Pigs,
Politics and Social Change in Vanuatu
William F. S. Miles
Northeastern University
Pigs have long held
great symbolic import for the people of Vanuatu, a sprawling
archipelago 1,000 miles northeast of Australia. In most of the
indigenous, small-scale communities which comprised traditional
Vanuatu society, pig ownership and pig killing conveyed status,
wealth, and informal power. Such rituals were the sole measure
of social standing and political rank. In this study, I show
how the cultural valuation of an animal, in this case the pig,
can evolve as a society undergoes socio-economic development,
and also how it can be used to foster nationalistic, partisan,
and other political ends. I show how competing nationalist leaders
used pig symbolism in their struggle to create a unified national
identity for varying island groups, and how even today, local
leaders derive their legitimacy through the manipulation of
traditional animal rites.
In 1991, after ten years of incarceration, Jimmy Stevens was
released from prison. Stevens still had four and a half years
to serve on his sentence, but he was ailing. The very same government
leader who had originally called for Stevens' conviction now
summoned him, still in his prison blues, to explain the terms
of his release. Among other stipulations, the official, an ordained
minister, intimated that he expected Jimmy to deliver over twenty
pigs. Responding to Jimmy's protests that he did not have the
means to gather such a large quantity of swine on his own, the
official promised to provide government assistance so that Jimmy's
son could do so. Stevens was more than happy to comply with
this arrangement (personal communication, August 18, 1991).
The government official who proposed this unusual deal was Father
Walter Lini, an Anglican priest and prime minister of the Pacific
island-nation republic of Vanuatu. Jimmy Stevens was a customary
chief, founder of the traditionalist Nagriamel movement and
leader of a secessionist movement at the time of Vanuatu's independence
in 1980. It was for his acts of political rebellion in 1980
that Stevens had, at Lini's behest, been imprisoned for a full
decade.
Pigs have long held great symbolic import for the people of
Vanuatu, a sprawling archipelago 1,000 miles northeast of Australia.
In most of the indigenous, small-scale communities which comprised
traditional Vanuatu society, pig ownership conveyed status,
wealth, and informal power. In a subsistence, cashless society,
pigs were the sole medium by which social significance was measured.
Culture contact in Melanesia throughout the last 150 years greatly
eroded much of indigenous custom, however, and money, often
tied to politics, increasingly came to supplant pig ownership
as the relevant index of wealth and power. Nevertheless, as
the above compact between Vanuatu's prime minister and his erstwhile
nemesis underscores, pigs still possess significant political
capital, even to the point of facilitating national reconciliation
between ardent unionists and former secessionists.
Research on the cultural and political uses of animal symbols
tends to be historically static, examining the nature and place
of a particular animal symbol during one particular time (Shanklin,
1985). A smaller body of research focuses on the biological
(Davey, 1994), ecological (Harris, 1966) or cultural (Geertz,
1972) origins of these symbols. While a few researchers have
examined the evolution of animal symbols over time in modern
societies, as in the case of horses (Lawrence, 1985) or primates
(Sperling, 1988), researchers have generally neglected to study
the continuity, or lack thereof, of specific animal symbols
as preindustrial societies undergo change over time.
In this article I show how the cultural valuation of an animal,
in this case the pig, can evolve as a society undergoes socio-economic
development, and also how it can be used to foster nationalistic,
partisan, and other political ends. Indeed, while Rappaport
(1968) has described the importance of pigs in human ceremonial
and social life, his work does not consider the facility with
which pigs can be used as political symbols. Thanks to its ancient
and profound place in the cultural psyche of the Vanuatu people,
the symbol of the pig, in the hands of adroit leaders, helps
transcend disruptive cleavages which have emerged as a result
of political modernization.
The Origins of Vanuatu
Anthropologists believe that the prehistoric origins of the
peoples of Melanesia-- the band of Oceania west of Polynesia
and south of Micronesia-- lie in Southeast Asia. The original
migration to New Guinea probably occurred as long as 30,000
years ago; a secondary migration from New Guinea to the islands
of Vanuatu began 26,000 years later. Less reliable than the
reasons and dates for these maritime migrations was the mode:
the mariners and their families used wooden, dugout canoes which
could transport only the barest of essentials. During these
perilous oceanic treks, pigs (as well as chickens) were crammed
next to people; that sus papensuis was the only mammal to populate
the islands simultaneously with homo sapiens has certainly contributed
to Melanesian man's enduring relationship with it.
Unlike the kingdoms of Polynesia, most polities of Melanesia
never developed centralized political systems or unifying indigenous
languages. Vanuatu is a prime example. Clans evolved in such
social and political isolation from each other that several
mutually unintelligible communities often lived on the same
island. What contact they did have was often antagonistic, culminating
in raiding parties, outright warfare, and triumphal cannibalism.
Social customs, too, were distinctive from clan to clan, island
to island, and region to region.
Though the islands of Vanuatu had been "discovered"
and named by Western explorers in the early 1600s, it was not
until the nineteenth century that Europeans and Australians
began taking an active interest in what Captain Cook had christened
the "New Hebrides." Sandalwood traders, labor recruiters,
and Christian missionaries found the islands rich in trees,
bodies, and souls. Merchants and planters, particularly of French,
British, and Australian provenance, also found reason to put
down stakes throughout the New Hebrides group of islands. So
as to better arbitrate disputes among their nationals, and so
as to clarify the political status of the islands, Britain and
France came to an unusual accommodation by which they would
jointly administer the New Hebrides. The agreement, known as
the Condominium, lasted from 1914 until 1980.
Throughout most of the Condominium, the natives of the New Hebrides
were stateless, powerless, and exploited. During the 1960s and
early 1970s, two parallel movements arose to contest foreign
domination. Nagriamel, led by the unschooled but charismatic
Jimmy Stevens, began as a localized, populist land rights movement
with a strong nativist, anti-modernist, and autonomist tinge.
Father Walter Lini's Vanuaaku Pati (VP), or Our Land Party,
whose leadership came from the emerging English-speaking and
ecclesiastical indigenous elite, was a self-consciously anti-colonial
and somewhat socialistic national liberation movement. Whereas
Jimmy Stevens and Nagriamel claimed ownership over ancestral
land, Walter Lini and the VP demanded outright political independence.
Though their movements' aims were not inherently contradictory,
mutual suspicion came to divide the staunchly indigenous Stevens
from the church-based and Westernized Lini.
What both Nagriamel and the VP did share was a rhetorical recourse
to traditional kastom (custom) as the basis of legitimacy for
their respective movements. Given that no common set of custom
rituals or beliefs applied throughout the archipelago, however,
each movement had to invent, or reinvent, its own version of
kastom. For Nagriamel this was an amalgam of pre-contact rural
communalism and naturalism, as practiced on Jimmy Stevens' native
island of Santo. For Walter Lini and the VP, kastom implied
a Melanesian socialism informed by enlightened and progressive
Christianity. Identity politics lay at the core of both versions
of kastom, and for both, kastom remained an open-ended, vague,
and malleable concept. One symbol of Melanesian identity which
nevertheless brooked all conceptual disparities about kastom
was the pig. (Other symbols of kastom were yams, woven mats
and kava, a beverage, extracted from the root of a tuber plant,
that possessed semi-narcotic properties and was originally reserved
for ritual usage.)
In the lead-up to independence in 1980, Nagriamel, under the
influence of American libertarians and francophile, anti-VP
elements, formally seceded from the rest of the archipelago.
New Guinean soldiers with Australian logistical support helped
the newly established government of Vanuatu to quash the rebellion.
Jimmy Stevens was tried, convicted, and sentenced to fourteen
and a half years' imprisonment for treason. His 1991 release
ended his legal debt to the Republic; but, as Prime Minister
Lini informed him, only a pig-killing ceremony, conducted according
to the tacit rules of kastom, would formally bring the enmity
associated with the Santo rebellion to a close.
The Place of Pigs in Indigenous Vanuatu Societies
In traditional Vanuatu society, pigs confer power. Leadership--
the status of bigman-- is achieved through the accumulation
of pigs, whose ceremonial sacrifice is a means, particularly
in the northern and central islands, to ascending a progressive
scale of chieftainship (graded society). Killed pigs are distributed
and eaten throughout the community, but they are not valued
chiefly for their nutritional or economic benefits: pig worth
is a function not of size or taste but of teeth and sex.
Through a painstaking and protracted process, the lower canines
in a boar's jaw are teased to grow in a circular pattern. This
is accomplished by knocking out the animal's upper canines,
thereby eliminating grinding resistance and providing space
through which the lower canines can grow. So as to protect these
elongated tusks from breakage, the animals are fed by hand.
By carefully nurturing the pig and its teeth, a task which takes
years, the owner is rewarded with a curved tusk. Masters of
the tusk even tease a double circle out of the boar's mouth;
the greatest experts can even cultivate three round turns of
teeth. These are the pigs whose sacrifice, accomplished by a
deft blow to the spot where the snout meets the head, confers
status. The tusks are thereby accrued, and confer the right
to wear other insignia of rank.
In Vanuatu's polygamous societies, pigs were the essential medium
of dowry and pig ownership enhanced men's marital eligibility.
Adultery, otherwise a capital offense, could be mitigated by
pig-giving. In one group in which females predominated, men
unceremoniously traded women for pigs (Harrisson, 1938). Potential
wives were valued in terms of their ability to care for the
household pigs, who themselves usually shared family quarters.
It was not unknown for lactating women to suckle piglets and
for pig-caring to take precedence over child-bearing (Harrisson,
1936a; Jolly, 1994). Understandably, for such women the killing
of pigs was as much a cause for sorrow as for celebration: "women
cry and wail as for an eldest son. Some have loved these pigs"
(Harrisson, 1937, p. 32).
Indeed, the relationship between person and pig is so intense
in the Melanesian context that it has been characterized as
"pig love," worthy of psychoanalytic, and particularly
Jungian, analysis (Jolly, 1984). Pigs are not esteemed as living
beings because they are valued commodities; rather, they possess
material value on account of their intrinsic being. Pigs are
given personal names for reasons that transcend the anthropomorphic
equivalent of pet-naming in Western society: in Melanesia, the
pig is considered to have a soul. Pigs are regarded as family
members, albeit non-human ones (Jolly, 1984)
For Melanesians, identification between person and pig is intense
and is in no way compromised by the periodic ritual obligation
of the former to kill the latter. Indeed, it is the combination
of pig love with death which invests the human-porcine relationship
with such intensity. "Identification with the beast one
has nurtured is stressed in several ways: by caressing the unfortunate
beast while tethered to the stakes, by crooning special songs
about its life, and by sharing a special sacred pudding with
the pig just before its death (a sort of Last Supper?)"
(Jolly, 1984, p. 96).
Human-pig relations also carry strongly gendered overtones:
Since pigs, like humans, are alive and procreate, they can readily
convey the reproductive as well as the productive character
of human existence.... The pig thus embodies the pattern of
relationships between men and women, and between male and female
qualities. (Jolly, 1984, p. 176)
The sexual parallelism inherent in the human-pig relationship
goes beyond the scope of the present paper, except to underscore
the intensity of pig symbolism for Melanesian men and women
and the deeply held place of the pig in the traditional Melanesian
world-view.
Depending on the local political system, all of a village's
pigs and women could officially belong to the bigman (Harrisson,
1936a). Among the Big Nambas on the island of Malekula, pigs
had names where wives did not (Gourguechon, 1977). Female beauty
was believed enhanced by a tooth knock-out ceremony reminiscent
of that performed upon the domesticated boar. Yet on other islands,
women had their own ranking scales and related pig-killing rituals
(Hume, 1985; Rodman, 1981). One group on a northern island traced
its ancestry to a woman born of a sow (Rivers, 1914). Elsewhere,
to the south, another group which believed itself to be descended
from the son of a sow used as its group label the word for calling
pigs. Inter-sexual or hermaphroditic pigs were particularly
rich in symbolic power, with the "whole culture" of
one group revolving around them (Marshall, 1937).
In rituals reminiscent of the North American potlatch, villages
competed with each other for status through a system of mass
pig-exchange and sacrifice. Pig-exchanges were also used to
ratify peace agreements between warring villages. These agreements
put a halt to "payback" killings by substituting a
tusker pig for each unavenged enemy. Among anthropaphagic islanders,
pig sacrifice was associated with cannibalism; and (good) human
flesh is today still likened to succulent pork (Harrisson 1936a;
personal communications). With regard to the most awesome and
power-conferring of all Melanesian practices-- the eating of
killed or captured foes-- pigs thus became surrogates for human
beings. Indeed, "Pig business, with a climax in sacrifice,
became the central theme of life, modifying cannibalism; with
it came equal opportunity for all to ascend the social ladder
of piggery..." (Harrisson, 1937, p. 110).
Similar to the sacrificial lamb or the scapegoat in Old Testament
theology, pigs in Melanesia were killed as penance for taboo
violations that occurred during sojourns in the white man's
world (Harrisson, 1936a). They were needed to celebrate birth
as well as death; and for those who did not give pigs their
due, a special devil awaited in the afterworld (Harrisson, 1937).
Secret societies revolved around them (Rivers, 1914). Pigs could
be paid as tolls to permit passage through a village's land
to the coast; on occasion they were traded for penis-wrappers;
and, as the ultimate goal of plantation labor, tusked pigs were
eventually given a standard monetary value by white traders
(Harrisson, 1936a; Harrisson, 1936b). "Pigs our are life
and our progress. Without pigs we should only exist" (Harrisson,
1937, p. 24).
It is important to stress the group-specific nature of these
pig-related beliefs and rituals. While pigs had relative importance
in virtually all of the indigenous societies which made up the
archipelago now known as Vanuatu, the aforementioned practices
were not universal. Even with regard to pig-killing for rank-taking,
the names of the tusks, the details of the ceremony, and the
actual system of bigman hierarchy change considerably from island
to island and group to group. In some Vanuatu communities, particularly
in the southern islands, bigman hierarchies did not even exist
and pigs lacked the same ritual value, as has been described
above. Not coincidentally, it was in these islands that ranking
in the Christian church came to supplant virtually all other
criteria of indigenous leadership.
Missionization, Nationalism, and Kastom
Just as the specificities of pig importance differed from group
to group throughout Vanuatu, so did Christian missionaries diverge
in their views of indigenous Melanesian society. Accordingly,
they varied in their tolerance for pig fetishes. Presbyterians,
Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses were emphatic
about expunging the most satanic elements of indigenous religion,
and this included pig-related norms of community leadership
and wife-taking. Anglicans and Roman Catholics believed in a
more syncretic process by which Christianity would better "take"
among peoples who did not deem their cultures to be under foreign
evangelical attack. Theology did not operate in a materialistic
vacuum, however; modernization and monetization of Vanuatu society
(spearheaded by Protestant mission-traders and driven by copra-driven
cash cropping) also came to erode the primacy of the pig.
As a national society in Vanuatu emerged in the 1970s, leadership
arose largely among the indigenous Anglican and Presbyterian,
mostly English-speaking, cadres in the Condominium. These were
both ordained clerics and lay but Church-educated civil servants.
(French-speaking, mostly Catholic, leaders also surfaced, but
mostly in reaction to the anglophone Protestants; francophones
advocated a "go-slow" policy on independence.) Thus,
national leadership became a function of education, church prominence,
and mastery of the English language, eclipsing such traditional
and localized criteria of leadership as boar-tusk possession
and frequency of pig-sacrifice.
At the same time, reacting to the alien and Westernizing ethos
that threatened indigenous lifestyles and land claims on his
native island of Santo, Jimmy Stevens' Nagriamel movement strove
to revalidate kastom as a basis for constructing a new polity.
(The movement took its name from two kinds of leaves found in
the jungles of Santo which together created a kind of yin-yang
holistic symbolism). Nagriamel eventually expanded to other
islands in the archipelago, but its core belief system remained
a loose and idiosyncratically interpreted combination of beliefs,
symbols, and rituals familiar to, or created by, Jimmy Stevens
himself. A group of like-minded islanders carved out a settlement
in the "dark bush" of Santo and established an agricultural
community organized around customary and communal principles.
Stevens, whose own lineage was far from indigenous (he was a
métis, a descendent of a Scottish sailor and a Tongan
princess), built up his legitimacy by associating with a traditional
Santo chief and staging annual pig-killing fêtes (Beasant,
1984). In Santo language, he thereby achieved the chiefly rank
of moli. Condominium authorities viewed the success of Nagriamel
and the popularity of Jimmy Stevens with alarm. Stevens eventually
came to play the British off against the French by accepting
the latter's support.
One of the best examples of Stevens' idiosyncratic use of pigs-in-kastom
to achieve political capital occurred in April of 1976. So as
to end a volatile confrontation between francophone Catholic
and anglophone Presbyterian islanders on Santo, Stevens
arranged a kastom ceremony in which the main actors were the
local French and British representatives of the Condomonium.
Stevens had the British government official dressed in a grass
skirt (traditional female garb), while his French counterpart
donned a loincloth (strictly male apparel). Stevens presented
the European couple with a hermaphrodite pig with circular tusks,
which the officials took turns bludgeoning to death. The animal's
innards were then inspected to verify that it was indeed intersexual;
that being the case, the colleagues-in-Condominium brought the
sex organs, tusks, and split carcass to the local capital for
public display.
Stevens' opponents criticized the unorthodox and imaginative
ceremony on customary grounds. According to one critic, true
Santo tradition did not permit such a spectacle. By leaving
the hair on the skin of the pig, claimed another, Stevens had
insulted the officials, who were now bound to avenge the affront
by force. Stevens, for his part, later claimed that by jointly
killing the pig and dividing its halves, the participating couple
were now unknowingly "divorced" and the Condominium
thereby nullified (MacClancy, 1988).
On another occasion, Stevens arranged a reconciliation between
the families of two men, one of whom, incited in part by political
animosity, had killed the other. The reconciliation ceremony
included the exchange of pigs, among other items, and it prompted
this denunciation by scandalized Christian islanders: "You
can't exchange a man's life for one, or two, or three pigs....
Do you think that a PIG can replace one of God's children?"
(MacClancy, 1988, p. 105).
More nuanced than either Nagriamel kastom revivalism or indigenized
Christian fundamentalism was Father Walter Lini's brand of Melanesian
liberation theology. As an ordained and practicing Anglican
minister, Father Lini wholeheartedly accepted church doctrine
on moral and religious issues. Conversion to Christianity of
fellow islanders was a good thing, as was the missionaries'
eradication of such pre-Christian practices as cannibalism,
wife strangulation, and infanticide. At the same time, Lini
believed in the importance of retaining indigenous Vanuatu culture,
such as it had evolved in the previous century and a half. Only
through political independence-- a theological imperative on
its own for the colonially oppressed-- could his people's identity
be preserved. Vanuatu identity, for Lini and his National Party
(later Vanuaaku Pati) comrades, meant an indigenous and authentic
amalgam of Christianity and kastom.
Pigs were indisputably part of this picture, for they figured
prominently in many of Vanuatu's indigenous societies. More
than the Santo-centered Stevens, however, Lini's nationally
minded movement had somehow to synthesize the diversity of practices,
customs, and symbols into a single, archipelago-wide version
of kastom. On some of the islands, this actually meant reviving
customs which had become dormant, if not "reinventing traditional
culture" outright (Mankind, 1982). To the extent that tusked
boars, pig-exchange, and pig-sacrifice could be used to forge
national unity, so much the better.
Walter Lini and Jimmy Stevens-- or, more broadly, the V.P. and
Nagriamel-- were thus in agreement over the value and importance
of kastom. Nor was religion much a factor in their eventual
split. Stevens never overtly repudiated Christianity, and indeed
forged close alliances with Church of Christ and Seventh Day
Adventist communities. What divided them was politics, as aggravated
by external actors: Stevens, egged on by French settlers, officials,
and American investors, demanded autonomy for his Nagriamel
federation; Lini, supported by Britain and Australia, would
accept nothing less than a unified and centralized nation-state.
The outcome was the aborted secession of Nagriamel from Vanuatu,
the death of one of Jimmy Stevens' sons, and Stevens' own long
imprisonment.
Pigs and Independence
During the first decade of its independence, under the helmsmanship
of Walter Lini and the Vanuaaku Pati, Vanuatu pursued a policy
of Melanesian socialism under the rubric of a democratic parliamentary
system of government. Invocation of kastom values and objects
to strengthen national unity was common. Curved pig tusks figured
prominently in official symbols of Vanuatu sovereignty: on the
national flag, the pig tusk envelopes fern fronds (symbols of
peace); on the official emblem it serves as background to a
spear-holding warrior and the country's motto, Long God Yumi
Stanap ("We Stand Before God"); and on the nation's
currency, representations of pig tusks are displayed liberally.
Travellers to the nation's second-largest airport walk between
a giant replica of a pig's tusk and slit gong (statue drum).
Even beer drinkers are reminded of the pig's importance as they
imbibe, for Vanuatu's national brew is called Tuskers!
National arts festivals are important occasions for bringing
together the people of Vanuatu's far-flung islands and allowing
them to exhibit their specific variety of kastom through song,
dance, arts, crafts, magic, and so on. From a political point
of view, even more important is that arts festivals are occasions
to forge a common framework of national kastom. That the opening
ceremony to the festival includes the clubbing to death of a
pig by the president of the republic, bedecked in traditional
regalia, is thus considered only natural; that it was performed
in 1991 by the usually prim, bespectacled, Presbyterian pastor
President Fred Timakata illustrates the accommodation that Protestantism
has come to make with kastom.
In December of that same year, a fierce electoral contest was
fought among a splintered Vanuaaku Pati and the longtime opposition
Union of Moderate Parties (UMP). The campaign featured promises
of free health and education benefits, higher copra prices,
the distribution of bags of rice, and a UMP pledge to bring
television to the nation. The Economist (Pig of an election,
1991, p. 43) reported that the "pig population suffered
a dramatic decline as local 'bigmen' threw feasts to persuade
anyone still undecided."
As a result of that election, Maxime Carlot of the UMP became
prime minister. In several respects, Carlot is the antithesis
to Walter Lini: he is French-speaking and pro-French, holds
no position of religious authority, and espouses progressive
capitalism as opposed to Melanesian socialism. Nor has the UMP
ever attached the partisan importance to kastom that the VP
has. Yet, as prime minister, Carlot has sought like his predecessor
to enhance his legitimacy through kastom symbols and ceremonies.
Shortly after the election, he added a kastom name to his Christian
one; and in his travels to the outer islands Prime Minister
Maxime Carlot Korman has publicly clubbed many a pig, thereby
accumulating traditional chieftaincy titles. In Vanuatu, ceremonial
pig-killing remains good politics.
It is not only electoral politics in which pigs play a role
in modern-day Vanuatu; government officials may use pigs in
the course of regular business. When traditional norms are applied
to contractual matters, however, normative conflict may result.
Witness this account of a government deal gone awry:
The Supreme Court has ordered the Government to pay compensation
of about º100,000 to landowners in Malekula whose property
was damaged when the company building the Hydroelectric Project
ran transmission lines over their land without seeking prior
agreement.... The Minister of Lands...seems to have thought
it enough that an agreement with the chief had been sealed by
the killing of a pig. (British Friends of Vanuatu, 1995, p.
45)
Conclusion: Animal Symbolism and Human Power
Pigs and their teeth are by no means the sole symbol of Vanuatu
cultural identity. Slit gongs, woven mats, and club houses,
along with kava and yams, are also prominent in Vanuatu kastom.
Sows and boars are, however, the only animals in the panoply
of Vanuatu ritual. This alone imparts a special power to them.
Nearly human according to traditional cosmology, their symbolistic
recuperation by modern, nation-building statesmen is more powerful
than that accomplished by artifacts derived from plant, wood
or fiber.
Even though Christian teachings have supplanted many indigenous
ones, including a porcine-derived genesis, the pig still resonates
profoundly in the Vanuatu psyche. Natural phenomena remain subject
to supernatural interpretation, and local leaders derive authority
from their manipulation of traditional rites. "The people
of Ambae are greatly relieved [that the nearby volcano is cooling
down]," it was reported recently, "but what perplexes
them now is whether it this is just a natural phenomenon or
whether it is the happy result of a ceremony in which the West
Ambae chiefs had sacrificed a pig...in a bid to appease the
god Tagaro who, they believed, had stirred up the volcano after
being angered by the abusive behavior of some local louts"
(British Friends of Vanuatu, 1995, p. 45). Leaders prominent
in the modern sector still seek status in the traditional one:
such was the case of Vanuatu's Director of Basic Education who,
in 1995, made island history by killing one hundred pigs-- including
ten double circle tuskers-- on a single day (p. 46).
From village to capital, as circumstances and era demanded,
leaders have successfully used the pig to promote personal authority,
community solidarity, national identity, and political reconciliation.
Despite their very conflicting politics and divergent interpretations
of kastom, Jimmy Stevens, Walter Lini, and Maxime Carlot-- customary
chief, liberation theologian, and francophone politician-- have
all understood how to parlay pigs into political capital. This
animal, more than any other living icon, has helped join pre-contact
tradition with modern day politics.
The Vanuatu experience demonstrates the power of animate symbols,
at least in divided and developing polities in search of unity.
Customs involving animate symbols, more so than inanimate ones,
may play a vital role for societies in transition whose members
have totemistic attitudes toward other species and longstanding
beliefs in their cultural importance. This is not surprising;
as Wilson (1984) has noted, people frequently turn to animals
for symbolic expression, because animals are inherently more
interesting than are inanimate objects.
Prior research has found that humans selectively transform animals
into symbols that their behavior and/or bodies suggest (Lawrence,
1997). Totemization of the pig does not in and of itself fully
explain its politicization. Future research might examine why,
in Vanuatu and elsewhere, specific animals are chosen to achieve
political ends.
Note
1. Correspondence should be addressed to William F. S. Miles,
Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston,
MA 02115. I wish to express my appreciation to Arnold Arluke,
Kirk Huffman, and two anonymous journal reviewers for their
comments and improvements on a draft of this article.
References
Beasant, J. (1984). The Santo rebellion: An imperial reckoning.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
British Friends of Vanuatu. (1995). "News from Vanuatu."
Surrey, England.
Davey, G. (1994). The role of disease and illness in the perpetuation
of fear of spiders. Society and Animals, 2, 17-26.
Funabiki, T. (1981). On pigs of the Mbotgote in Malekula. In
M. Allen (Ed.), Vanuatu: Politics, economics and ritual in island
Melanesia. Australia: Academic Press.
Geertz, C. (1972). Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.
Daedalus, 101, 1-27.
Gourgechon, C. (1977). Journey to the end of the world. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Harris, M. (1966). The cultural ecology of India's sacred cattle.
Current Anthropology, 7, 51-66.
Harrisson, T. H. (1936a). Living with the people of Malekula.
Geographical Journal, 38, 97-124.
Harrison, T. H. (1936b). The New Hebrides people and culture.
Geographical Journal, 38, 332-41.
Harrison, T. H. (1937). Savage Civilization. London: Victor
Gollancz.
Harrison, T. H. (1938). Living in Espiritu Santo. Geographical
Journal, 90, 243-61.
Hume, L. (1985). Making lengwasa: A women's pig-killing ritual
on Maewo (Aurora), Vanuatu. Oceania, 55, 272-87.
Jolly, M. (1984). The anatomy of pig love: Substance, spirit
and gender in South Pentecost, Vanuatu. Canberra Anthropology,
7, 78-108.
Jolly, M. (1994). Women of the place: Kastom, colonialism and
gender in Vanuatu. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Lawrence, E. (1997a). Hoofbeats and society: Studies of human-horse
interactions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lawrence, E. (1997b). Hunting the Wren. Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press.
MacClancy, J. (1988). Kastom and politics. International Journal
of Moral and Social Studies, 3, 95-110.
Mankind. (1982). Reinventing traditional culture: The politics
of Kastom in Island Melanesia [Special issue]. 13, 4.
Marshall, (1937). The black musketeers. London: William Heinemann.
Pig of an election. (1991, December 14), The Economist, 43-4.
Rappaport, R. (1968). Pigs for ancestors. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Rodman, M. (1981). A Boundary and a bridge: Women's pig killing
as a border-crossing between spheres of exchange in East Aoba.
In M. Allen (Ed.), Vanuatu: Politics, economics and ritual in
island Melanesia. Australia: Academic Press.
Rivers, W. H. R. (1914). The history of Melanesian society.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shanklin, E. (1985). Sustenance and symbol: Anthropological
studies of domesticated animals. Annual Review of Anthropology,
14, 375-403.
Sperling, S. (1988). Animal liberators: Research and morality.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
For
abstracts of all issues, including the most current, click Article
Abstracts
To order Society &
Animals Journal, go to our secure online
ordering page
You
can Search the online issues of Society & Animals, as well
as the entire Society & Animals Forum (formerly PSYETA)
website,
for topics and keywords of your interest:
|