The Tchambuli View of Persons: A Critique of Individualism in the Works of Mead

and Chodorow

Deborah Gewertz

American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 3. (Sep., 1984), pp. 615-629.

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The Tchambuli View of Persons: A Critique of Individualism
in the Works of Mead and Chodorow

DEBORAH
G EWERTZ
A m h e r s t College

I n Sex and Temperament and Male and Female, Margaret Mead demonstrated that
significant differences exist in the dispositzons of males and females in particular cultures.
I n her unpublished field notes she also provided a partial explanation of why such dzf-
ferences should exist. In this paper I evaluate her explanation of the basis ofgender dif-
ferences i n the particular culture of the Tchambuli, and place it within the context of
more recent social psychology, particularly Nancy Chodorow's psychoanalytic study of
female personality. Prompted by the recent reconsideration of Mead's work-a recon-
sideration 1 believe to be as inaccuratelyfocused o n Western categories of understanding
as Mead herself was-I argue that both Mead and Chodorow fail to consider adequately
n o n - Western m'ews of the self i n explaining gender dzfferences.

ANTHROPOLOGY IS FREQUENTLY DEFINED I N OUR COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS as the study of cultural

similarities and differences. Our students are told that as anthropologists our goal is to
use cross-cultural descriptive data to devise explanatory hypotheses about why people do
what they do. The enterprise rests on a comparison of accurate reports about exotic
behavior to illustrate the range of human potential and the patterns of constraints on
this potential. And yet, because we engage in this enterprise for our own cultural pur-
poses and wish the data we compare to speak to our own lives, we frequently domesticate
the cultural alternatives presented. In other words, there is considerable benefit in the
misinterpretation of cross-cultural data, so that the alternatives presented are both
culturally understandable and socially useful.
No people, as far as I know, have been more misinterpreted than the Tchambulil of
Papua New Guinea. Their utility to social scientists is well known. As examples of this
utility, consider the following three passages, the first taken from an introductory sociol-
ogy textbook written by Melvin Tumin of Princeton University, and the next two from
early works by the feminist scholars Nancy Chodorow and Una Standard.
Margaret Mead, in her classic Sex and Temperament i n Three Primitive Societies, investigated
whether the temperaments we think of as typically male and female are seen similarly in other
societies or . . . simply reflect cultural ideas and conditioning. . . . She found three groups in
New Guinea all living within a hundred miles of each other but all culturally distinct. In the
Arapesh, Dr. Mead found that both men and women were raised to behave according to our
"ideal" of female temperament. In the Mundugumor, both women and men were raised to be

DEBORAH GEWERTZ is Associate Professor. Amherst College, and Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology, P.O. Box
4, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2600. Australia.

Copyright @ 1984 by the American Anthropological Association

0002-7294/84/030615-1582.00/1
616 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [86, 1984

tough, cold, and striving-like our "successful," hard-driving males. By contrast, the Tchambuli
raise women as we raise men, and vice versa. [Tumin 1973:198]
Margaret Mead's studies describe societies in which both men and women are gentle and unag-
gressive (the Arapesh); in which women dislike childbearing and children and both sexes are
angry and aggressive (the Mundugumor); in which women are unadorned, brisk and efficient,
whether in childrearing, fishing, or marketing, while men are decorated and vain, interested in
art, theater and petty gossip (the Tchambuli). . . . [Chodorow 1971:174]
Among the Tchambuli in New Guinea, woman also shave their heads and do not adorn them-
selves; the men are graceful and charming, curl their hair, and wear bird of paradise head-
dresses. [Standard 1971 :1201
Mead's New Guinea work, therefore, seems to have been used by a great number of
social scientists to convince us that those personality differences between men and women
that we in the West tend to classify as masculine and as feminine may be reversed or
transformed within other cultural contexts. Both men and women may be like our
women; both women and men may be like our men; and-based on the Tchambuli
data-men may be like our women, while women may be like our men. Absent, however,
from any of these accounts of gender differences in New Guinea are descriptions of per-
sonality traits not found in the West. Tumin has Mundugumor men and women behav-
ing like corporate executives on Madison Avenue. Standard describes Tchambuli men as
if they would relish having their coifs done by Charles of the Ritz. And Chodorow places
these same men at a suburban garden party. Each has used these New Guineans as pro-
jections of ourselves, exhibiting characteristics that are but permutations of established
Western categories.
These descriptive passages were written, of course, to illustrate that significant dif-
ferences do indeed exist in the dispositions of males and females in particular cultures.
They were not meant as explanations of Tchambuli behavior. But even when we leave
the realm of didactic description and move toward explanation, the apparent utility of
people like the Tchambuli to us as models for our own conduct does not appear to
diminish. First, for example, consider Mead's (1933) own explanation of why significant
gender differences exist, found not in any of her popular works but in the methodology
she devised while working among the Tchambuli between January 1933 and April 1933.
Entitled "Working Plan for Investigation of Personality Formation, March 20, 1933" in
her unpublished field notes, Mead's methodology looks like this:
Suggestion: That key to personality development and emotional tone is to be found in the organi-
zation of the women's groups and the relationship of children of both sexes to women rather
than to men.
Points: Large size of informal women's group, continual aggregation of this group, association
with constant eating, gay and sociable preparation of food, warmth of emotional tone between
women, and the extension of this tone to children of both sexes under five or six, and to females
for life.
Cross cousin marriage of lien type assuring that a girl marries into group of female kin who
regard her as one of them, not as an intruder.
Preference for marrying women from same group, so that women in a house and co-wives are all
friends. This eliminates conflict between mothers over children. House boy organization
prevents any father-daughter relationship and so decrees that a girl suffers no social weaning
trauma, either in childhood or at marriage.
Quantitate and check thus: Living or dead own mothers and the personality of living ones.
Relationship of fathers' other wives to own mother.
Relationship of elder brothers' wives and small papas' wives to own mother.
Size of the feminine group in house where child is reared.
Amount of diffusion through remarriage and irregular marriage of "mothers" throughout the
community.
Gewertz] TCHAMBULZ V I E W OF PERSONS

Personality of living maternal grandmothers.

Age at death of mother.
Relationship of foster mothers to own mother and to each other.
Correlate with: Personality traits such as aggressiveness, leadership, shyness, timidity, savoir
faire, gregariousness, tendency to form wide alliances, rootlessness.
Compare these traits also with personality of fathers, foster fathers and elder brothers, probably
also with "big man" of house boy.
Compare personalities of pishaben [affinal] groups; within the group.
Compare strength of marriages which do and do not follow decreed lines, in relation also to
makeup of household which bride enters.
Compare brothers through different fathers, with brothers through different mothers, when
mothers are clan sisters, when they aren't.
Consider primogeniture factor for both men and women.
Mead's "Working Plan" not only reflects the extraordinary organizational ability she
brought to her fieldwork but also reveals, more than any of her books, her theoretical
prescience. In it she anticipates the work of many contemporary scholars, some thirty
years before the women's liberation movement compelled the investigation of the social
causes of sex-linked personality development (see Slater 1968; Dinnerstein 1976;
Chodorow 1971, 1974, 1979). This recent work is general in its scope, purporting to ex-
plain gender differences among all peoples, including the Tchambuli. It fails, however,
as I will argue in a moment, for thh same reason that Mead herself fails, by remaining at-
tached to Western cultural categories.
As an example of this recent work, consider the following passage from Chodorow's
(1974:43-44) influential psychoanalytic study, "Family Structure and Feminine Personal-
ity."
[A] crucial differentiating experience in male and female development arises out of the fact that
women, universally, are largely responsible for early child care and for (at least) later female
socialization. This points to the central importance of the mother-daughter relationship for
women, and to a focus on the conscious and unconscious effects of early involvement with a
female for children of both sexes. The fact that males and females experience this social environ-
ment differently as they grow up accounts for the development of basic sex differences in per-
sonality.
Chodorow, therefore, would agree with Mead's suggestion that the key to personality
development in both males and females is to be found "in the organization of the
women's group and the relationship of children of both sexes to women." This should not
surprise us, however, because Mead and Chodorow each draws a portion of her theory
from Freud (1925), who emphasized the importance of mothers, particularly their
children's perception of them as insufficiently nuturant, in explaining ego differentiation
among both males and females.
What is of greater significance, however, is the degree to which both Mead and
Chodorow diverge from Freud. He argues that the development of female gender identity
depends on penis envy. Girls, because they blame their mothers for their lack of penes,
reject the affective bonds they have established with their mothers, and embrace first
their fathers and then males in general as their source of sexual gratification. What
Freud misses, according to both Mead and Chodorow, is the degree to which females fail
to break their affective bonds with their mothers, remaining forever identified with the
"warmth and emotional tone" of women.
Mead, at least in the Tchambuli case, attributes this persistent identification of
females with the "women's group" to those social institutions that allow unity between
female agnates and their female affines, including the "houseboy [men's house] organiza-
tion which prevents any father-daughter relationship and so decrees that a girl suffers no
618 AMERICAN A N T H R O P O L O G I S T [86, 1984

social weaning trauma, either in childhood or at marriage." Indeed, she attributes the
possession of the "real position of power in society" (1963:253) to the sense of self Tcham-
buli women gain through their intergenerational solidarity.
Chodorow (1974:57), while agreeing that women "are likely to participate in an inter-
generational world with their mother, and often with their aunts and grandmother,"
does not feel their "embeddedness" within women's groups allows them easily to assume
positions of power. In fact, she argues that girls, who need not reject an early identifica-
tion with their mothers in order to become adult women, may be kept "from differen-
tiation and lessening [their] infantile dependency" (1974:64).
Thus, where Mead finds the aggressiveness, savoir faire, gregariousness, and leader-
ship ability of Tchambuli women, Chodorow discovers a cross-cultural potential for
female dependence and for female problems with individuation. On the basis of these
disparate conclusions, one might assume that Mead and Chodorow part explanatory
company. Both, however, locate their explanations of female personality traits within the
same set of Western assumptions, failing to consider adequately non-Western views of the
self in explaining gender differences. They are thus using cross-cultural data, not only in
their descriptions but even in their explanations, to validate our own cultural categories.

ON BEING PART-MAN IN T H E HOUSE BOY

When I first arrived among the Tchambuli in 1974, I did not understand that they
viewed persons differently than we do, and learned this lesson with some difficulty. It
happened in the following manner.
I was initially prohibited entrance into any of the 15 men's houses, which line the shore
of Chambri Lake. I was a woman, and women, the Tchambuli explained, are neither
allowed inside men's houses nor on the path closest to these houses. Women, I was told,
should take the upper road when they're forced to leave their women's houses in order to
fish or go to market. Otherwise, they should stay at home.
I protested the decision. My argument was a simple and effective lie. I told my Tcham-
buli hosts that I had to visit them in their men's houses if I was to adequately complete my
work. If they didn't wish me in them, I'd move to their enemy village, where I'd be quite
welcome everywhere, including in the men's houses. (I did not then know that the
Tchambuli were actually involved in land disputes with their Iatmul enemies on Tim-
bunmeri Island, but merely assumed that all New Guineans must have enemies some-
where.)
My Tchambuli hosts thought my bluff incredibly amusing. Indeed, they guffawed and
slapped their thighs as they are wont to do when witnessing a debate in which the speaker
has just demolished his opponent with a humiliating sally. One old man, however, re-
frained from laughing. He took some betel nuts, a betel pepper catkin, and an incised
lime gourd from his string bag, offered them to me and, when I accepted, said: "I think
it's alright for her to sit with us." And so I was admitted.
A few weeks after I had begun to regularly join my hosts within sacred male territory, I
overheard a group of Tchambuli men and women discussing why the rules had been
broken in my case. They agreed that I was probably not a woman at all, but a strange
creature who grew male genitals upon donning trousers. My husband, they thought, was
a "man bilong sem"-a man of shame-meaning a feminized male. And our daughter,
they decided, was not born of our union but had been acquired unnaturally, perhaps
purchased from a stranger who needed money. After all, two normally fertile people
would have produced many more children by our advanced ages.
My initial response to this rationalization of my presence in Tchambuli men's houses
Gewertz] TCHAMBULI V I E W OF PERSONS 619

was one of amusement. I associated it with the American expression, "she's got balls,"
which is popularly used by men to compliment the women they respect. But I found
myself becoming increasingly preoccupied and disturbed by it, as I began to wonder
about what sort of relationships a hermaphroditic "creature" such as myself could ever
establish with Tchambuli men and women. My preoccupation has increased over the
years, and I have come to recognize that in portraying me as they did, the Tchambuli
were not complimenting my forceful presentation of self. It was not simply a matter of
making me part-man to justify my presence in their men's houses, but, more significant-
ly, a matter of denying my capacity to affect the proceedings, thereby depriving me of the
status of "person ."
T o be a person among the Tchambuli is, first of all, to be a member of a patriclan, a
land-owning, residential, and ceremonial group.' Tchambuli describe a patriclan as "the
people with the same totems," a phrase that indicates that members of the clan hold com-
mon ownership of numerous totemic names-names referring to the ancestors who once
held them and to the territories and resources owned and lived in by these ancestor^.^
Although patriclan members claim descent from their patriclan founder, it is the in-
heritance of totemic names that links them together.
All clan members together assume responsibility for payment of the bride price and af-
final debts incurred by a co-member, and together they receive the affinal prestations
owed to the clan. During all affinal transactions marking marriage, birth, initiation, and
death, clan members celebrate the occasion with long recitatives of their totemic names.
Frequently the chants also recount the travels of their clan's founder, incarnate as a
supernatural crocodile, swimming through clan-owned water, and resting on clan-owned
land. Their chanting often extends over several days and nights, with their affines re-
counting their own names as the clan members rest.
Each individual also inherits several totemic names from his or her father's affines.
Thus, Tchambuli become repositories of both their patrilineal and matrilateral relation-
ships through their possession of certain names. T o be a person among them is to embody
these relationships.
I , however, had no relationships. I was given no totemic names, but was called by the
nondescript Chambrinamak, which means, simply, a Tchambuli woman. If a woman,
however, I was a hermaphroditic one, completely self-contained, with neither affines nor
kin. I could not, after all, bear my own daughter, but had to purchase her from
strangers. I would never produce children whose kin had to be compensated and was
therefore a nonperson, a nonthreatening introduction into their men's houses.
I was, nevertheless, what both Mead and Chodorow would have every Tchambuli be, a
differentiated individual, an autonomous self. From their Western perspective, groups
are the sum of these selves, and powerful groups are formed when the individuals who
constitute them decide to unite their strong, differentiated egos. Yet from the Tchambuli
perspective, an individual has no significant reality, and hence no power, apart from his
or her relationships.
I thus argue that both Mead and Chodorow are wrong, the former explicitly and the
latter through implication, to explain the relative strengths or weaknesses of Tchambuli
women in individual terms. If it were true that Tchambuli women dominate their men, it
would not be because mother's brother's daughter's marriage and the house boy organi-
zation allow them to become aggressive and gregarious personalities. If it were true that
Tchambuli women lack political clout, it would, equally, not be because these same in-
stitutions prevent them from differentiating and from developing a mature sense of self.
We must explain their dominance, or lack thereof, in terms of the relationships through
which they as Tchambuli define themselves as persons.
620 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [86, 1984

SEPIK PERSONS: T H E SOCIOHISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The question of how Tchambuli define themselves as persons brings up another
cultural distortion in Mead's work. Although this distortion has not had the widespread
intellectual consequences that have arisen from her use of Western categories to create
specious relationships between "us" and "them," it is nonetheless important to correct it if
the Tchambuli are to be properly understood.
Because Mead was concerned with making cross-cultural data convincing and useful to
a Western audience, she tended to summarize her findings and the findings of other
ethnographers in the form of typologies, which not only differentiated various non-
Western cultures from Western culture but also distinguished among various non-
Western cultures. Thus, the Tchambuli became what the Arapesh, Mundugumor,
Manus, and Iatmul were not. Each of these cultures illustrated for Mead one of the
possibilities relevant to the Western cultural framework in which she worked. Unfor-
tunately, in the interests of creating typologies that would represent all possibilities within
this framework, her conclusions, as they appear in her classifications, are sometimes at
variance with ethnographic data.
Consider, for example, the following three ethnographic passages, the first from
Gregory Bateson's description of the ethos of Iatmul women, who are close neighbors of
the Tchambuli, and the last two from Mead's description of Tchambuli women in Sex
and Temperament.
Thus, in our study of the women's ethos, we find a double emphasis. For the most part, the
women exhibit a system of emotional attitudes which contrasts sharply with that of the men.
While the latter behave almost consistently as though life were a splendid theatrical perform-
ance-almost a melodrama-with themselves in the centre of the stage, the women behave most
of the time as though life were a cheerful cooperative routine in which the occupations of food-
getting and child-rearing are enlivened by the dramatic and exciting activities of the men. But
this jolly, co-operative attitude is not consistently adopted in all contexts, and we have seen that
women occasionally adopt something approaching the male ethos and that they are admired for
so doing.
In the ceremonial activities of women, the same double emphasis is present, and these activities
fall into two distinct ethological groups according as one or the other emphasis is predominant.
In general, the jolly, co-operative emphasis is most evident when women celebrate by themselves
in the absence of men, while the proud ethos is exhibited when women celebrate publicly in the
dancing ground of the village with men in audience. [Bateson 1958:148]
In their energetic friendly activity there is an air of solidarity, of firm cooperation and group pur-
pose. . . . [Mead 1963:239]
Solid, preoccupied, powerful, with shaven unadorned heads . . . [Tchambuli] women sit in
groups and laugh together, or occasionally stage a night dance at which, without a man present,
each woman dances vigorously all by herself the dance-step that she has found to be most ex-
citing. Here again the solidarity of women, the inessentialness of men, is demonstrated. [Mead
1963:257]
Thus, Tchambuli and Iatmul women appear to be frequently very similar, and if we
had no other data than these ethnographic descriptions ofthem, we would reject, out of
hand, the graphic illustration of the temperamental differences between them that Mead
(1972:218) provides in Blackberry Winter (see Figure 1). Mead is never precise about the
temperamental characteristics she means her compass points to illustrate, but she implies
that Mundugumor men and women, Iatmul men, and Tchambuli women are all ex-
pected to behave aggressively; Arapesh men and women, Tchambuli men, and Iatmul
women are all expected to behave submissively; and Manus men and women are free to
behave either aggressively or submissively. (When she formulated her fourfold scheme,
Gewertz] TCHAMBULZ V I E W OF PERSONS

Mundugumor men and women

Iatmul men Tchambuli women

[Missing: no culture in

which both men and

women belonged to
fit in here]

Tchambuli men
wt Manus men and women

Iatmul women

Arapesh men and women

Figure 1. Mead's typology of temperaments.

she knew of no culture that emphasized neither aggressiveness nor submissiveness among
both its men and women, but later discovered the Balinese to fit this missing category.)
Elsewhere I have criticized the ontological nature of Mead's scheme (Gewertz 1981),
which, as she admits, is based on Ruth Benedict's assumption that cultures are like in-
dividual personalities written large (Mead 1972:255). Thus, for example, the behavior of
all Tchambuli women, unless they are deviants, should conform at all times to the
cultural preference for female aggressiveness. Bateson, it seems to me, takes a more ac-
curate, systemic approach, and demonstrates that Iatmul women can sometimes act like
Iatmul men. He argues, in Naven (1958) and elsewhere (1972), that there is a range of
possible behaviors within a culture and that particular behaviors become relevant under
certain social circumstances. Thus, Iatmul women sometimes act cooperatively and
sometimes exhibit competitive pride.
T o Bateson's social contextualization of Mead's emphasis on culture and personality, I
would add a historical dimension. It is not only within certain social circumstances that
particular culturally possible behaviors become relevant, but also under particular
historical conditions that these behaviors emerge as predominant. Thus, when Mead and
Fortune worked among the Tchambuli, 52% of Tchambuli men between the ages of 15
and 45 were away from their villages, probably for the purpose of labor m i g r a t i ~ n . ~
Those men who remained were busy rebuilding their ceremonial houses, which had been
razed during a war with the Parambei Iatmul. The defeated Tchambuli had been exiled
to the Sepik Hills for over 20 years and had just been returned to their island by Austral-
ian officials a few years before Mead and Fortune arrived among them. In one sense, they
were paying for Australian protection against the Iatmul with their labor (see Gewertz
1983). With so many men away, Tchambuli women had begun to assume control of the
trading relationships previously dominated by their husbands and father^.^ It seems
possible, therefore, that Mead (1963:236-322) was wrong to attribute either the emo-
tional insecurity cum artistic preoccupation of Tchambuli men or the cooperative, work-
oriented solidarity of Tchambuli women to cultural preferences. Both could simply be
seen as reflecting sociohistorical circumstances.
Sociohistorical circumstances are also helpful in understanding the genuine relation-
ships between Tchambuli and Iatmul. These peoples have been locked in mutual inter-
dependence for perhaps the past three hundred years, and are far more alike than Mead
622 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [86, 1984

suggested (see Gewertz 1983). Indeed, both peoples exhibit fundamental similarities in
their definitions of persons, a fact that would have occurred to Mead if her comparative
effort had included a consideration of native categories of experience and understanding.
These native categories teach us that, taken separately, the Tchambuli and Iatmul are
far more similar to each other than Mead was willing to acknowledge; taken together,
they are vastly more different from us than she was willing to admit.

SEPIK PERSONS: T H E MALE DILEMMA

The categories through which the Tchambuli define themselves as persons do not dif-
fer significantly from those of importance to their neighbors, the Iatmul. Both peoples
conceive of persons as the embodiment of their affinal and agnatic relationships, and the
best place to begin a discussion of Sepik persons is with the men, who actively initiate and
perpetuate these relationships. A crucial difference between Sepik men and women is
that the former frequently find it stressful to maintain the relationships that define them.
I describe the nature of this stress from the Tchambuli perspective elsewhere (Gewertz
1982), where I analyze a Tchambuli myth about the male effort to avoid affinal relation-
ships. Here, however, I present a Iatmul myth, primarily because it confirms my point
that there are fundamental similarities between Iatmul and Tchambuli definitions of
persons, but also because the nature of the stress experienced by Sepik men is nowhere
better illustrated. Bateson (1958:145) tells the myth to exemplify one side of the ethos of
Iatmul women, since it describes "the respect which is paid to [Iatmul] women of strong
and courageous personality," but, as I show, it is really about relationships between men
established through women.
Kararau were killing us.6 They speared women who went out to get tips of wild sugar-cane, and
women who went to get water-weed (for pig's food), and women who went to their fish traps. And
they shot a man, Au-vitkai-mali. . . . His wife was Tshanggi-mbo and (his sister was) Au-vitkai-
mangka. They shot him and beat the gongs (in triumph). Au-vitkai-mangka was away; she was
on the lake (fishing) . . . [The] sound o f . . . [the] gongs came (over the lake). She asked,
"Whom have they speared?" and (the people) said, "They have speared your h ~ s b a n d . " ~
Then she filled up a bag with shell valuables and she (went to the ceremonial house and) said,
"Men of this village, I have brought (valuables) for you." But they said, "No. We d o not want
them," and they were ashamed (because they had not dared to accept the valuables which she
had offered as payment for assistance).
Then she went down into her canoe; she loaded the valuables into the canoe; she took off her
skirt and put it in the canoe. Au-vitkai-mangka was in the stern and Tshanggi-mbo in the bow.
T h e bag of valuables was in the middle of the canoe. She went up the river to ~ a l i m b a i , 'because
she had heard his gongs. . . .
They sat leaning against the ceremonial mound (a place of refuge) in ~ a l i m b a iand, ~ they put
the bag of valuables on the ground close to the mound. At dawn (the people of Palimbai) got up
and saw (them). They were sitting stripped of their skirts, with their skirts on their shoulders.1
T h e men of Palimbai said, "They are women of Kararau"; and they were for spearing them."
T h e women said, "Why will you spear us?" Kaulievi (of Palimbai) saw them and said, "Don't
spear them"; and he said "~ome."- hen he beat the gong to summon all the men of Palimbai,
Kankanamun, Malingai, and Jentschan. . . . The men said, "What women are you?"; and the
women said, "We are the women of Ienmali." (Ienmali is the name of the old site of
Mindimbit.) . . .
Au-vitkai-mangka then (calling the names of the totems of the four villages) appealed to
Kankanamun: "You! Crocodile! Wanimali!"; and to Malingai: "You! Crocodile! Kavok!"; and to
Palimbai: "You! Pig! Palimbai-awan!"; and to ,]entschan: "You! Pig! Djimbut-nggowi!". And she
said, "I shall take away my bag of valuables."
She set out the valuables ii a line; and the four villages accepted them. That night they
Gewertz] T C H A M B U L I V I E W OF PERSONS 623

debated, "Already tomorrow we shall raid them." Each of the four villages (brought) a fleet of
canoes. They formed into one fleet on the Sepik River.
They (the men) gave a spear to Au-vitkai-mangka and the men of Palimbai gave another spear
to Tshanggi-mbo.
When they drifted down to the Kararau (reaches of the) Sepik, (the canoes took up
f o r m a t i ~ n ) . Then
'~ the men shot a n eel. It said "War." (A favorable omen; and here my infor-
mant reproduced the grunting of the eel.)
. . . T h e Palimbai people killed the people of Kararau and they caught two men (alive) in
their hands. Au-vitkai-mangka speared one of them. Tshanggi-mbo speared the other. They
speared them all, every one of them. . . . [Bateson 1958:145-1471
The key to understanding this myth rests in the shame felt by the men of Mindimbit
when approached by Au-vitkai-mangka to avenge her husband. l 3 She undoubtedly made
her request of his patrilineal relatives, for "their first duty was the taking of nggambwa
(vengeance)" (Bateson 1958:139).
T h e rings of cane worn in mourning for the killed individual may not be put aside until
vengeance has been achieved; and a pointed reference to a n unavenged relative is one of the most
dangerous insults that one Iatmul can use in ranting against another . . .
Indeed, so serious is the condition of those who are unable to secure revenge, that it . . . may
lead to the sickness and death o f . . . [group] members. [Bateson 1958:139-1401
But her husband's relatives refused to avenge their kinsman, thereby revealing
themselves as fearful and weak-unequal to other men within Mindimbit, and certainly
to those Parambei who eventually accepted the task. Their shame must have been doubly
great because it was Au-vitkai-mangka, a woman who had married into their clan, who
made it public.
Among both the Iatmul and the Tchambuli-regardless of whether marriage occurs
with the iaz' (father's mother's brother's son's daughter), through sister exchange, by ab-
duction, or with the mother's brother's daughter-wife givers are considered "superior"
to their affines, and their superiority rests on several social facts. First of all, throughout
egalitarian New Guinea, an individual or a group to whom another is indebted is always
considered to be at least temporarily superior. Thus, in the highlands of New Guinea,
status differentials are established and maintained through competitive equal exchange.
One individual gives a quantity of goods to his trading partner who reciprocates with
more goods, forcing the first donor to give even more goods. Certain individuals and
groups will be indebted to other individuals and groups at any one point in time, and
"the only way they can maintain their alliance is by continuing positive, ceremonial ex-
changes of valuables . . . [The system is one] in which reciprocative transactions prevail
and the relationship between partners is relatively egalitarian" (Strathern 1971:214-215).
Although Tchambuli and Iatmul men do not engage in competitive equal exchanges,
they also contract inequality-producing debts with their affines. In a sense, Iatmul and
Tchambuli wife takers owe their lives to those who have provided their mothers, and
bridewealth (which the Iatmul speak of as "wainga, the same word being equally applic-
able to the purchase of a canoe or any other object" [Bateson 1958:281]) is the means
used to repay their obligations-to purchase themselves and their children from their
matrilateral kinsmen. Thus, jural membership in both Iatmul and Tchambuli patriclans
is contingent on the payment of debts incurred to affines.
But there is another important social fact to be considered: despite repeated payments,
affinal debts can never be fully settled, primarily because the exchanges between wife
takers and wife givers involve items of an incommensurate nature (see Forge 1972:537).
Valuables move in one direction and women move in the other, and since women remain
more valuable to exchange than valuables, the men who are linked through these ex-
624 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [86, 1984

changes are trapped in a relationship of inequality, a relationship established between

men by means of women.
Thus, to return to the myth, Au-vitkai-mangka, by marrying into the murdered man's
clan, had already effected a relationship of inequality between her own family and theirs,
and was now transforming this affinal inequality into a patron-client relationship be-
tween unrelated groups of men.
By taking the valuables to Parambei, Au-vitkai-mangka was asking Kaulievi and his
supporters to assume her in-laws' responsibilities. The message she brought was this: "My
in-laws are rubbish-men. They have neither the will nor the strength to avenge my hus-
band's death. You must do so, and thereby become his relatives and my affines." By sit-
ting at the ceremonial mound stripped of her skirt, she was declaring herself already mar-
ried into Kaulievi's clan; for this is the posture assumed by mothers during nauen
ceremonies (Bateson 1958:6-22).
Her message would have been immediately comprehensible to any Iatmul or Tcham-
buli as inaugurating a patron-client relationship. Among both peoples, individuals and
groups that are not linked through marriage are considered equal, "differentiated from
other identical individuals and groups only by sets of cultural signs, typically names"
(Forge 1972:533). Differences in status are established and maintained between these
groups of equal men when those that are "more than equal" assist their "less than equal"
neighbors to meet their affinal debts. When a Iatmul, or a Tchambuli and his clan co-
members cannot amass sufficient valuables to compensate their wife givers, they will seek
assistance from an unrelated clan. The unrelated clan, by giving assistance, gains power
over its clients. This is what the Iatmul and Tchambuli mean when they say that an
unrelated individual "bosses" the resources, names, and powers of his clients.
"Tchuikumban," Iatmul would tell me, "is not the father of this crocodile; he bosses it,
that's all." Thus, competition between equal clans is played out within the context of
unequal affinal exchange. One's own affinal relationship is a source of inequality, but the
affinal relationships of others provide unrelated men with the opportunity to prove
themselves equal by competing to patronize those who cannot fulfill their affinal obliga-
tions. And this is the opportunity Au-vitkai-mangka provided the Parambei. She asked
them to assume her husband's relatives' responsibilities, to become their patrons.
In this sense, the myth is not only about the origin of the traditional feud between
members of the Iatmul village of Kararau and those of Parambei and Mindimbit, but
also about the development of patron-client relationships between individuals from
Parambei and Mindimbit. A man from Kararau killed a man from Mindimbit; the slain
man's relatives hadn't the strength to avenge his death; men from Parambei assumed
responsibility, initiating the feud with men from Kararau and gaining status and power
over the shamed men of Mindimbit.
We see, then, that the myth is more an admonition than a panegyric. It was told not
merely to glorify the courageousness of two unusual Iatmul women, as Bateson thought,
but rather to warn against the stress inherent in the relationship established through
women. This danger is twofold: wife givers maintain superiority over their wife takers,
and unrelated groups may create from this affinal inequality another inequality of
patrons to clients.

AFFINAL RELATIONS: THE FEMALE RESOLUTION

Bateson, it will be recalled, tells the Au-vitkai-mangka story to illustrate the courage-
ousness of two Iatmul women, who obviously locate themselves within the network of af-
final and agnatic relationships that their husbands and fathers find important. Both Iat-
mu1 and Tchambuli women, indeed, perceive themselves as members of patriclans, and
Gewertz] TCHAMBULZ VIEW OF PERSONS 625

when Bateson (1958:148) discerned their "proud ethos when . . . celebrat[ing] publicly
in the dancing ground of the village with men in audience," it is likely that their comport-
ment was not meant to express an opposition to men, per se, but rather an opposition to
men-and women-of competing patriclans. Moreover, the jolly and cooperative em-
phasis he observed "when women celebrate by themselves in the absence of men" (1958:
148)-the same attitude Mead (1963:257) discovered in Tchambuli women, who also like
to "stage a night dance at which, without a man present, each woman dances vigorously
all by herself the dance-step [Mead believes] she has found to be most excitingn-reflects,
I argue, the very particular position of women within the network of affinal and agnatic
relationships.
We have seen that men find it difficult to coordinate these relationships. They are
trapped in a relationship of inequality, owing their lives to those who have provided their
mothers, striving to pay their debts in order to gain recognition as successful members of
their patriclans, but unable to ever fully accomplish this goal. Women, however, are
under no such obligations, for they can compensate those to whom they owe their lives by
bearing sons and daughters. From the male perspective, affinal debts can never be fully
settled, because the exchanges between wife givers and wife takers are of essentially dif-
ferent things, with valuables moving in one direction and women in the other. Females,
however, incur no affinal debts, because they can compensate their affines for their own
lives with the lives they bear. That is what, it seems to me, my Tchambuli sister meant
when she told me that "the business of men [i.e., affinal exchanges] is to pretend that
they can bear children. Women don't have to pretend, because they can."
Thus, women do not find themselves torn betwixt and between two patriclans, as the
following songs indicate. I collected them at one of the many all-female dances I ob-
served, this one held to celebrate the fifth birthday of the grandson of an aging Tcham-
buli Big Man, where, as was generally the case, the dance-steps performed by the women
tended toward uniformity, and not individualism as Mead suggests. What she saw as in-
dividuality, I saw as minor variations on a common theme. In any case, at the dance were
women who described themselves as "the wives of the clan": the boy's mother, his pater-
nal grandmother, her sister, the boy's father's brother's wife, her two sisters, and the boy's
paternal grandfather's brothers' three wives. Also present were women who said that they
were "sisters of the clan": the boy's father's three sisters and his paternal grandfather's
two sisters. They sang nine songs in all, each repeated many times. Like all women's
songs, they consisted of a short phrase followed by semantically meaningless chants. An
annotated translation of the nine songs is as follows:
1. "We're happy with Woliwogwi," a totemic name belonging to the boy's clan. This
song was sung by the wives of the clan.
2. "Our husbands don't bring us tobacco from the Nyaula," an Iatmul dialect group.
"Our men are no good." This song was sung by both the wives and the sisters of the clan.
3. "Mandoi," a totemic rat owned by the men of the clan, "wears beautiful decorations
on his head and on his tail." This song was sung by the sisters of the clan, and refers to the
elegance of their brothers.
4. "I'm worried about you. Come home." This was sung by both the wives and the
sisters of the clan. It is about husbands and brothers, away on plantations.
5. "Kapiakkupwan," a totemic fly owned by the clan of the boy's father's brother's
wife, "sits down by the fire and eats with Mandoi." This was sung by the wives of the clan,
and refers to the relationship between their clans and those of their husbands.
6. "Kill a man; cut off his head; put it on top of our men's house." This was sung by the
sisters of the clan, who describe the pride they feel when their brothers distinguish
themselves in warfare.
7. "Your brother walks crookedly; he's not strong, Woliwogwi is strong." This was sung
626 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [86,1984

by the sisters of the clan. It compares the club-footed brother of the birthday boy's pater-
nal grandmother to the physically able men of the boy's own clan.
8. "When fathers go away, children cry: 'Take me with you in the canoe.' " This was
sung by the wives of the clan.
9. "Take your bastards and go to jail." This angry song was sung by the sisters of the
clan. It accuses their brothers of being cuckolds.
What strikes me about these songs is that both the wives and the sisters of the clan use
them to express the same sentiments about the same men. Both groups of women sing
about their anger at, their pleasure with, their commitment to, and their disappointment
in their brothers and husbands. If wives and sisters found their structural positions within
Tchambuli society to be stressful, I would expect their "talk play," as they put it, to ex-
press polarity between them. Instead, they seem to identify with one another-to share
the same viewpoint toward the men. Although they possess totemic names given to them
by both their patrilateral and matrilateral kin and define themselves in terms of their
agnatic and affinal relationships, it seems that they have resolved the dilemma that their
men find so preoccupying. They experience no stress because as childbearers they owe
neither their affines nor their agnates anything.

CONCLUSION: MEAD, CHODOROW AND THE INEQUALITY OF CONDITION

Forge (1971:142), writing about Middle Sepik male sensibilities in general, feels that
underlying the fear of the unequal relationships established between men through their
marriage to women is a more fundamental ambiguity: that "women are treated as in-
ferior by men, who nevertheless believe them to be superior." And certainly many Iatmul
and Tchambuli have told me that women are in need of careful watching, for they once
owned the men's houses, sacred flutes, and other accoutrements of culture, and threaten
to someday regain their lost possessions. Indeed, on top of every Iatmul and Tchambuli
men's house is the carved figure of culture's progenitress, who reminds the occupants that
women once sat where they now do.
Iatmul and Tchambuli men feel distressed by their dependence on the reproductive
capacities of women, and only partially because reproduction entails claims by matri-
lateral kinsmen. These claims are explicit, although Sepik men believe that it is possible
to at least partially compensate their male affines. However, they make no effort to com-
pensate their wives and mothers and, indeed, ignore their debts to them by denying them
their equality. As Forge (1971:142) points out, "people who are by definition unequal
cannot compete," and what better way could there be to deny indebtedness to one's
women than by defining them as inferior?
It is possible for men in some cultures to stress their own role in procreation-for exam-
ple, to adopt the view of women, common throughout Western history, as being mere in-
cubators of male essences. Why Sepik men do not so view women, given that they feel it
important to avoid indebtedness to them, is a topic for another paper. Sepik men do,
however, actively seek in ritual to refute the culturally defined fact that men who are
equal are produced through the power of inferior women. Indeed, their initiation of
young men into patriclan membership involves scarification and bloodletting, each de-
signed to free initiates from the deleterious effects of the mother's blood that they are
bound to internalize before birth. Moreover, as part of the ceremony of initiation, the
agnates of the young man's mother receive by far the largest prestation ever given them
by their affines. During this ceremony, thus, men attempt to earn their psychophysiolog-
ical freedom from their mothers and their social freedom from their male in-laws.
What we see in this ceremony of initiation is the expression of themes characterizing
the lives of Sepik men. The fundamental problem they face is how to achieve relations of
Gewertz] TCHAMBULI VIEW OF PERSONS 627

equality in a culture that also profoundly believes that causes are more important than
effects. The most general statement of this problem may be viewed thus: How can I be
equal to others when I am also indebted to those responsible for my existence? More
specifically, how can men regard themselves as equal to women when they are produced
by women; how can men regard themselves as equal to other men when they receive their
wives from other men? Thus, Iatmul and Tchambuli men deprecate their women and
recompense their affines in the hopes of overcoming the inequality implied by their very
existence. Since all Tchambuli and Iatmul men either sense or know they are unequal to
those responsible for their existence, the social process becomes activated through their
attempt to gain their equality.
Tchambuli and, as all available evidence suggests, Iatmul women, however, need only
to bear children-that is, to act as causes- to overcome their inequality with respect to
affinal obligations. They thereby find the politics of affinal exchange, engaged in with
such obsessional intensity by their husbands and fathers, a time-wasting occupation.
This feminine position is not without its liabilities, for to assume it is to opt out of the
realm of political power and prestige that ultimately defines women as subservient. As
Mead (1963:254) suggests, once a man has obtained property, frequently through the
productive efforts of women, "it becomes a counter in the game that men play," a game,
I would add, they play with deadly seriousness. Thus, Mead's description of this "game"
is only half right. She suggests:
[Once men obtain property from their women] it is no longer concerned with the underlying
economics of life, but rather with showing one's appreciation for one's brother-in-law, soothing
someone's wounded feelings, behaving very handsomely when a sister's son falls down in one's
presence. T h e minor war-and-peace that goes on all the time among the men, the feelings that
are hurt and must be assuaged, are supported by the labour and contributions of the women.
[Mead 1963:254.]
She is wrong to describe the war and peace that goes on among the men as minor and
unimportant. She is right to suggest that women do not wish to engage in these battles.
However, even where her description is accurate, she is trapped by her use of Western
categories into an error of interpretation. That Tchambuli women lack interest in these
"games" has little to do with the strength of their personalities. Nor can it be said, as
Chodorow might, that they lack gamesmanship because of circumstances that leave them
trapped in infantile dependence. Tchambuli and Iatmul women are neither superwomen
nor infants, and if we wish to investigate their lives, we must be particularly careful to
avoid making them over in our own images.

NOTES
Acknowledgments. My first research among the Tchambuli was carried out in 1974-75 under the
auspices of grants from the East-West Center Population Institute, the National Geographic Socie-
ty, and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. During this time I also visited the
Iatmul on numerous occasions. In 1979 I returned, supported by the National Endowment for the
Humanities and a Miner D. Crary grant. I a m also grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
supporting my investigation of archival material during 1980-81. I thank Dr. Mary Catherine
Bateson for granting permission to use the unpublished field notes of Margaret Mead about the
Tchambuli. Finally, I wish to thank Frederick Errington, without whose support, -.
advice, and
editing this paper would never have been completed.
Elsewhere I have spelled "Chambri" as the government of Papua New Guinea does. Here I use
"Tchambuli" only because their previous incarnation in the scientific literature is important to my
argument.
In 1974 there were 34 patricians within the three Tchambuli villages, ranging in population
from 10 to 79 members.
628 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [86, 1984

Most of the totemic names owned by Tchambuli were adopted from the Iatmul long ago. In
Iatmul the names are translated as, for example, "Leg-fishhook-man" or "North-bank-earth-tree"
(Bateson 1933:410), but in Tchambuli the same names have no lexical meanings.
Bateson (1958:145) sets this myth within the following context: "As a further documentation of
the respect which is paid to women of strong and courageous personality, we may cite here a tradi-
tional myth which was told to me in Mindimbit in explanation of the head-hunting alliance be-
tween that village and Palimbai. Both of these villages have a traditional feud with the village of
Kararau which lies between them."
Bateson (1958:145-146, n . 1) tells us in a footnote that Iatmul men frequently confuse sisters
with wives in their myths. This is so, I believe, because they blame all women for establishing rela-
tionships of inequality between otherwise equal groups of men. I think it clear, however, that Au-
vitkai-mangka was acting, in this story, as a wife would. If she had been the dead man's sister, then
she would not have felt free to offer herself in marriage to the men of Parambei. As his wife, her
self-evaluation was not tied to the successes of her husband's corporate group.
Government maps spell the name of this Iatmul village "Parambei."
Each Iatmul and Tchambuli clan possesses its own ceremonial mound or ceremonial stone,
near to which members bury the bodies of enemies taken in warfare.
Bateson (1958:146) elaborates on this sentence in a footnote: "The nakedness of the women in
this context seemed so natural to me when I was told the myth, that I did not enquire into the
reasons for it. I have no doubt, however, that this nakedness is the mark of the suppliant and that it
is, in some degree, analogous to the nakedness of the women in nauen when they lie down before the
hero."
Bateson admits that he has condensed the conversation in the following four paragraphs.
' O Bateson (1958:147) explains in a footnote: "This phrase is substituted for a list of technical
terms which d o not concern us here."
l 1 This myth and parts of its analysis have appeared in my book, Sepik River Societies: A
Historz'cal Ethnography of the Chambri and Their Neighbors (Yale University Press, 1983).
l 2 Mead's unpublished household surveys are organized according to men's house affiliation. She
lists all of the initiated men who reside in the same s ~ i r i house.
t and then records their wives. their
children, and their other dependents, such as widowed mothers. My genealogies are relatively com-
plete for the generation of men from the Tchambuli village of ~ n d i n g a iamong whom ~ e a lived. d
According to my records, 18 young men between the ages of 15 and 25 and 22 older men between
the ages of 26 and 45 are unaccounted for by Mead. I think it likely that these men were living away
from Indingai, probably on plantations, because otherwise Mead would have recorded their names
and families. Since her surveys are organized according to male household heads, it is not surprising
that the wives and children of these migrants appear nowhere in her records.
l 3 See Gewertz 1983 for a discussion of the formation of barter markets among both the Iatmul
and Tchambuli when men abdicated control of their trading partnerships.

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