Sister exchange among the Wamek of the middle Fly [microform]
- Bib ID:
- 3287660
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Busse, Mark William
- Description:
- 404 p.
- Summary:
-
This dissertation is an analysis of the custom of seki towam (literally, "to give women") among the Wamek, a Boazi speaking tribe of the Middle Fly Census Division of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. In seki towam, men in opposite moieties marry by exchanging women, preferably their uterine sisters. The dissertation seeks to answer four basic questions: (1) What is being given or exchanged in seki towam? (2) Who is doing the giving or exchanging in seki towam? (3) What are the rules which govern seki towam? (4) What are the consequences of seki towam?Briefly, it is men--brothers, fathers, and mothers' brothers--who exchange women in the Middle Fly.
There is, however, an important difference between the women who are given and the women who are received from the point of view of the men involved: the women who are given are sisters and daughters (i.e., women whose relationships to the men who are doing the giving are based on shared substance) while the women who are received are wives and daughters-in-law (i.e., women whose relationships to the men who are receiving them are based on sexuality and procreation). In addition, both because postmarital residence is uxorilocal and because a groom is expected to perform brideservice for his wife's father, there is a sense in which men are also being exchanged in seki towam.
seki towam is governed by three rules: the rule of moiety exogamy, the prohibition of marriage with close matrilateral kin, and the requirement that a woman be given in exchange for a woman received (whether she is received as a wife from the opposite moiety or as a classificatory sister from another lineage or totemic group in one's own moiety). Because the rules of patrilineal recruitment to moieties and totemic groups are subordinated to the rule of moiety exogamy and to the practice of recruiting outsiders to tribes, moieties, and totemic groups by providing those outsiders with women to use in making marriage exchanges, seki towam results not only in marriage and enduring affinal relations but also in the on going constitution of the tribes, moieties, and totemic groups themselves.
- Notes:
-
- (UnM)AAI8804717
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-02, Section: A, page: 0285.
- Chairman: Donald F. Tuzin.
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1987.
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Cultural
- Other authors/contributors:
- University of California, San Diego
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
Contact us for information about copying.
Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 1987
Copyright status may not be correct if data in the record is incomplete or inaccurate. Other access conditions may also apply. For more information please see: Copyright in library collections.
Request this item
Request this item to view in the Library’s reading room.