[Anthropgrad] Anthropology seminar 3 September

[Melinda Hinkson]

Anthropology Seminar, 9.30 am Wednesday September 3, Coombs Seminar Room A
 
Mark Mosko, Anthropology, RSPAS
 
The Fractal Yam: Recursive Holography and Human Agency in the Trobriand
Islands.
Anthropologists have long appreciated that animals are Œgood to think¹
(Levi-Strauss 1966; Tambiah 1968). In this essay I ponder whether plants
might be good to think too, and particularly whether there is any sense in
asking if plants (along with animals) might also be Œgood to act¹. The
botanical metaphor of Œbase¹, Œbranch¹ and Œtip¹ animates the Œorigin
structures¹ of many if not most societies of the Austronesian world. Less
attention has been directed at indigenous elaborations of base-branch-tip in
other cultural domains of the region. This seminar traces such ramifications
through numerous dimensions of the Trobriand culture based partly on new
ethnographic data collected at Omarakana village, the home of the Tabalu
Paramount Chief. I argue that the recursiveness of base-branch-tip across
contexts is fractally structured ­ borrowing a notion from chaos theory.
Here the production of Œfruit¹ from every categorical Œtip¹ becomes the
condition or Œbase¹ for further transformations. In this way, the
Austronesian botanical metaphor serves as the cultural template for a
variety of processes including human social action ­ what I term Œaction
scenarios¹. Re-examining several Trobriand cultural contexts in this manner
sheds new interpretive light on many topics of long-standing anthropological
interest (e.g. the production, display and exchange of yams and other
values, the classification of village and garden spaces, human procreation,
the relation of dala Œsubclan¹ to valu Œvillage¹, and kula and sagali
mortuary exchange). In particular, I suggest that the base-body-tip-fruit
scenario structures human agency as it is understood by Trobriands, thereby
providing a theoretical alternative to Munn¹s (1986) phenomenological
treatment of value transformations in the northern Massim.

All welcome.




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