Abstract

Abstract This chapter discusses the meaning and experience of fertility among men in Wavio village, East Sepik Province, in northwest Papua New Guinea. In Wavio (a pseudonym), the nature and meaning of fertility to men can be understood by unravelling the meanings behind the commonly heard statement that all men need ‘someone to take their place’. The notion that children are needed to take one’s place refers to men’s location in several regards: in chronological and genealogical time, and in structural and genealogical space. These literal and symbolic senses of one’s ‘place’ pertained to topics such as local concepts of reproductive health and masculinity, the phases of the male life-course, ownership and control of natural resources, and kin-oriented networks of debt and exchange that grew and multiplied over the course of an individual’s life. In Wavio, fertility and sexuality related to the cultural hierarchies among men based in enduring principles of social organization, yet they also reflected an historical context of change over several generations.

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