The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Maurice Godelier
is important to stress that the fact that a Baruya or an Andje belongs to the same ethnic group and knows this does not entitle him (or her) to either land or a spouse, and does not give him any power or authority outside the boundaries of his own local group; neither does it keep the tribes belonging to this ethnic group from making war on each other. In short, the ethnic group is a social and cultural reality, but an ethnic group is not a ‘society’. Conversely, a territorial group such as the Baruya or the Andje does constitute a society. What makes the Baruya a society is first of all the fact that this group has an identity that is expressed by a ‘big name’, a single overarching name that subsumes the names of the particular groups (clans and lineages) and those of the individuals that compose them, and endows everyone with a specific all-encompassing identity they recognize and which is also recognized by the other territorial groups around them (who also have a big name, e.g. Bulakia, Andje, Wantekia, etc.).
This big name always goes with a territory whose boundaries are known, if not respected or accepted, by the neighbouring groups and over which the group exercises a sort of sovereignty, in the two senses of the term. Sovereignty in the sense that the clans and lineages that make up the Baruya society thereby have the exclusive right to appropriate and exploit parts of this territory in order to extract the bulk of their means of existence. Sovereignty, too, in the sense that the Baruya do not give groups other than themselves the right to resolve the sometimes bloody conflicts that arise between their members. No outside intervention is accepted or requested, save in exceptional circumstances.
So we see what makes the difference between an ethnic group, which is a social reality without being a society, and a ‘tribe’, which, on the other hand, is a society. The Baruya, the Wantekia, the Usarumpia, etc., speak the same language or closely related dialects, share the same culture and follow the same rules of social organization (sister exchange, male and female initiations, etc.). These facts attest that they belong to a single group of linguistically and culturally related populations, and it is this set of populations that we call an ethnic group, a social reality whose existence was recognized by these populations, who referred to it by a periphrasis: ‘those who wear the same ornaments as we’.
What thus makes the Baruya, the Wantekia, etc., different societies within the same ethnic set is that each of these groups controls a distinct territory. Because they exploit the resources and extract the bulk of their material means of existence from it, this territory is therefore the first condition for the reproduction of the social groups that make up these societies, and therefore for the reproduction of the social relations that bind them together through marriage, initiations, ritual practices, solidarity in times of war, etc. For a society to exist (as a whole able to reproduce itself), there must be in addition to the ‘mental’ components of social life (representations of the universe, rules for organizing society, values, standards of conduct), a relation of social and material appropriation to the territory from which the group’s members draw a significant fraction of their material means of existence.21
THE BARUYA ARE A SOCIETY, THE ANGA ETHNIC GROUP IS A COMMUNITY
This whole that must reproduce itself as such and which constitutes a society consists concretely of a certain number of persons of both sexes and different generations, born into distinct kin groups, often having different social, ritual or other functions, but who exercise in common what could be called a sort of ‘sovereignty’ over their natural environment which ends as soon as they step outside their territorial boundaries. Because of this, all these individuals and groups have a common identity and carry a common name that is added to their personal names (these indicate the person’s lineage, sex, etc.). In addition, all these individuals and groups entertain a certain number of connected but distinct relations – of kinship, material or ritual dependence, subordination of one gender to the other, etc. – such that, for a society to continue to exist, not only must those who die be replaced by others, but the relationships between individuals and groups which characterize this type of society (relations shaped by the kinship system or by the existence of an initiation system) must also be reproduced. And, of course, just as individuals cannot – save in exceptional circumstances – stop producing and reproducing their social relations, neither can they avoid producing their material conditions of existence, which not only ensure their subsistence but also consist in producing or assembling the material conditions necessary for exercising kinship relations, performing initiations, making war, etc.
Yet the story of the Yoyue and the Baruya shows us just as clearly that these territorial groups operate as societies, as overarching local units, only for a time. Before the arrival of Europeans, which froze the habitually unstable state of relations between neighbouring tribes, numerous conflicts of interest (over women, land, game, trading partners) opposed lineages and individuals (even close relatives) from the same tribe. Ultimately, in certain circumstances, the tacit agreement between lineages and individuals to live together breaks down, the unity of the tribe is shattered, and the tribe splits into fragments that join with neighbouring tribes or come together to create a new tribe, as in the case of the Baruya. However, it must be noted that, if, before the Europeans arrived, local groups came together, split up and joined with others, the tribal form of these groups, by contrast, did not disappear and was promptly reproduced by each of the new groups.
The fact of having shown that the Baruya existed as a society from the moment they exercised a sort of sovereignty over a territory (a sovereignty that was, if not recognized, at least known by their neighbours), and of having then applied the concept of tribe to this society because the social units sharing the territory are kin groups, still tells us nothing about the internal structure of the society, a structure that engenders distinct functions and social positions hierarchically distributed among individuals as well as among the kin groups into which they are born.
SOME INSTITUTIONS ARE BROADER THAN KINSHIP RELATIONS AND KIN GROUPS
There are other divisions running through Baruya society than those between clans or lineages. Two of these are of particular importance because they cut across the whole society: one is between the sexes and the other between clans.
Baruya gender relations were, in 1967, and indeed still are, relations of complementarity and cooperation at the same time as relations of domination and subordination. The complementarity is visible in the division of labour and in the domains of activity assigned to each sex (hunting, warfare, child-raising, weaving, etc.), ensuring that each gender makes its distinct contribution to the ongoing production of the Baruya’s material and social conditions of existence. But this cooperation works on the basis of a characteristic overarching relationship of domination, which one could describe as that of the generalized subordination of women to men.22
This gender inequality is affirmed at the child’s birth, but does not reach its fully fledged and definitive form until the moment when, around the age of nine or ten, all the boys in that age group are taken away from their mothers and sisters and, after having their noses pierced, are secluded in the ‘men’s house’ that dominates every Baruya village. Women are strictly forbidden to approach this house. The separation and the marking of the boys’ bodies are the first in a long series of initiatory ordeals that, after ten or more years and four stages of initiation, ultimately rid them of everything that tied them to the maternal world. They will now be masculine enough to cope with the world of women, and to leave the men’s house and marry a girl who has been chosen for them and for whom their lineage has given a ‘sister’.
Over the course of these years, the boys will be led deep into the forest or into the dimly lit men’s house and placed in contact with the sacred objects held by the clans in charge of the various initiation rites. They will hear the sound of the bull-roarers and will discover that this noise – which terrifies the women and the uninitiated, who have been led to believe they are hearing the voices of the forest spirits come to visit the men and the new initiates in the midst of their ceremonies – is actually man-made. It will be revealed to them – but they must not speak of it to women or children on pain of death – that it was really the women who invented the flutes, bows and many other things, and that these were subsequently stolen by the first men, and now the women can neither own them nor even look on them. It will also be explained to them that the men were compelled to take the bows from the women because they used them ill-advisedly, killing