Disparate dimensions of a Mekeo socio-moral order: Values, emotions and dispositions in language, discourse and practice

Abstract

Terms for affective constructs and references to social ideals proliferate in the ethnography of the Mekeo, but these are often inconsistently defined and treated in isolation. I here attempt to produce a more coherent account of relevant terms and, ultimately, a systematic representation of the ontologically disparate elements that combined to produce a viable socio-moral order in twentieth-century Mekeo village society. The exercise reveals unexpected synergies between seemingly unrelated dispositions and emotions, espoused values and enacted Using Bourdieu’s concept of a ‘generative model’ (1990) I develop a schematic account that brings a gamut of diverse socio-moral constructs into semi-orderly alignment with the realities of a disorderly lifeworld. For a certain time at least, the socio-moral discourse and practices summarised in this schema successfully resolved the basic lived problem of the Mekeo lifeworld—the antinomy between a social structure based on inequality and the intransigence of a narcissistic and hubristic inner male self.