SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

i?8 I Notes to pages 171-89
11. The Bimin-Kuskusmin case is fruitfully compared to the myth of Hainuwele from
Ceram analyzed by J. Z. Smith (1978:304; 1982:96-101), where the incongruity of the encounter
with Europeans and foreign goods is coded by indigenous motifs in mythological narratives.
12. On this performative function see Clooney 1987:672.
References
8. Naturalization of Convention
1. The Saussurean theory that the relationship of "signification" in language is "radically
arbitrary" and that "relative motivation" enters only along the axis of systemic "value" has
received much recent criticism; for a summary see Friedrich 1979.
2. As Summers (1981:119) notes with respect to artistic convention: "Arbitrariness implies
choice and judgment. But the choice of the builder or builders of the first fence is not the
same as the choice of builders who come afterward. The potentially endlessly variable characteristics
of the initial choice are magnified to the point of being qualitatively different from
choices that come afterward; this is because the first formulation defines the concept of a
fence." Cf. Frye 1966:140.
3. For a mild critique of these ideas see Fortes 1983; for a stinging attack see Sahlins
1976b.
4. Elias (1983:230) notes, however, that a yearning for rural, natural life began to permeate
the artistic conventions of the court, as evidenced in the development of landscape
painting.
5. The gradation of court behavior echoes the linkage between social rank and realization
of consumption in ancient Hawaii: "The consumption of this meat is never strictly
profane but is ritualized to different degrees. Moreover, there is a complementarity between
these degrees. In other words, it is precisely the extreme ritualization of the consumption of
pork (as well as all other foods) by the ali'i [chiefs] that makes possible the lesser ritualization
of its consumption by those of inferior rank. Thus the meals of the people of different rank
form an ideal series: closer to the gods, an ali'i of high rank takes the first step in the process
of approaching them, and this step makes all the others possible, whether they are directly
associated (but in a subordinate position) with the ali'i's meal or are separate from it" (Valeri
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