Study of a West Sepik people, New Guinea - with special reference to their system of beliefs, kinship and marriage, and principles of thought

Abstract

There are 19 Au-speaking villages, with a total population of 4098 (in 1972), located in Au East and Au West Census Division in the Lumi Sub-District. These villages lack any centralized political organization and merely constitute a linguistic and cultural phyle. Each Au village is stateless, politically autonomous, and economically self-sufficient and has kinship and affinal relations with its neighbouring villages. Warfare and destructive magic are inter-village phenomena.

The thesis is mainly concerned with Puang, a typical and large Au village consisting of six hamlets and with a population of 450 (in 1972). In Puang the material culture is neolithic and the subsistence economy is based on shifting cultivation and sago production, supplemented by gathering, hunting, and fishing. Malay contact is recent and may also have taken place in the remote past. European contact has produced a need for radical change and cargo cult beliefs are prevalent. In Puang descent is traced patrilineally, the residential rule is virilocal, and clans often include many non-agnates and non-relatives, with whom no attempt is made to create fictitious genealogical connections. The ideal marriage is marriage with FMBSD and wife-givers are superior to wife-takers and conceived as life-givers. is partly asymmetric.

The kinship terminology Identity statements, such as 'The bird of paradise is a woman', abound in Puang and are 'depth-oriented' as well as logical. Puang thought is structured in terms of four universals: identification, opposition, similarity, and contiguity; and the unit of Puang thought consists of two propositions, or four elements, and invariably has opposition as one of its underlying principles.