“we feed our father”: paternal nurture among the Sabarl of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Among matrilineal peoples in Papua New Guinea, power symmetries and asymmetries, with their bases in indigenous models of gender and generation‐based relations, are often revealed in the way paternal nurture is conceptualized and the way people act in relation to it. In the case of the Sabarl, these relations are marked in “paths” of symbolic action and embodied concretely in the movement of ritual foods and objects featured in affinal exchanges. The ritual action and exchange scene is especially elaborate and circumscribing at death, when the contribution of males to the reproductive process is formally acknowledged. The position of males within the matrilineal system is examined here in relation to the larger theme of societal and cultural continuity, [ceremonial exchange, matrilineal systems, mortuary symbolism, Papua New Guinea]