Argonauts of the Western Pacific - Bronisław Malinowski (darmowa biblioteka online .TXT) 📖

But alas, for one who could look below the surface and read the various symptoms of decay, deep changes would be discernible from what must have been the original conditions of such a native gathering. In fact, some three generations ago, even its appearances would have been different. The natives then would have been armed with shields and spears; some would have borne decorative weapons, such as the big sword-clubs of hard wood, or massive ebony cudgels, or small throwing-sticks. A closer inspection would have shown many more decorations and ornaments, such as nose-sticks, finely carved lime spatulae, gourds with burnt-in designs, some of which are now out of use, or those used of inferior workmanship or without decoration.

But other and much deeper changes have taken place in the social conditions. Three generations ago both the canoes in the water and the people on the shore would have been more numerous. As mentioned above, in the olden days there would have been some twenty canoes in Kiriwina, as against eight at the present time. Again, the far stronger influence of the chief, and the much greater relative importance of the event would have attracted a larger proportion out of the then more numerous population. Nowadays, other interests, such as diving for pearls, working on white man’s plantations, divert the native attention, while many events connected with Missions, Government and trading, eclipse the importance of old customs.

Again, the people on the shore would have had to adhere in olden days even more closely to the local distribution, men of the same village community keeping together still more strictly, and looking with mistrust, and perhaps even hostility, at other groups, especially those with whom they had hereditary feuds. The general tension would often be broken by squabbles or even miniature fights, especially at the moment of dispersing, and on the way home.

One of the important features of the performance, and the one of which the natives think perhaps most — the display of food — would also have been quite different. The chief whom I saw sitting on a platform surrounded by a few wives only, and with small attendance would, under the old conditions, have been the owner of thrice as many wives and consequently relatives-in-law, and as it is these from whom he derives most of his income, he would have provided a much bigger sagali than he is able to do nowadays.

Three generations ago the whole event would have been much more solemn and dramatic to the natives. The very distance to the neighbouring island of Kitava is nowadays dwarfed. In the past, it would not, as now, be quickly obliterated by a white man’s steam-launch. Then, the canoes on the beach were the only means of arriving there, and their value in the eyes of the natives must have, therefore, been even higher, although they think so much of them now. The outlines of the distant island and the small fleet of canoes on the beach formed for the natives the first act of a big over seas expedition, an event of far deeper significance to them then than now. A rich haul of arm-shells, the arrival of many much-coveted utilities, the bringing back of news from the far-off land, all this meant much more in older days than it can mean at present. War, dancing, and the Kula supplied tribal life with its romantic and heroic elements. Nowadays, with war prohibited by the Government, with dancing discredited by missionary influence, the Kula alone remains, and even that is stripped of some of its glamour.

Before we proceed to the next stage, we must pause in following the events of a Kula expedition, and consider one or two points of more general importance. I have touched in the narrative, but not dwelt upon, certain problems of the sociology of work. At the outset of the preceding chapter it was mentioned that canoe-building requires a definite organisation of work, and in fact we saw that in the course of construction, various kinds of labour were employed, and more especially towards the end, much use was made of communal labour. Again, we saw that during the launching ceremony payment was given by the owner to the expert and his helpers. These two points therefore, the organisation of labour and communal labour in particular, and the system of payment for experts’ work must be here developed.

Organisation of Labour. — First of all, it is important to realise that a Kiriwinian is capable of working well, efficiently and in a continuous manner. But he must work under an effective incentive: he must be prompted by some duty imposed by tribal standards, or he must be lured by ambitions and values also dictated by custom and tradition. Gain, such as is often the stimulus for work in more civilised communities, never acts as an impulse to work under the original native conditions. It succeeds very badly, therefore, when a white man tries to use this incentive to make a native work.

This is the reason why the traditional view of the lazy and indolent native is not only a constant refrain of the average white settler, but finds its way into good books of travel, and even serious ethnographic records. With us, labour is, or was till fairly recently, a commodity sold as any other, in the open market. A man accustomed to think in terms of current economic theory will naturally apply the conceptions of supply and demand to labour, and he applies them therefore to native labour. The untrained person does the same, though in less sophisticated terms, and as they see that the native will not work well for the white man, even if tempted by considerable payment and treated fairly well, they conclude that his capacity for labour is very small. This error is due to the same cause which lies at the bottom of all our misconceptions about people of different cultures If you remove a man from his social milieu, you eo ipso59 deprive him of almost all his stimuli to moral steadfastness and economic efficiency and even of interest in life. If then you measure him by moral, legal or economic standards, also essentially foreign to him, you cannot but obtain a caricature in your estimate.

But the natives are not only capable of energetic, continuous and skilful work; their social conditions also make it possible for them to employ organised labour. At the beginning of Chapter IV, the sociology of canoe-building was given in outline, and now, after the details of its successive stages have been filled in, it is possible to confirm what has been said there, and draw some conclusions as to this organisation of labour. And first, as we are using this expression so often, I must insist again on the fact that the natives are capable of it, and that this contention is not a truism, as the following considerations should show. The just mentioned view of the lazy, individualistic and selfish savage, who lives on the bounties of nature as they fall ripe and ready for him, implicitly precludes the possibility of his doing effective work, integrated into an organised effort by social forces. Again, the view, almost universally accepted by specialists, is that the lowest savages are in the pre-economic stage of individualistic search for food, whereas the more developed ones, such as the Trobrianders, for instance, live at the stage of isolated household economy. This view also ignores, when it does not deny explicitly, the possibility of socially organised labour.

The view generally held is that, in native communities each individual works for himself, or members of a household work so as to provide each family with the necessities of life. Of course, a canoe, even a masawa, could obviously be made by the members of a household, though with less efficiency and in a longer time. So that there is a priori nothing to foretell whether organised labour, or the unaided efforts of an individual or a small group of people should be used in the work. As a matter of fact, we have seen in canoe-building a number of men engaged in performing each a definite and difficult task, though united to one purpose. The tasks were differentiated in their sociological setting; some of the workers were actually to own the canoe; others belonged to a different community, and did it only as an act of service to the chief. Some worked in order to derive direct benefit from the use of the canoe, others were to be paid. We saw also that the work of felling, of scooping, of decorating, would in some cases be performed by various men, or it might be performed by one only. Certainly the minute tasks of lashing, caulking and painting, as well as sail-making, were done by communal labour as opposed to individual. And all these different tasks were directed towards one aim: the providing the chief or headman with the title of ownership of a canoe, and his whole community with its use.

It is clear that this differentiation of tasks, co-ordinated to a general purpose, requires a well developed social apparatus to back it up, and that on the other hand, this social mechanism must be associated and permeated with economic elements. There must be a chief, regarded as representative of a group; he must have certain formal rights and privileges, and a certain amount of authority, and also he must dispose of part of the wealth of the community. There must also be a man or men with knowledge sufficient to direct and co-ordinate the technical operations. All this is obvious. But it must be clearly set forth that the real force which binds all the people and ties them down in their tasks is obedience to custom, to tradition.

Every man knows what is expected from him, in virtue of his position, and he does it, whether it means the obtaining of a privilege, the performance of a task, or the acquiescence in a status quo60. He knows that it always has been thus, and thus it is all around him, and thus it always must remain. The chief’s authority, his privileges, the customary give and take which exist between him and the community, all that is merely, so to speak, the mechanism through which the force of tradition acts. For there is no organised physical means by which those in authority could enforce their will in a case like this. Order is kept by direct force of everybody’s adhesion to custom, rules and laws, by the same psychological influences which in our society prevent a man of the world doing something which is not „the right thing”. The expression „might is right” would certainly not apply to Trobriand society. „Tradition is right, and what is right has might” — this rather is the rule governing the social forces in Boyowa, and I dare say in almost all native communities at this stage of culture.

All the details of custom, all the magical formulae, the whole fringe of ceremonial and rite which accompany canoe-building, all these things add weight to the social scheme of duties. The importance of magical ideas and rites as integrating forces has been indicated at the outset of this description. It is easy to see how all the appurtenances of ceremony, that is, magic, decoration, and public attendance, welded together into one whole with labour, serve to put order and organisation into it.

Another point must be enlarged upon somewhat more. I have spoken of organised labour, and of communal labour. These two conceptions are not synonymous, and it is well to keep them apart. As already defined, organised labour implies the co-operation of several socially and economically different elements. It is quite another thing, however, when a number of people are engaged side by side, performing the same work, without any technical division of labour, or social differentiation of function. Thus, the whole enterprise of canoe-building is, in Kiriwina, the result of organised labour. But the work