‘I am Still a Young Girl if I Want’: Relational Personhood and Individual Autonomy in the Trobriand Islands

Abstract

In the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, sexuality is valued as a positive expression of relational personhood, registering the efficacy of consensual and pleasurable practice in producing and maintaining social relations. The power of sexuality to demonstrate individual and collective capacity and potential holds particular salience for unmarried young people. This paper draws on my ethnographic research on culture and HIV in the Trobriands to address perduring questions about the locus of individual autonomy in Melanesian sociality, where relational personhood shapes identity and modes of exchange in the moral economy. I focus on the gendered agency of youth sexuality, including the use of kwaiwaga, or love magic, in exercising and controlling desire. The narrative identities of two young women provide the lens through which questions of agency are explored, revealing how the autonomous mind, nanola, is central to understanding the embodiment of social relations, how the power of love magic transfers agency from one individual to another, and how individual assertions and acts are ultimately expressions of situated relationality.

Coping with personhood limbo: Personhood anchoring work among undocumented workers in Italy

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Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality

“…Historically, people attributed conception not to the father but to matrilineal ancestor spirits, emphasised the mother's role in the continuation of the matriline and invoked the shared essence of matrilineal kin (Spiro, 1982; Brindley, 1984). Families exchange marriage gifts, but these do not constitute a bride price and relationships are not framed as men ‘owning’ women (Lepani, 2015). Men give annual harvest gifts to their married sisters and mothers (which also benefit their husbands); in this way, chiefs receive large gifts from their wives’ relatives (Leach, 1971; Malinowski, 1929).…”

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“…Their choice is not about freedom from others, but rather freedom to meet the moral ideal of personhood. Lepani (2015:51) highlights in her work amongst Trobriand Island youth just how young women in the Trobriands, who act autonomously as women, show a 'positive expression of relational personhood'. Individual personhood is made salient, and agency is realized, through 'situated relationality' (2015, 52) akin to pasin bilong luksave .…”

“…Individual personhood is made salient, and agency is realized, through 'situated relationality' (2015, 52) akin to pasin bilong luksave . She thoughtfully applies Thèry's observations about gender: 'being gendered, a man or a woman, gains personal status gained in and by social relations , realised in the actions of which each person is the agent, the object, the beneficiary' (1999, 17 cited in Lepani 2015: 52). 'Being gendered' assumes an autonomous choice for that action and, in turn, that action is witnessed and reinforced by others (Strathern 1988) through social relations and social processes.…”