In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

65 CHAPTER 4 “Because We Can!” Gendered Agency and Social Reproduction Iwas visiting my good friend Buna in her village shortly after the birth of her third child. We sat together on the raised veranda of her one-room family dwelling , and I cradled her newborn while she and another young mother chewed betel nut. Two playful toddlers and a crawling baby animated the small space, moving between our laps and outstretched legs. Our casual talk turned to questions I posed about pregnancy and childbirth when an older woman, a mother of five whose last-born child had just turned one year old, ambled over to ask for betel nut. She paused to listen to the thread of our conversation and then suddenly turned to me and said, “Do you know this picture, In a Savage Land?” “Yes, I do, I have seen it,” I answered. “So, what do you think of it?” she asked. In a Savage Land is an Australian feature film shot on location in the Trobriands in 1998. Billed as “a sweeping romantic adventure set at the outbreak of the Second World War,” the film depicts in sepia tones the story of a husband and wife, both anthropologists, who follow Malinowski’s footsteps to study Trobriand sexual customs. The film explores colonial gender relations through a range of stereotypical characters—anthropologist, missionary, colonial administrator, merchant trader, beachcomber—and their competing agendas in the “Islands of Love.” I sensed that the woman had a strong opinion about the film and asked if she had been involved in the production, knowing that although it generated some welcome income on the islands, the film also provoked considerable controversy as Trobrianders vied for participation or protested the filming for aesthetic and political reasons.1 The woman answered my question with an emphatic, “Ga!” (No!), she was not involved. Her face wrinkled with disapproval. “Sainagaga!” (Very bad!), she said. “Avakapela?” (Why?), I wanted to know. “Because the picture made Trobriand women say the wrong answer to the wrong question!” was her definitive answer. “And what was the wrong answer to the wrong question?” I was eager to know. Her response was delivered in mockery. “Why do Trobriand women have so many babies? Because we love so much having sex with men!” “So what is the right answer to the wrong question?” I probed. 66 ISLANDS OF LOVE, ISLANDS OF RISK Standing tall with uplifted arms, a self-evident gesture of exasperation as much as affirmation, the woman projected her full stature to the relentless gaze of an imagined audience. “Because we can!” she declared. “Because we are old enough to go with the men! Because we are old enough to have babies!” “So what is the right question?” I asked with tactful reserve, feeling restrained by the seeming indiscretion of ethnographic inquiry. The woman hit back without missing a beat—“I’m tired of questions!” A Question of Embodied Capacity and Potential The impromptu conversation in the vignette noted above agitates the tensions between Trobriand assertions of cultural identity and the colonial and anthropological representations of Trobriand sexuality as casually excessive and wanton, representations that persist in contemporary depictions and parallel the discourse on sexual risk and promiscuity that dominates HIV communication. The conversation offers a framework for exploring cultural constructions of gender, sexuality, and reproduction, and how meanings are activated in embodied practice. As an expression of sociality, sexuality is a productive resource in relationship building. In particular, the period of youth sexuality represents a fertile field of possibilities as the arena for demonstrating capacity and potential for social reproduction. In the storyline of In a Savage Land, the woman anthropologist protests her husband’s disregard for her own theoretical quest and criticizes his methodological bias in not paying attention to what Trobriand women do and say. Then in one of the few scenes in Kiriwina language with English subtitles, the woman anthropologist sits with a small group of Trobriand women on the beach and questions one of them about conception beliefs. In response to the explanation that baloma, the ancestral spirits from Tuma, impregnate women by arriving on sea foam or driftwood, the anthropologist asks, “Avakapela kukwekaytasi?” (Why then do you copulate?). The woman answers, “Pela dikwadekuna” (For pleasure).2 The question asked by the woman anthropologist captures the perceived anomaly of Trobriand conception beliefs that has “long excited Western observers ” (Strathern 1988:235) and that sparked relentless debate on the notion of “virgin birth” following Malinowski’s initial...

Share