Abstract
The public masquerade I call the “Gaingiin Society” consists of ranked spirit-masks which afford men a measure of veiled agency in village space. Divided into seven named age-grades, each one initiated its junior grade into its mask when they fulfilled certain obligations. The most senior masks used to be exchanged in return for younger men’s wives’ sexual services. In 1988, money was substituted for sexual intercourse during a grade-taking rite. This substitution took place in the broader context in which modern tokens of value, such as fiberglass boats and outboard motors, have replaced archaic forms of Murik material culture, like outrigger canoes. The semantic extensions of Murik meaning that some of them have received—such as cars being called canoes—give voice to a fairly equivocal dialogue in which men’s alienation has doubled.
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Lipset, D. (2017). Money and Other Signifiers. In: Yabar. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51076-7_6
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