Sea-going canoes for overseas trade are also produced on Budibudi (Laughlan Islands). In the context of myth, depiction of such cycles commonly represents an " original " fabrication : a transition from non-human modes of existence to the human mode in which displacement and reproduction of elements can continually take place, i.e., in which existence can be "fabricated" (cf. I take these operations upon the fire to exemplify "fabricating" processes in the sense intended here : separated from its matrix in the sun (and subsequently the jaguar's house), the fire shifts organisational level as it is changed from sun to jaguar fire to human fire. Fire is detached from its fixed matrix in the sun, moved through a medial stage as the jaguar's single log of fire, and finally generalised through man's capacity to make fire, divide and reproduce it (pp. Turner argues that the "detachment" and "generalisation" of fire constitute a fundamental process worked out in the narrative. d.) in his important analysis of the Kayapo Jaguar myth are relevant to the general model I am suggesting here. In the present article, I do not deal directly with Gawan spells as modes of reconstructing the object world, although I refer to them in connection with certain aspects of canoe production.Ģ. Bourdieu's (1975) recent, stimulating discussion of French high fashion considers labelling, signatures and other verbal processes as revaluations that change the socio-symbolic nature of an artifact. In a previous paper (Munn 1971), I examined Trobriand magic as a constructive process a similar approach was suggested by Tambiah (1968). I would also like to express my appreciation to the Gawan people for their help.ġ. I am grateful to the National Science Foundation for supporting funds for both trips. Fieldwork on Gawa was carried out in 1973-1974 (twelve and a half months) and 1975 (two months). * The present article is a revised version of a paper presented in the Art and Anthropology colloquia at Harvard University, 1975. Since production forms the grounds of exchange, we may speak of each mode of conversion as constituting a different plane, that of exchange representing Gawa, an island of some 445 people in the northeast Massim region of Papua- New Guinea, is one of the main producers of seagoing canoes (waga) in the area, and an important link in the Kula trade ring.3 I argue that to understand what is being created when Gawans make a canoe, we have to consider the total canoe fabrication cycle which begins in production with the conversion of raw materials into a canoe, and continues in exchange with the conversion of the canoe into other objects. In the present paper, I examine Gawa canoes from this perspective. Fabrication seen in this way, does not end with technological construction, but consists of the total cycle of conversions effecting significant changes in an object. "Fabrication" taken in this broad sense has certain generic features : shifts of matrix or context are made (elements are separated from one context and entered into another), and shifts of organizational level ("new" objects or elements reformulate primary ones on another level).2 This view of fabrication sets the stage for a study of making processes not simply as, for instance, technological construction, but rather as developmental symbolic processes that transform both socially significant properties or operationalĬities of objects, and significant aspects of the relations between persons and objects, between the human and the material worlds. Man, as Marx (1961 : 102) put it, "sees his own reflection in a world which he has constructed." It is necessary, however, to expand the notion of construction to include not simply the physical reshaping of material media, but also verbal operations such as magical spells1 and other modes of conversion such as exchange. The treatment of the object world as a " potential for making something else out of what is given" (Munn 1971) is a characteristic feature of human orientation. The Spatiotemporal transformations of Gawa canoes.
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