‘Feeding the Caregiver’: Internal and External Relations in a Matrilineal Life-Cycle Ritual, West Gao

ABSTRACT

Due to the rule of matriclan exogamy, a West Gao father belongs to a different matriclan to that of his wife and children. During a feast known as fangamu taego, children present their father with gifts to acknowledge his care. Acting as a pivot within the sequence of life-cycle rituals in West Gao, fangamu taego provides a ritual space in which two opposed modes of relationality are brought together. During the exchanges that constitute the feast, relationships flowing internally to each matriclan are weighed against external relationships forged between matriclans. The relational interplay elaborated during fangamu taego is predicated upon ancestrally mediated relationships of emplacement with regard to a specific territory. This comes into focus during a further set of transactions instigated by the feast involving use rights in land and its organic products. The ‘matter’ of these exchanges participate in two distinct relational modes simultaneously: they both activate pre-existing internal relationships and figure as ‘terms’ in the temporary construction of external relationships. Ultimately, fangamu taego captures an interplay between the relative permanence and impermanence of different relational configurations in the West Gao lived world.

KEYWORDS:

• Life-cycle rituals
• relationality
• emplacement
• organic products
• exchange

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the people of West Gao for sharing their knowledge with me. My thanks also to the organisers of the ‘Matter(s) of Relations’ panel at the 2015 ESFO conference in Brussels, whose engagement was instrumental to the development of my argument. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments have helped me to refine the paper. Any issues that remain are entirely my own responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the example used in this paper, the transaction occurs between a father and daughter. However this is simply because she is an only child. In other feasts the transactions are between the father and all of his children, who then obtain equal rights in the plots of land or trees transferred.

2. According to the 2009 census the population of Kaloka Ward was 962 (Solomon Islands Government 2011).

3. Land is also necessary for the development of small businesses such as trade stores and, increasingly, homestays or rest houses for visitors and tourists.

4. Sir Colin Allan was District Officer for Santa Isabel in 1948 and in the 1950s was commissioned by the British government to produce reports on local land tenure. Allan (1988) uses the term ‘sub-clan’ to refer to what I term matrilineages.

5. Whilst undeniably a longstanding institution, the fangamu taego was also a site of innovation and contestation. Indeed, oral histories collected during fieldwork point to significant changes in the structure of the event (Whiteley 2015, 207–211).

6. Use rights can be maintained over generations if the children concerned initiate their own presentation of food to their father, as he did for his father. However, this does not happen in every case, nor should it need to. Space restrictions dictate that I cannot explore this issue further here.

Additional information

Funding

The 22 months of ethnographic research undertaken in West Gao, Honiara and Australia was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council 3 + 1 studentship.