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Interethnic relations and transcultural kinship among the Wampar (Papua New Guinea)

This research project focuses on interethnic relations, kinship and transcultural kinship among the Wampar in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. A good deal of anthropological research has been conducted on interethnic marriages, but few projects have examined in depth the bi- or multicultural kinship usually entailed by such marriages. We will research not only the relations between interethnic couples and their affines, but also the social situations of their offspring and the organisation of relations they maintain with distant kin: What notions of kinship do such couples and their children have? How do they relate to their kindreds and use their kinship relations? Interethnic offspring often grow up with different kinship systems, including different terminologies, which organise rights and obligations across descent lines (patri-/ matrilineal or cognatic) in contrasting, perhaps conflicting, ways. Individual decisions about which side and which relations to emphasize or intensify can be expected to be contingent on a range of factors, but the opportunities and difficulties of meeting the expectations of, and obligations to, the different sides are clear. The sometimes complicated situation of transcultural kindreds has consequences for the inheritance of goods, land rights, and group membership – and may be important for the accommodation of pre-existing legal systems to contemporary settings.

Wampar lands are close to town, and parts of the population live in a semiurban setting; They have many and varied social relations with members of other ethnic groups. Extended anthropological fieldwork, carried out in several different villages, has provided substantial longitudinal data on interethnic marriages upon which the current research will expand; it includes three interrelated sub-projects:

1. „Transcultural kinship among the Wampar in Gabsongkeg village“ (B. Beer)
2. Oral traditions and linguistic indicators of interethnic relations and transcultural kinship past and present“ (H. Fischer)
3. „Childhood and transcultural socialisation“ (D. Bacalzo Schwörer)

Kinship is central to individual and group identities as well as to boundaries between social collectives. Kin relations that transgress such boundaries have the potential to change them. Transcultural kinship will be investigated not only as the sum of individual relations but also in its relevance to political and legal issues relating to the maintenance or dissolution of social boundaries. Conflict between established legal principles is planned to be the focus of a follow-up project. Transcultural kinship is not only relevant for legal systems of societies like the Wampar, but also in industrialized societies, for example in conflicts about alimony, immigration laws, naming practices, adoption and inheritance law.

Anthropology of the senses: empirical research on smell, taste, and touch

Since the early 1990s, interest in the formation, use and meanings of the senses (as well as relations among them) has grown in anthropology. Talk of a 'sensory revolution' (Howes 2006) might, however, be thought premature given how little substantive empirical work has so far been done. Of the influential publications that have appeared in this literature, several have focused on Melanesia, notably, Steven Feld's Kaluli acoustemology (1990) and David Howes' comparison between Massim and Middle Sepik ways of sensing the world (2003). David Howes and The Concordia Sensoria Research Team have focused on variations in the sense hierarchies of different societies. This approach has been criticized by Tim Ingold (among others) for “its naturalisation of the properties of seeing, hearing and other sensory modalities, leading to the mistaken belief that differences between cultures in the ways people perceive the world around them may be attributed to the relative balance, in each, of a certain sense or senses over others.” (Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill p. 281 [London, New York: Routledge. 2000]).

Building on the notion of a sensorium, understood as a set of senses inflected by and used within contexts defined by specific cultural meanings, the following central problems, topics and questions emerge as foci for further discussions:

1. Is it possible to speak of how “a culture senses the world” (Howes) if age, gender and specific situations condition the way senses are developed and used?
2. Sensorial experiences are not stable across individuals nor (for a given individual) across situations; they are often transformed by context and synaesthesia, context dependent, and heterogenous.
3. A “sense” should not be thought of as a clearly bounded entity. Senses interact with one another (drum beats, for example, are sometimes felt as well as heard and one might experience seeing something sacred as a form of touch) and might be transformed by particular circumstances, for example, in rituals.
4. Our senses are not merely anatomical features or “groups of receptors”, but constitute an active engagement with the world.
5. Our senses come into being through culturally mediated processes. The way children learn to use their senses is of central interest for the ongoing and planned research projects.
6. Emic and etic descriptions of the senses must be treated very carefully. The taste of hot chilli, for example, is described by biologists as a perception mediated by pain receptors, while it is classified in many local contexts as one “taste” among others.
7. Often the senses that are not involved in an experience are as important as those that are. Blindfolding or darkness in rituals, for example, gives the other senses a different priority and decisively affects the experience of a given setting.
8. In many ethnographic contexts, the senses are central media of communication with spirits, human beings and the environment.
9. The ethnographer's problems in learning different ways of sensing and understanding, and in translating sensual experiences are central to an anthropology of the senses.

The project includes research on the senses in the Philippines (Visayas) and among the Wampar in Papua New Guinea (B. Beer) and ongoing research by Yi Chen, "Taste and food classification among Chinese living in Germany"

“Research focus Wampar”

The Wampar (neighbours call them “Laewomba”) are a language group occupying the area of the middle Markham River in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. They were first mentioned in reports of German gold miners and colonial officers in the beginning of the 20th century. After peaceful initial contacts with the medic-ethnographer, Richard Neuhauss, and missionaries of the “Neuendettelsauer Mission” in 1909, a mission station (Gabmadzung) was built in 1910/11. Richard Neuhauss' „Deutsch-Neu-Guinea“ (1911) contains early photographs and some ethnographic information on the Wampar. The missionaries wrote reports, printed story books on Wampar (Panzer 1917) and left several unpublished texts written in the 1930s. The last-mentioned stimulated Hans Fischer’s interest and led to his conducting anthropological fieldwork among them from 1958 to the present.

The usual pattern in ethnographic research has involved a single anthropologist investigating a specific problem in one ethnic group for a limited time. “Research Focus Wampar” has been developed as a reaction to this ethnographic approach. Our research does not pose one overarching question, theoretical orientation or definite time frame. Several anthropologists conduct research in different villages of one language group over a long time period. Results complement and control each other by revealing cultural continuity and similarities as well as differences between villages and local groups. Some of these, such as the extent of interethnic relations local groups are involved in, are relevant to longer and short term relevant processes.
The intention is for anthropologists differentiated by gender, age, and anthropological education, with a broad range of research questions to work in the same or different villages, so that different – sometimes contradictory – conclusions can emerge. Restudies and long-term research mean that time is also a dimension of comparison. This approach encourages discussion of research results and a better understanding of methods, sources and local heterogeneity. The Wampar, like most other ethnic groups, were and are not isolated, and interethnic contacts and relations, and integration into the state and church organisations are taken into account. Sociocultural change, including the disintegration of aspects of culture as well as continuities can be understood and explained.

Hans Fischer, as mentioned, began fieldwork in Papua New Guinea in 1958, when he visited several Wampar villages, but conducted fieldwork at that time mainly in villages in the lower Watut, where Wampar went as missionaries. He conducted his first long bout of fieldwork in Wampar territory in Gabmadzung in 1965, and then again in 1971/72, 1976, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1997, 1999/2000, 2003/04. He also made short term visits to Gabsongkeg village. His research was on various topics such as settlement and household organization, kinship, language and oral traditions, and material culture including, for example, string figures.

Heide Lienert did fieldwork as MA student in Ngasawapum village on marriage and kinship. She returned for short time periods to Ngasawapum in 1984, 1994, and 2002.

Christiana Lütkes, together with her husband Piotr, did fieldwork in Tararan village in 1993. Her PhD research on cultural and social organisation of work has been published along with several articles on related topics.

Accompanied by her daughter, Rita Kramp did a PhD research on family planning in Gabantsidz village in 1994/95, the results are published in a monograph (Kramp 1999)

Bettina Beer did (for part of the time together with her husband Hans Fischer) research on interethnic relations and the senses in 1997, 1999/2000, 2002 and 2003/04 in Gabsongkeg village.

The student Paulina Reimann studied children’s play and games in context of a fieldwork practice in 2002.

In 2002 Juliane Neuhaus did research for her PhD on village courts and legal pluralism in Munun village. She is in the final process of writing up results for her thesis “Legal Pluralism and the challenges of state efficiency: Ethnography of the Local State in the Markham Valley, Papua New Guinea.”