286 Roger M. Keesing

WAGNER, R., 1984. Ritual as Communication: Order, Meaning and Secrecy in Melanesian Initiation Rites. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13:143-55.

----------- , 1986. Asiwinarong: Ethos, Image, and Social Power Among the Usen Barok of New Ireland. Princeton,N.J., Princeton University Press.

TRANSACTIONS AND OWNERSHIP IN CENTRAL ESPIRITU SANTO, VANUATU

Tomas Ludvigson University of Auckland

Explicit attention to language and semantics as an approach to understanding indigenous perspectives is commonplace in anthropological writing. Words/speech/language have always played a central role in anthropological research, as what our informants tell us (and each other) is our main route of access to their version of the world.

What follows1 is very much within this tradition of “anthropological linguistics”, as I present and discuss some language material collected during ethnographic field research among the Kiai-speakers in the upper Ari valley in central Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu.2

My aim is both ethnographic and analytic. I focus on the part of the Kiai lexicon that is used when referring to ownership and the flow of goods and services throughout the mountain communities. Apart from placing the relevant Kiai vocabularies on record, I analyse them as systems of constituent meaningful units in an indigenous model of distribution and exchange.

The larger significance of this model is that it informs the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers in the primarily subsistence economy of central Espiritu Santo. My interest goes beyond a pure semantic focus however, as I discuss these vocabularies in relation to some features of socio-economic organisation among the Kiai-speakers and their neighbours.3

In particular, I use this examination of Kiai idioms as an occasion to revive some questions about conscious models of economic relationships as ideologies that distort, mystify or otherwise render obscure relationships of inequality or exploitation, to the point of representing them as the opposite of what they can be seen to be from an analytic point of view. My particular focus of interest here is the lexical expression of such ideologies. In the analysis below I pursue the idea that ideology in this sense resides not only in beliefs or statements about the world, but also in the very language in which these beliefs or statements are expressed.

IDEOLOGY AND MYSTIFICATIONThis interest of mine in the lexical expression of ideology and mystification originated with an observation I

made a number of years ago in Sweden, regarding contending terminologies for representing roles and relationships in Swedish industry.

The common Swedish words for “employer” and “employee” are arbetsgivare and arbetstagare. They are both compound words. The first part of these compounds, arbets-, common to both, is derived from the word arbete, which means “work” or “labour”. The latter parts, givare and tagare, are derived from giva and taga, cognates of English “give” and “take”, and mean “donor” and “recipient” respectively. This means that the literal translation of the Swedish words for “employer” and “employee” are “work-donor” and “work- recipient”.

In the left-wing press that proliferated in Sweden in the late sixties and early seventies I noticed an alternative terminology in use. “Employer” was rendered as arbetskopare and “employee” as arbets saljare. The first part of these alternative compounds is the same as in the standard terminology (arbets-), but givare had been replaced by kôpare, “buyer”, and tagare by sâljare, “vendor”.

Why the alternative terminology? An answer suggests itself when we compare the connotations of the two pairs of terms. The first pair, arbetsgivare/arbetstagare (“work-donor”/“work-recipient”) implies that the employer gives work to the employee and the employee receives work from the employer. The connotation is that “work” passes from the employer to the employee, casting the employer as playing the active part in a one­sided transaction/relationship.

Transactions and Ownership in Central Espiritu Santo 287

The second pair paints a different picture. The terms arbetskôpare/arbetssâljare (“work-buyer”/“work- vendor”) imply that the employer buys work form the employee and the employee sells work to the employer. In this case “work” passes from the employee to the employer - the opposite direction to that implied by the first set. Employer and employee are here cast in more equal terms, as parties to an exchange transaction/relationship.

The reason for the alternative terminology should now be apparent. The second pair of terms depicts the employer/employee relationship in a manner more in keeping with the rhetorical perspective on Swedish industrial relations promulgated in the literature where it was encountered. It is also fair to say that the literal meaning of the second set of terms does better ethnographic justice to the nature and complexity of Swedish industrial relations.

The first pair of terms furnishes an ethnographic example of “ideology”, as this notion is understood within a Historical Materialist perspective: the misrepresentation or “mystification” of relationships of exploitation, to the point of representing them as the opposite of what they can be seen to be after analysis.

The example shows how ideology in the sense discussed can go beyond beliefs and attitudes into the language in which they are expressed. This suggests the possibility of examining the language of economic roles and relationships from other parts of the world for such “ideological” features. Such an analysis would explore the roles and relationships explicit or implicit in the idioms used when discussing transactions and the economic life of a specific community, guided by the hypothesis that misrepresentation or mystification may be encountered in areas of exploitation or inequality. The exploration of Kiai idioms for transactions and ownership to follow is set within this perspective.

TRANSACTION IDIOMSThe following list is a compilation of Kiai transaction idioms with approximate English glosses. These are

the words or expressions that are used when negotiating or otherwise discussing the transactions that taken together constitute economic relationships between people in the Espiritu Santo interior. All the idioms listed are verbs or verbal expressions.

ani “eat”avuti “pay compensation for death”kaun “borrow”kezi “give wastefully”kore “give”kore mule “return”malai “pay compensation for adultery’mama “eat pre-chewed food”mamai “feed with pre-chewed food”pain “pay a fine”presen “give”puni “steal”rentem “borrow”reve “cadge”salem “sell”saplai “give”sekan “give with handshake”sola “pay a fine”susu “drink milk from breast”susu “give as susu tana food gift”suei “foist upon”tueni “help with”tuni “distribute”vanani “feed”varea noni “garden for”vasusui “breastfeed”vati “take”, “obtain”vavau ani “present food to”, “feast”ve na aniani ani “present food to”, “feast”voko isini “work for on coastal plantation’voli “buy”, “reward”zeni “return”

When viewed in this manner, as a simple compilation of transaction idioms, the list does not seem to be of outstanding sociological significance. In order to bring out some systematic biases in Kiai representations of

288 Tomas Ludvigson

transactions/relationships I first need to introduce the analytical notions of “agency” and “complementarity” among transaction idioms.

AGENCY AND COMPLEMENTARY IDIOMSTransactions in goods always involve at least two parties: the party that has the good(s) at the outset of the

transaction and the party who has the item(s) at the end of the transaction. Transactions in services are structured in a similar fashion - there is always a party who performs the service and another party for whom the service is performed.

These circumstances are reflected in the language of transactions, in that it is usually possible to speak of transactions in two different ways, stressing either the donor or the recipient as the active agent in the transaction. The above discussion of Swedish furnishes an ethnographic illustration of this possibility, as the difference between the two pairs of terms for employer/employee pivots on the representation of agency.

An example may help to clarify this notion of agency. In English, a transaction which can be described as “A gave X to B” can also be rendered as “B obtained X from A”. Both statements may be adequate descriptions of the transaction, but in the first case A is cast as the active agent, while in the second case this role is allocated to B.

I will refer to pairs of transaction idioms like “give”/“obtain” and “buy”/“sell” as complementary, each being the complementary verb of the other. These notions of agency and complementarity enable me to order the Kiai transaction vocabulary into complementary pairs.

While logic may suggest that it should be possible at least in principle to phrase all transactions in two different and complementary ways, assigning agency to either of the parties to the transaction, this is not the empirical situation regarding the Kiai transaction vocabulary. Several Kiai transaction idioms lack complementary verbs. References to those transactions always necessarily cast only one of the parties to the transaction as playing an active part, as Kiai furnishes neither vocabulary items nor idiomatic constructions that allow a speaker to talk about the other party as being actively involved in the transaction.4

These idioms that lack complementary verbs are particularly interesting, in that they reveal the absence of idioms where they could have been expected. Moreover, it is possible to link these gaps in the Kiai transaction vocabulary to features of socio-economic organisation in central Espiritu Santo. The material reveals a patterning of such lacunae which invites interpretation in accordance with the hypothesis above, as “mystification” of economically one-sided transactions/relationships.

I will first discuss Kiai idioms for simple transactions, i.e. where a good or service is transferred in one direction once only. This will be followed by a discussion of more complex transactions. Throughout I will say very little about the transactions themselves, their performance, context etc. Instead I will discuss them in blocks of near synonyms, obscuring finer nuances of difference between them in the interest of brevity, as a full ethnographic treatment of transactions in central Espiritu Santo would be too extensive to be appropriate in the present context.

SIMPLE TRANSACTIONSSome transactions are simple and direct, involving the transfer of goods or services in one direction only,

on one single occasion. I will refer to these as simple transactions.It is possible to sort Kiai idioms for simple transactions with complementary verbs into two sub-sets. The

sub-sets show some overlap, but they are nevertheless salient enough to enable the idioms in each sub-set to be discussed as groups of mutually complementary idioms.

One sub-set describes transactions in goods in general. Idioms that cast the donor as the active agent are:

/core “give”saplai “give”tuni “distribute”presen “give”sekan “give with handshake”tueni “help with”kezi “give wastefully”susu “give as susu tana food gift’suei “foist upon”

These terms variously take the complementary verbs:

vatireve

“take”, “obtain” “cadge”, “pull”

Transactions and Ownership in Central Espiritu Santo 289

The other sub-set consists of idioms referring to transactions in prepared food. Put differently, this group of idioms all refer to various ways of feeding or being fed:

vanani “feed”mamai “feed with pre-chewed food”vasusui “breastfeed”vavau am “present food to”, “feast”ve na aniani ani “present food to”, “feast”

These terms variously take the complementary verbs:

ani “eat”mama “eat pre-chewed food”susu “drink milk from breast”

We may note in passing the greater elaboration of idioms for giving. This is perhaps only to be expected in the Melanesian context, where generosity constitutes an important cultural focus.

Three idioms for simple transactions lack complementary verbs. They are:

puni “steal”varea noni “garden for”voko isini “work for on coastal plantation”

That puni should be without complementary verb is no cause for surprise, as it is in the very notion of stealing that it is done without the involvement or consent of the person from whom something is being stolen. This is especially so in Kiai, where the connotative meaning of puni is something done “with stealth”, hidden from view. The absence of complementary verbs for varea noni and voko isini is in accordance with our hypothesis. Brideservice is the major institutionalised form of extraction of surplus-labour in central Espiritu Santo, where a man must garden regularly for his wife’s parents for as long as they remain alive.

Occasional work on coastal plantations for wages involves Kiai-speakers in a further relationship of exploitation, employing a mode of appropriation of surplus-labour characteristic of the coastal economy. Thus neither of these two main forms of extraction of surplus-labour that directly involve the Kiai-speakers can be phrased as actions on part of those who obtain this surplus-labour.

COMPLEX TRANSACTIONSComplex transactions are transactions that involve more than one good or service, direction or occasion. In

the Kiai context these can be differentiated into trade, loans/exchange and compensation payments.Complex trade transactions comprise only two terms, which together make up one complementary pair:

voli “buy”, “reward”salem “sell”

Though these two idioms complement each other, there are some limitations on their complementarity. Voli has no complementary verb in discussions concerning bridewealth payments. It is not appropriate to use the term salem to refer to giving a daughter away in marriage while receiving bridewealth. Numerous instances of the construction voli na p ita (“buy a woman”) were recorded, whereas the complementary construction *salem ini na pita (“sell a woman”) did not occur in spontaneous speech.

Here we again encounter lack of agency on part of the wife-givers in the vocabulary of affinal transactions/relationships. The correlation between this absence and that discussed above in relation to brideservice adds to its significance, as bridewealth transactions initiate brideservice relationships. Hence, while the balance of transactions in affinal relationships favours the wife-givers, usage avoids direct expression of this as an active strategy, a situation that accords with our hypothesis concerning mystification of relationships of exploitation.

All Kiai idioms for loan transactions lack complementary verbs. There are two different sets of terms for “borrow” and “return”, depending on whether the item borrowed is to be returned itself in its own particularity (this item), or whether the expected return is an equivalent item.

In the first case (particular item) the terms are:

rentem kore mule

“borrow”“return”, “give back”

290 Tomas Ludvigson

In the second case (equivalent return) they are:

kaun “borrow”zeni “return”, “replace”

Both these sets of terms lack complementary verbs - there are no Kiai idioms for “lend” and “collect”. This surely is a significant absence in a Melanesian context, where political leadership is exercised by “big men” who recruit their followers just by putting them in debt. Our hypothesis is again borne out, as the lexical expression of agency on part of those who derive political influence from the relationship is lacking.

Kiai terms for compensation payments also lack complementary verbs:

sola “pay a fine”pain “pay a fine”avuti “pay compensation for a death”malai “pay compensation for adultery”

Compensation payments are not very significant from the point of view of exploitation, but we may note that it is again the receiving party that is absent as agent in the set of lexical resources available for representing these transactions/relationships.

The overall picture that emerges from this examination of Kiai transaction idioms is one of greater elaboration and differentiation of the rhetorical resources for talking about “giving”, while the corresponding resources for talking about “obtaining” are comparatively undeveloped, and frequently non-existent.

Differentiation or elaboration of a part of the lexicon is also at issue in an examination of Kiai idioms for ownership.

OWNERSHIP IDIOMSThe rhetoric of ownership in central Espiritu Santo is inextricably bound up with that part of the lexicon

which expresses possession. An examination of Kiai possessives reveals a more differentated terminology/ideology of ownership than that expressed in the English possessives.

In Kiai possession is indicated with suffixes.5 These can be added to the possessed noun:

tama-ku “my father”

Otherwise they are added to special possessive moiphemes pula-, no-, a-, ma-, as follows:

pula-m poe “your pig”no-na zivi “his knife”a-ra peta “their taro”ma-ku mālō “my kava drink”

This adds up to five different ways of indicating possession in Kiai. Tryon has developed an interpretation of Vanuatu possessives, which hinges on a categorisation of the nouns possessed. He suggests that in Vanuatu languages

. . . possessed nouns may be classified according to the manner by which possession is indicated. In all the languages of the group, there is a first dichotomy of nouns which take a direct suffix to indicate possession, and those which do not. The former is generally known as “inalienable” possession, and appears restricted to nouns for parts of the body, kinship terms, parts of a whole and other phenomena with which the “possessor” is closely connected. The second broad category of nouns show what has been termed “alienable” possession. This second class may be divided into a variety of subclasses, such as food, drinkables, items destined for planting, etc. (Tryon 1973:311-13).

At a first glance this is consistent with the Kiai material presented above. Tryon includes Kiai in the Northern New Hebrides group of languages, for which he has developed an interpretation of possessives that can be diagrammed as below (Tryon 1973:313-17):6 Here the choice of possessive morphemes is taken to depend on the character of the object possessed. Though superficially in keeping with Kiai usage, this interpretation however falls down on one point: using the character of the possessed noun as a criterion for choice of possessive morphemes does not adequately predict usage, as the same noun can enter into constructions with more than one possessive morpheme, e.g. both a-ku peta (“my taro”) and pula-ku peta (“my taro”) occur in Kiai speech.

Transactions and Ownership in Central Espiritu Santo 291

Lynch has developed a different interpretation of Melanesian possessives that accounts for this overlap:

. . . the type of surface construction in many cases depends only secondarily on the lexical features of the possessed noun. Much more important is the nature of the relationship between the possessor and possessed, or the intentions and attitudes of the possessor to the possessed. Different types of possessive constructions are thus seen as a classification of relationships and not of nouns (Lynch 1973:76).

This hypothesis appears to fit the Kiai material better. A revised model of usage focussed on the specific nature of die relationship between possessor and possessed adequately predicts usage, including the anomalies discussed above. This revised model can be diagrammed as follows:

Diagram 2.

The difference between this model and the former is that I have dropped the category “prized possessions” and instead introduced the “user”/“producer” distinction within the “alienable” class. TTiese terms refer to the relationship between possessor and possessed. Possessive constructions using pula- mark the fact that the possessor is the producer of the item possessed. Constructions employing no-, a- and ma- indicate that the possessor is an owner who is not necessarily the producer of the item in question. An alternative formulation would be that pu la- goods are “o f ’ the possessor as producer, while the other three types are “for” the possessor as user.

Some telling informants’ statements will show how usage that appears anomalous according to Tryon’s model is fully in accordance with the revised model suggested above.

Livestock was usually spoken of as pula-ku (“mine/of me”) by their owners. This is indeed in accordance with the category “prized possessions” in Tryon’s model. There were however some significant discrepancies. I noticed for example that a cattle beast which had recently been sold was still being referred to as pula-ku (“mine/of me”) by its former owner, while called no-ku (“mine/for me”) by the new owner. A corollary can be seen in the case of a goat being referred to as pula-ku (“mine/of me”) by its owner and as no- ku (“mine/for me”) by a person who was about to buy it. Rather than a blanket use of pula- for livestock (as “prized possessions”), we find pula- and no- differentiating the relationship between possessor and possessed.

Another telling example is provided by an old man remarking about the coconut trees on European-owned plantations that they were

. . . pula-ni tama-mau, la am otira. Vokai tasale, mo kai te pula-ra! (“. . . of/owned by our fathers, as they planted them. The European people, there are none of/owned by them!”).

292 Tomas Ludvigson

In this case pula- is rejected as an adequate expression of the relationship between coconut trees on European- owned plantations and their owners, as these owners were not owner-producers; they had not planted the trees.

The above discussion of Kiai possessives suggest that as a terminology of ownership it is more differentiated than English possessives, which are relatively more undeveloped. We hide under the same labels a variety of different relationships of possession, which could be given more varied lexical expression, as exemplified in the greater elaboration of the Kiai terminology.

According to our guiding hypothesis this is only to be expected within our capitalist socio-economic system, where labour is a commodity and surplus-labour is extracted by way of ownership of the means of production. The Kiai-speakers can afford to retain their distinction between user and producer in their lexical resources for representing ownership, as they do not have a set of permanent non-producing users living off the producers. But where this is the case, as in our own society, it is left “unspeakable” as a matter-of-course feature of relationships of possession.

In this context it is ironic, or perhaps singularly appropriate, that in Bislama, the lingua franca that has grown out of the colonial era in Vanuatu, ownership is as undifferentiated as in English. Bislama uses only one possessive morpheme, bilong (“belonging to”).

This discussion of two portions of the Kiai lexicon that play a crucial constitutive role in the representation of economic relationships indicates a possible framework for comparative study of “economic” terminologies - a “comparative ethno-economics”, if I may neologise along familiar lines. The object of such comparative analysis would be (as with kinship terminologies in the past) to explore relationships between differences in the terminologies and differences in socio-economic organisation. As a guiding hypothesis we have the one pursued in the above: “mystification” in areas of exploitation.

The above analyses are only brief sketches of such an undertaking. A full analysis would have to include further documentation of the specific forms of extraction of surplus-labour within relationships entered into by the population under study - a topic which I have only addressed in very general terms. If my exercise indicates any direction for such similar studies, it is that we can expect “mystification” to take the form of lack of differentiation: a blurring of distinctions. Ideology as silence.

NOTES

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented under the title “Silent Exploitation - an Exercise in Comparative Ethno-economics” at the 5th Annual General Meeting of the New Zealand Association of Social Anthropologists.

2. Eighteen months of field research was carried out in Central Espiritu Santo between 1974 and 1976. In addition to this I had a Kiai-speaking assistant working with me in Auckland for three months. The research was generously funded by Stiftelsen Lars Hierta’s Minne (The Lars Hierta Memorial Trust), Statens Râd For Samhāllsforskning (The Swedish National Council for Social Research) and the Auckland University Research Committee.

3. The Kiai-speakers live in small, thinly scattered hamlets situated on ridges 500-800 metres above sea level, in the upper Ari (Toro) valley in central Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. For subsistence they grow taro and other crops in swidden clearings on the mountain sides, raise pigs and cattle, fish in the streams and hunt in the forest surrounding the settlements. Despite extensive changes over the last hundred years, they have remained non- Christian and relatively independent of the coastal community and market economy.

4. Kiai has no passive or similar constructions that would permit inversion of agency in reference to transactions.5. Kiai possessive suffixes are as follows:

Sing. Plur.1st Pers. -ku incl. -ka

excl. -mau2nd Pers. -m -meu3rd Pers. -na -ra

6. Try on calls the Kiai language by the name of Fortsenal. A fuller treatment of the topic of subgrouping of Vanuatu languages can be found in Tryon (1976).

REFERENCES

LYNCH, John, 1973. Verbal Aspects of Possession in Melanesian Languages. Oceanic Linguistics, 12:69-102. TRYON, Darrell T., 1973. Linguistic Subgrouping in the New Hebrides: a Preliminary Approach. Oceanic Linguistics,

12:303-52.----------- , 1976. New Hebrides Languages: an Internal Classification. Pacific Linguistics, C-50. Canberra, Australian

National University.