Pigs as Ordinary Wealth

Everywhere you look, in villages or the wilds of New Guinea, you see pigs ( Sus scrofa papuensis ). 1 Alive, they clean up village garbage, work the soil of abandoned gardens and constitute a “food reserve on the hoof” ( Vayda et al . 1961 ). They are exchanged by families or groups to acquire wives, dependants and prestige, but also to compensate for a death or to vie in peaceful gift-giving contests. Once killed, their meat becomes the ceremonial meal par excellence . Far from being a mere source of food, then, pigs are a universal, highly charged symbolic object that stands at the heart of a complex web of social relations.

Economics · Agricultural Economics and Policy