Social Body and Icon of the Person

A Symbolic Analysis of Shell Money Among the Wodani, Western Highlands of Irian Jaya

Bibliographic Data

ID2467995
AuthorsStéphane Breton (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume26
Issue3
Pages558-582
Publication date1999-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1999.26.3.558
OpenAlexW2099848869
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited35

The Wodani of Irian Jaya describe shell money as an immortal person, endowed with a human anatomy. In the context of matrimonial and homicide compensations, shell money pays for the different parts and organs of the person, thus symbolically transforming the bride or the victim into a composite body. Each part is ascribed to one or the other parent's procreative agency. The patrilineal organs are compensated for with the most valued shells. By fragmenting the person into hierarchized elements, the payment does not produce individual pieces but social components, distributed among patrilineal clan members in monetary form. In payments, shells are said to be eaten by their recipients, so that the clan depleted by the loss of a daughter or a son is symbolically reconstituted. The clan is represented by payments as a totality made out of persons' parts, as a pool of patrilineal organs. Deconstructing persons to form a social whole and recycling elements of this whole to produce the person, shell money is an instrument of social reproduction at the same time as it is the symbol of the perpetuity of the clan body. [shell money, bridewealth, symbolic exchange, Irian Jaya, New Guinea

Archaeology · Clan · Context (archaeology · Economics · Genealogy · Perpetuity · Sociology · Symbol (formal · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Asian Studies and History · History · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies