I’m Sorry, Brother, I Don’t Eat That

Abstract

Places on familiar lands are significant because they are the context for relationships and shared activities. Most of the people with whom a Kaluli person interacts daily, and upon whom he relies for assistance and support throughout most of his life, are those he counts as kinsmen and affines. The way Kaluli carry out relationships with these others in mundane situations of casual visiting, garden planting, and sago making gives their social interaction its particular quality and style. The focus here is not so much on the structure of social relationships—the relative statuses, rights, and obligations obtaining between kinsmen. Rather, the issue is the way Kaluli relationships are conceived and expressed in a system of metaphors and the symbolism of everyday behavior. We are interested in seeing how Kaluli frame and communicate their sentiments about each other and articulate their social relations in actual situations.