SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

64 I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Transactional Symbolism in Belauan Mortuary Rites I 65
And, finally, mats (or small cash amounts referred to by the same label,
badek) are presented to the widowed husband by his male friends and political
allies "simply out of affection." These become his personal property and are not
directly reciprocated, at least not until subsequent funerals involving these same
male associates, at which time they will be returned.
okdemaol
Cash given as badek thus differs from cash given by a person claiming senior
status to pay the debt of the funeral. Semper (1982:175-76) comments
on the strategic aspect of these prestations at the funeral of high-ranking
titleholders. The two chiefs of Ngebuked village, where he was living, appeared
to be hassled at having to deliver elaborate funeral mats at the rites following the
death of Reklai Okerangel, the chief of powerful Melekeok village. "Krai [one
of the chiefs from Ngebuked] is upset that he has to go to Melekeok, but he must
pay his last respects to the dead chief. That is the custom here in Palau." I also
observed several cases in which titleholders from different villages sent and received
badek (in the form of cash) because the two villages are said to be "related
villages" (kauchad
el beluu). Titleholders who send cash badek are entitled to
receive in return a portion of the funeral feast, even if they do not themselves
attend; called dikesel a rubak, these portions used to be calculated by the graded
division of the pig, but more recently they are simply combinations of rice, sugar,
soy sauce, and instant coffee. 19
The significance of this custom [of omadek] is reciprocity. The money might
be only $25, but it is a badek for me. It is given by a person who has affection
for me. Lots of money arrived this way, perhaps about $400. Now I can use
this money to help pay for the funeral, but this money is different from the
money collected by the okdemaol. That money is just to pay the debt, so it
does a different kind of work. (M)
People keep written records of all the funeral mats they have received, since, as
should be obvious, the complexity of these transactions over a lifetime would
defy even a Belauan's social memory. These transactions also severely challenge
the ethnographer, since the prestations are very numerous, since people often
bring or carry away mats on behalf of others, and since each gift presupposes a
history of prior funerals.
This is a very long-term affair. People definitely remember [who gave mats]. If
they do not recall, and there is no reciprocity [olteboid] to those who once gave
them mats, then they are to be pitied. People are extremely careful about this.
. . . Women are especially skilled at this and rarely make a mistake. (M)
We are now in a position to appreciate the semantic motivation which connects
the word badek "funeral mat" and the word bladek
"ancestral spirit." The
infixed -/- signals the state resulting from the operation or instantiation of the
thing referred to in the base form, so that an ancestral spirit is an entity which
is literally constructed through the reciprocal exchange of funeral mats among
kin of the deceased. And conversely, the social groups brought into high definition
at funerals are perpetuated under the protective, generative guidance of this
collectivity of ancestral spirits (cf. Poole 1984:192). This analysis enables us,
further, to see that the correlation between the social rank of titleholders and the
ritual elaboration of their funerals is not simply a matter of conspicuous distribution,
since a high-ranking person requires more expanded effort of social cooperation
to construct him or her as a major ancestral spirit.
The second transaction that comes to a conclusion at the divination-gravepaving
rite is the distribution (called mengesiuch after the word for turtleshell
tray) of funeral goods to the spouses of men who have labored for the past week
to ensure a constant supply of food for the kin of the deceased and for visiting
mourners. As was explained above, this presentation involves various storebought
goods useful in food preparation; to these are added more traditional
items such as female valuables (principally, turtleshell trays). Although this presentation
of funeral goods to wives of men in payment for food and service follows
exactly the directionality of normal affinal exchange, there is reason to believe
that this is not the way people try to categorize the exchange in the funeral
context. First, it should be recalled that the main axis of affinity activated by a
funeral is the bond between husband's house and wife's house, not that between
men of these two houses and the houses of all in-married women. As one man
explained to me, there are really two important categories of people participating
in funeral rituals, those "who belong at the sorrowful event" [ngar er a tia el
chelbuul) and the spouses of men, who clearly are viewed as peripheral servers
entitled to payment for their efforts. Second, the many overt gestures of reciprocity
and cooperation between "sides" of this main affinal axis suggest that the
ritual as a whole attempts to downplay this inevitable source of division. Everyone
talks in consanguineal language (tekoi er a klauchad), saying that "we are
all children of the deceased" or "we are all mourning the loss of our mother/
father." 20
Taken together, these two points help to explain what might seem to be a
peculiarity of the symbolic dimension of mengesiuch prestations, namely, that in
contrast to the norms of affinal exchange, food (here, ngeliokl) passes against
funeral goods (here, klalo and toluk) rather than against male valuables. In other
words, the fact that these women are given female valuables and other kitchen
equipment rather than objects which would emphasize the affinal character of
the relationship points to the conclusion that villagers conceptualize mengesiuch
payments by analogy to friendship-service gifts—women to women—rather than
by analogy to affinal payments of orau valuables—men to men. (Recall that women
give each other female valuables when they help each other in various domestic,
agricultural, or customary tasks, and that a man gives male valuables to his wife's
brothers.) This is an excellent example of the power of ritual objects to convey
their inherent symbolic meaning so that the context itself is transformed, here