Abstract
AbstractMarshall Sahlins described divine king forms for a wide range of societies from Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, among others. In this article, I document a divine king form among the Fuyuge people of the Papuan highlands, revising my previous understanding of this powerful figure. At the same time, I argue there is an inextricable connection between Sahlins's theory of divine power and Marilyn Strathern's model of Melanesian gift exchange: both operate according to distinct ideas of otherness. The capacity to engage in transaction derives from cosmological sources while evidence of cosmological power is provided by the ability to engage in transactions with others in effective and powerful ways. More generally, I argue that conventional Melanesian figures of big‐men, great men, and chiefs are all versions of the alterity of power in related political forms; each instantiates the mutual relations between cosmological and transactional otherness.
Highlights
What kind of king? When I first conducted fieldwork in the Papuan highlands, I was told one of the men in the area I lived was like a king
Some of the younger men said this to me in Tok Pisin: Em olsem king,1 he is like a king
Sovereignty is embodied and transmitted in the native woman, who constitutes the bond between the foreign intruders and the local people’ (Graeber & Sahlins 2017: 6)
Summary
Marshall Sahlins described divine king forms for a wide range of societies from Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, among others. I document a divine king form among the Fuyuge people of the Papuan highlands, revising my previous understanding of this powerful figure. I argue there is an inextricable connection between Sahlins’s theory of divine power and Marilyn Strathern’s model of Melanesian gift exchange: both operate according to distinct ideas of otherness. I argue that conventional Melanesian figures of big-men, great men, and chiefs are all versions of the alterity of power in related political forms; each instantiates the mutual relations between cosmological and transactional otherness
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