Crime and Custom in Savage Society - Bronisław Malinowski (co można czytać .txt) 📖

in the village which should have aroused my suspicions. I found that another youth had been severely wounded by some mysterious coincidence. And at the funeral there was obviously a general feeling of hostility between the village where the boy died and that into which his body was carried for burial.

Only much later was I able to discover the real meaning of these events: the boy had committed suicide. The truth was that he had broken the rules of exogamy, the partner in his crime being his maternal cousin, the daughter of his mother’s sister. This had been known and generally disapproved of, but nothing was done until the girl’s discarded lover, who had wanted to marry her and who felt personally injured, took the initiative. This rival threatened first to use black magic against the guilty youth, but this had not much effect. Then one evening he insulted the culprit in public — accusing him in the hearing of the whole community of incest and hurling at him certain expressions intolerable to a native.

For this there was only one remedy; only one means of escape remained to the unfortunate youth. Next morning he put on festive attire and ornamentation, climbed a coco-nut palm and addressed the community, speaking from among the palm leaves and bidding them farewell. He explained the reasons for his desperate deed and also launched forth a veiled accusation against the man who had driven him to his death, upon which it became the duty of his clansmen to avenge him. Then he wailed aloud, as is the custom, jumped from a palm some sixty feet high and was killed on the spot. There followed a fight within the village in which the rival was wounded; and the quarrel was repeated during the funeral.

Now this case opened up a number of important lines of inquiry. I was here in the presence of a pronounced crime: the breach of totemic clan exogamy. The exogamous prohibition is one of the corner-stones of totemism, mother-right, and the classificatory system of kinship. All females of his clan are called sisters by a man and forbidden as such. It is an axiom of Anthropology that nothing arouses a greater horror than the breach of this prohibition, and that besides a strong reaction of public opinion, there are also supernatural punishments, which visit this crime. Nor is this axiom devoid of foundation in fact. If you were to inquire into the matter among the Trobrianders, you would find that all statements confirm the axiom, that the natives show horror at the idea of violating the rules of exogamy and that they believe that sores, disease and even death might follow clan incest. This is the ideal of native law, and in moral matters it is easy and pleasant strictly to adhere to the ideal — when judging the conduct of others or expressing an opinion about conduct in general.

When it comes to the application of morality and ideals to real life, however, things take on a different complexion. In the case described it was obvious that the facts would not tally with the ideal of conduct. Public opinion was neither outraged by the knowledge of the crime to any extent, nor did it react directly — it had to be mobilized by a public statement of the crime and by insults being hurled at the culprit by an interested party. Even then he had to carry out the punishment himself. The ’group-reaction’ and the ’supernatural sanction’ were not therefore the active principles. Probing further into the matter and collecting concrete information, I found that the breach of exogamy — as regards intercourse and not marriage — is by no means a rare occurrence, and public opinion is lenient, though decidedly hypocritical. If the affair is carried on sub rosa16 with a certain amount of decorum, and if no one in particular stirs up trouble — ’public opinion’ will gossip, but not demand any harsh punishment. If, on the contrary, scandal breaks out — every one turns against the guilty pair and by ostracism and insults one or the other may be driven to suicide.

As regards the supernatural sanction, this case led me to an interesting and important discovery. I learned that there is a perfectly well established remedy against any pathological consequences of this trespass, a remedy considered practically infallible, if properly executed. That is to say the natives possess a system of magic consisting of spells and rites performed over water, herbs, and stones, which when correctly carried out, is completely efficient in undoing the bad results of clan incest.

That was the first time in my field-work that I came across what could be called a well-established system of evasion and that in the case of one of the most fundamental laws of the tribe. Later on I discovered that such parasitic growths upon the main branches of tribal order exist in several other cases, besides the counteraction of incest. The importance of this fact is obvious. It shows clearly that a supernatural sanction need not safeguard a rule of conduct with an automatic effect. Against magical influence there may be counter-magic. It is no doubt better not to run the risk — the counter-magic may have been imperfectly learned or faultily performed — but the risk is not great. The supernatural sanction shows then a considerable elasticity, in conjunction with a suitable antidote.

This methodical antidote teaches us another lesson. In a community where laws are not only occasionally broken, but systematically circumvented by well-established methods, there can be no question of a ’spontaneous’ obedience to law, of slavish adherence to tradition. For this tradition teaches man surreptitiously how to evade some of its sterner commands — and you cannot be spontaneously pushed forwards and pulled back at the same time!

Magic to undo the consequences of clan incest is perhaps the most definite instance of methodical evasion of law, but there are other cases besides. Thus a system of magic to estrange the affections of a woman from her husband and to induce her to commit adultery is a traditional way of flouting the institution of marriage and the prohibition of adultery. To a slightly different category perhaps belong the various forms of deleterious and malicious magic: to destroy the crops, to thwart a fisherman, to drive the pigs into the jungle, to blight bananas, coco-nuts or areca palms, to spoil a feast or a Kula expedition. Such magic, being levelled at established institutions and important pursuits, is really an instrument of crime, supplied by tradition. As such it is a department of tradition, which works against law and is directly in conflict with it, since law in various forms safeguards these pursuits and institutions. The case of sorcery, which is a special and very important form of black magic, will be discussed presently, as also certain non-magical systems of evasion of tribal law.

The law of exogamy, the prohibition of marriage and intercourse within the clan is often quoted as one of the most rigid and wholesale commandments of primitive law, in that it forbids sexual relations within the clan with the same stringency, regardless of the degree of kinship between the two people concerned. The unity of the clan and the reality of the ’classificatory system of relationship’ are — it is urged — most fully vindicated in the taboo of clan incest. It lumps together all the men and all the women of the clan as ’brothers’ and ’sisters’ to each other and debars them absolutely from sexual intimacy. A careful analysis of the relevant facts in the Trobriands completely disposes of this view. It is again one of these figments of native tradition, taken over at its face value by anthropology and bodily incorporated into its teachings.17 In the Trobriands, the breach of exogamy is regarded quite differently according to whether the guilty pair are closely related or whether they are only united by bonds of common clanship. Incest with a sister is to the natives an unspeakable, almost unthinkable crime — which again does not mean that it is never committed. The breach in the case of a matrilineal first cousin is a very serious offence, and it can have, as we have seen, tragic consequences. As kinship recedes, the stringency lessens and, when committed with one who merely belongs to the same clan, the breach of exogamy is but a venial offence, easily condoned. Thus, as regards this prohibition, the females of his clan are to a man not one compact group, not one homogeneous ’clan’, but a well-differentiated set of individuals, each standing in a special relation, according to her place in his genealogy.

From the point of view of the native libertine, suvasova (the breach of exogamy) is indeed a specially interesting and spicy form of erotic experience. Most of my informants would not only admit but actually did boast about having committed this offence or that of adultery (kaylasi); and I have many concrete, wellattested cases on record.

So far I have spoken of intercourse. Marriage within the same clan is a much more serious affair. Nowadays even, with the general relaxation of the rigour of traditional law, there are only some two or three cases of marriage within the clan in existence, the most notorious being that of Modulabu, headman of the large village of Obweria, with Ipwaygana, a renowned witch, who is also suspected of intercourse with the tauva’u, supernatural evil spirits who bring disease. Both of these people belong to the Malasi clan. It is remarkable that this clan is traditionally associated with incest. There is a myth of brother and sister incest, which is the source of love magic, and this happened in the Malasi clan. The most notorious case of brother-sister incest of recent times also occurred in this clan.18 Thus the relation of actual life to the ideal state of affairs, as mirrored in traditional morals and law, is very instructive.