Sikret Fren: economic costs and moral values in a friendship ritual in Honiara, Solomon Islands

Abstract

his article analyses the case of Sikret Fren, a like-forlike gift exchange ritual organised by the members of the Anglican church of Gilbert Camp, an illegal settlement on the outskirts of Honiara, Solomon Islands. he objects exchanged, the people involved, and their relationships are discussed according to Gregory's analytical opposition between Gift and Commodity. he resulting categorization of people, objects, and relationships is looked at from the perspective of the Domestic Moral Economy developed by Peterson & Taylor. he article locates Sikret Fren in relation to the cultural, historical, geographical, and socioeconomic context in which it was developed; illustrates the rationale behind the reciprocal transactions of identical gifts between ritual friends; and suggests that urban and peri-urban settlers use their cultural creativity in reaction to the moral and economic challenges caused by the incompatibilities between their values and their material conditions.

Homand Honiara: Interpreting, importing, and adapting “home” in Solomon Islands

“…The first time I observed a social situation in which the Kwara'ae people of Gilbert Camp were concretising the value of hom in Honiara was within a ritual exchange of like‐for‐like gifts named Sikret Fren (Maggio, 2017b). By exchanging identical gifts, the Kwara'ae people were at once supporting each other with useful objects and making a public display of their identity as a community.…”

“…Similarly, Kwara'ae people adjust to the condition of living in town. As listed above, they organise a circulation of gifts that they see as an extension of their traditional exchange practices; they construct hybrid objects that are at the same time gifts and commodities to solve the dilemma between the need to buy useful objects and the duty of honouring their neighbours (Maggio, 2017b); they create hybrid courts (Maggio, 2018a); they coordinate the domestic sale of retailed products and adapt it to a new conceptualisation of such practice to make it compatible with customary ways of valuing relatives (Maggio, 2016, 2017c, 2018b); and many other forms of adaptation, reorganisation and creation of value.…”