Women as Unseen Characters: Male Ritual in Papua New Guinea. By Pascale Bonnemère. (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pp. 200, ISBN 0-8122-3789-7)

The societies of Melanesia and their pervasive gender polarizations have occupied a prominent place within anthropological research. Women as Unseen Characters is an anthology of nine essays by male and female anthropologists with special interest in the ritual practices of the peoples of Papua New Guinea. This includes analysis and comparison of the initiation rites, ceremonies, secret societies, social life, customs and attitudes of the Gebusi, Duna, Ipili, Enga, Hagen, Sambia, Ankave, Kamea and Ömie peoples. There is particular emphasis on the Eastern Highland Provinces where a history of violent conflict between groups has produced exaggerated gender divisions. The essays were selected for their dual focus on the participation of women and the concern that such participation has been overlooked in previous scholarship. Drawing on themes discussed by Arve Sørum (1980) and Annette Weiner (1982) in their work on the male rites of the Bedamini and Bimin-Kuskusmin respectively, Bonnemère is critical that the subject of female participation in male rituals and the related issues of Euro- and ethnocentrism as they impact gender have not been explored more rigorously. As a result, Bonnemère and fellow contributors seek both to provide ethnographic evidence that confirms the presence and influence of women on male ritual process and to address why women’s participation in male ritual has remained unacknowledged by anthropologists working in Melanesia. Such work, Bonnemère believes, remedies an “undeniable gap” in the ethnographic literature on New Guinea and in feminist studies. Following the introduction where Bonnemère presents a thorough literature review, contextualizes prevalent issues within the field and draws analogies to similar gaps in ethnographic work on other aboriginal groups, contributors enter into discussions centred on initiation rites, bachelor cults and female spirit cults – the three main types of male ritual. While some essays concentrate on the practices of one particular group, others look at how certain practices compare between groups linked by language and/or geography. Bonnemère, Sandra Bamford, Pierre Lemonnier, Marta Rohatynski and Bruce M. Knauft discuss the participation of “flesh and blood” women in initiation rites; Aletta Biersack and Polly Wiessner write about bachelor cults within the Ipili and their eastern neighbours, the Enga, with regard to participants’ relationships with a female spirit who will protect them from dangers implicit in sexual relations with their future wives; Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart focus on female spiritual cults where contact between male participants and a female spirit and/or objects symbolic of femaleness will restore lost fertility to both land and humans; and Gilbert Herdt considers the inclusion of both real women and spiritual female figures in the initiation rituals of the Sambia. In terms of methodological approaches, Bonnemère and Lemonnier, for example, are able to draw from fieldwork conducted in the 1990s among groups who, because of their remoteness, continue to practice initiation rites with little interference from either church or government. In contrast, Rohatynski writing on the Ömie, had to rely on the recollections of elders within the community to reconstruct initiation rites, since such practices were abandoned in the 1940s. In theorizing their work, Strathern and Stewart recognize a “collaborative model” that functions in opposition to what they perceive as a “male exclusivity model.” In a collaborative model, any intervention by women in ritual practice gives equal importance to the participation of men and women without measuring degrees of presence. Knauft’s analysis centres on the recognition of shifting discourses with regard to the construction of personhood, where until the 1980s, personhood took as its premise the creation of individuals independently of their relationships to other adults. Working within this framework, Knauft perceives that it is therefore not …