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Strathern's Melanesian 'dividual' and the Christian 'individual': a perspective from Vanua Lava, Vanuatu.

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INTRODUCTION

Inhabitants of Vanua Lava, of the Banks Islands group in northern Vanuatu have been in contact with Anglican missionaries since about 1850 (Hillard 1978). (1) The very first Melanesian to be ordained, in 1873, was George Sarawia from Vanua Lava (Sarawia n.d.). The language of the neighbouring Island of Mota was chosen as the language of instruction by the Melanesian Mission in 1931 (Hillard 1978:271). (2) With over 150 years of contact and missionisation, what has happened to customary beliefs on life after death? How have Vanua Lavans engaged with Christian ideas and what effect has this engagement had on notions of personhood?

Melanesians have been described as 'dividual' in contrast to the Western 'individual' (Strathern 1988). Probably the most quoted definition of the Melanesian person can be found in Marilyn Strathern's seminal work The Gender of the Gift:

Far from being regarded as unique entities, Melanesian persons are as dividually as they are individually conceived. They contain a generalized sociality within. Indeed, persons are frequently constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationships that produce them (Strathern 1988:13).

Strathern's argument that 'Melanesians' do not think about social life in terms of the individual versus society has become widely accepted. She has been criticised, however, for comparing 'Melanesian notions of personhood not to the Western reality of personhood but to Western ideology' of individualism (LiPuma 1998:75). Gell suggests, however, that the categories 'West' and 'Melanesia' that Strathern has set in opposition are idealist ones:

The 'Melanesia' of Strathern's discourse ... is not a 'real' place, ... It ... stands for an intellectual project rather than a geographic entity ... Perhaps the best way to think about Strathern's Melanesia ... is [as] the setting for a sustained thought experiment (Gell 1999: 34).

I have chosen the topic of life after death on Vanua Lava to explore the utility of the questions of dividuality and individuality proposed by Strathern and their implication in the engagement with modernity. Kinship certainly clearly demonstrates the themes of dividuality and individuality, but it lacks the complexity and contested quality of issues of life and death. Kinship is a subject of general taken for granted agreement and, while the church uses kinship metaphors to promote unity and cooperation, it is not aiming to contest kinship in the way it does contest local understandings of life and death.

Following Gell's 'user guide' to Strathern, 'Strathernograms' (1999: 29ff) I will briefly outline expressions of dividuality on Vanua Lava in two classical fields of anthropological enquiry, kinship and life cycle rituals, before I turn to people's idea on life after death to examine possible changes to notions of personhood. (4)

EXPRESSIONS OF VANUA LAVAN DIVIDUALITY

On Vanua Lava, descent is reckoned matrilineally. A person belongs to the same venem (subsection or clan of a moiety) as his or her mother. The system can be described as Crow type with Dravidian terminology (Keesing 1975: 148ff). That is, one's mother's sister's children are addressed as one's siblings whereas one's father's sister's children are addressed as one's parents. The mother's brother (or MMB) is, according to kastom, the most important authority. It is he who gives and receives payments at death ceremonies representing the whole venem. Or to use Gell/Strathern: at such an instance his person is a dividual, at the same time including and eclipsing all other venem members and their relationships. The whole venem acts as one person through him; he is the venem.

The second example I would like to use is a life cycle ritual: a wedding. Today, in most parts of Vanuatu two ceremonies are performed, one kastom wedding and one Church wedding. On Vanua Lava the kastom wedding is usually performed first. Otherwise, as one person hinted, if the union is sanctioned by God already why pay the bride wealth? Bride wealth payments are made by the 'side' of the husband to the 'side' of the bride. All family members of the husband contribute money or goods, such as taro, coconuts, bananas, or building materials. These family members (for example the groom's father and his father's sister) are not all of his venem. Still, in this instance they are considered to be on his 'side'. The bride wealth is presented by the husband through his mother's brother to the parents of the bride and her brothers. These persons, again, have received the bride wealth as dividuals because although they have contributed the most to their daughter's 'feeding', many others, related through the classificatory kinship system, have too. Items of the bride wealth are distributed further to all persons that were included by their belonging to the same 'side' and by having existing and past relationships with the bride.

In stark contrast to this is the handling of gifts given at a Christian wedding. Here everybody who comes to the wedding gives a personal present, as an individual, to the couple. Gifts typically are money, soap, matches, clothes, kitchenware etc. Of course there are gifts between individuals in everyday life situations too. But the Church, by performing their own wedding ceremony offers an alternative version of marriage. Here the couple is taken out of their dividual relationships with their kin and put into an individual relationship with God. Thus, the Church can be seen as competing with kastom for 'truth'. When is a couple truly married? The local priest and some devout Christians would...

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