Introduction

I have argued that Avatip cosmology is an ideology inhibiting the use of material wealth in political competition, because it transposes the political significance of affinal exchange relationships out of the sphere of material production into the medium of magic and ritual. In this chapter I examine the consequences of this transposition for the structure of political relations between groups.

In an important paper, Morauta (1973) has identified what she calls a ‘magical division of labour’ – an hereditary division of ritual powers among social groups – as a common pattern in Lowland New Guinea social systems. Besides the societies which she cites as examples, some recent ethnographic studies indicate the existence of ritually specialised descent groups among some of the fringe Highland peoples (Godelier 1986), and there is evidence of this pattern in many Sepik societies in addition to the Manambu. A particularly important conclusion Morauta makes, and one which I should like to develop in this chapter in relation to Avatip, is that these ritual specialisations are typically associated in Melanesian societies with ideologies of rank. In some of these social systems – the Trobriand Islands (Malinowski 1935; Powell 1960) for instance, and the Mekeo (Hau'ofa 1981) – the inequalities of status are relatively strongly institutionalised. In others, such as the village of Kalauna on Goodenough Island (Young 1971) they take a weaker form that Young (1971: 63) calls submerged rank.