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3 Webs of Interaction Human Beings, Other Beings, and Many Things All webs of sociocultural interaction, whether between oceanic islands or between islands and continents, begin with face-to-face relationships between at least two human beings or nonhuman beings and other “things” who are embedded and act in a given social and cultural milieu. Relationships between human actors begin at home, within the residential compound of the household. As individuals mature and grow to assume increased responsibility in society, their network or web of relationships will expand beyond the confines of the homestead or village and, for some individuals, into far-flung regions, not to mention those who will leave their natal settlement for good. Throughout their life cycle, humans will keep changing their web of social relations ; thus their personal identities will also change accordingly. Ideas and perceptions about self in relation to other beings and things—native philosophies of “being” in the cosmos—lead to distinct ways in which persons are constructed and thus condition the ways in which interactions are effected (Fowler 2004). Personhood as a state of being, therefore, becomes an important frame of reference , a theoretical approach to explore and inform about the nature of interactions between human beings and other things in the cosmos—in particular, the cemí icons. In any face-to-face social interaction between human actors, some ties or interconnections are strongly developed, maintained, and encouraged to persist, if not expand, over the long run, whereas others are weakly developed, ephemeral, and may contract, dissipate, or disappear over time.The motivations driving human actors toward particular kinds of face-to-face relationships are, as might be expected, tremendously diverse. Humans place different values on things and on relationships and rank them accordingly. These ranked values are thus what motivate different behaviors and social relations (Graeber 2001). The motivation that rests on such a set of values, however fugitive a concept it might be, is nevertheless the driving force that propels humans into action (or inaction) toward (or away from) establishing and maintaining, expanding, or even closing the webs of relations. What forces and circumstances motivate the spread of highly valued cemí artifacts is one of the fundamental questions to be addressed in later sections of this book. How the humans and other beings and things are valued, as David Graeber (2001) has eloquently elaborated in his book Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, is 44 Chapter 3 what motivates attitudes and behaviors in all social relationships, most particularly in the Maussian context of giving and receiving and in the Marxist context of production and consumption (i.e., inalienable or alienable things or acts rooted in values). Motivation, whether voluntary or coercive, occasional or persistent, drives positive and negative relationships, be these spurred by kin-based gift reciprocity (or avoidance), by descent and martial alliances, by perceived economic gains, by advantageous political maneuverings, or by threats of conflict and aggression. Graeber said that value is: the way people represent the importance of their own actions to themselves: normally, as reflected in one or another socially recognized form. But it is not the forms [structures] themselves that are the source of values. Compare, again, [Marilyn] Strathern. Because of her Sassurean starting point, she sees value as a matter of “making visible”: social relations take on value in the process of being recognized by someone else. According to [Nancy] Munn’s approach, the value in question is ultimately the power to create social relations ; the “making visible” is simply an act of recognition of a value that already exists in potential. Hence, where Strathern stresses visibility, Munn’s language is all about “potencies,” “transformative potential,” human capacities that are ultimately generic and invisible. Rather than value being the process of recognition itself, already suspended in social relations, it is the way people who could do almost anything (including creating entirely new sorts of social relation) . . . assess the importance of what they do, in fact, when they are doing it.This is necessarily a social process; but it is always rooted in generic human capacities [Graeber 2001:47]. By virtue of their power to act, objects imbued with cemí, especially those with legendary status, were highly valued and thus motivated human beings to act and react to, and with them to achieve determined, desired goals. More important, these cemís, as iconic beings, are essential in creating certain kinds of social relations that could not exist in human society without their participation. Social relations...

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