In Wamira, food is exchanged at political feasts in a highly symbolic and carefully coded way. Only bundled taro, with their regenerative stalks attached (symbols of men’s virility that hold the power to shame), can be used strategically to increase and manipulate status. Thus when
relationships between men are discussed, only taro can speak the appropriate language. In social feasts the messages communicated are less political. Statements are about amiability, solidarity, and cooperation among group members. Any food (other than the symbolically potent political food diwara) can be used because it is the sharing of food, not the symbolic value of the food itself, which imparts the message. On such occasions loose taro—or rice—can be used to express social concerns. Taro is such a potent symbol in Wamiran society precisely because it can play both roles. Its multiplicity of functions undoubtedly has contributed to its endurance against the obstacles of an inhospitable environment and, more recently, of introduced changes.
My original question concerned choice between traditional and imported foods. It appears that choice is determined primarily by the type of feast being held and the messages expressed within it. For Wamirans, the decision is rational and is independent of such factors as the availability of money or imported food, factors analyzed by other authors (Bindon 1988; and Sexton 1988). Defying their inhospitable environment, and despite their access to cash and imported foods, Wamirans have chosen to continue their arduous cultivation of taro. They persevere because taro is more than a nutritional morsel. It is a crop with which men identify and to which they attribute an entire range of symbolic and political meaning.
This conclusion about the necessity of exchanging taro during Wamiran political feasts has practical value for planners of development and for policy makers. Food is particularly affected by change in developing Pacific countries. Policy makers are often in the position to mandate different methods of land allocation, to suggest new agricultural technologies, and to introduce cash crops. The complex questions of agricultural change must take into consideration the importance of certain traditional foods for the people concerned. In this instance, developers must consider the sociopolitical role that taro plays in some areas of the Pacific (or yams in other regions) if they are to encourage true independence for developing nations rather than make countries dependent on cash, imported food, and outsider’s (often exploitative) ideas about development.
Encouraging Pacific Islanders to depend upon cash and imported foods may invite more than an economic shift from self-reliance to dependency.
It may simultaneously undermine their sociopolitical systems. If Wamirans were to replace taro with imported foods, for example, they would be stripped of their main symbol of male identity and their
primary vehicle for political communication. The replacement of taro with purchased food would force Wamirans to define themselves and their relationships in terms of a symbol—money—devised and controlled by Westerners. Wamirans often have commented to me, “We are taro people, but- where you come from people are money people.” If a total shift from “taro people” to “money people” were to take place, as some developers might wish, the result would be dependency in two realms: the economic and the symbolic. To separate Wamirans from their taro would have effects as far-reaching as ridding Westerners of their money.
NOTES
1. The research upon which this article is based was conducted during two field trips to Wamira, one from June 1976 to March 1978, the other from August 1981 to March 1982. I am very grateful for the generous support of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Institute for Intercultural Studies, which made the research financially possible. Those who truly enabled the research to flourish, however, were the Wamirans. I thank those Wamiran friends who patiently and magnanimously helped me with my work, especially the people of Inibuena hamlet who continually included me in their feasts. My deepest gratitude goes to Alice Dobunaba, Aidan Gadiona, and the late Sybil Gisewa for being my family during the two-and-one-half years that I lived with them.
2. In Papua New Guinea, only the Port Moresby area and the Markham Valley suffer from an equivalent lack of rainfall.
3. For specific details on the irrigation system see Kahn 1984.
4. Figures are based on several surveys I conducted at the Dogura trade store in 1977 and 1982.
5. Wamirans do not verbally articulate the fact that there are two different types of feasts. Yet the fact that at each feast the message was further stressed by short speeches indicates that they are conscious of the symbolic content of the food presentations.
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