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Death and the ideology of compensation among the Wodani, western highlands of Irian Jaya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1999

STÉPHANE BRETON
Affiliation:
EHESS, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris, France
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Abstract

This article is a case study which deals with the consequences of a conflict among the Wodani. It describes the irruption of a Cargo Cult in this remote region of New Guinea, a series of incests provoked by the millenarian ideology, followed by murders and internecine war within the Kundiyau clan and, finally, the attempt to resolve these disorders through the organisation of a homicide payment, which, thanks to an unexpected juridical fiction, is collected not from the murderer but from a clan-brother of the incestuous prophet. These developments allow us to consider a number of more general questions: the notion of incest, of clan affiliation and personal identity in Wodani society; the compensation system allowing for the establishment of an equivalence between human lives and means of payment; the eschatological doctrine explaining the reproductive function of shell money; the theory of causality and juridical responsibility justifying a fictitious charge of murder; and finally, the future of the traditional currency in a society which is now compelled to reformulate its cosmological principle of compensation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Fieldwork among the Wodani began in 1995 thanks to the support of the Fyssen Foundation and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I would like to thank the Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia for having allowed me to do research in Irian Jaya, and in particular EKM. Masinambow and Roosmalawati Rusman. I am also grateful to the Irian Jaya Research Group at the University of Leiden, to Wim Stokof, Jacob Vredenbregt and Jelle Miedema. I thank Jean-Claude Galey, André Iteanu, Bernard Juillerat, Éric Schwimmer, Carlo Severi and Andrew Strathern for their comments.