The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier
a number of years, the refugees decided, with the Ndelie’s complicity, to take over their hosts’ territory. In the meantime they had adopted their hosts’ language (very similar to their own) and had their children initiated by the Andje. One day they lured the Andje into a trap, massacred some and put the rest to flight. History was repeating itself. After a series of battles, the Andje abandoned their territory and moved to the other side of Mount Yelia. At the conclusion of these events, a new local group, new ‘tribe’, was formed which took the name of the Baruya clan – probably because the Baruya already played an important role in the Yoyue male initiations through their possession of sacred objects and powerful ritual knowledge.
Now a ‘tribe’, the Baruya pursued their expansion throughout the nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth, to the detriment of the neighbouring groups. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they penetrated into the Wonenara Valley – where I was to encounter them in 1967 – drove out two groups already living there and settled on their lands. When peace was restored, certain Baruya lineages gave women to enemy lineages, thus making them affines. When wars broke out anew between the tribes, the Baruya, if victorious, would leave those of their enemies who were affines the choice of either fleeing with the rest of their tribe or coming to live with the Baruya and thus preserving their lives and their lands. Thus it was, when I arrived in 1967, that the Baruya society was composed of fifteen ‘clans’, eight of which descended from the Bravegareubaramandeuc refugees and seven from local lineages that had intermarried or joined with the Baruya. As a reward for having betrayed the Andje and helped the Baruya seize their territory, the Ndelie had been given a certain number of sacred objects and been allowed to take part in Baruya initiations. By contrast, although the six other local lineages had kept their lands and provided warriors, they played no role in these rites on the pretext (which turned out to be unfounded) that they had never owned kwaimatnie12 and were therefore not sons of the Sun like the Baruya from Bravegareubaramandeuc, but were born there from droppings left by the cassowary, a wild woman who lives deep in the forest.
WHAT IS A ‘TRIBE’?
Let us leave the Baruya for a moment, now they are a ‘tribe’, and try to define what we mean in this context by ‘tribe’, ‘ethnic group’ and, of course, ‘clan’.13
A ‘tribe’, as we just saw with the story of the Baruya, is a local group which forms when a certain number of kin groups band together to defend and share the resources of a territory they exploit individually and/or in common. This territory has either been inherited from ancestors or conquered by force. In the Baruya’s case, a tribe is also a largely endogamous territorial group, since the kin groups that comprise it prefer to marry among themselves rather than with members of neighbouring friendly or hostile tribes. We will see why, finally, everyone cooperates directly (kwaimatnie-owning clans) or indirectly (associated local clans) to initiate their boys together and make them into warriors, shamans and so forth.
It is important to note that, in the Baruya language, the word tsimiyaya (‘what tsimia do you belong to?) is used to ask someone what local group (what I here call a ‘tribe’) they belong to. Yaya means ‘name’. Tsimia designates the big ceremonial house erected by the Baruya and neighbouring tribes, who speak the same language and share the same culture, in which they perform the rites that introduce a new generation of boys into the men’s world and promote the other generations to the next initiation stage. This temporary structure is built by all of the adult men and women in the Baruya villages, whatever their clan and village. The word tsimie designates the ‘big centre post’ that holds up the roof of the ceremonial house. This post is called ‘grandfather’ during the initiations, and from its top a dangerous wild animal is thrown to its death, the meat from which is then presented to the oldest man in the valley. This gift signifies that his generation will have vanished before the next initiations are held three or four years hence, when a new generation of boys will be initiated and thus testify that the Baruya, as a tribe, continue to exist.
In short, by banding together to defend a territory, exchange women and initiate their children, the kin groups that make up the tribe act in such a way that each depends on all the others to reproduce itself, and in so doing reproduces the others. All of these kin groups share the same language and the same culture. By culture, I mean the whole set of representations of the universe, rules for organizing society, positive and negative values and behavioural standards to which the individuals and groups that make up the Baruya society refer14 when acting on other groups, themselves or the world around them. This world that surrounds the Baruya is made up of trees, rivers and streams, animals and spirits of the dead, neighbouring friendly or enemy tribes, evil underground-dwelling spirits, the Python (god of rain and menstruation) and the two shining heavenly bodies, the Sun and the Moon – two powers that govern the seasons and human destiny well beyond tribal frontiers. Of course, nowadays, the Baruya’s world also includes Europeans, the police, the army and the Administration – instruments of a new institution that is the state. Not forgetting the presence of a new god as well, Jesus Christ, and his adversary, Satan.
One very important fact will now allow us to distinguish between the realities we designate by the terms ‘tribe’ and ‘ethnic group’, and to show that a shared culture is not enough – as Schneider and his disciples had advanced – to make a set of local groups, kin groups or others, into a society; that is to say, into a whole capable of representing itself to itself as such, and which must reproduce itself as a whole in order to go on existing as such.
FROM TRIBE TO ETHNIC GROUP
Let us therefore come back to the fact that, with the exception of a single group,15 all of the Baruya’s neighbours – Wantekia, Usarumpia, Bulakia, Yuwarrounatche, Andje, etc. – speak the same language and have nearly the same customs as the Baruya. All wear the same kinds of clothing, the same insignia; all say that their remote ancestors lived in the Menyamya area.
In fact, the Baruya and their neighbours form the northwestern edge of a set of local groups that speak related languages and occupy a vast territory stretching from the high valleys in the north to a few kilometres from the shores of the Gulf of Papua in the south. Neighbouring tribes understand each other’s speech, but individuals from tribes located on opposite sides of this immense territory do not. According to linguists using glottochronology, all of these languages split off from a common trunk spoken in the vicinity of Menyamya, and their differentiation probably occurred over the span of a millennium. But it was not only the languages that diverged; the social structures also display striking differences.
The northern groups, to which the Baruya belong, worship the Sun, emphasize the role of sperm in making babies, and initiate their boys by isolating them in men’s houses, where they engage in ritualized homosexual practices.16 The southern groups, on the other hand, emphasize menstrual blood, their initiations do not include homosexual practices, and they separate their young male initiates from their mothers and the world of women for only a short time.17 Yet in spite of these cultural and social differences, all of these tribes recognize a shared origin, which goes back to the Dreamtime of their mythic ancestors (wandjinia), a common origin attested by the clothing and the insignia worn by the men and the women, which are nearly identical in all groups.18
But recognizing their common origins and their shared cultural identity does not stop these tribes from fighting each other, massacring their neighbours or seizing all or part of their territory – as the history of the Baruya themselves shows. This shared identity is also recognized by bordering tribes that belong to other linguistic and cultural groups. Moreover, some use derogatory terms, like kukakuka, to designate all of the groups living between Menyamya and the Gulf of Papua. Since Kuka means ‘to steal’ in Baruya, one imagines that the Baruya and their neighbours who share the same culture do not use a term for themselves or each other that evokes a society of thieves whose lethal raids once devastated enemy villages.19
By ethnic group, I mean the whole set of these local groups – Baruya, Andje, Bulakia, etc. – that recognize each other as having a common origin, speak closely related languages, and share ways of thinking and living, that is to say, representations of the universe and rules of organization which show by their very differences that they belong to one tradition within which these differences appear as possible