SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

68 I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Transactional Symbolism in Belauan Mortuary Rites I 69
with their parents through the continuity of inheritance of these gendered objects,
it also suggests a hierarchical relationship between the subordinated recipients
and their generational superiors (cf. Munn 1970:158).
Now, with the techniques for carving wooden plates a lost art, both male
children and female children receive similar turtleshell trays, although the linguistic
differentiation still remains firm. It is clear that this transgenerational transaction
symbolizes the continuity of maternal kinship, expressed, it must be
noted, by the same objects that are employed in asymmetrical affinal exchanges
with the spouses of men. Given the completely different emotional attachment
found in the maternal bond, however, no one in Belau would confuse the distinct
meaning adhering in these objects functioning in the two disparate social contexts.
And, in contrast to the chiasmic, reciprocal exchange of funeral mats, the
ongall and chesiuch gifts to children are intended to be the permanent, personal
possessions of the heirs. Last, whereas both mats and funeral goods for spouses
of men have undergone substitution by American cash, these intimate forms of
maternal inheritance maintain their attachment to the traditional turtleshell
form.
Conclusion
From the foregoing.analysis, it is clear that both traditional and contemporary
variations in Belauan funerals rites closely parallel the well-documented patterns
of funerals in the Indonesian and Oceanic worlds. 21
We have noted widespread
themes such as the journey of the ghost to a western land of spirits, the
role of mats and cloth in sedimenting the affect of kin, the imposition of silence
and inactivity during the mourning period, the use of mortuary practices to signal
differential social rank, the lengthy period of delay between the burial and
the final settlement of affinal obligations, and the transformation of the dead into
fructifying ancestral spirits. Although these general areal similarities are worth
noting and do aid our understanding of the Belauan case, I think that each society
needs to be studied in terms of specific patterns of intersection involving
kinds of meaningful objects, social roles and groups brought into play during the
ritual, and modalities of transaction or exchange which couple these objects and
these social relations.
objects. Yet we have also seen instances where changes in the character of exchange
media make it nearly impossible for particular symbolic meanings to be
differentiated, especially where one ritual practice adopts an object already associated
with a polar meaning, as in the example of women substituting (male) cash
for (female) kitchen goods. In other words, the vectors of intersection of these
three analytical distinctions cannot be predicted prior to empirical research. In
fact, the assignment of fixed symbolic meaning to objects, the ti plant and turmeric
for instance, may be an indication that these objects have lost_rJie_power
to create social contexts, a power still maintained by male and female valuables.
And, by looking at the funeral data from a diachronic perspective, it is possible
to see how different aspects of the society are intertwined. For example, the
abrupt termination of the practice of burial in front of houses (in favor of community
graveyards) correlates with the increased importance of intervillage affiliative
relations, so that "lateral" rather than "vertical" paths of relationship
contribute to social identity; this lateral expansion also correlates with the inflation
of the importance of spouses-of-men houses. Together these two developments
in turn link up with the gradual severing of Belauan social groups from
their prescribed land parcels (cf. Bloch 1982:212-13). Thus, social identity is
almost entirely a product of customary transactions like the ones described above
rather than, as was the case in the traditional situation, of presupposed territorially
anchored hierarchies. Whereas, in the traditional situation, a person's strongest
claim to status at a given house was to say (actually, to insult) "My mother
is buried here," social status today is roughly calculable by the number of visitors
from affiliated houses who attend a funeral. Thus, the irony is that, despite the
apparent commercialization of funerals and the gradual loss of cosmological
groundings for many of the ritual actions, the mortuary sequence is destined to
play an even greater role in Belauan social life.
But the ethnographic evidence from Belau suggests that it is impossible to
simply read off the understood meaningfulness of exchange events from the presupposed
symbolic meaning of transacted objects. We have seen examples where
identical objects carry different meanings when they are present in social contexts
requiring distinct transactional modes: baskets of taro being both ngeliokl
and chelungel; and, inversely, radically distinct objects, such as mats and cash,
can be categorized as badek for senior men. Clearly, it is the social relationships
themselves which provide the contextual specification of the meaningfulness of