to you. Did Hamlet’s father and uncle
have one mother?”
His question barely penetrated my mind; I was too upset and thrown too
far off-balance by having one of the most important elements of Hamlet
knocked straight out of the picture. Rather uncertainly I said that I thought
they had the same mother, but I wasn’t sure—the story didn’t say. The old
man told me severely that these genealogical details made all the difference
and that when I got home I must ask the elders about it. He shouted out
the door to one of his younger wives to bring his goatskin bag.
Determined to save what I could of the mother motif, I took a deep breath
and began again. “The son Hamlet was very sad because his mother had
married again so quickly. There was no need for her to do so, and it is our
custom for a widow not to go to her next husband until she has mourned
for two years.”
“Two years is too long,” objected the wife, who had appeared with the old
man’s battered goatskin bag. “Who will hoe your farms for you while you
have no husband?”
“Hamlet,” I retorted, without thinking, “was old enough to hoe his mother’s
farms himself. There was no need for her to remarry.” No one looked
convinced. I gave up. “His mother and the great chief told Hamlet not to be
sad, for the great chief himself would be a father to Hamlet. Furthermore,
Hamlet would be the next chief: therefore he must stay to learn the things
of a chief. Hamlet agreed to remain, and all the rest went off to drink beer.”
While I paused, perplexed at how to render Hamlet’s disgusted soliloquy to
an audience convinced that Claudius and Gertrude had behaved in the best
possible manner, one of the younger men asked me who had married the
other wives of the dead chief.
“He had no other wives,” I told him.
“But a chief must have many wives! How else can he brew beer and prepare
food for all his guests?”
I said firmly that in our country even chiefs had only one wife, that they
had servants to do their work, and that they paid them from tax money.
It was better, they returned, for a chief to have many wives and sons who
would help him hoe his farms and feed his people; then everyone loved the
chief who gave much and took nothing—taxes were a bad thing.
I agreed with the last comment, but for the rest fell back on their favorite
way of fobbing off my questions: “That is the way it is done, so that is how
we do it.”
I decided to skip the soliloquy. Even if Claudius was here thought quite
right to marry his brother’s widow, there remained the poison motif, and I
knew they would disapprove of fratricide. More hopefully I resumed, “That
night Hamlet kept watch with the three who had seen his dead father. The
dead chief again appeared, and although the others were afraid, Hamlet
followed his dead father off to one side. When they were alone, Hamlet’s
dead father spoke.”
“Omens can’t talk!” The old man was emphatic.
“Hamlet’s dead father wasn’t an omen. Seeing him might have been an
omen, but he was not.” My audience looked as confused as I sounded. “It
was Hamlet’s dead father. It was a thing we call a ‘ghost.’” I had to use the
English word, for unlike many of the neighboring tribes, these people
didn’t believe in the survival after death of any individuating part of the
personality.
“What is a ‘ghost?’ An omen?”
“No, a ‘ghost’ is someone who is dead but who walks around and can talk,
and people can hear him and see him but not touch him.”
They objected. “One can touch zombis.”
“No, no! It was not a dead body the witches had animated to sacrifice and
eat. No one else made Hamlet’s dead father walk. He did it himself.”
“Dead men can’t walk,” protested my audience as one man.
I was quite willing to compromise.
“A ‘ghost’ is the dead man’s shadow.”
But again they objected. “Dead men cast no shadows.”
“They do in my country,” I snapped.
The old man quelled the babble of disbelief that arose immediately and
told me with that insincere, but courteous, agreement one extends to the
fancies of the young, ignorant, and superstitious, “No doubt in your
country the dead can also walk without being zombis.” From the depths of
his bag he produced a withered fragment of kola nut, bit off one end to
show it wasn’t poisoned, and handed me the rest as a peace offering.
“Anyhow,” I resumed, “Hamlet’s dead father said that his own brother, the
one who became chief, had poisoned him. He wanted Hamlet to avenge
him. Hamlet believed this in his heart, for he did not like his father’s
brother.” I took another swallow of beer. “In the country of the great chief,
living in the same homestead, for it was a very large one, was an important
elder who was often with the chief to advise and help him. His name was
Polonius. Hamlet was courting his daughter, but her father and her brother
. . . [I cast hastily about for some tribal analogy] warned her not to let
Hamlet visit her when she was alone on her farm, for he would be a great
chief and so could not marry her.”
“Why not?” asked the wife, who had settled down on the edge of the old
man’s chair. He frowned at her for asking stupid questions and growled,
“They lived in the same homestead.”
“That was not the reason,” I informed them. “Polonius was a stranger who
lived in the homestead because he helped the chief, not because he was a
relative.”
“Then why couldn’t Hamlet marry her?”
“He could have,” I explained, “but Polonius didn’t think he would. After all,
Hamlet was a man of great importance who ought to marry a chief’s
daughter, for in his country a man could have only one wife. Polonius was
afraid that if Hamlet made love to his daughter, then no one else would
give a high price for her.”
“That might be true,” remarked one of the shrewder elders, “but a chief’s
son would give his mistress’s father enough presents and patronage to
more than make up the difference. Polonius sounds like a fool to me.”
“Many people think he was,” I agreed. “Meanwhile Polonius sent his son
Laertes off to Paris to learn the things of that country, for it was the
homestead of a very great chief indeed. Because he was afraid that Laertes
might waste a lot of money on beer and women and gambling, or get into
trouble by fighting, he sent one of his servants to Paris secretly, to spy out
what Laertes was doing. One day Hamlet came upon Polonius’s daughter
Ophelia. He behaved so oddly he frightened her. Indeed”—I was fumbling
for words to express the dubious quality of Hamlet’s madness—“the chief
and many others had also noticed that when Hamlet talked one could
understand the words but not what they meant. Many people thought that
he had become mad.” My audience suddenly became much more attentive.
“The great chief wanted to know what was wrong with Hamlet, so he sent
for two of Hamlet’s age mates [school friends would have taken a long
explanation] to talk to Hamlet and find out what troubled his heart.
Hamlet, seeing that they had been bribed by the chief to betray him, told
them nothing. Polonius, however, insisted that Hamlet was mad because
he had been forbidden to see Ophelia, whom he loved.”
“Why,” inquired a bewildered voice, “should anyone bewitch Hamlet on
that account?”
“Bewitch him?”
“Yes, only witchcraft can make anyone mad, unless, of course, one sees the
beings that lurk in the forest.”
I stopped being a storyteller and took out my notebook and demanded to
be told more about these two causes of madness. Even while they spoke
and I jotted notes, I tried to calculate the effect of this new factor on the
plot. Hamlet had not been exposed to the beings that lurk in the forests.
Only his relatives in the male line could bewitch him. Barring relatives not
mentioned by Shakespeare, it had to be Claudius who was attempting to
harm him. And, of course, it was.
For the moment I staved off questions by saying that the great chief also
refused to believe that Hamlet was mad for the love of Ophelia and nothing
else. “He was sure that something much more important was troubling
Hamlet’s heart.”
“Now Hamlet’s age mates,” I continued, “had brought with them a famous
storyteller. Hamlet decided to have this man tell the chief and all his
homestead a story about a man who had poisoned his brother because he
desired his brother’s wife and wished to be chief himself. Hamlet was sure
the great chief could not hear the story without making a sign if he was
indeed guilty, and then he would discover whether his dead father had told
him the truth.”
The old man interrupted, with deep cunning, “Why should a father lie to
his son?” he asked.
I hedged: “Hamlet wasn’t sure that it really was his dead father.” It was
impossible to say anything, in that language, about devil-inspired visions.
“You mean,” he said, “it actually was an
omen, and he knew witches sometimes
send false ones. Hamlet was a fool not
to go to one skilled in reading omens
and divining the truth in the first place.
A man-who-sees-the-truth could have
told him how his father died, if he really had been poisoned, and if there
was witchcraft in it; then Hamlet could have called the elders to settle the
matter.”
The old men looked at each
other in supreme disgust. "That
Polonius truly was a fool and a
man who knew nothing!"
The shrewd elder ventured to disagree. “Because his father’s brother was a
great chief, one-who-sees-the-truth might therefore have been afraid to tell
it. I think it was for that reason that a friend of Hamlet’s father—a witch
and an elder—sent an omen so his friend’s son would know. Was the omen
true?”
“Yes,” I said, abandoning ghosts and the devil; a witch-sent omen it would
have to be. “It was true, for when the storyteller was telling his tale before
all the homestead, the great chief rose in fear. Afraid that Hamlet knew his
secret he planned to have him killed.”
The stage set of the next bit presented some difficulties of translation. I
began cautiously. “The great chief told Hamlet’s mother to find out from
her son what he knew. But because a woman’s children are always first in
her heart, he had the important elder Polonius hide behind a cloth that
hung against the wall of Hamlet’s mother’s sleeping hut. Hamlet started to
scold his mother for what she had done.”
There was a shocked murmur from everyone. A man should never scold his
mother.
“She called out in fear, and Polonius moved behind the cloth. Shouting, ‘A
rat!’ Hamlet took his machete and slashed through the cloth.” I paused for
dramatic effect. “He had killed Polonius.”
The old men looked at each other in supreme disgust. “That Polonius truly
was a fool and a man who knew nothing! What child would not know
enough to shout, ‘It's me!’” With a pang, I remembered that these people
are ardent hunters, always armed with bow, arrow, and machete; at the
first rustle in the grass an arrow is aimed and ready, and the hunter shouts
“Game!” If no human voice answers immediately, the arrow speeds on its
way. Like a good hunter, Hamlet had shouted, “A rat!”
I rushed in to save Polonius’s reputation. “Polonius did speak. Hamlet
heard him. But he thought it was the chief and wished to kill him to avenge
his father. He had meant to kill him earlier that evening. . . .” I broke down,
unable to describe to these pagans, who had no belief in individual afterlife,
the difference between dying at one’s prayers and dying “unhousell’d,
disappointed, unaneled.”
This time I had shocked my audience seriously. “For a man to raise his
hand against his father’s brother and the one who has become his father—
that is a terrible thing. The elders ought to let such a man be bewitched.”
I nibbled at my kola nut in some perplexity, then pointed out that after all
the man had killed Hamlet’s father.
“No,” pronounced the old man, speaking less to me than to the young men
sitting behind the elders. “If your father’s brother has killed your father,
you must appeal to your father’s age mates: they may avenge him. No man
may use violence against his senior relatives.” Another thought struck him.
“But if his father’s brother had indeed been wicked enough to bewitch
Hamlet and make him mad that would be a good story indeed, for it would
be his fault that Hamlet, being mad, no longer had any sense and thus was
ready to kill his father’s brother.”
There was a murmur of applause. Hamlet was again a good story to them,
but it no longer seemed quite the same story to me. As I thought over the
coming complications of plot and motive, I lost courage and decided to
skim over dangerous ground quickly.
“The great chief,” I went on, “was not sorry that Hamlet had killed
Polonius. It gave him a reason to send Hamlet away, with his two
treacherous age mates, with letters to a chief of a far country, saying that
Hamlet should be killed. But Hamlet changed the writing on their papers,
so that the chief killed his age mates instead.” I encountered a reproachful
glare from one of the men whom I had told undetectable forgery was not
merely immoral but beyond human skill. I looked the other way.
“Before Hamlet could return, Laertes came back for his father’s funeral.
The great chief told him Hamlet had killed Polonius. Laertes swore to kill
Hamlet because of this, and because his sister Ophelia, hearing her father
had been killed by the man she loved, went mad and drowned in the river.”
“Have you already forgotten what we told you?” The old man was
reproachful. “One cannot take vengeance on a madman; Hamlet killed
Polonius in his madness. As for the girl, she not only went mad, she was
drowned. Only witches can make people drown. Water itself can’t hurt
anything. It is merely something one drinks and bathes in.”
I began to get cross. “If you don’t like the story, I’ll stop.”
The old man made soothing noises and himself poured me some more
beer. “You tell the story well, and we are listening. But it is clear that the
elders of your country have never told you what the story really means. No,
don’t interrupt! We believe you when you say your marriage customs are
different, or your clothes and weapons. But people are the same
everywhere; therefore, there are always witches and it is we, the elders,
who know how witches work. We told you it was the great chief who wished
to kill Hamlet, and now your own words have proved us right. Who were
Ophelia’s male relatives?”
“There were only her father and her brother.” Hamlet was clearly out of my
hands.
“There must have been many more; this also you must ask of your elders
when you get back to your country. From what you tell us, since Polonius
was dead, it must have been Laertes who killed Ophelia, although I do not
see the reason for it.”
We had emptied one pot of beer, and the old men argued the point with
slightly tipsy interest. Finally one of them demanded of me, “What did the
servant of Polonius say on his return?”
With difficulty I recollected Reynaldo and his mission. “I don’t think he did
return before Polonius was killed.”
“Listen,” said the elder, “and I will tell you how it was and how your story
will go, then you may tell me if I am right. Polonius knew his son would get
into trouble, and so he did. He had many fines to pay for fighting, and
debts from gambling. But he had only two ways of getting money quickly.
One was to marry off his sister at once, but it is difficult to find a man who
will marry a woman desired by the son of a chief. For if the chief’s heir
commits adultery with your wife, what can you do? Only a fool calls a case
against a man who will someday be his judge. Therefore Laertes had to take
the second way: he killed his sister by witchcraft, drowning her so he could
secretly sell her body to the witches.”
I raised an objection. “They found her body and buried it. Indeed Laertes
jumped into the grave to see his sister once more—so, you see, the body
was truly there. Hamlet, who had just come back, jumped in after him.”
“What did I tell you?” The elder appealed to the others. “Laertes was up to
no good with his sister’s body. Hamlet prevented him, because the chief’s
heir, like a chief, does not wish any other man to grow rich and powerful.
Laertes would be angry, because he would have killed his sister without
benefit to himself. In our country he would try to kill Hamlet for that
reason. Is this not what happened?”
“More or less,” I admitted. “When the great chief found Hamlet was still
alive, he encouraged Laertes to try to kill Hamlet and arranged a fight with
machetes between them. In the fight both the young men were wounded to
death. Hamlet’s mother drank the poisoned beer that the chief meant for
Hamlet in case he won the fight. When he saw his mother die of poison,
Hamlet, dying, managed to kill his father’s brother with his machete.”
“You see, I was right!” exclaimed the elder.
“That was a very good story,” added the old man, “and you told it with very
few mistakes.” There was just one more error, at the very end. The poison
Hamlet’s mother drank was obviously meant for the survivor of the fight,
whichever it was. If Laertes had won, the great chief would have poisoned
him, for no one would know that he arranged Hamlet’s death. Then, too, he
need not fear Laertes’ witchcraft; it takes a strong heart to kill one’s only
sister by witchcraft.
“Sometime,” concluded the old man, gathering his ragged toga about him,
“you must tell us some more stories of your country. We, who are elders,
will instruct you in their true meaning, so that when you return to your
own land your elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but
among those who know things and who have taught you wisdom.”
Return to Web Site Archive, Picks from the Past
One Hundred Percent American
By Ralph Linton
There can be no question about the average American’s Americanism or his desire to preserve
this precious heritage at all costs. Nevertheless, some insidious foreign ideas have already
wormed their way into his civilization without his realizing what was going on. Thus dawn finds
the unsuspecting patriot garbed in pajamas, a garment of East Indian origin; and lying in a bed
built on a pattern which originated in either Persia or Asia Minor. He is muffled to the ears in
un-American materials: cotton, first domesticated in India; linen, domesticated in the Near East;
wool from an animal native to Asia Minor; or silk whose uses were first discovered by the
Chinese. All these substances have been transformed into cloth by methods invented in
Southwestern Asia. If the weather is cold enough he may even be sleeping under an eiderdown
quilt invented in Scandinavia.
On awakening he glances at the clock, a medieval European invention, uses one potent Latin
word in abbreviated form, rises in haste, and goes to the bathroom. Here, if he stops to think
about it, he must feel himself in the presence of a great American institution; he will have heard
stories of both the quality and frequency of foreign plumbing and will know that in no other
country does the average man perform his ablutions in the midst of such splendor. But the
insidious foreign influence pursues him even here. Glass was invented by the ancient Egyptians,
the use of glazed tiles for floors and walls in the Near East, porcelain in China, and the art of
enameling on metal by Mediterranean artisans of the Bronze Age. Even his bathtub and toilet are
but slightly modified copies of Roman originals. The only purely American contribution to tile
ensemble is tile steam radiator, against which our patriot very briefly and unintentionally places
his posterior.
In this bathroom the American washes with soap invented by the ancient Gauls. Next he cleans
his teeth, a subversive European practice which did not invade America until the latter part of the
eighteenth century. He then shaves, a masochistic rite first developed by the heathen priests of
ancient Egypt and Sumer. The process is made less of a penance by the fact that his razor is of
steel, an iron-carbon alloy discovered in either India or Turkestan. Lastly, he dries himself on a
Turkish towel.
Returning to the bedroom, the unconscious victim of un-American practices removes his clothes
from a chair, invented in the Near East, and proceeds to dress. He puts on close-fitting tailored
garments whose form derives from the skin clothing of the ancient nomads of the Asiatic steppes
and fastens them with buttons whose prototypes appeared in Europe at the Close of the Scone
Age. This costume is appropriate enough for outdoor exercise in a cold climate, but is quite
unsuited to American summers, steam-heated houses, and Pullmans. Nevertheless, foreign ideas
and habits hold the unfortunate man in thrall even when common sense tells him that the
authentically American costume of gee string and moccasins would be far more comfortable. He
puts on his feet stiff coverings made from hide prepared by a process invented in ancient Egypt
and cut to a pattern which can be traced back to ancient Greece, and makes sure that they ire
properly polished, also a Greek idea. Lastly, he tics about his neck a strip of bright-colored cloth
which is a vestigial survival of the shoulder shawls worn by seventeenth century Croats. He
gives himself a final appraisal in the mirror, an old Mediterranean invention, and goes
downstairs to breakfast.
Here a whole new series of foreign things confronts him. His food and drink are placed before
him in pottery vessels, the proper name of which–china–is sufficient evidence of their origin. His
fork is a medieval Italian invention and his spoon a copy of a Roman original. He will usually
begin the meal with coffee, an Abyssinian plant first discovered by the Arabs. The American is
quite likely to need it to dispel the morning-after effects of overindulgence in fermented drinks,
invented in the Near East; or distilled ones, invented by the alchemists of medieval Europe.
Whereas the Arabs took, their coffee straight, he will probably sweeten it with sugar, discovered
in India; and dilute it with cream, both the domestication of cattle and the technique of milking
having originated in Asia Minor.
If our patriot is old-fashioned enough to adhere to the so-called American breakfast, his coffee
will be accompanied by an orange, domesticated in the Mediterranean region, a cantaloupe
domesticated in Persia, or grapes domesticated in Asia Minor. He will follow this with a bowl of
cereal made from grain domesticated in the Near East and prepared by methods also invented
there. From this he will go on to waffles, a Scandinavian invention with plenty of butter,
originally a Near Eastern cosmetic. As a side dish he may have the egg of a bird domesticated in
Southeastern Asia or strips of the flesh of an animal domesticated in the same region, which has
been salted and smoked by a process invented in Northern Europe.
Breakfast over, he places upon his head a molded piece of felt, invented by the nomads of
Eastern Asia, and, if it looks like rain, puts on outer shoes of rubber, discovered by the ancient
Mexicans, and takes an umbrella, invented in India. He then sprints for his train–the train, not
sprinting, being in English invention. At the station he pauses for a moment to buy a newspaper,
paying for it with coins invented in ancient Lydia. Once on board he settles back to inhale the
fumes of a cigarette invented in Mexico, or a cigar invented in Brazil. Meanwhile, he reads the
news of the day, imprinted in characters invented by the ancient Semites by a process invented in
Germany upon a material invented in China. As he scans the latest editorial pointing out the dire
results to our institutions of accepting foreign ideas, he will not fail to thank a Hebrew God in an
Indo-European language that he is a one hundred percent (decimal system invented by the
Greeks) American (from Americus Vespucci, Italian geographer).
From Ralph Linton, "One Hundred Per-Cent American," American Mercury 40 (1937): 427-29.
INTRODUCTION
THE SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE OF
THIS INQUIRY
I
THE coastal populations of the South Sea Islands, with very few exceptions, are,
or were before their extinction, expert navigators and traders. Several of them
had evolved excellent types of large sea-going canoes, and used to embark in
them on distant trade expeditions or raids of war and conquest. The PapuoMelanesians, who inhabit the coast and the outlying islands of New Guinea, are
no exception to this rule. In general they are daring sailors, industrious
manufacturers, and keen traders. The manufacturing centres of important
articles, such as pottery, stone implements, canoes, fine baskets, valued
ornaments, are localised in several places, according to the skill of the
inhabitants, their inherited tribal tradition, and special facilities offered by the
district; thence they are traded over wide areas, sometimes travelling more than
hundreds of miles.
Definite forms of exchange along definite trade routes are to be found
established between the various tribes. A most remarkable form of intertribal
trade is that obtaining between the Motu of Port Moresby and the tribes of the
Papuan Gulf. The Motu sail for hundreds of miles in heavy, unwieldy canoes,
called lakatoi, which are provided with the characteristic crab-claw sails. They
bring pottery and shell ornaments, in olden days, stone blades, to Gulf Papuans,
from whom they obtain in exchange sago and the heavy dug-outs, which are used
afterwards by the Motu for the construction of their lakatoi canoes.*
Further East, on the South coast, there lives the industrious, sea-faring
population of the Mailu, who link the East End of New Guinea with the central
coast tribes by means of annual trading expeditions.* Finally, the natives of the
islands and archipelagoes, scattered around the East End, are in constant trading
relations with one another. We possess in Professor Seligman’s book an
* The hiri, as these expeditions are called in Motuan, have been described with a great
wealth of detail and clearness of outline by Captain F.Barton, in C.G.Seligman’s “The
Melanesians of British New Guinea,” Cambridge, 1910, Chapter viii.
2 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
excellent description of the subject, especially of the nearer trades routes
between the various islands inhabited by the Southern Massim.† There exists,
however, another, a very extensive and highly complex trading system,
embracing with its ramifications, not only the islands near the East End, but also
the Louisiades, Woodlark Island, the Trobriand Archipelago, and the
d’Entrecasteaux group; it penetrates into the mainland of New Guinea, and
exerts an indirect influence over several outlying districts, such as Rossel Island,
and some parts of the Northern and Southern coast of New Guinea. This trading
system, the Kula, is the subject I am setting out to describe in this volume, and it
will be seen that it is an economic phenomenon of consideraable theoretical
importance. It looms paramount in the tribal life of those natives who live within
its circuit, and its importance is fully realised by the tribesmen themselves,
whose ideas, ambitions, desires and vanities are very much bound up with the
Kula
II
Before proceeding to the account of the Kula, it will be well to give a description
of the methods used in the collecting of the ethnographic material. The results of
scientific research in any branch of learning ought to be presented in a manner
absolutely candid and above board. No one would dream of making an
experimental contribution to physical or chemical science, without giving a
detailed account of all the arrangements of the experiments; an exact description
of the apparatus used; of the manner in which the observations were conducted;
of their number; of the length of time devoted to them, and of the degree of
approximation with which each measurement was made. In less exact sciences, as
in biology or geology, this cannot be done as rigorously, but every student will
do his best to bring home to the reader all the conditions in which the experiment
or the observations were made. In Ethnography, where a candid account of such
data is perhaps even more necessary, it has unfortunately in the past not always
been supplied with sufficient generosity, and many writers do not ply the full
searchlight of methodic sincerity, as they move among their facts but produce
them before us out of complete obscurity.
It would be easy to quote works of high repute, and with a scientific hall-mark
on them, in which wholesale generalisations are laid down before us, and we are
not informed at all by what actual experiences the writers have reached their
conclusion. No special chapter or paragraph is devoted to describing to us the
conditions under which observations were made and information collected. I
consider that only such ethnographic sources are of unquestionable scientific
* Cf. “The Mailu,” by B.Malinowski, in Transactions of the R. Society of S. Australia,
1915; Chapter iv. 4, pp.612 to 629.
† Op. cit. Chapter xl.
SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE 3
value, in which we can clearly draw the line between, on the one hand, the
results of direct observation and of native statements and interpretations, and on
the other, the inferences of the author, based on his common sense and
psycholgical insight.* Indeed, some such survey, as that contained in the table,
given below (Div. VI of this chapter) ought to be forthcoming, so that at a glance
the reader could estimate with precision the degree of the writer’s personal
acquaintance with the facts which he describes, and form an idea under what
conditions information had been obtained from the natives.
Again, in historical science, no one could expect to be seriously treated if he
made any mystery of his sources and spoke of the past as if he knew it by
divination. In Ethnography, the writer is his own chronicler and the historian at
the same time, while his sources are no doubt easily accessible, but also
supremely elusive and complex; they are not embodied in fixed, material
documents, but in the behaviour and in the memory of living men. In
Ethnography, the distance is often enormous between the brute material of
information—as it is presented to the student in his own observations, in native
statement, in the kaleidoscope of tribal life— and the final authoritative
presentation of the results. The Ethnographer has to traverse this distance in the
laborious years between the moment when he sets foot upon a native beach, and
makes his first attempts to get into touch with the natives, and the time when he
writes down the final version of his results. A brief outline of an Ethnographer’s
tribulations, as lived through by myself, may throw more light on the question,
than any long abstract discussion could do.
III
Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a
tropical beach close to a native village, while the launch or dinghy which has
brought you sails away out of sight. Since you take up your abode in the
compound of some neighbouring white man, trader or missionary, you have
nothing to do, but to start at once on your ethnographic work. Imagine further
that you are a beginner, without previous experience, with nothing to guide you
and no one to help you. For the white man is temporarily absent, or else unable
or unwilling to waste any of his time on you. This exactly describes my first
initiation into field work on the south coast of New Guinea. I well remember the
long visits I paid to the villages during the first weeks; the feeling of
hopelessness and despair after many obstinate but futile attempts had entirely
failed to bring me into real touch with the natives, or supply me with any material.
* On this point of method again, we are indebted to the Cambridge School of
Anthropology for having introduced the really scientific way of dealing with the question.
More especially in the writings of Haddon, Rivers and Seligman, the distinction between
inference and observation is always clearly drawn, and we can visualise with perfect
precision the conditions under which the work was done.
4 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
I had periods of despondency, when I buried myself in the reading of novels, as a
man might take to drink in a fit of tropical depression and boredom.
Imagine yourself then, making your first entry into the village, alone or in
company with your white cicerone. Some natives flock round you, especially if
they smell tobacco. Others, the more dignified and elderly, remain seated where
they are. Your white companion has his routine way of treating the natives, and
he neither understands, nor is very much concerned with the manner in which
you, as an ethnographer, will have to approach them. The first visit leaves you
with a hopeful feeling that when you return alone, things will be easier. Such
was my hope at least.
I came back duly, and soon gathered an audience around me. A few
compliments in pidgin-English on both sides, some tobacco changing hands,
induced an atmosphere of mutual amiability. I tried then to proceed to business.
First, to begin with subjects which might arouse no suspicion, I started to “do”
technology, A few natives were engaged in manufacturing some object or other.
It was easy to look at it and obtain the names of the tools, and even some
technical expressions about the proceedings, but there the matter ended. It must
be borne in mind that pidgin-English is a very imperfect instrument for
expressing one’s ideas, and that before one gets a good training in framing
questions and understanding answers one has the uncomfortable feeling that free
communication in it with the natives will never be attained; and I was quite
unable to enter into any more detailed or explicit conversation with them at first.
I knew well that the best remedy for this was to collect concrete data, and
accordingly I took a village census, wrote down genealogies, drew up plans and
collected the terms of kinship. But all this remained dead material, which led no
further into the understanding of real native mentality or behaviour, since I could
neither procure a good native interpretation of any of these items, nor get what
could be called the hang of tribal life. As to obtaining their ideas about religion,
and magic, their beliefs in sorcery and spirits, nothing was forthcoming except a
few superficial items of folk-lore, mangled by being forced into pidgin English.
Information which I received from some white residents in the district,
valuable as it was in itself, was more discouraging than anything else with regard
to my own work. Here were men who had lived for years in the place with
constant opportunities of observing the natives and communicating with them,
and who yet hardly knew one thing about them really well. How could I
therefore in a few months or a year, hope to overtake and go beyond them?
Moreover, the manner in which my white informants spoke about the natives and
put their views was, naturally, that of untrained minds, unaccustomed to
formulate their thoughts with any degree of consistency and precision. And they
were for the most part, naturally enough, full of the biassed and pre-judged
opinions inevitable in the average practical man, whether administrator,
missionary, or trader, yet so strongly repulsive to a mind striving after
the objective, scientific view of things. The habit of treating with a self-satisfied
frivolity what is really serious to the ethnographer; the cheap rating of what to
SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE 5
him is a scientific treasure, that is to say, the native’s cultural and mental
peculiarities and independence—these features, so well known in the inferior
amateur’s writing, I found in the tone of the majority of white residents.*
Indeed, in my first piece of Ethnographic research on the South coast, it was
not until I was alone in the district that I began to make some headway; and, at
any rate, I found out where lay the secret of effective field-work. What is then
this ethnographer’s magic, by which he is able to evoke the real spirit of the
natives, the true picture of tribal life? As usual, success can only be obtained by a
patient and systematic application of a number of rules of common sense and
well-known scientific principles, and not by the discovery of any marvellous
short-cut leading to the desired results without effort or trouble. The principles of
method can be grouped under three main headings; first of all, naturally, the
student must possess real scientific aims, and know the values and criteria of
modern ethnography. Secondly, he ought to put himself in good conditions of
work, that is, in the main, to live without other white men, right among the
natives. Finally, he has to apply a number of special methods of collecting,
manipulating and fixing his evidence. A few words must be said about these
three foundation stones of field work, beginning with the second as the most
elementary.
IV
Proper conditions for ethnographic work. These, as said, consist mainly in
cutting oneself off from the company of other white men, and remaining in as
close contact with the natives as possible, which really can only be achieved by
camping right in their villages (see Plates I and II). It is very nice to have a base
in a white man’s compound for the stores, and to know there is a refuge there in
times of sickness and surfeit of native. But it must be far enough away not to
become a permanent milieu in which you live and from which you emerge at
fixed hours only to “do the village.” It should not even be near enough to fly to
at any moment for recreation. For the native is not the natural companion for a
white man, and after you have been working with him for several hours, seeing
how he does his gardens, or letting him tell you items of folk-lore, or discussing
his customs, you will naturally hanker after the company of your own kind. But
if you are alone in a village beyond reach of this, you go for a solitary walk for
an hour or so, return again and then quite naturally seek out the natives’ society,
this time as a relief from loneliness, just as you would any other companionship.
And by means of this natural intercourse, you learn to know him, and you become
* I may note at once that there were a few delightful exceptions to that, to mention only my
friends Billy Hancock in the Trobriands; M.Raffael Brudo, another pearl trader; and the
missionary, Mr. M.K.Gilmour.
6 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
familiar with his customs and beliefs far better than when he is a paid, and often
bored, informant.
There is all the difference between a sporadic plunging into the company of
natives, and being really in contact with them. What does this latter mean? On
the Ethnographer’s side, it means that his life in the village, which at first is a
strange, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes intensely interesting adventure, soon
adopts quite a natural course very much in harmony with his surroundings.
Soon after I had established myself in Omarakana (Trobriand Islands), I began
to take part, in a way, in the village life, to look forward to the important or
festive events, to take personal interest in the gossip and the developments of the
small village occurrences; to wake up every morning to a day, presenting itself to
me more or less as it does to the native. I would get out from under my mosquito
net, to find around me the village life beginning to stir, or the people well
advanced in their working day according to the hour and also to the season, for
they get up and begin their labours early or late, as work presses. As I went on
my morning walk through the village, I could see intimate details of family life,
of toilet, cooking, taking of meals; I could see the arrangements for the day’s
work, people starting on their errands, or groups of men and women busy at
some manufacturing tasks (see Plate III). Quarrels, jokes, family scenes, events
usually trivial, sometimes dramatic but always significant, formed the
atmosphere of my daily life, as well as of theirs. It must be remembered that as
the natives saw me constantly every day, they ceased to be interested or alarmed,
or made self-conscious by my presence, and I ceased to be a disturbing element
in the tribal life which I was to study, altering it by my very approach, as always
happens with a new-comer to every savage community. In fact, as they knew
that I would thrust my nose into everything, even where a well-mannered native
would not dream of intruding, they finished by regarding me as part and parcel
of their life, a necessary evil or nuisance, mitigated by donations of tobacco.
Later on in the day, whatever happened was within easy reach, and there was
no possibility of its escaping my notice. Alarms about the sorcerer’s approach in
the evening, one or two big, really important quarrels and rifts within the
community, cases of illness, attempted cures and deaths, magical rites which had
to be performed, all these I had not to pursue, fearful of missing them, but they
took place under my very eyes, at my own doorstep, so to speak (see Plate IV).
And it must be emphasised whenever anything dramatic or important occurs it is
essential to investigate it at the very moment of happening, because the natives
cannot but talk about it, are too excited to be reticent, and too interested to be
mentally lazy in supplying details. Also, over and over again, I committed
breaches of etiquette, which the natives, familiar enough with me, were not slow
in pointing out. I had to learn how to behave, and to a certain extent, I acquired
“the feeling” for native good and bad manners. With this, and with the capacity
of enjoying their company and sharing some of their games and amusements, I
began to feel that I was indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the
preliminary condition of being able to carry on successful field work.
SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE 7
V
But the Ethnographer has not only to spread his nets in the right place, and wait
for what will fall into them. He must be an active huntsman, and drive his quarry
into them and follow it up to its most inaccessible lairs. And that leads us to the
more active methods of pursuing ethnographic evidence. It has been mentioned at
the end of Division III that the Ethnographer has to be inspired by the knowledge
of the most modern results of scientific study, by its principles and aims. I shall
not enlarge upon this subject, except by way of one remark, to avoid the
possibility of misunderstanding. Good training in theory, and acquaintance with
its latest results, is not identical with being burdened with “preconceived ideas.”
If a man sets out on an expedition, determined to prove certain hypotheses, if he
is incapable of changing his views constantly and casting them off ungrudgingly
under the pressure of evidence, needless to say his work will be worthless. But
the more problems he brings with him into the field, the more he is in the habit
of moulding his theories according to facts, and of seeing facts in their bearing
upon theory, the better he is equipped for the work. Preconceived ideas are
pernicious in any scientific work, but foreshadowed problems are the main
endowment of a scientific thinker, and these problems are first revealed to the
observer by his theoretical studies.
In Ethnology the early efforts of Bastian, Tylor, Morgan, the German
Völkerpsychologen have remoulded the older crude information of travellers,
missionaries, etc., and have shown us the importance of applying deeper
conceptions and discarding crude and misleading ones.*
The concept of animism superseded that of “fetichism” or “devil-worship,”
both meaningless terms. The understanding of the classificatory systems of
relationship paved the way for the brilliant, modern researches on native
sociology in the field-work of the Cambridge school. The psychological analysis
of the German thinkers has brought forth an abundant crop of most valuable
information in the results obtained by the recent German expeditions to Africa,
South America and the Pacific, while the theoretical works of Frazer, Durkheim
and others have already, and will no doubt still for a long time inspire field
workers and lead them to new results. The field worker relies entirely upon
inspiration from theory. Of course he may be also a theoretical thinker and
worker, and there he can draw on himself for stimulus. But the two functions are
separate, and in actual research they have to be separated both in time and
conditions of work.
As always happens when scientific interest turns towards and begins to labour
on a field so far only prospected by the curiosity of amateurs, Ethnology has
introduced law and order into what seemed chaotic and freakish. It has transformed
for us the sensational, wild and unaccountable world of “savages” into a number
of well ordered communities, governed by law, behaving and thinking according
to consistent principles. The word “savage,” whatever association it might have
had originally, connotes ideas of boundless liberty, of irregularity, of something
8 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
extremely and extraordinarily quaint. In popular thinking, we imagine that the
natives live on the bosom of Nature, more or less as they can and like, the prey
of irregular, phantasmagoric beliefs and apprehensions. Modern science, on the
contrary, shows that their social institutions have a very definite organisation,
that they are governed by authority, law and order in their public and personal
relations, while the latter are, besides, under the control of extremely complex
ties of kinship and clanship. Indeed, we see them entangled in a mesh of duties,
functions and privileges which correspond to an elaborate tribal, communal and
kinship organisation (see Plate IV). Their beliefs and practices do not by any
means lack consistency of a certain type, and their knowledge of the outer world
is sufficient to guide them in many of their strenuous enterprises and activities.
Their artistic productions again lack neither meaning nor beauty.
It is a very far cry from the famous answer given long ago by a representative
authority who, asked, what are the manners and customs of the natives, answered,
“Customs none, manners beastly,” to the position of the modern Ethnographer!
This latter, with his tables of kinship terms, genealogies, maps, plans and
diagrams, proves the existence of an extensive and big organisation, shows the
constitution of the tribe, of the clan, of the family; and he gives us a picture of
the natives subjected to a strict code of behaviour and good manners, to which in
comparison the life at the Court of Versailles or Escurial was free and easy.*
Thus the first and basic ideal of ethnographic field-work is to give a clear and
firm outline of the social constitution, and disentangle the laws and regularities
of all cultural phenomena from the irrelevances. The firm skeleton of the tribal
life has to be first ascertained. This ideal imposes in the first place the
fundamental obligation of giving a complete survey of the phenomena, and not
of picking out the sensational, the singular, still less the funny and quaint. The
time when we could tolerate accounts presenting us the native as a distorted,
childish caricature of a human being are gone. This picture is false, and like
many other falsehoods, it has been killed by Science. The field Ethnographer has
seriously and soberly to cover the full extent of the phenomena in each aspect of
tribal culture studied, making no difference between what is commonplace, or
* According to a useful habit of the terminology of science, I use the word Ethnography
for the empirical and descriptive results of the science of Man, and the word Ethnology
for speculative and comparative theories.
* The legendary “early authority” who found the natives only beastly and without
customs is left behind by a modern writer, who, speaking about the Southern Massim with
whom he lived and worked “in close contact” for many years, says:— “…We teach
lawless men to become obedient, inhuman men to love, and savage men to change.” And
again:— “Guided in his conduct by nothing but his instincts and propensities, and
governed by his unchecked passions….” “Lawless, inhuman and savage!” A grosser
misstatement of the real state of things could not be invented by anyone wishing to parody
the Missionary point of view. Quoted from the Rev. C.W. Abel, of the London Missionary
Society, “Savage Life in New Guinea,” no date.
SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE 9
drab, or ordinary, and what strikes him as astonishing and out-of-the-way. At the
same time, the whole area of tribal culture in all its aspects has to be gone over
in research. The consistency, the law and order which obtain within each aspect
make also for joining them into one coherent whole.
An Ethnographer who sets out to study only religion, or only technology, or
only social organisation cuts out an artificial field for inquiry, and he will be
seriously handicapped in his work.
VI
Having settled this very general rule, let us descend to more detailed
consideration of method. The Ethnographer has in the field, according to what
has just been said, the duty before him of drawing up all the rules and
regularities of tribal life; all that is permanent and fixed; of giving an anatomy of
their culture, of depicting the constitution of their society. But these things,
though crystallised and set, are nowhere formulated. There is no written or
explicitly expressed code of laws, and their whole tribal tradition, the whole
structure of their society, are embodied in the most elusive of all materials; the
human being. But not even in human mind or memory are these laws to be found
definitely formulated. The natives obey the forces and commands of the tribal
code, but they do not comprehend them; exactly as they obey their instincts and
their impulses, but could not lay down a single law of psychology. The
regularities in native institutions are an automatic result of the interaction of the
mental forces of tradition, and of the material conditions of environment. Exactly
as a humble member of any modern institution, whether it be the state, or the
church, or the army, is of it and in it, but has no vision of the resulting integral action
of the whole, still less could furnish any account of its organisation, so it would
be futile to attempt questioning a native in abstract, sociological terms. The
difference is that, in our society, every institution has its intelligent members, its
historians, and its archives and documents, whereas in a native society there are
none of these. After this is realised an expedient has to be found to overcome this
difficulty. This expedient for an Ethnographer consists in collecting concrete
data of evidence, and drawing the general inferences for himself. This seems
obvious on the face of it, but was not found out or at least practised in
Ethnography till field work was taken up by men of science. Moreover, in giving
it practical effect, it is neither easy to devise the concrete applications of this
method, nor to carry them out systematically and consistently.
Though we cannot ask a native about abstract, general rules, we can always
enquire how a given case would be treated. Thus for instance, in asking how they
would treat crime, or punish it, it would be vain to put to a native a sweeping
question such as, “How do you treat and punish a criminal?” for even words
could not be found to express it in native, or in pidgin. But an imaginary case, or
still better, a real occurrence, will stimulate a native to express his opinion and to
supply plentiful information. A real case indeed will start the natives on a wave
10 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
of discussion, evoke expressions of indignation, show them taking sides—all of
which talk will probably contain a wealth of definite views, of moral censures, as
well as reveal the social mechanism set in motion by the crime committed. From
there, it will be easy to lead them on to speak of other similar cases, to remember
other actual occurrences or to discuss them in all their implications and aspects.
From this material, which ought to cover the widest possible range of facts, the
inference is obtained by simple induction. The scientific treatment differs from
that of good common sense, first in that a student will extend the completeness
and minuteness of survey much further and in a pedantically systematic and
methodical manner; and secondly, in that the scientifically trained mind, will
push the inquiry along really relevant lines, and towards aims possessing real
importance. Indeed, the object of scientific training is to provide the empirical
investigator with a mental chart, in accordance with which he can take his
bearings and lay his course.
To return to our example, a number of definite cases discussed will reveal to
the Ethnographer the social machinery for punishment. This is one part, one
aspect of tribal authority. Imagine further that by a similar method of inference
from definite data, he arrives at understanding leadership in war, in economic
enterprise, in tribal festivities—there he has at once all the data necessary to
answer the questions about tribal government and social authority. In actual field
work, the comparison of such data, the attempt, to piece them together, will often
reveal rifts and gaps in the information which lead on to further investigations.
From my own experience, I can say that, very often, a problem seemed settled,
everything fixed and clear, till I began to write down a short preliminary sketch
of my results. And only then, did I see the enormous deficiencies, which would
show me where lay new problems, and lead me on to new work. In fact, I spent a
few months between my first and second expeditions, and over a year between
that and the subsequent one, in going over all my material, and making parts of it
almost ready for publication each time, though each time I knew I would have to
re-write it. Such cross-fertilisation of constructive work and observation, I found
most valuable, and I do not think I could have made real headway without it. I
give this bit of my own history merely to show that what has been said so far is
not only an empty programme, but the result of personal experience. In this
volume, the description is given of a big institution connected with ever so many
associated activities, and presenting many aspects. To anyone who reflects on the
subject, it will be clear that the information about a phenomenon of such high
complexity and of so many ramifications, could not be obtained with any degree
of exactitude and completeness, without a constant interplay of constructive
attempts and empirical checking. In fact, I have written up an outline of the Kula
institution at least half a dozen times while in the field and in the intervals
between my expeditions. Each time, new problems and difficulties presented
themselves.
The collecting of concrete data over a wide range of facts is thus one of the
main points of field method. The obligation is not to enumerate a few examples
SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE 11
only, but to exhaust as far as possible all the cases within reach; and, on this
search for cases, the investigator will score most whose mental chart is clearest.
But, whenever the material of the search allows it, this mental chart ought to be
transformed into a real one; it ought to materialise into a diagram, a plan, an
exhaustive, synoptic table of cases. Long since, in all tolerably good modern
books on natives, we expect to find a full list or table of kinship terms, which
includes all the data relative to it, and does not just pick out a few strange and
anomalous relationships or expressions. In the investigation of kinship, the
following up of one relation after another in concrete cases leads naturally to the
construction of genealogical tables. Practised already by the best early writers,
such as Munzinger, and, if I remember rightly, Kubary, this method has been
developed to its fullest extent in the works of Dr. Rivers. Again, studying the
concrete data of economic transactions, in order to trace the history of a valuable
object, and to gauge the nature of its circulation, the principle of completeness
and thoroughness would lead to construct tables of transactions, such as we find
in the work of Professor Seligman.* It is in following Professor Seligman’s
example in this matter that I was able to settle certain of the more difficult and
detailed rules of the Kula. The method of reducing information, if possible, into
charts or synoptic tables ought to be extended to the study of practically all
aspects of native life. All types of economic transactions may be studied by
following up connected, actual cases, and putting them into a synoptic chart;
again, a table ought to be drawn up of all the gifts and presents customary in a
given society, a table including the sociological, ceremonial, and economic
definition of every item. Also, systems of magic, connected series of ceremonies,
types of legal acts, all could be charted, allowing each entry to be synoptically
defined under a number of headings. Besides this, of course, the genealogical
census of every community, studied more in detail, extensive maps, plans and
diagrams, illustrating ownership in garden land, hunting and fishing privileges,
etc., serve as the more fundamental documents of ethnographic research.
A genealogy is nothing else but a synoptic chart of a number of connected
relations of kinship. Its value as an instrument of research consists in that it
allows the investigator to put questions which he formulates to himself in
abstracto, but can put concretely to the native informant. As a document, its
value consists in that it gives a number of authenticated data, presented in their
natural grouping. A synoptic chart of magic fulfils the same function. As an
instrument of research, I have used it in order to ascertain, for instance, the ideas
about the nature of magical power. With a chart before me, I could easily and
conveniently go over one item after the other, and note down the relevant
practices and beliefs contained in each of them. The answer to my abstract
problem could then be obtained by drawing a general inference from all the
cases, and the procedure is illustrated in Chapters XVII and XVIII.* I cannot
* For instance, the tables of circulation of the valuable axe blades, op. cit., pp. 531, 532.
12 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
enter further into the discussion of this question, which would need further
distinctions, such as between a chart of concrete, actual data, such as is a
genealogy, and a chart summarising the outlines of a custom or belief, as a chart
of a magical system would be.
Returning once more to the question of methodological candour, discussed
previously in Division II. I wish to point out here, that the procedure of concrete
and tabularised presentation of data ought to be applied first to the
Ethnographer’s own credentials. That is, an Ethnographer, who wishes to be
trusted, must show clearly and concisely, in a tabularised form, which are his
own direct observations, and which the indirect information that form the bases
of his account. The Table on the next page will serve as an example of this
procedure and help the reader of this book to form an idea of the trustworthiness
of any statement he is specially anxious to check. With the help of this Table and
the many references scattered throughout the text, as to how, under what
circumstances, and with what degree of accuracy I arrived at a given item of
knowledge, there will, I hope remain no obscurity whatever as to the sources of
the book.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF KULA EVENTS WITNESSED
BY THE WRITER
FIRST EXPEDITION, August, 1914—March, 1915.
March, 1915. In the village of Dikoyas (Woodlark Island) a few ceremonial offerings
seen. Preliminary information obtained.
SECOND EXPEDITION, May, 1915—May, 1916.
June, 1915. A Kabigidoya visit arrives from Vakuta to Kiriwina. Its anchoring at
Kavataria witnessed and the men seen at Omarakana, where information collected.
July, 1915. Several parties from Kitava land on the beach of Kaulukuba. The men
examined in Omarakana. Much information collected in that period.
September, 1915. Unsuccessful attempt to sail to Kitava with To’uluwa, the chief of
Omarakana.
October-November, 1915. Departure noticed of three expeditions from Kiriwina to
Kitava. Each time To’uluwa brings home a haul of mwali (armshells).
November, 1915—March, 1916. Preparations for a big overseas expedition from
Kiriwina to the Marshall Bennett Islands. Construction of a canoe; renovating of
another; sail making in Omarakana; launching; tasasoria on the beach of Kaulukuba. At
the same time, information is being obtained about these and the associated subjects.
Some magical texts of canoe building and Kula magic obtained.
THIRD EXPEDITION, October, 1917—October, 1918.
* In this book, besides the adjoining Table, which does not strictly belong to the class of
document of which I speak here, the reader will find only a few samples of synoptic
tables, such as the list of Kula partners mentioned and analysed in Chapter XIII,
Division II, the list of gifts and presents in Chapter VI, Division VI, not tabularised, only
described; the synoptic data of a Kula expedition in Chapter XVI, and the table of Kula
magic given in Chapter XVII. Here, I have not wanted to overload the account with
charts, etc., preferring to reserve them till the full publication of my material.
SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE 13
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF KULA EVENTS WITNESSED
BY THE WRITER
November, 1917—December, 1917. Inland Kula; some data obtained in Tukwaukwa.
December—February, 1918. Parties from Kitava arrive in Wawela. Collection of
information about the yoyova. Magic and spells of Kaygau obtained.
March, 1918. Preparations in Sanaroa; preparations in the Amphletts; the Dobuan fleet
arrives in the Amphletts. The uvalaku expedition from Dobu followed to Boyowa.
April, 1918. Their arrival; their reception in Sinaketa; the Kula transactions; the big
intertribal gathering. Some magical formulae obtained.
May, 1918. Party from Kitava seen in Vakuta.
June, July, 1918. Information about Kula magic and customs checked and amplified in
Omarakana, especially with regard to its Eastern branches.
August, September, 1918. Magical texts obtained in Sinaketa.
October, 1918. Information obtained from a number of natives in Dobu and Southern
Massim district (examined in Samarai).
To summarise the first, cardinal point of method, I may say each phenomenon
ought to be studied through the broadest range possible of its concrete
manifestations; each studied by an exhaustive survey of detailed examples. If
possible, the results ought to be tabulated into some sort of synoptic chart, both
to be used as an instrument of study, and to be presented as an ethnological
document. With the help of such documents and such study of actualities the
clear outline of the framework of the natives’ culture in the widest sense of the
word, and the constitution of their society, can be presented. This method could
be called the method of statistic documentation by concrete evidence.
VII
Needless to add, in this respect, the scientific field-work is far above even the
best amateur productions. There is, however, one point in which the latter often
excel. This is, in the presentation of intimate touches of native life, in bringing
home to us these aspects of it with which one is made familiar only through
being in close contact with the natives, one way or the other, for a long period of
time. In certain results of scientific work—especially that which has been called
“survey work”—we are given an excellent skeleton, so to speak, of the tribal
constitution, but it lacks flesh and blood. We learn much about the framework of
their society, but within it, we cannot perceive or imagine the realities of human
life, the even flow of everyday events, the occasional ripples of excitement over
a feast, or ceremony, or some singular occurrence. In working out the rules and
regularities of native custom, and in obtaining a precise formula for them from
the collection of data and native statements, we find that this very precision is
foreign to real life, which never adheres rigidly to any rules. It must be
supplemented by the observation of the manner in which a given custom is
carried out, of the behaviour of the natives in obeying the rules so exactly
14 SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE
formulated by the ethnographer, of the very exceptions which in sociological
phenomena almost always occur.
If all the conclusions are solely based on the statements of informants, or
deduced from objective documents, it is of course impossible to supplement them
in actually observed data of real behaviour. And that is the reason why certain
works of amateur residents of long standing, such as educated traders and
planters, medical men and officials, and last, but not least, the few intelligent and
unbiassed missionaries to whom Ethnography owes so much, surpass in
plasticity and in vividness most of the purely scientific accounts. But if the
specialised field-worker can adopt the conditions of living described above, he is
in a far better position to be really in touch with the natives than any other white
resident. For none of them lives right in a native village, except for very short
periods, and everyone has his own business, which takes up a considerable part of
his time. Moreover, if, like a trader or a missionary or an official he enters into
active relations with the native, if he has to transform or influence or make use of
him, this makes a real, unbiassed, impartial observation impossible, and precludes all-round sincerity, at least in the case of the missionaries and officials.
Living in the village with no other business but to follow native life, one sees
the customs, ceremonies and transactions over and over again, one has examples
of their beliefs as they are actually lived through, and the full body and blood of
actual native life fills out soon the skeleton of abstract constructions. That is the
reason why, working under such conditions as previously described, the
Ethnographer is enabled to add something essential to the bare outline of tribal
constitution, and to supplement it by all the details of behaviour, setting and
small incident. He is able in each case to state whether an act is public or private;
how a public assembly behaves, and what it looks like; he can judge whether an
event is ordinary or an exciting and singular one; whether natives bring to it a
great deal of sincere and earnest spirit, or perform it in fun; whether they do it in
a perfunctory manner, or with zeal and deliberation.
In other words, there is a series of phenomena of great importance which
cannot possibly be recorded by questioning or computing documents, but have to
be observed in their full actuality...
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