Unity in duality : social and ritual organization of the Ilahita Arapesh

Abstract

This study analyzes the growth and organizational elaboration of Ilahita, an unusually large village (population: 1490) in the Maprik area of the East Sepik District, New Guinea. Two general questions are posed, the one historical, the other structural-functional: how did Ilahita come to be so large? and, more important theoretically, by what organizational means has it retained its size over the years? The village's social organization is based on a complex system of dual structures defined by residence, ritual categories and, somewhat contingently, descent. These structures are analyzed as an integrated system of cognitive categories and social activities, interrelated at a higher systemic level with the secret men's Tambaran Cult, and with culturally patterned behaviour of a more mundane kind. The former gives dramatic expression to the dual organization; the latter yields disruptive tensions which are regulated and absorbed by the dual organization. Thus, the ritual system sacralizes the dual organization, while the behavioural vicissitudes stimulate the innovation and elaboration of dual structures. That the social system of Ilahita is largely in tact and accessible to study is the result of recent pacification (compared to much of lowland Australian New Guinea) and a strongly conservative attitude toward social, economic and political change. The historical background of Ilahita is inferred from oral tradition, comparative ethnography and linguistic evidence. The antecedents of the present-day Ilahita Arapesh were among those peoples displaced by Middle Sepik groups whose predatory expansion continued until relatively recent times. These groups concentrated themselves into large villages (structurally imitative of Middle Sepik settlements) which became formidable enough to prevent further territorial encroachment. Because of its advantageous geographical position, Ilahita emerged larger and more secure than other villages in the culture, thereby attracting to itself more refugees. This, along with effective military and diplomatic strategies, established Ilahita's local hegemony.

With village growth and consolidation, behavioural tensions mounted which had previously been relieved by the physical separation of contending groups or individuals. Military stress no longer allowed this mode of resolution. Tension arose from the ambiguity inhering in the relations of boundary-sharing groups joined in a state of military interdependence, the inevitable conflict of interests between affinally related groups living in close proximity, and by the ambivalence of fraternal and parental relationships. As well as alleviating much of this tension through conventional competition and rivalry, the dual organization is equilibrated at the lower structural levels by adoption

practices, the custom of sister-exchange marriage, and by various forms of ritual promotion. The dual organization also contains an authority hierarchy based on age and access to ritual secrets. With the Pax Australiana and the removal of military stress, behavioural tensions are again finding resolution through physical separation; the village is beginning to fragment, thus removing the socio- spatial supports of the authority structure.

The Tambaran Cult is analyzed in its relationship to the dual organization, and also as an integrated system of religious belief and practice. Cult activities and symbols imbue the dual organization with religious meaning, while at the same time apotheosizing certain fundamental cultural values, most prominently, the supremacy of age over youth and men over women. In analyzing the four grades of the Cult, it is shown that the first three comprise a self-contained ritual system indigenous to Arapesh culture. Its symbols refer to masculine growth and sexuality, while the initiation ceremonies feature a traumatic exertion of dominance by the older males over the novices. Nggwal, the fourth and highest grade, is a ritual form borrowed from the Middle Sepik peoples, and is organizationally predicated on a village, as opposed to a dispersed, settlement pattern. In ideology, the grade focuses on a personified deity figure, and its symbols refer to the glories of collective masculine endeavour: war, technology and ritual extravagance.

The close integration of dual organization and ritual is facilitated through a series of cognitive identifications linking worldly authorities with supernatural entities. The series spans the full range of meaningful male relationships, both real and fantastic: elder brother, father, ghost, ancestral spirit, Tambaran spirit. The context of this analysis is a mechanism of social control in which village elders draw on religious ideology to resolve crises resulting from alleged sorcery attacks; in the process, the elders reaffirm their mystical and authoritative privileges in a way that contributes to community solidarity. Show more