The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea - Book Report/Review Example

The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Annette Weiner. 1st ed. US: Wadsworth Publishing. 1988 0 SUMMARY Anne Weiner's "The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea" has become one of the most often cited reading materials not only for discovering Polynesian culture but also in discussing socio-anthropological perspectives. In this study, Weiner tries to provide a view of the Trobrianders culture and behaviour that is remarkable for its depth and clarity. Weiner's work is actually a re-examination of this particular culture which was first placed on the anthropological map with the brilliant and classic early 20th century writings of Malinowski. Weiner previously thought that her understanding of the Trobriander's custom and beliefs was complete after having read Malinowski's account only to find out during her ethnographic work that his writings were more than a kind of fictional account of an author's experience. Weiner sought to provide a gender balanced view of Trobriand culture by highlighting new discoveries regarding the importance of woman's work and wealth in the Trobriand society. She gave particular attention to women's productive work whereas previously women were not the central focus of studies. She was following in the footsteps of Malinowski but provided a new perspective as she questioned Malinowski's findings and contradict his beliefs. She allows us to understand further than Malinowski's account into the power and meanings of yam exchanges. The reader will know of a culture of matrilineal descent and its importance to them. The significance of their rituals that outsiders may deem odd will be revealed to be more spiritual and having more purpose than one can imagine. In the end, readers will find the Weiner's work to be revealing a new perspective of the world learned thru the in-depth contemplation of the Trobriander's culture. It makes us question past perspectives and calls for a gender-critical analysis of anthropological work. 2.0 MAJOR FINDINGS OF STUDY Inspired by Malinowki's writings, Professor Annette Weiner went on an ethnographic study on the Trobrianders islands which then had a 150 people who highly depended on fishing as a source of employment but was living in poverty. Before Malinowki's expository writing, there was little knowledge regarding Papua New Guinea societies and was limited to reports and diaries from missionaries, government officers and explorers. In 1914, Malinowski conducted a fieldwork lasting two years and discovered the sacredness of the Trobrianders Islands to the indigenous population. He then set out to make known to the world the Trobriander culture and tried to put across the natives point of view as oppose to the outsider's view. Weiner regards Malinowki's writings as too limited and did not revealed gender roles. In her analysis of the beliefs system, she found out that women played a key role in Trobriander society. Malinowski conducted majority of his study on Kiriwina and was unable to appreciate the variations within other societies but it is worth noting that did recognise the significant engagement of women into the public world of politics. While Kiriwana was the most socially and politically prominent, there are important cultural differences in each Islands populations. 2.1 The Importance of Women and their Roles Birth In Trobriander society, the birth of a new member is a very private matter as compared to the publicity of death. When a woman gives birth, the only ones present are the woman's close matrilineal kin (i.e. mother, auntie, grandmother). The strong nature of the matrilineal system is evidenced by the fact that the women to give birth moves out of her marital home and goes back to the home of her mother where she stays for two months after giving birth. The role of the husband is confined only to bringing food which is cooked by the woman's matrilineal relatives. The husband is only the instrument of a spirit for a woman to get pregnant through intercourse. It is the spirit that causes the woman to fall pregnant. Adolescence Children or teenagers, whether they may be male or female, are allowed to experiment and take lovers though they must be discreet in doing this. In this case, one can see that choosing a partner is not solely a male activity but also that of the female. The partners 'bond' together in a house other than their home but must leave the house before sunrise the next morning so as not to be seen. If they wish to marry, they must first get the approval of their family including that of their female relatives. Marriage When a male decides to marry a female, the latter is expected to move to her husband's kin's village or hamlet but this is not sign of subservience. The political power of the woman is shown by the fact that a man wanting to become a chief should marry more than one. The more that the man marries, the more yam garden he is expected to receive from the woman's close male kin. The male kin are expected to build the woman her yam garden. In other words, yams serve as a political currency obtainable thru women. Death Women provide banana skirts and bundles to the death ceremony for exchanging mortuary rights. These are then distributed by women alone to the matrilineal kin of the dead person. The 'owners' of the dead persons things are the members of the dead person's matrilineage and are responsible with the burial and the exchanges that follow. Wealth In Weiner's account, Malinowski's analysis was very gender biased as he claimed that Trobriander culture was patriarchal in nature. Weiner gave particular attention to the productive work of women which deviated from the usual practice of women not being the central focus of studies. She found that the women had their own wealth and had the power to distribute it. This she discovered in the exchange of bundles of banana leaves and banana fibre skirts among women to commemorate the recent dead. It was also used to pay mourners and is directly incorporated to the contributions of men (pg. 28). This event forced her to investigate further the women's economic roles more seriously than Malinowski. While Malinowski did recognize that Trobrianders women had high status, he failed to fully grasp the concept of women having their own wealth in the form of banana bundles and only noted that the women used only the men's wealth. Malinowski gave women the role of being in the shadow of men. What Malinowski failed to recognize and Weiner was able to point out was that women were capable of manufacturing and controlling their own wealth. Also, the women inherit banana trees from their mothers or sisters. Banana leaves strewn as skirts and bundles were found to be economically important and was use as a form of payment. The exchange of this wealth among women during a commemoration of the recent dead underscored the deep political significance of death to both Trobriand women and men. 2.2 Cultural Uniqueness Aside from gender considerations, Weiner provides an account of the culture of the Trobriand who were particularly meticulous with the handling of the death of a family or village member. There are other sections that show the culture of the Trobrianders but this is what is most interesting. Death in a Trobriander village is important and involves many rituals and organised event. They have many stringent taboos and have specified different roles for each member of the village. As an example of death-related culture, worker female Trobrianders sit facing each other with their legs extended under the dead person giving the impression that they are carrying the body. The mourning of the dead continues for several months. There are many more details regarding the death of Trobrianders but suffice it to say, they have developed such an intricate system that is profound even for the superstitious 'natives'. What Weiner was trying to reveal to the reader is that there is a certain logical and highly spiritual rationale beyond the seemingly superstitious and tedious activities they conduct during the death of a person. Throughout the work of mourning, the number of workers and mourners symbolize the degree and nature of the accomplishments of the deceased. The various efforts and activities conducted signify that the person's life have not been in vain. The extensive mourning also serves to defy the sorcerer's malevolent intent. When a Trobriander does not play their role in the mourning, they will be though of causing the death. In other words, the many different rules and roles that they have developed play a very important part in the maintenance and structure of the society. 3.0 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The late Annette Weiner revealed in her 1988 published work that that Malinowski had misunderstood the Trobriand Islands. While Malinowski's writing seems to imply that women were imprisoned in the domestic sphere created by their men-folk, they were actually enjoying equal standing. Malinowski had overlooked a fundamental reality because he did not pay sufficient attention to women and overvalued the male's power. In other words, Melanesian societies deserve non-androcentric reassessments. Weiner further argued that the Trobrianders provide a setting for "universal womanhood" which is a place for women developing their full potential. According to Weiner, the Trobriand Islands provided Western men and women with an example of womanhood in a non-patriarchal setting: a demonstration of the inherent strength within women. Central to Weiner's work is the concept of gender and so deserves attention. The term 'gender' describes the cultural and social attributes of men and women. Gender is a relatively complex term because one cannot use it exclusively to refer to anatomical distinctions. It became popular in the early 1980's and is often found in the writings of social and cultural anthropologists. According to Pine (1996: 253), it is a term referring to both the male and the female, the cultural construction of these categories, and the relationship between them. One of Weiner's contributions to the field of Cultural Anthropology is the highlighting of the concept of gender role. The term refers to the expected pattern of behaviour associated with a particular gender in defined circumstances specifically behaving in a way that is stereotypically associated with the feminine or masculine. Thru her work, Weiner was able to make the scholars appreciate furthermore the concept that gender roles and disparities do exist. However, making scholars realize distinction male and female roles were not the most important concept that can be derived from Weiner's work. It is the fact that she was able to contribute in bringing gender considerations in the anthropological table. Previous works in anthropology may have overcome ethnocentrism but it has not been able to consider also gender issues. Perhaps the primary contribution to Cultural Anthropology of Weiner's work can be summarized with the term Anthropology of Women or Feminist Anthropology. The subfield emerged in the 1970s to address the perceived androcentric bias within the discipline of Anthropology (Lamphere 1996: 488). While the field of Anthropology has seen women such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict rose to prominence, the discipline has been dominated by modes of thought which according to early feminist anthropologists were certainly androcentric (Reiter 1975: 13-14). Feminist anthropologists argue that there are indeed substantial gaps in anthropological literature due to male bias (Lamphere 1996: 488). The ethnographic data concerning women was often based on the reports of male informants transmitted through male ethnographers. Like Weiner, feminist anthropologists no longer focus ethnographic research solely on gender asymmetry. They now explore the importance of female activities which were previously seen as unimportant. These activities include foraging, parenting, and sexual selection in our reconstructions of human history (Lamphere 1996:488). The interest has shifted from particularistic and historically grounded studies to a more gender-concerned approach. Feminist anthropological work is said to follow a few trends one of which is to focus on materialistic perspective such as focusing gender as it relates to social relations of power, class and modes of production. The other trend is to focus on the social construction of gender as it is expressed in the roles of motherhood, marriage and kinship. (McGee and Warms 1996:392). Contemporary feminist anthropologists have shown that in general, gender is an important analytical concept and Weiner's works provides a good understanding of how gender should be included in anthropological research. The definition of gender does vary from culture to culture but feminist anthropology would point out that instead of focusing research on differences between male and female, the focus of contemporary scholars should be differences existing among women (McGee, Warms 1996: 392). The anthropology of women has developed strongly since the 1975. We know much more about women's status in contemporary non-Western cultures than twenty years ago. Anthropologists, whether they may be women or men conducting anthropological fieldwork are much aware of possible male bias or Eurocentric bias in their work. This has lead to a partial re-writing of ethnographies about several societies one good example of which is Annette Weiner's 'The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea". This, however, was not her first work. Considered as one of the first brave reviews of traditional anthropological beliefs was Annette Weiner's 1976 work on the famous Trobriand islanders entitled "Women of value, men of renown". In this work, Weiner showed that in addition to the widely published men's kula-exchange, there existed many other exchange-networks which involved women in central roles and that these exchanges were in no way seen marginal or less important by the community. 4.0 IMPRESSION In retrospect, 20th century Anthropology has been concerned with universal social laws wherein the anthropologists search for common themes of truth in the world's societies. However, anthropology was a masculine concept in that it was termed "the study of man" up until the 20th century. After the period of colonization, interest shifted from local indigenous people to the study of 'other' culture. According to Fleming (2006), Anthropology became focused on meanings, values and beliefs encoded in world views, material practice and personal identity and material practice. Anthropology claimed to be interested in different forms of knowledge outside of western knowledge but in fact, anthropologists have acted ethnocentrically by considering that their own culture was much more superior to others. Anthropological research work and studies have been mostly judged through a white, western, male, middle class perspective serving to 'other' knowledge by judging them according to western standards. Moore (1996:2) observes that the definition of what constitutes knowledge is contested because local people produce local knowledge but local people are not included as producers of social science theory which is seen as the work of the anthropologist. Although anthropology began as the study of man, women have always been 'included' with regards to the discipline of kinship and marriage (Moore 1988:1) and that women had been significantly included since the early days of anthropology. However, feminist analyses of anthropology states that it is not so much a problem of inclusion in empirical studies but the representation. As an example, consider the different interpretations of female and male ethnographers to the position and nature of Aboriginal women. The male ethnographers considered that the women were profane, excluded from rituals and were basically unimportant within the economy but female ethnographers had another thing to say. Aboriginal women were important to subsistence, central to rituals and were treated with respect by men. This shows that it is how women are included that is of importance (Moore 1988:1). The challenge is then to critically analyse existing anthropological literature creating new research where women are at the centre. It is in this regard that I find Weiner's work to be very important and very remarkable. It is important in the sense that it provides a good material in forwarding the notion that anthropological research could be androcentric. Indeed, upon reading the book of Weiner and that of Malinowski, we note that there is indeed a difference in observation. What is remarkable is that once a perspective is substituted for another, we gain another understanding of the culture of societies that can be completely different from what could have arisen with the use of a single perspective. It now becomes important to the anthropological student to be aware that he/she must not just be cautious with regards to ethnocentrism but must also be cautious of being androcentric. While there are indeed different fields in Cultural Anthropology and so much literature regarding its various topics, Weiner's 'The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea" is indeed remarkable because of the revelations that it presents to the reader. Her work makes the reader conscious of the perspectives that he/she employs in conducting anthropological research. Reference: Fleming, L (2006) Lecture notes, Middlesex University, Enfield. Lamphere, L (1996) Gender. In Levinson, D. and M. Ember, eds.Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 2. New York: Henry Holt and Co, pp. 488-493. McGee, RJ and RL Warms (1996) Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. London: Mayfield Publishing Company. Moore, H. (1988) Feminism and Anthropology, Polity Press: Cambridge. Moore, H. (1996) The Future of Anthropological Knowledge. Polity Press: Cambridge. Pine, F (1996) Gender. In Barnard, A and J Spencer, eds. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. New York: Routledge, 253-262. Reiter, Rayna R. (1975) Toward an Anthropology of Women (Introduction). New York: Monthly Review Press. Read More