THE PRODUCTION OF INEQUALITY

The Production of Inequality



The Production of Inequality

Introduction

The analysis of gender relations has been at the heart of many debates in anthropology, including several recent discussions on Melanesian societies, especially in the context of ritual. At issue in many of these discussions has been a debate on how to see matters of personhood, inequality and agency, as these are expressed and performed in ritual contexts. The category of 'male cults' has been a focus of interest, whether these are centred on boys' initiations or otherwise, and concomitantly there has tended to be a focus on male agency, particularly in terms of the exclusion of females from cult participation. Where males have drawn on symbolic resources that are seen as female in these cults they have sometimes been described as appropriating female powers to themselves in order to claim control over social reproduction, an action that may then be further analysed in terms of male domination and exploitation. (Lisette, 1985, 22)

While all these perspectives may help us understand aspects of these practices and their embeddedness in sociality, in this article we argue for the merits of a different, and somewhat neglected, focus on the ways in which cult practices actually depend on the practical collaboration of men and women. We call this the 'collaborative-procreative-nurturant' focus of these cults. Our model of 'collaboration' can thus be juxtaposed with models of 'male exclusivity'. The procreative-nurturant components bring into focus the emphasis on fertility and growth that we find in these societies while also including the dimension of moral coding that is reinforced through ritual practices. Our stress on the significance of gendered collaboration and complementarity in ritual contexts builds on perspectives suggested by some of the writers cited above, such as Lutkehaus (1995), who stresses the importance of the female principle in the myth-cycle of Jari, and Meigs (1984), who questions, if tentatively, the model of male dominance and shows the shifting configurations of substances that constitute male and female elements of human embodiment.

The Production Of Inequality

Lisette says that although its precise role is still much debated, the value of ethnographic analogy to archaeological theorizing is now widely accepted (Lisette, 1985, 22). Archaeology being heavily occupied with the pre industrial eras of human history and prehistory, Melanesia therefore stands among the richest and most varied sources of ethnographic analogy in the world. By almost any definition, it is home to some 1000 languages and many more dialect groupings. Its environments range from swampland, river, and coast, through grass plains and foothills, to high mountain valleys and peak lands. Its peoples include hunters, fishers, and gatherers, horticulturalists, and intensive agriculturalists; and its social and cultural forms run the gamut from small-scale, semi nomadic, egalitarian kin groups, through sedentary villages boasting elaborate artistic and ritual production, to dispersed homestead dwellers integrated into vast networks of material exchange.

A core aim of the network is to produce theoretically informed high quality empirical research that illuminates three inter-related aspects of gender inequality in production ...