Portraits TOC
MUNDUGUMOR:
SEX AND TEMPERAMENT
REVISITED
Nancy A. McDowell
I
n 1932 anthropologists Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune left the
United States and traveled to the island of New Guinea in the
remote southwest Pacific. Although Fortune’s goal was a general one, Mead’s explicit intention was to investigate a particular
problem: to what extent was human temperament based on biological sex? That is, are men temperamentally different from women
because of biology, or are the differences Mead thought she
observed in Western nations in the 1930s the product of culture
and society? Her intention was to explore a range of societies relatively unaffected by European colonization. At the time very little
was known about the many societies on the large island of New
Guinea (there are over one thousand separate language groups in
New Guinea and the surrounding islands of Melanesia1); coastal
groups were familiar to Westerners but inland and highland
groups were fairly unknown to outsiders. Mead hoped to use what
she considered a “natural laboratory” to study the relationship
between biological sex and human temperament. If she could find
one society in which temperament was not biologically determined, didn’t that mean that sex and temperament were not necessarily related throughout the species Homo sapiens?
The results of Mead’s study were published in a classic book,
still read and studied today, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive
Societies.2 The argument Mead made was no less astonishing when
it was first published in 1935 than it is today: Each individual is
born with a biologically given temperament that society can mold
to a desired shape through socialization. This temperament is not
indefinitely malleable; it can only be shaped and molded to a certain degree. This biologically-based temperament was not, according to Mead, associated with the biological differences between
male and female but was exclusively an individual constellation of
traits.
What evidence did she have for this assertion? She studied
individual variation in three societies in the Sepik River region of
New Guinea and looked at differences between the genders and
among individuals. She first spent time with the Mountain
Arapesh in the foothills of the Sepik region.3 Although the environment was harsh and making a living was difficult, the men and
women were both, according to Mead, gentle and nurturing just as
the focus of the culture as a whole was on growing things. Of
course there were deviants, individuals who were violent or
aggressive, but they were exceptions, not the norm. What was most
striking to Mead was that, although there was a clear division of
labor by sex, the Arapesh expected both men and women to exhibit
3
4
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
the same temperament and most did so. Deviations were individual matters and not related to biological sex.
Among the Mundugumor, the next group Mead studied, the
same situation existed: Both women and men were expected
(and to a great extent did) conform to the same ideal temperament. 4 But in the case of these river-dwelling villagers, that
norm was not gentle and unassertive, but rather (to Mead’s
Euro-American eye) violent and aggressive. Here, both men and
women were histrionic, volatile, and quick to assert themselves.
Again, there were deviants—individuals who were gentle and
unassuming—but these were idiosyncratic exceptions and not
patterned by sex or gender. Many have read Mead’s description
and decided that Arapesh temperament was essentially the
same as the Western stereotype of the “feminine” while that of
the Mundugumor was “masculine.” Indeed, Mead herself lends
credence to this interpretation in the way she contrasts the two
groups:
…whereas the Arapesh have standardized the personality of
both men and women in a mould that, out of our traditional
bias, we should describe as maternal, womanly, unmasculine,
the Mundugumor have gone to the opposite extreme and,
again ignoring sex as a basis for the establishment of personality differences, have standardized the behaviour of both
men and women as actively masculine, virile, and without
any of the softening and mellowing characteristics that we are
accustomed to believe are inalienably womanly….5
Despite the contrast between the groups, what impressed
Mead was that neither group differentiated temperament or personality along gender lines, and in this way both groups were
very much unlike what she perceived Americans to be in the
1930s.
When Mead arrived at her third study site, she was surprised
to discover a society similar to her own but in some senses, according to her, the reverse. Among the Tchambuli (now known as the
Chambri6), Mead saw active, no-nonsense, initiating women who
were concerned with the economy, and sensitive men who focused
on artistic and religious activities. There was a contrast between
women and men here, as in the United States, but the characteristics were almost reversed: Men were gentle, passive, and “femi-
MUNDUGUMOR
5
nine” while women were assertive, active, and “masculine.” As
elsewhere, there were exceptions, but these were complicated by
gender expectations. Among the Arapesh, aggressive men and
women were deviant, and among the Mundugumor passive and
nurturing women and men were deviant. For the Tchambuli
(Chambri), unassertive women and aggressive men were nonconforming to their gender character as well as outside the norm for
Tchambuli (Chambri) people. Whatever factors affected ethos and
temperament, it was clear to Mead that biological sex could not be
determinative.
There have been a variety of critiques of this work: Is this pattern “too perfect”? Did Mead see what she went (and wanted) to
see? Did she exaggerate some things in order to bolster the contrasts? Why did she portray the Mundugumor as such assertive
and violent people? What data did she have to substantiate such a
depiction? Would someone else have seen the same thing? If one
were to look at these data from the vantage point of the 1990s,
would the analysis change? Would men and women look any different? There is now a large and growing literature in anthropology that evaluates both Mead and the anthropology of her time,7 so
I shall not linger here with an extensive critique. It is important,
however, to note that Mead’s approach was colored by two related things: the nature of anthropology when she did her fieldwork
and wrote her analysis, and the kind of theory in terms of which
she framed her investigations. The nature of the theoretical paradigm an anthropologist has cannot help but affect the way in
which he or she perceives, records, and understands data.
Although we can look back and easily find errors and naiveté in
her analysis (e.g., likening the Arapesh to Western women, the
Mundugumor to Western men), we need to appreciate what she
wrote in the context of when she wrote it and the materials available to her.
It is also necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses
of how anthropologists go about gathering the data they collect. If
by science we mean an exploratory endeavor that produces replicable results in a systematic way, then there are people who would
argue that fieldwork anthropology cannot be scientific. Whether it
is or is not, of course, depends on how science is defined; what is
important is an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of
anthropological methodology. How might one best learn about
other cultures and societies? There are a variety of means (includ-
6
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
ing the study of, for example, the history and literature of the
place), but anthropologists rely on participant observation, that is,
actually living in the society while observing how it works and to
different extents participating in the activities of the people studied.8 The advantages of this method are numerous: One can obtain
an intimacy with the culture and its people not otherwise available;
one can learn about cultures for whom writing is a recent acquisition; one can understand that there is often a difference between
what people say they do and what they actually do; one can relate
as a human being to other human beings and thus enrich the database in ways that no survey would ever do, and so on. The disadvantages are numerous as well. Foremost among these is the fact
that it is an individual with her or his own personality and culture
that selects and filters all of the data before it ever enters a notebook. To what extent does the fieldworker’s own world view affect
what he or she sees? Would another fieldworker have described
the Mundugumor as aggressive or assertive? Does such a simple
word change significantly alter the reader’s understanding of what
this culture is like?
Beginning in 1972 I have done fieldwork off and on in the village (Bun) upriver from Mead’s “Mundugumor” (who now prefer to be known as the “Biwat” people after the river that runs
through their land). The two peoples are culturally and linguistically very similar but consider themselves to be different groups
and indeed are described as speaking two separate languages.9 I
was never a student of Mead’s and had no formal ties with her,
but she knew of my work on these neighboring people. When it
became apparent to her that she would not be able to realize her
ambition of writing up all of the materials she had gathered on
the Mundugumor before she died (apart from Sex and
Temperament, she wrote little else on the Mundugumor ), she
asked me if I would do so after her death. I spent several years
going over her notes and eventually published an ethnography
based on them and my own familiarity with the people.10 Here,
my intention is to examine the Mundugumor in some detail, to
look into the nature of their society, beliefs, and values. Doing so
should help in any evaluation of Mead’s anthropology, and it
should also shed some light on the relationship between sex and
temperament and gender as socially constructed in the human
species. It should also help us understand the values—and pitfalls—of fieldwork and participant observation as methodology.
MUNDUGUMOR
7
ENVIRONMENT AND SUBSISTENCE
Mead and Fortune chose to study the Mundugumor rather than
some other group because the community was easily accessible
by water and yet relatively unaffected by outside influences. The
area had been “pacified” according to local authorities; that is,
warfare and the raiding of enemies had pretty much ceased but it
was thought that little else had changed. Of course one might
question the assumption that a society that focused on warfare
and raiding could cease this behavior without significant changes
in other parts of the social system, but Mead thought the assumption a fair one, partly because the cessation of hostilities had been
so recent.
In general, the Sepik basin of Papua New Guinea is defined
by the Sepik River itself, a broad and meandering river that
slowly makes its way north to the Pacific Ocean while flowing
through lowland swamps and grasslands. It has several tributaries that begin at higher elevations and flow into the Sepik
itself at various points. The Yuat River is one of these tributaries;
it is fed by several highland rivers (including the Jimi) and is
noted for being turbulent and dangerous in its higher elevations.
Most of the entire Sepik River region is flat, swampy lowland.
However, at the upper reaches of the Yuat, the ground is higher
and drier than neighboring lands. Mead believed that this ecological situation had something to do with the strength and
power of the Mundugumor people. They lived on the only high
and dry ground in the area and because their land was ample
and they had access to a variety of ecological niches as well as
dry ground for gardens and hunting, they could dominate their
neighbors.
There is no way of knowing for how long they held this position; their traditions assert that after they moved into the area, the
course of the river changed and turned these land-loving people
into river-dwellers. We do know that when explorers first encountered them, probably in the later years of the last century or the
early part of this century, they were a warlike people who were difficult to pacify. It was not until colonial authorities jailed leaders
(rather than punishing them in other ways) that the warfare and
raiding ceased.
8
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
Compared to their neighbors, many of whom lived in the
swampy fens of the grassy lowlands, the Mundugumor were land
rich in two senses: They had a great deal of land and their land was
good land. They were able to exploit a variety of resources in their
environment and led relatively rich lives for that time and place.
They worked hard, to be sure, but they always managed to produce ample and diverse food sources for all of the people. Indeed,
Mead believed that the resources were so rich that women alone
were able to produce enough for the whole society, and this
allowed men the freedom to conduct intergroup raids and focus
more exclusively on political and ritual matters. Although these
people were not rich in a technological sense, rarely did anyone go
hungry.
The staple food, or main dietary item, was sago. This is basically a carbohydrate leached from the interior pith of the sago
palm. Men felled the large tree and cut open the trunk; women
beat the interior until it was in slivers and shreds. These they
washed and thereby leached out the sago paste. The paste was
usually reconstituted as pudding by adding boiling water; sometimes it was fried or used in other ways. Sago was eaten daily by
almost everyone.
Sago was usually supplemented by some protein source: fish
caught in the rivers or swamps, pig or smaller game hunted in the
forest, grubs gathered from downed trees, some leafy green vegetables grown in gardens or gathered in the forest. The basic diet
was supplemented substantially by items produced in slash-andburn gardens: yams, taro, sweet potatoes, greens, coconuts,
bananas, and a few other crops. An especially important crop,
although no one knows when it arrived in Papua New Guinea
and began to be cultivated there, was tobacco. The fertile, high,
dry ground along the river was perfect for growing tobacco, and
the Mundugumor made much of this. They were inveterate
smokers themselves, but more importantly traded this crop for a
variety of products (for example, clay pots and woven baskets)
from their neighbors. Betel nut was also an important trade item,
consumed locally and traded with neighbors for crafted items.
The Mundugumor participated in two general trading networks. The first was with bush or non-river villages in the area.
Especially important were the three villages located in the nearby
swamps, Yaul, Dimiri, and Maravat. These villagers produced
MUNDUGUMOR
9
pottery (something the Mundugumor could have produced but
did not) and were given garden products in exchange. With
other “inland” villages the Mundugumor traded for mosquito
baskets (large baskets in which people slept to escape the mosquitoes) and other crafted products. The second network linked
a series of villages along the waterways up into the mountains.
In general, mountain products and crafted items were traded for
sea and river products. Down from the mountains came stones
and bird plumes, which were traded for shells and other sea
products. The Mundugumor acted as middlemen in this system,
adding pottery obtained from nearby non-river villages as well
as tobacco and betel nut to the flow of goods. Their role as middlemen provided a politico-economic advantage in the region.
All trading, whether with bush villages or on the river system,
was conducted by way of a balanced reciprocity between individual (inherited) partners. As we will see below, the importance
of reciprocity loomed large in the pantheon of values. Every item
given required a return, as did every action taken for or against
another.
The sexual division of labor was clear. Men hunted while
women did most of the fishing; both sexes helped in the processing of sago (men cut the trees, women leached the starch). Men
felled the trees and did heavy clearing work in the gardens, but
women did most of the planting, weeding, and harvesting. The
only exception to this rule was a special kind of yam garden;
because of their association with certain rituals, these gardens
were the province of men only and women were not allowed to
help. Both sexes gathered products in the environment on occasion. Women did most domestic chores and child-care while men
constructed houses and canoes. Women made the essential fishing nets and woven bags used for carrying all sorts of items; men
devoted considerable time and energy to political activities and
warfare (both offense and defense). Mead did not record whether
or not the people conceived of the sexual division of labor as a
reciprocal exchange of male and female goods and services, but
such an interpretation does conform to the pattern of reciprocity
which underlay a good deal of social action here. Mead did make
it very clear in her notes that although men and women had the
same temperament or personality, that did not mean that they
did the same things.
10
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
DEMOGRAPHY
The people identified as the “Mundugumor” comprised six different villages: Biwat, Branda, Kinakatem, Akuran, Dowaning, and
Andafugan. The first four of these were located on the Yuat or
Biwat River; the latter two were inland from the river. Mead
argued that the inland villages had begun to separate from the
river villages; that is, they had begun to split off and identify themselves as a different people. She found both behavioral and linguistic evidence to support this assertion, so here we will consider
Mundugumor to refer only to the four river villages. Together, the
population of these four communities could not have totaled much
more than 750 people. The village of Kinakatem, the place where
Mead and Fortune actually lived and made their base of operations, contained only 183 people.
By naming the four localities Biwat, Branda, Akuran, and
Kinakatem, Mead did not mean to imply that they were separate
nucleated villages with definite boundaries. They were not. Rather,
each locality was a dispersed settlement: People lived with family
in hamlets scattered throughout the bush area. They did so for two
reasons. One was that it was easier to keep a particular hamlet’s
location secret from enemies; in fact, some paths were secret. The
second was that with fewer people near each other, there was less
likelihood for interpersonal strife; that is, fewer people meant
fewer arguments, and with individuals scattered throughout the
bush, conflict was less of a problem.
Sometimes one of these hamlets contained only one household,
but others consisted of more than one. A household was a recognized residential and social unit headed by an adult male. This
head of household might have more than one wife; each wife ideally had a separate dwelling for herself and her children. Other relatives and supporters might also be present, such as the head’s lazy
brother, an up-and-coming nephew, or a widowed mother. The
size of the household varied, usually depending on the number of
wives (and thereby children) present. Every man strove to achieve
the ideal: to head a household composed of many wives, many
children, and many other dependents. However, few men managed completely to achieve this goal. Of the twenty households in
Kinakatem in 1932 only two did (one had twenty-seven people in
MUNDUGUMOR
11
it, the other, thirty). Most households (fifteen) had between five
and twelve members. Two households had only three members,
and one man lived alone.
POLITICS, WORLD VIEW,
AND RELIGION
Already, just from examining this distribution of people in space, it
is possible to make some interesting and informed guesses about
additional aspects of Mundugumor social life. Why did only two
men achieve the ideal of the society? Of course, if there exists an
approximately equal sex ratio (that is, the same number of males
and females in the society), then every adult man cannot possibly
have two or more wives unless some adult men go without any
wives or unless women from other places marry in while no
women marry out. Although both of these things occurred in
Kinakatem, the fact that two men were able to achieve this ideal
while others remained far behind gives us some clues about where
to look for political power. If one had to guess who the village leaders were, knowing only what has been presented thus far, most
people would correctly guess the leaders were the heads of the two
enormous households. Nor would it be difficult to envision the two
as rivals for the allegiance of others in the village. But how did they
get to where they were? What did they do to achieve the ideal
when so many others were unable to do so? In other words, how
did a Mundugumor man acquire wives and power?
Political organization in stateless societies can be difficult to
understand. Can one even talk about politics when there is no
state? No formal government? No central authority? Where does
the order come from? Among the Mundugumor, there were no
established mechanisms that promoted “law and order;" there
were no courts, councils of elders, or chiefs. Status and political
power were achieved entirely by individual activity. A man
achieved some measure of power and renown basically by his own
actions and force of character.11 The route to power lay through
exchange and transaction. As in many places in the world, the
powerful control resources. But here, possessing wealth and mater-
12
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
ial goods was not the key to power; merely having a lot of wealth
did not ensure political clout. It was by strategically investing in
others and thereby indebting them to him that a man gathered
fame and power, and thus became what, in Melanesia, is called a
“big man.”12 Big men were rarely rich men, at least in material
terms. If they acquired many pigs, they gave away many pigs; by
giving a relative a pig in order for that relative to pay off a debt, the
big man indebted the recipient to him and thus made him his political subordinate. Shrewd investing in others was necessary to
achieve power. It is important to note here that these were individual achievements; groups such as clans or a generation of siblings
did not engage in concerted action. In fact, adult men had few natural allies, even among their close kin.
The more wives a man had, the more pigs he had and the more
tobacco he could raise; these activities gave him an important place
in external as well as internal trading transactions. If he had many
wives, he also had many in-laws (see below for details on kinship);
these also helped him achieve renown. The two men who headed
the largest households in Kinakatem were such individuals; they
had married many women, had many people dependent on them,
and were respected and feared within and without the village.
Prowess in warfare was an added way in which a man could
achieve fame and renown because it was a way in which he attracted adherents and supporters; people who feared enemy raids took
shelter with strong, violent men and thereby became indebted to
them.
The picture of the leader, then, is of a man of forceful personality, given to violence and self-assertion, one who takes wives when
he can and defends himself and his household members against all
others. He would take initiative in organizing and leading raids on
other villages and would never let someone take advantage of him.
He was a strong, forceful individual. It is important to note that he
was not the richest man, although he had access to considerable
resources and factors of production; his wealth and economic
access benefited him not because he could buy things or because he
could amass wealth, but because he could indebt others to him by
giving goods away. This pattern is a common one throughout the
area of Melanesia, where political leaders are rarely the richest, for
they do not hold on to wealth for long periods of time but distribute it to others.
Relationships with other villages varied. Although there was
tension even between and among Mundugumor villages, there
MUNDUGUMOR
13
was usually a limit to the violence that took place. Relations with
non-Mundugumor villages were different. Although some villages
could be called enemies while others were trade partners, there
was no firm line between these two categories; a village could be a
trade partner one moment but become an enemy the next. Trading
expeditions were often carried out in an atmosphere of mutual hostility, fear, and mistrust. On occasion, in order to assure safe
exchanges with potentially hostile villages, child hostages could be
provided; if the enemy villagers harmed anyone from the
Mundugumor village, the hostage was killed (and vice versa).
Much activity and energy centered around offense and
defense; indeed, preparations for warfare, the execution of warfare,
and defense in warfare were activities that circumscribed much of
Mundugumor society. Because most warfare was conducted in
stealth, by surprise raids rather than openly confrontational battles,
hamlets were scattered and hidden; this made it more difficult for
enemies to find and surprise inhabitants. Raids were carried out by
young and adult men; target villages or hamlets were surrounded,
and the ideal was to kill as many people (including children) as
possible. Sometimes, however, women were taken and added as
wives for the most influential men. Cannibalism was practiced;
enemy skulls were kept as war trophies. Mead’s 1932 impression
was that the Mundugumor were dominant in the region and that
their reputation for fierceness extended far.
Exchange and the principal of reciprocity were themes that
underlay more than just Mundugumor economics and politics; the
world operated according to these principles. World view is a general term that refers to a people’s vision of how reality operates; for
the Mundugumor, reality assumed reciprocity. Very much as
Westerners assume that gravity will work when they get out of bed
in the morning, the Mundugumor assumed that the world worked
according to the principle of reciprocity. It was for this reason that
exchange and transaction were central in the economic and political systems, and these were dominant in their religion as well. The
universe and all beings and forces within it adhered to the principle. In some ways, then, the universe was a rather mechanistic one;
actions had opposite reactions that unequivocally occurred (“If
this, then that”). If one broke a taboo imposed by a water spirit,
then one became ill; if one then made the proper prestation to that
spirit, one would recover. The world was populated with spirits of
various sorts, but there were always rules by which one could con-
14
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
trol or at least counteract their effects. Most control came through
exchange and the giving of gifts. If the spirit, for example, accepted
a particular offering, then the spirit had no choice but to make the
donor well—that’s the way the world worked. This kind of view of
the world and how it works is a common one throughout the geographical region of Melanesia.
The Mundugumor world was populated with a variety of spirits. People would not have described them as supernatural because
these beings were, to the Mundugumor, a part of the natural
world. Most frequently encountered were water and bush spirits.
These beings lived on known, defined territories and could manifest their existence to people, even interact with human beings by
assuming some material form. For example, water spirits frequently appeared as crocodiles; bush spirits could appear as human
beings and interact with real people (a possible cause of death was
sexual intercourse with such a spirit). People avoided breaking
taboos relative to these spirits and sometimes asked their assistance
in some human endeavor (such as warfare or pig hunting). These
spirits were often the cause of illness but rarely the cause of death.
Also sometimes in the world and encountered were the spirits
of dead human beings, ghosts. Elaborate funeral rituals were conducted to ensure that these ghosts were properly dealt with and
therefore unlikely to cause harm to human beings. People believed
that if they performed the rituals properly, the ghosts had no
choice but to leave living kin in peace. People did not worship
ghosts and rarely appealed to them.
The very old could die natural deaths, and obvious accidents
and deaths in warfare were not necessarily sorcery-related. But
most other deaths were attributed to the work of sorcery. There
were several kinds of sorcery present, but most relied on two
important elements: knowing the proper technique (spell, ritual)
and possessing some part of the victim (nail clippings, hair, a piece
of half-eaten food). Mundugumor hired the services of sorcerers
from other places who knew the techniques but had to supply the
victim’s “dirt.” People were therefore careful about what they left
behind and who had access to their dirt. Any enemy or person
with resentment could get hold of a piece of dirt and hire the services of a sorcerer. People were thus naturally suspicious of those
they had offended; it was not unknown for wives to procure the
services of a sorcerer to murder their husbands (semen was easily
acquired by a seemingly respectful wife). Any person could then
MUNDUGUMOR
15
hire the sorcerer and did not have to know the technique personally. The motivation for hiring a sorcerer to harm someone varied,
but it usually involved a slight, an insult, or anger over an
exchange or transaction.
Mead recorded much data on initiation rituals in Kinakatem;
in fact, she commissioned such a ritual to be performed so that
she could observe and record it (this was the last such ritual performed by the Mundugumor). Many societies have ritual performances connected with social groups, but that did not seem to be
the case here. Mead was somewhat puzzled because there
seemed to be no systematic set of beliefs that united a set of rituals. Individuals possessed rights to perform certain rituals related
to sacred objects (such as flutes); the first time a young man saw
such an object, he was required to undergo the initiation ritual
that permitted its use. Because there were so many different
objects and rituals, there was no point at which a young boy
became a man because he had been initiated. Boys probably did
perceive one or two of the largest and most important ritual initiations as such a rite of passage (Mead’s detailed recording of the
crocodile initiation indicates, for example, its elaborateness and
importance). One puzzling item exists in Mead’s notes. She
observed young women and girls being initiated along with boys
in the ceremony she commissioned. She believed that, consonant
with temperamental similarity, some girls were initiated along
with boys as a matter of course here. This is highly unusual, especially in Melanesia, where a very pronounced dichotomy between
female and male pervades most societies. It is possible that these
girls were admitted to the initiation as a result of the dislocations
caused by colonialism. In any case, girls’ participation in initiations has not been recorded elsewhere in the area.
MARRIAGE AND KINSHIP
It is clear that there was an intimate connection between political
organization and the institution of marriage and the existence of an
ideal of polygyny. Men acquired power by acquiring wives, and
men with power acquired more wives. How did men acquire
wives to begin with? How did people acquire mates? In theory,
16
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
there were four ways.
If a male relative, such as a brother or father’s brother, died, a
man could “inherit” the deceased’s wife. This is called marrying by
the levirate. Although it appears to be a form of widow inheritance,
it is best interpreted as a way of retaining the rights transferred by
marriage; often it provided the only access an older woman could
have to male products in the sexual division of labor.
A man could give his in-laws a significant amount of valuables
and thus obtain a wife. Although this looks like “buying” a
woman, usually it occurred in cases in which the young people had
a mutual desire to marry. Few women married men not of their
own choosing.
In raids and warfare, men simply stole enemy women and
brought them home to be additional wives. Older, more powerful
men were more likely than younger men to use all three of these
means of marrying.
The fourth way of acquiring a wife was the preferred way.
Despite the fact that many marriages took place according to the
above three means, the ideal was a method known as brother-sister
exchange. Here, it was as if two men negotiated together and
swapped sisters. Of course, the reality was more complex. Adult
men would try to arrange marriages for their children (with wives’
and mothers’ advice). Sons were often glad to have marriages
arranged for them; they rightly feared that their fathers might use
their sisters to acquire more wives for the fathers rather than the
sons. Daughters were more difficult to please because they realized
that they had some say about whom they married; they were
favorites of their fathers (see below) and could cause incalculable
trouble by refusing to cooperate in exchanges, thus giving them
considerable power.
Consider the sorry situation of a man without a sister; his was
an unfortunate position indeed. No men would want their sisters
to develop an interest in him, for he had no way of reciprocating.
Sometimes such a man was able to make a payment in lieu of a sister (the second method described above), especially to men who
already had enough wives of their own. Or perhaps he could convince relatives in his clan to use a distant “clan sister” in place of a
biological sister. If he were strong and fierce enough, he could
entice a young woman to join him and refuse her relatives any
compensation; however, such behavior could only be attempted by
a fierce, strong man.
An additional regulation applied to marriages of firstborns.
MUNDUGUMOR
17
Not only were the marriages executed by sibling exchange, but
they were also ideally between particular kinds of relatives. In a
small community basically based on kinship, any person was related to just about every other person in one way or another. In terms
of people in one’s own generation, there were strangers, cousins,
and siblings. One might, of course, marry a stranger; and one could
not, also of course, marry a sibling (a violation of the incest taboo).
Because these were categories of persons and not actual biologically direct links, there was some play in the system. But even so,
finding a particular kind of cousin who fit all the other criteria was
very difficult.
The ideal, then, was that all marriages took place as a part of
an exchange. As you might imagine, arranging such exchanges was
very difficult. Men had to have “marked sisters” of the right age;
the man to whom the marked sister was to go wanted a wife of the
appropriate age. The women involved had to agree to the transactions, or at least be talked into giving them a try. Brothers had to
agree which of their sisters were to be used for each’s marriage.
Fathers had to be prevented or discouraged from using their
daughters to acquire additional wives for themselves. It is easy to
see why marriages were difficult to arrange and often caused conflicts. The tensions could be between the two sets of in-laws; for
example, a man might not want the sister offered in exchange for
the sister he had provided but another one. Or perhaps the tensions were between male relatives, brothers or sons and fathers; the
ideal was that brothers used their marked sisters but the reality
was that men used any female relatives they were strong enough to
take. One of the main reasons brothers split apart and did not constitute one large household together was that tensions almost
inevitably existed because of this system. This marriage system
was one of the main causes of conflict and dissension both within
and between villages. If a man from Kinakatem married a woman
from Branda but his sister did not marry the appropriate man from
Branda, bad feelings would result in both the families and villages.
Given the typical Mundugumor temperament, it is no surprise
that marriages tended to be stormy affairs. Spouses frequently
fought; women went home to their natal families, physical violence
between spouses was common, and divorce—especially in the first
year or so of marriage—was also common. Once a couple settled
down and had one or two children, however, the marriage calmed
down and was more likely to last. If a man acquired additional
wives, he did so only after subduing the protests of his current wife
18
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
or wives. Jealousy and physical attack were common between cowives, each of whom protected what she perceived to be her rights
and the rights of her children. A smart polygynist, it was agreed,
built a separate domicile for each wife and her children. Very powerful men, however, did occasionally put more than one wife in a
single structure; lazy men who attempted to do the same were
rarely successful. Sheltered in these houses of individual wives
were other relatives, such as children of deceased parents and
unmarried adult siblings of the couple. Each adult woman would
cook at her own hearth for her husband and the others of her
domicile. Children who were unhappy with the way they were
treated in one place could attempt to attach themselves to another.
The two adult couples who participated in the single marriage
exchange were ideally closely cooperating in all endeavors.
However, because so many marriages were executed in hostile
ways, rarely was this ideal achieved. Far more frequently the two
men/husbands continued to exhibit animosity toward one another. For example, the two men who fully achieved the ideal household in Kinakatem—those with twenty-seven and thirty members—were the two most powerful in the village. Each had numerous wives, children, and adherents. They were also brothers-inlaw, having exchanged sisters. Although the ideology dictated that
they cooperate with one another, that rarely happened. In fact, one
of the wives/sisters was accused of stealing some of her husband’s
dirt so that her brother could cast a spell upon him.
It was into this milieu that children were born. Men favored
daughters while women favored sons. Men wanted daughters,
knowing that they could use them to acquire additional wives;
women valued sons for the power and protection they would provide for them when they were older. Children, especially girls, did
spend considerable time with the same-sex parent learning sexappropriate tasks. Boys wandered much farther afield than did
girls, but even they observed the tasks they would one day have to
perform.
Mead’s special theoretical interest was in the relationship
between culture and personality; that is, why and how did the people in one society seem to exhibit a general type of personality so
different from the people in another? On her trip to the Sepik, she
encountered the quiet and nurturing Arapesh and the violent and
assertive Mundugumor. Why were these peoples so different?
Although it is impossible to ascertain how these systems got start-
MUNDUGUMOR
19
ed, she believed that they were essentially perpetuated through
socialization, that is, through child-rearing techniques. If the
Mundugumor were fierce, initiating, assertive, individualistic people, then one should look to the way children were raised to find
out why.
Most of what Mead observed of child-rearing in her time in
Kinakatem has already appeared in print and I can only summarize here.13 Children were neither prized possessions nor precious
gifts; in fact, most people didn’t especially like children, and young
couples were not pleased when the new wife discovered her pregnancy. Young people did not like to observe the taboos incumbent
upon them in order to have a child. Infanticide was not infrequently practiced by throwing the newborn into the river. Couples did
not agree on the desired sexes of their children, either; men wanted
daughters while women wanted sons. Because of the marriage system, it was important to have at least as many daughters as sons.
Mead contrasted what she perceived to be the caring, nurturing
attitude of Arapesh parents with Mundugumor parents, who
seemed to be relatively uninterested in the welfare and comfort of
their children. Almost as a paradigm for the differences, she
described the way in which Mundugumor children were placed in
hard, rough baskets to sleep; if they stirred, a passer-by would
scratch on the basket in an effort to quiet the baby. Mead thought
this harsh and nonchalant behavior paradigmatic and wrote about
how such child-rearing techniques affected the children. They grew
up to be individualistic and assertive, and did not expect others to
come to their aid. Providing any kind of comfort was simply not
expected or considered. What is of special relevance here is that
although they were treated somewhat differently, both boy and
girl children were never coddled or cuddled and grew up expecting to stand up for themselves against others.
Nuclear and polygynous families did not exist in a vacuum; in
most small-scale stateless societies, kinship relations provide the
context in which most social action occurs. Since almost everyone
in one’s own village was one kind of relative or another, the rules
of behavior for kin essentially covered all behavior and possible
relationships. However, it is important to understand here that kinship was reckoned in a classificatory way; that is, people were classified into categories based on biological and marital ties. These
categories included a variety of people whom Westerners would
separate, and they separated people Westerners would put togeth-
20
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
er. All societies recognize kin, but the way in which they divide up
that mental universe varies; where one people draws a line, another group perhaps does not. For example, a Mundugumor person
called mother’s sister “mother” and father’s brother “father” along
with the actual biological parent. Mother’s brother was a called by
a special term, as was father’s sister. Some cousins were categorized with people Westerners call siblings. It was these kinship categories that structured the way in which people behaved toward
one another because every kin relation had a prescribed set of
appropriate behaviors.
In many societies such as the Mundugumor, social groups are
based on kinship as well. People obtain group membership from
one or the other parent; if from the mother, then descent is called
matrilineal (membership from the mother), and if from the father,
patrilineal (membership from the father). The importance of the
groups formed in this way varies greatly from one society to the
next. The Mundugumor did recognize patrilineal descent groups
(or “clans”) but these groups were relatively unimportant. One did
get one’s primary access to land through the group, but land was
not in short supply and one could usually get land from another
source if necessary or more convenient. Clan memberships did,
however, add an additional complication to marriage rules: One
was not allowed to marry a member of one’s own clan or one’s
mother’s clan (this rule made certain that one’s father and mother
were in different clans). One did get a sense of identity from one’s
clan, and it was believed that each clan came from a different origin. Each clan had a different signal call on the slitgong drum, and
it was possible to identify individuals by their clan affiliations; first,
one’s own clan signal would be struck, then one’s mother’s, then
further relatives until there could be no doubt as to which individual was being summoned.
Anthropologists are fond of saying that kinship often provides
the glue that holds societies together in the absence of a state or
centralized political authority. Can this be true here? If clans are so
unimportant, and brother does not ally often with brother, what
provides the glue? What prevents these atomized households from
hiving off from one another? The answer is still kinship—not necessarily kinship groups but exchanges and transactions that tie kin
together. People have obligations to their relatives in all societies,
and it is these obligations that tie individuals into networks and
thus provide some structure for the society as a whole. One must
look at the nature of exchanges that occur between and among kin
to get a sense of how Mundugumor society was structured, espe-
MUNDUGUMOR
21
cially over time.
If one brother-sister pair exchanged and married another
brother-sister pair, they had obligations to one another for life and
their obligations continued in the next generation. Let us say, for
example, that a man Albert marries a woman Beatrice while his sister Alicia marries Bert (Beatrice’s brother). Albert has obligations to
Beatrice, Alicia, and Bert; but when his sister Alicia has a child
(with Bert), he has obligations to his sister’s children as well. For
example, when Alicia’s son (Bert’s son) participates in any initiation ceremony, it is Albert who acts as his sponsor. Similarly, when
Beatrice’s son (Albert’s son) is ready to be initiated into any of the
various cults, Bert must act as sponsor. The children of these two
marriages have obligations to one another, to the senior generation,
and to future generations. The details need not detain us here, but
most of the obligations are of a ritual nature and involve exchanges
between the participants that, if slighted, damaged a person’s
name and the esteem in which he/she was held. Such damage
ruined a person’s chances for respect and any kind of political
power and put her/him in danger of supernatural punishment.
The ideal was that the descendants of the first intermarrying pair
would themselves marry in the fifth generation. These exchanges
and transactions continue down for five generations, thereby uniting individuals into an interconnected network of obligation and
reciprocity. It was this overlapping network of exchange obligations among individuals over time that knitted Mundugumor society together, not the existence of intermarrying kin groups, as is so
often true elsewhere.
ETHOS, GENDER,
AND ANTHROPOLOGY:
SOME OBSERVATIONS
Mead’s description of the Mundugumor is striking in two ways.
First is her general depiction of ethos or the emotional tone, tenor,
quality of the society. This she found to be violent, aggressive,
volatile; individualism was extreme. (It is important to add here,
however, that Mead also noted how quickly these people were to
22
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
laugh, how easily they accepted adversity, and so on; not all of her
description is couched in what are negative terms to Westerners).
These folks were, simply, tough. The second striking thing about
this description is that female and male temperaments were not
different; in their way, women were just as tough and aggressive as
the men. Although women and men did different things, they performed their roles with similar attitudes.
Mead’s description has been questioned by anthropologists
who suspect that she exaggerated the differences between the
Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli in order to make a point.
Such issues go to the epistemological heart of anthropology: If we
rely on the observations of a single person or even a few people,
how can we ever know how they perceive? How do personality
and culture act as screens for perception? There are two equally
unacceptable extreme approaches to this issue: (1) If Mead is open
to question, so then is every anthropologist; (2) we only have the
data we have and shouldn’t question it at all. Obviously both of
these extremes are inadequate; what we need are ways to judge the
reliability.14
Let us look at Mead’s Mundugumor as a case in point. How
can we evaluate this work fairly and not either dismiss it out of
hand or accept it uncritically? One criterion is to look for internal
consistency in Mead’s notes and presentations, and when we do so,
we find general consistency.15 Although Fortune published little16
and his notes are not particularly useful, he does not specifically
contradict Mead’s depiction of the Mundugumor.
The closest we can come to any kind of independent verification of Mead’s description is my own work with the neighboring
upriver people. Although they spoke a different (yet related) language, they appeared to be in many ways quite similar. Several
people from the Mundugumor river villages married into Bun, the
village I studied, and I knew them well. I visited Biwat and
Kinakatem several times during my own fieldwork, and I spent
two weeks there when I was preparing Mead’s notes for publication. Although this is a far cry from any kind of reliable fieldwork
experience, what I do know supports Mead’s depiction of
Mundugumor ethos and temperament. The individuals I knew
took pride in their reputation for fierceness and were quick to take
offense (as well as to laugh). Unlike many if not most other places
in Melanesia, women took part in the village meeting I witnessed,
and young men and women played together on co-ed basketball
MUNDUGUMOR
23
teams in 1981. I certainly found nothing to doubt Mead’s portrayal
of general ethos, and I also saw little difference between female and
male temperament.
In one sense, there can be no resolution to the question, was
Mead right? What we now await are Mundugumor voices themselves, commenting on the work of Mead. That their voices will be
harsh is not in doubt; Mead did not hide her dislike of their culture
(but she was quick to voice her respect and liking for many individuals). Perhaps the only resolution to the question anthropologists often ask—how can we know if we know?—will come only
when we are able to combine two kinds of pictures, one from an
“outsider” point of view with one from an “insider” point of view.
When we combine Mead’s picture with what the Mundugumor
themselves have to say, we may come close. And it is also true that
we will have the best perspective on our own society when we are
able to combine an outsider’s view—perhaps even a Mundugumor
anthropologist’s view—with our own folk vision. Can you imagine, for example, how a Mundugumor woman anthropologist
would describe gender ideology in the United States in the 1990s?
FINAL NOTE:
MUNDUGUMOR TODAY
A great deal has changed in Kinakatem in 1932, but much has
remained the same. Photographs I took in 1981 are sometimes difficult to differentiate from those Mead took almost fifty years ago
because the village looks very much the same; houses are still built
out of bush materials and the canoes are dugouts. But if one looks
closely, one can see dramatic evidence of change. In the village of
Biwat stands a large Catholic church, staffed by a resident priest
and well attended every Sunday. Many of the dugout canoes have
powerful outboard motors attached to them. People are quick to
show photograph albums of their children, most of whom have
gone to the local school and some of whom have gone to colleges
and universities outside the area. In some ways, life in the village
continues as it did before: Sago remains the staple crop despite the
purchase of rice in the local stores. Tobacco and betel nut are still
24
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
significant items of trade, but they are taken to market now in
locally owned power canoes and trucks, sometimes even in chartered airplanes. The descendants of the women and men Mead
knew in 1932 live in a larger world and look forward to continuing
change in the next millennium with the assurance that they have
kept alive many of their traditions but have responded with wisdom to the imposed changes of colonialism.
NOTES
1. Ann Chowning, An Introduction to the Peoples and Cultures of
Melanesia, 2nd ed. (London: Cummings Publishing Company,
1977), p. 11.
2. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
(New York: William Morrow, 1963). This book was first published
in 1935.
3. Mead published a variety of works on the Arapesh people, including the following: The Mountain Arapesh, vol. 5: The Record of
Unabeliin with Rorschach Analyses (1949; reprint Garden City, NJ:
The Natural History Press, 1968); The Mountain Arapesh, vol. 2: Arts
and Supernaturalism (1938, 1940; reprint Garden City, NJ: The
Natural History Press, 1970); The Mountain Arapesh, vol. 3: Stream of
Events in Alitoa (1947; reprint Garden City, NJ: The Natural
History Press, 1971).
4. In addition to Sex and Temperament, material on the Mundugumor
appears in the following works by Mead: “Tambarans and
Tumbuans in New Guinea,” Natural History 34 (1934): 234–246;
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (New
York: William Morrow, 1949); Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years
(New York: William Morrow, 1972); Letters from the Field,
1925–1975 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).
5. Sex and Temperament, p. 165.
6. Mead did not publish much on the Tchambuli beyond what
appeared in Sex and Temperament. For further study of this people,
now called the Chambri, see the works of two later anthropologists, Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington. See especially
Gewertz, “An Historical Reconsideration of Female Dominance
among the Chambri of Papua New Guinea,” American Ethnologist
MUNDUGUMOR
25
8 (1981): 94–106; Gewertz, Sepik River Societies: A Historical
Ethnography of the Chambri and Their Neighbors (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1983); Gewertz, “The Tchambuli View of
Persons: A Critique of Individualism in the Works of Mead and
Chodorow,” American Anthropologist 86 (1986): 615–629; Frederick
Errington and Deborah Gewertz, Cultural Alternatives and a
Feminist Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987); Gewertz and Errington, Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts:
Representing the Chambri in a World System (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
7. For a detailed evaluation of Mead’s Mundugumor work (as well
as references to other anthropologists’ comments on her work),
see Nancy McDowell, The Mundugumor: From the Field Notes of
Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1991).
8. Participant observation is of course only one method anthropologists use. Other methods include historical research, direct observation, quantification and measurement, surveys, in-depth interviews, video analysis—a whole range of possible techniques are
available to contemporary anthropologists.
9. Donald Laycock, Sepik Languages: Checklist and Preliminary
Classification (Canberra: Linguistic Circle of Canberra, Pacific
Linguistics series B, no. 25, 1975).
10. See McDowell, The Mundugumor: From the Fieldnotes of Margaret
Mead and Reo Fortune. All of the material contained in this chapter comes from three sources: this book, Mead’s Sex and
Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, and Mead’s original
fieldnotes.
11. There are many issues concerned with defining power and who
has power. Here I certainly do not mean to imply that only men
had power; Mundugumor women had considerable amounts of
power as well. However, positions of public power were held predominantly by men in this society.
12. “Big man” is an expression used to described a variety of positions
of achieved status in the geographical region of Melanesia.
13. See Mead, Sex and Temperament as well as McDowell, The
Mundugumor.
14. There are many discussions of ethnographic reliability. See
Annette Weiner, “Ethnographic Determinism: Samoa and the
Margaret Mead Controversy,” American Anthropologist 85 (1985):
909–919.
26
PORTRAITS OF CULTURE
15. See McDowell, The Mundugumor for a more detailed discussion as
well as a reconstruction of Mundugumor kinship that does not
agree with Mead’s interpretation.
16. See, for example, Reo Fortune, “Law and Force in Papuan
Societies,” American Anthropologist 49 (1947): 244–259.
SUGGESTED READING
Errington, Frederick, and Deborah Gewertz. Cultural Alternatives and a
Feminist Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1987. A modern analysis of gender among the peoples Mead studied as the Tchambuli (now known as the Chambri).
Mead, Margaret. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New
York: William Morrow, 1935. Margaret Mead’s original publication describing the Tchambuli (Chambri) and Arapesh as well as
the Mundugumor.
____. Blackberry Winter. New York: William Morrow, 1972. Mead’s
autobiography, covering the years of early research in Papua New
Guinea.
____. Letters from the Field, 1925–1975. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Mead’s letters covering fifty years of fieldwork and a variety of
field locations.
Weiner, Annette. Women of Value, Men of Renown. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1976. A “restudy” of the famous Trobriand Islands,
using data from Malinwoski as well as Weiner’s own contemporary field results.
Portraits TOC