Women in Kararau

he book oers a glimpse back in time to a Middle Sepik society, the Iatmul, first 16 Göttingen Series in Tinvestigated by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson in the late 1920s while the Social and Cultural Anthropology feminist anthropologist Margaret Mead worked on sex roles among the neighbouring Tchambuli (Chambri) people. The author lived in the Iatmul village of Kararau in 1972/3 where she studied women’s lives, works, and knowledge in detail. She revisited the Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin Sepik in 2015 and 2017. The book, the translation of a 1977 publication in German, is complemented by two chapters dealing with the life of the Iatmul in the 2010s. It presents rich quantitative and qualitative data on subsistence economy, marriage, and women’s knowledge concerning myths and rituals. Besides, life histories and Women in Kararau in-depth interviews convey deep insights into women’s experiences and feelings, Gendered Lives, Works, and Knowledge especially regarding their varied relationships with men in the early 1970s. Since then, Iatmul culture has changed in many respects, especially as far as the economy, in a Middle Sepik Village, Papua New Guinea religion, knowledge, and the relationship between men and women are concerned. In her aerword, the anthropologist Christiane Falck highlights some of the major topics raised in the book from a 2018 perspective, based on her own fieldwork which she commenced in 2012. Thus, the book provides the reader with detailed information about gendered lives in this riverine village of the 1970s and an understanding of the cultural processes and dynamics that have taken place since. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin has been Professor of Anthropology at the Georg- August-University Göttingen since 1992 Women in Kararau (emerita since 2016). She has carried out fieldwork among the Iatmul and Abelam in Papua New Guinea (between 1972 and 1985, revisits in 2015 and 2017). Among the Iatmul, she studied women’s lives, works, and knowledge. Among the Abelam she explored the elaborately constructed, towering ceremonial houses, which constituted the focal point of social, political, and ritual life. Later, her interests shied to Bali and Sumatra, Indonesia (since 1988), and to Cambodia (since 2008). Many of her recent Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin Hauser-Schäublin Brigitta publications focus on the ritual and political organization of space, on the one hand, and on material culture, cultural heritage, and cultural politics, on the other. ISBN: 978-3-86395-422-2 Göttingen University Press Göttingen University Press ISSN: 2199-5346 Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin Women in Kararau This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Published in 2019 by Göttingen University Press as volume 16 in “Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology” This series is a continuation of “Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie”. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin Women in Kararau Gendered Lives, Works, and Knowledge in a Middle Sepik Village, Papua New Guinea Volume 16 Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology Göttingen University Press 2019 Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über <http://dnb.dnb.de> abrufbar. “Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology” Editors Prof. Dr. Elfriede Hermann Prof. Dr. Andrea Lauser Prof. Dr. Roman Loimeier Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Schareika Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Theaterplatz 15 D-37073 Göttingen This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law. It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and the Göttingen University Catalogue (GUK) (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de). The license terms of the online version apply. Setting and layout: Sascha Bühler Cover picture: Jörg Hauser: Marriage ceremony in Kamenimbit in 1972. The bride steps over the relatives of her husband-to-be; she is wearing an outfit that combines modern and traditional elements, such as a white dress and sunglasses while holding a bunch of cigarettes in her hand. She is carrying a traditional grass skirt over her shoulder. Her head is decorated with the fur of a possum and a bird of paradise skin. Photos: All black-and-white photographs by Jörg Hauser; all colour photographs by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin (unless noted otherwise). English translation: Nigel Stephenson, Basel © 2019 Universitätsverlag Göttingen http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de ISBN: 978-3-86395-422-2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1206 eISSN: 2512-6881 In memory of my late parents and to Jörg, in gratitude and love Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................11 1 Introduction: After Almost 50 Years ..........................15 1.1 e Middle Sepik and previous anthropological studies .................15 1.2 A documentation of the past, and new studies ........................20 1.3 A comparative glimpse back ....................................22 Religious practices and new ideas ...................................22 Environmental changes and the exploitation of natural resources ................24 From subsistence to market economy ................................30 Conclusion .................................................36 Part One: Women and Subsistence Economy ............................39 2 e Village ...............................................41 3 Sources of Subsistence ......................................45 3.1 Fishing ...................................................45 Fishing techniques: rod, spear, and trap ................................47 e shing grounds ............................................48 Catching and spearing turtles ......................................49 3.2 Fish survey ................................................50 Size of the catch ..............................................54 Own consumption of sh ........................................55 Qualitative analysis ............................................56 Selling sh in Wewak ...........................................64 3.3 Overview of the most important trade relations with other villages ...........................................66 3.4 Sago and the sago market with Gaikorobi ............................67 Organizing the sago supply .......................................72 Quantitative aspects ............................................77 Qualitative aspects .............................................79 3.5 Signicance of the market with Gaikorobi for Kararau’s subsistence ........82 Breach of the market peace .......................................83 e sago market in mythological perspective ............................85 Comparison of historical conict between Kararau and Gaikorobi and the conict recounted in the myth ................................88 3.6 Kararau’s further trade relations ..................................99 e Aibom pottery market .......................................99 Kapaimari, an example of a modern market ............................100 Tourist art .................................................101 3.7 Cultivation ...............................................102 Crops, gardens and ownership ....................................102 Tobacco, cultivation and harvest ...................................104 Coconut groves .............................................107 3.8 Hunting and animal husbandry .................................107 Part Two: Women in Love and Marriage ..............................111 4 Getting Married ..........................................113 4.1 Run-up to marriage .........................................113 Social insecurity of women who are not ocially married yet .................118 4.2 Ideal marriage relationships ....................................118 4.3 Marriage rules and actual marital relations in comparison ..............120 4.4 Bridewealth ..............................................125 Marriage without bridewealth. .130 Transferring the bridewealth. .131 Composition of the bridewealth ...................................139 An interpretation of the bridewealth ceremony ..........................141 Behaviour patterns of men and women ...............................142 4.5 e relationship between wife givers and wife takers ..................144 4.6 Marriage as described in a myth ................................147 4.7 Duties and rules of conduct after marriage .........................152 Changing locality when sick .....................................153 4.8 e relationship between brother and sister and between husband and wife . .155 4.9 Spatial division of the house ...................................157 Koliuan’s dwelling house ........................................158 Gimbun’s dwelling house .......................................160 Family dwelling house of Kamangali, Wanyo, and Tshui ....................161 5 Conception, Pregnancy and Birth: Concepts and Practices .......165 5.1 e signicance of birth in Iatmul thought .........................173 5.2 e post-partum period ......................................175 6 e Relationship Between Husband and Wife. .179 6.1 Polygyny ................................................183 6.2 Divorce ..................................................186 6.3 Changes in the course of a woman’s life ...........................188 Part ree: Women, the Realm of Men, and the

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