the body in the gift: memory and forgetting in Sabarl mortuary exchange

Abstract

In casting gift exchange as an inscriptive performance of embodied gender relations, the Sabarl of Papua New Guinea reveal an indigenous valuation of forgetting as a willed transformation of memory and resist the opposition between inscribed and enacted cultural traditions that is so pervasive in the anthropological literature on social memory. Sabarl mortuary exchanges that feature “corpses” of gendered wealth serve here as a case in point. [exchange theory, gender performances, embodiment, memory and forgetting, Melanesia, mortuary rituals]

Olive Oil, Chocolates and a Bright Blue Sweater: Power Relations and the Implications of Gifts in the Field

“…I was motivated to somehow bond the participants to me, thereby ensuring that the study would be materially beneficial to them. Perhaps I was trying, consciously or otherwise, to achieve a situation similar to the one described by Battaglia (1992), in which gift-giving creates a debt on the recipient's part, a label lending itself to expectations of return-in our case continued cooperation with the researcher.…”

“…Earlier research conducted in Southeast Asia, primarily Melanesia, considered giftgiving as a key component of the local culture, social system and even political life (Gregory 1980;Battaglia 1992;Aragon 1996;Maschio 1998). Other studies, that examined gift exchanges in the contemporary Third World (Laidlaw 2000;Rethmann 2000), consider gifts to be an infrastructure and a symbol of social relations and order, as well as a key to understanding the relevant culture.…”

“…Gifts entail recognition of the recipient's worth and value, claims Cooper (1995), adding that the act of giving expresses not only material wealth but also a more important asset, social capital. According to Battaglia (1992), the act of giving charts the future through anticipation of reciprocation. This awareness accords gifts the dimension of time and enables continuity of relationships.…”

In the Company of Things Left Behind: Asabano Mementos

“…When such objects are identified and claimed for particular actions, they connect the owner mentally and physically to past relationships on which their very identity draws (Godelier 1999, 200). Nevertheless, mementos of the deceased are as much concerned with controlled forgetting as they are with remembering (Battaglia 1992). As Straight (2006, 101) has remarked, 'death may demand intensive and loving memory work, but it may as well result in deliberate erasure'.…”

Reflecting on Loss in Papua New Guinea

“…I am required by the terms of this project to perform something like the reverse operation on the notion of 'culture loss,' which still haunts American anthropology classrooms as the process anthropology is supposed to document, critique, and according to some lights, forestall. In other words, to view the relationship between reflexivity and 'culture loss' as one between method and subject, respectively, may hinder anthropologists from considering the possibility After kula and its subsidiary exchange networks, Massim societies are anthropologically most renowned for their emphasis on the replacement of persons through mortuary rituals (Damon & Wagner 1989, Battaglia 1992, Mallett 1998. Like their neighbors in the island Massim, Suau emphasize death rather than birth as the defining moment of human reproduction, and reconstitute or redirect the relations thwarted by death through mortuary exchanges.…”