After the ‘Raskol’ Feast

Abstract

Youths’ alienation from both the exchange networks of their kin and the wage economy in urban Papua New Guinea depletes their spirit and will, thereby challenging that aspect of personal identity which establishes their relations to others. Their thefts, violence and gluttony exceed conventional habits of consumption and distinguish many youth as ‘rascals’ (in Tok Pisin, raskols), who have ‘no shame nor respect’ ( nogat sem). In this article I analyse the practice of excessive consumption in light of the ethos of sem amongst kin in village mortuary feasts and amongst friends in urban settlements, thereby showing that nogat sem approximates the condition of alienation in Melanesia. By assessing consumption theory in light of its ability to account for alienation, I conclude that practices of consumption not only produce and reproduce mutually recognized hierarchical relations, but also fracture those relations and dismember the actors’ identities.