PACIFIC STUDIES A multidisciplinary journal devoted to the study of the peoples of the Pacific Islands JUNE 1997 Anthropology Archaeology Art History Economics Ethnomusicology Folklore Geography History Sociolinguistics Political Science Sociology PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE FOR POLYNESIAN STUDIES BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY-HAWAI‘I IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE POLYNESIAN CULTURAL CENTER EDITORIAL BOARD Paul Alan Cox Brigham Young University Roger Green University of Auckland Francis X. Hezel, S. J. Micronesian Seminar Rubellite Johnson University of Hawai‘i Adrienne Kaeppler Smithsonian Institution Robert Kiste University of Hawai‘i Robert Langdon Australian National University Stephen Levine Victoria University Barrie Macdonald Massey University Cluny Macpherson University of Auckland Leonard Mason University of Hawai‘i Malama Meleisea University of Auckland Norman Meller University of Hawai‘i Richard M. Moyle University of Auckland Cohn Newbury Oxford University Douglas Oliver University of Hawai‘i Karen Peacock University of Hawai‘i Nancy Pollock Victoria University Sergio A. Rapu Easter Island Karl Rensch Australian National University Bradd Shore Emory University Yosihiko Sinoto Bishop Museum William Tagupa Honolulu, Hawai‘i Francisco Orrego Vicuña Universidad de Chile Edward Wolfers University of Wollongong Articles and reviews in Pacific Studies are abstracted or indexed in Sociolog- ical Abstracts, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, America: His- toy and Life, Historical Abstracts, Abstracts in Anthropology, Anthropo- logical Literature, PAIS Bulletin, International Political Science Abstracts, International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, International Bibliogra- phy of Book Reviews, and International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. PACIFIC STUDIES Editor DALE B. ROBERTSON Associate Editor Book Review Editor GLORIA L. CRONIN PHILLIP MCARTHUR Book Review Forum Editor Book Review Forum Editor ROBERT BOROFSKY LAMONT LINDSTROM Books Noted Editor Visual Media Review Editor RILEY M. MOFFAT LAURA ZIMMER-TAMAKOSHI Technical Editor SHARLENE ROHTER Editorial Policy: Pacific Studies is published quarterly by The Institute for Polynesian Studies, Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i, La‘ie, Hawai‘i 96762-1294, http://websider.byuh.edu/departments/ips/, but responsibil- ity for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is U.S. $30.00, payable to The Institute for Polynesian Studies. Articles submitted to the editor must not be submitted else- where while under review by Pacific Studies and should be the original typewritten copy, completely double-spaced (including quotations, ref- erences, and notes). Authors may write to the editor for a style sheet and information on computer-disk submissions. Books for review should also be sent to the editor. The Institute for Polynesian Studies is an organization funded by Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i. The Institute assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and publication. The Institute cooperates with other scholarly and research institutions in achieving their objectives. It publishes monographs, produces films, underwrites research, and spon- sors conferences on the Pacific Islands. Further information on the activities of the Institute may be obtained by writing to the editor. © 1997 Brigham Young University-Hawai’i. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is printed on acid-free paper and meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. ISSN 0275-3596 Volume 20 June 1997 Number 2 CONTENTS Articles Netbags Revisited: Cultural Narratives from Papua New Guinea PAMELA J. STEWART and ANDREW J. S TRATHERN . 1 Western Women’s Travel Writing about the Pacific Islands CLAUDIA KNAPMAN. 31 The Subsidization of Emperor Mines Limited ROMAN GRYNBERG, PETER FULCHER, and PETER DRYDEN . 53 Editor’s Forum Do Pacific Islanders in the United States Hold “Good” Jobs? DENNIS A. AHLBURG. 87 Book Review Forum Geoffrey Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific ROGER C. GREEN ...................................................... 105 PATRICK V. KIRCH ........................................................ 119 BEN F INNEY.......................................................... 129 WILLIAM F. KEEGAN ................................................... 136 CLIVE GAMBLE..................................................144 Response: GEOFFREY IRWIN ................................... 149 vi Pacific Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2--June 1997 Visual Media Reviews John Davis, prod./dir., Mountains of Gold: The People of Porgera (DAN JORGENSEN) . 167 Judith Hallet, prod./dir., Lords of the Garden (STUART KIRSCH) . .170 Books Noted Recent Pacific Islands Publications: Selected Acquisitions, June 1996-May 1997 RILEY M. MOFFAT . 181 Contributors . 193 PACIFIC STUDIES Vol. 20, No. 2 June 1997 NETBAGS REVISITED: CULTURAL NARRATIVES FROM PAPUA NEW GUINEA Pamela J. Stewart Andrew J. Strathern University of Pittsburgh In this article we reconsider materials on netbags from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya, as well as other parts of Melanesia, arguing that understanding of them is best set into a framework of ideas regarding embodi- ment and processes of trope expansion. Starting from the equation of netbag and womb, we trace the ramifications of this object of material culture and its contemporary significance in a commodifying context. Main emphasis is placed on materials from the Melpa or Mount Hagen area of the Western Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea, with comparisons to the cultures of the Ok region. Although netbags have predominantly female associations, modem High- lands netbag styles are a hybrid of elements from the netbags used by men and women in the past. We argue that the netbag’s chief significance is as a con- tainer of life and death, deeply bound up with the human life cycle, and that it gains its significance from its use in both everyday utilitarian contexts and highly charged ritual events. NETBAGS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA carry a rich symbolic significance as markers of gender relations, the life cycle, and the cosmos. Maureen Mac- Kenzie has made a pioneering analysis of their importance in the Ok culture area (1991), and here we extend the analysis to other parts of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, in particular Mount Hagen, drawing also on her wider ethnographic survey. Netbags are eminently worthy of study both for their role in life-cycle rituals and as the sites of individual creative activity in the context of contemporary changes in the social relations of production. As objects largely, but by no means exclusively, associated with the female sphere, they tend to play a muted role in the overall production of cultural 1 2 Pacific Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2--June 1997 meanings by comparison with carvings, shell valuables, and pigs, for example. Yet their meanings are in fact central to overall cultural ideas of fertility and the cycle of life and death. It is this centrality that makes them apt also for further symbolic use as markers of gendered relations in the wider social and political spheres of life, as in male initiations among the Ok peoples. In seeking to place netbags in their proper perspective, we have found it useful to use the ideas of embodiment and trope expansion (Csordas 1994; A. J. Strathern 1996; Wagner 1972). These concepts are suited to our pur- pose, because we argue that the netbag’s primary significance is as a marker of the female womb, but this meaning is expanded in specific pathways to cover further social contexts, such as the attachment to land, the production of initiates, and the like. We suggest that the basic reason for this form of trope expansion is that the fact of birth from the female body and the imme- diate acts of caring associated with this fact form a powerful template for the expression of ideas about social transitions generally. The netbag becomes an elementary material form objectifying the powers of female fertility and making them accessible for further semiotic production. This use of the netbag as a symbol corresponds to our decision to com- bine in our treatment two theoretical approaches that more often appear separately, that is, embodiment theory and trope-expansion theory. Embod- iment in our usage here refers to the ways in which social and cultural values are encoded materially, either in the human body itself or in objects whose significance is related to the human body. The term also reminds us of the complex interrelationship between elements signaled as belonging to the realms of “mind” and “body,” and the necessity to overcome the dichotomous representation of these categories in favor of a holistic and dynamic under- standing of human experience. It also stands in a definite relationship to the concept of objectification, as Bourdieu has argued (1977): for example, a house that is divided into male and female gendered spaces can be seen as an objectification of the embodied relationships between persons. Put other- wise, an objectification is the product of trope expansion, and we could speak of the productive use of the netbag as a symbol in terms of either concept. Trope expansion is a relevant concept to use here, because beginning with the fundamental equation of netbag with womb we find that the netbag can stand as a container for life in wider contexts, for example, those of male ini-