Death, Women, and "Value Production": The Circulation of Hair Strings among the Walpiri of the Central Australian Desert

Abstract

Weiner (1981) has provided some stimulating interpretations and hypotheses concerning the relationship between the circulation of goods produced exclusive? ly by women and social reproduction. Comparing Samoa and the Trobriand Islands, she interprets the production and circulation of fine mats as a necessary condition for social reproduction. These fine mats, exclusively made and decorat? ed by women, represent the group's cultural (mythical/historical) heritage, and are recognized as such by the men who say that these mats have more value for them than gold has for white men. Weiner observes that these objects of circulation and alliance return to the original descent line?that of the woman who produced the fine mat?when one of the members of this descent line dies. It is as though the symbolic rupture in the circulation was necessary in order to negate the gap produced by a member's death. At the same time, this symbolic rupture allows the circulation to start again. It guarantees the dead person's rebirth by repeating the cyclic reproduction on which the world view of these societies depends. She (Weiner 1981) interprets these fine mats as the incarnation of women's secret power which, in its symbolic form and its real transmis? sion, acts as a challenge to men's power, without implying a neutralization of the tendency towards male domination or a reduction in men's secular power. Rather, women's potential resistance is seen as necessary, even if it is contrary to the reproduction of the social system in general. In other words, women's role in production and exchange systematically questions the legitimacy that men want to make of their own power. Having carried out two periods of field work in Australia (1979 and 1980) among the Walpiri at Lajamanu (a central desert community), I will try to show here a determining role of Aboriginal women in social reproduction similar to that described by Weiner (1981) for the Pacific Islands women. This can be best understood through analyzing the circulation of hair strings which symbolize a privileged form of exchange among many of the 500 Australian Aboriginal peoples. These strings are not exclusively made by women, but systematically at each bereavement it is the women?according to their kinship relationship with the deceased person?who, more often than men, cut their hair and make strings