JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of Pittsburgh-Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnology. Studies of bridewealth in tribal societies usually have emphasized the importance of the transaction itself in transferring rights over women from one social group to another. The economic functions of exchange of property at marriage have also received attention (Goody I973), as has the composition of the groups involved in the payment. In writings on Papua New Guinea societies, the themes of compensation to the bride's group for the loss of her labor, the ceremonial and prestige-seeking aspects of marriage payments, and the political relationship of the groom and contributors to his bridal gift have been highlighted (Glasse and Meggitt I969; Ryan I973). This paper deals with marriage transactions of the Tombema-Enga of the Western New Guinea Highlands, and while all of the above are important features of them, my aim here is to explore how the bride herself emerges as the central character in the marriage exchange process. Anthropologists have effectively countered the mistaken judgment of missionaries and others that bridewealth (or brideprice) represents the purchase of a woman as chattel, but still have largely ignored the role of the bride in bridewealth.Specifically, this paper seeks to make the following points about Tombema bridewealth. (I) Bridewealth and indeed all transactions whatever their specific name or occasion are intricately bound up in the ceremonial exchange cycle called tee. (2) Bridewealth is one event in a series of transactions betsveen persons. Parties to bridewealth may have transacted before the marriage, in which case the marriage payment must be seen in the context of their existing exchange arrangements. If parties have not transacted prior to the marriage, bridewealth is often the initial payment in what becomes a lonaterm partnership. (3) Almost all bridewealth is eventually returned to the groom by the recipients, so that notions of compensation and property transfer to the bride's group may be more apparent than real. The return of bridewealth is a signal by the recipient that he would like to continue a tee partnership. (4) The pre-existing relationships to the bride of contributors to bridewealth are as important as their relationships to the groom.(5) The bride herself is a key figure in marshalling and distributing bridewealth. These points lead tO the general assessment that bridewealth cannot be viewed as an isolated event, but must be analyted within the wider perspective of ceremonial exchange. TOMBEMA SOCIETY AND THE TEETombema are a group of Enga speakers numbering roughly I 2,000 (i...

The character of the goods exchanged seems to have an independent effect on the character of exchange.(Sahl ins 1972:215)Exchange, whether ceremonially elaborated or more mundanely practiced, has become, for anthropologists working in Papua New Guinea, a theoretical concept of prime importance. Like descent in Africa, studies of exchange in Melanesia have shed bright light on political and economic institutions and behavior, and, in all its reciprocal varieties, exchange has been shown to permeate every aspect of social life. As a dominant organizational principle, it has provided a measure of comparability to an otherwise bewildering range of variation in Melanesian societies. Malinowski and Seligman of course pointed the way to i t s importance, but Mauss (1954). with his gift to anthropology of "total prestation," first noted that exchange activities have the enormous capacity to encapsulate so many social practices and express the gamut of cultural values.The analysis of exchange has, however, focused almost solely on i t s functional value for maintaining or expressing social relations; the transactions themselves have been seen as secondary.' The outstanding monographs of Strathern (1 971) and Young (1 971), and more recently of Sillitoe (1978). have shown ceremonial exchange to be a "social contract" between groups and individuals, promoting social control and, on balance, being a positive integrating force in societies lacking formal judicial procedures. While concentrating attention on what exchanges "do," the material side of transactions has been largely ignored. Sahlins's (1972:185) point that "a material transaction is usually a momentary episode in a continuous social relation" could be the theme of most studies of Melanesian exchange. This paper analyzes two neighboring, interconnected exchange systems in the New Guinea Highlands: the Melpa moka, a system primarily of pearlshell exchange, and the Enga tee, in which pigs are the most valued exchange items. The entailments of exchanging pearlshells and pigs, the sociopolitical implications of each, and the historical circumstances affecting both systems are examined. ther in the background. The social concomitants of exchange, rather than production, are generally the point of departure, a view recently criticized by some economic anthropologists (Frankenberg 1967;Meillassoux 1972Meillassoux , 1978 Clammer 1978). This paper examines items of exchange and their implications in two Papua New Guinea Highlands exchange systems. Essential to this consideration is an analysis of the actual exchange items of value, how are they produced, and the resulting relationships between people who produce them. Working outward from these starting points, I argue that other social, political, and economic phenomena can be explained and major differences between these societies and their exchange systems illuminated. M y aim is comparative, but I rely heavily on data collected on the tee ceremonial cycle of the Enga of the western New Guinea Highlands. Earlier public...

But we cannot infer from this a fixed relationship between the sexes, which operates throughout the entire social structure (Kaberry 1939:276)."Rigid sexual dichotomies" (Read 19521, "lechers and prudes" (Meggitt 1964). "sexual antagonism" (Langness 1967), and more recently, the "perambulating punitive penis" and the "vagrant voracious vagina" (Meggitt 1976)-these have been the predominant modes in which male-female relations in the New Guinea Highlands have been viewed by anthropologists. Evidently, only an unperceptive person could come to a conclusion other than that of inherent sexual hostility, for in every New Guinea Highland society the physical manifestations of that syndrome have been apparent: the strict separation of the sexes in sleeping arrangements, the elaborate sexual and menstrual taboos, and the presence of male cults and secret initiations in which boys and bachelors are taught the harmful affects likely to occur from prolonged contact with females. No less important have been the programmatic statements of informants (men mostly, but presumably women as well?) in shaping and reinforcing this conception of intersexual anxiety and conflict.Almost every analysis has used just these or a similar constellation of features f o r purposes of explanation. "Women's status" has been presumably summed up by them. What little else we have been told of the daily interaction of the sexes, of the position or status of women vis-a-vis men in a variety of social situations, of individual women's behavior, intent, and motivations was largely inferred from this same set of recurring social forms. For, how could it be otherwise, when the facts were so plain, for all to see? A subtle translation had been made or assumed from one level of reality to another.But viewing male-female relations as simply reflected in menstrual taboos, men's houses, and magic flutes represents only a very narrow slice of potential interaction between the sexes. We are entitled to ask what relation separate sleeping arrangements bear to the place of women in marriage proceedings, exchange transactions, or domestic proThis paper explores the power and influence of women in the tee exchange o f the Tombema Enga of the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Intersexual relations in the Highlands have generally been described as frought with anxiety and conflict. Similarly, women's position has been defined as low and inferior to that of men. This paper takes the view that rather than trying to sum up the position of women, it is more sensible to describe male-female relations in a variety of separate social domains, free from the more ideological Statements that men make of women in situational vacuums. By so doing we may find that women exercise considerable power. As male-female relations are viewed in the context of the tee exchange, a picture emerges in which women are essential participants, making key political decisions, allotting pigs, a n d in a l l ways, shaping the exchange partnerships and relations of men whom they link. These...

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