University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education

Why Is Shame on the Skin?

Author(s): Andrew Strathern
Source: Ethnology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 347-356
Published by: University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3773236 .
Accessed: 23/06/2014 02:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Why is Shame on the Skin?
Andrew Strathern
University of Papua New Guinea

Out on this open grassland space,

There is shame on our skins,
and we shiver with cold.
But,
Ruri, the man of Kamb, is counting
Dollars, is counting out silver.'

This was one of the songs sung by women performing a special dance on
October 6, 1971 to anticipate and greet the arrival of a hoped-for treasure
of cash in the Mount Hagen area of the Western Highlands District, Papua
New Guinea. Would the cargo come or not? A large crowd of people who
had helped to finance activities in the cult and expected returns for their sup-
port soon to materialize had come to watch the men and women of this par-
ticular group dance and to see the money revealed. The women sang of their
clan leader and of his place, where dozens of red boxes full of money were
said to be stored. Because of his claims to have the cargo and to be counting
it out, they were dancing now out in the open on the ceremonial ground of
the clan, with all eyes upon them, and "shame was on their skins." The
dance performed for the cargo, and the cargo cult itself, were an innovation
in the area. The dancers' performance and appearance would be taken as a
sign of the cult's success or failure, and if it failed all of the people of the
group would be deeply embarrassedand would suffer a loss of standing with
the groups around. One of the rival big-men in a neighboring clan was al-
ready speaking scornfully of their action in decorating up even the old
women of the group with bright face-paint and plumes, and pushing tree-
fruits into their mouths to fill out their gaunt cheeks and make them look
young and healthy-a hint on his part that he thought the whole cult a
piece of elaboratedeception which was destined to failure. It is not surprising,
then, that the women should feel shy and embarrassed about the public
stage and their performance on it for this occasion. The word "shame" in
their song certainly refers to all of this, and in addition it may also refer
to the idea that ancestral ghosts were expected to be present, though unseen,
at the dance. Such ghosts are thought always to be in the background sup-
porting human dancers at festivals ensuring that they look attractiveand that
the gifts they give or receive will be sufficientto maintain prestige; and they
were crucially involved in the present dance, for it was to them that the
people were looking to receive the money-cargo. Before ghosts and other
supernatural powers people are expected to feel another kind of "shame,"
347

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 348 ETHNOLOGY

which can perhaps be translated best as "awe." It is not regarded as being

the same as ordinary fear, although it may be accompanied by a feeling of
fear or apprehension. One of the German scholars who has worked in the
Mount Hagen area translates the Hagen word in the context as Scham-
Furcht (shame-fear).2
All these observations may be helpful preliminaries towards determining
the semantic range of the word which I have glossed in the song as "shame,"
pipil in the Hagen or Melpa language. They leave out, however, the interest-
ing question of why "shame"should especially be spoken of as "on the skin."
The general context of the song supplies a clue to the answer as well as an
entry into speculation on the old subject of the distinction between "shame"
and "guilt" in various cultures.
The women who sang the song were exposed to the collective scrutiny
of the community. The skin, their outer self, is the immediate point of con-
tact with the physical world outside them and can also conveniently symbol-
ize the point of contact between themselves and the social forces that sur-
round them. The feeling of "shame"to which they refer has both a psycho-
logical and a social referent. When persons feel "shame"in Hagen, they say
their skin breaks out in a sweat (kur ropa etim) which can produce either
a hot or a cold sensation or a combination of these. Similarly English people
often say that when they are embarrassedor ashamed, they blush. In both
cases the internal feeling triggers off an external sign which is indeed "on
the skin" in a direct physiological sense. But it was not with reference to
these psychological and physiological processesthat persons I asked in Hagen
tended to explain their expressions about shame. Their own explanations
were closer to the formulation which I have just attempted, that "shame"
(pipil) relates to the individual's reaction to his community relationships.
This, of course, is the classic characterizationof "shame-cultures"which has
been delineated for Melanesian cases by Hogbin and others.3This folk-cum-
analytical explanation does not cover the whole range of usage for pipil,4
but it does appear to apply to those cases where people stressthat the "shame"
which they feel is "on the skin."
I put the question which is posed in the title of the paper to Ongka, a
big-man of a particular group.5 First, I asked him to describe different
kinds of pipil and he told me:
If we stand up in public and say something, then someone challenges us and says
we are wrong and we realize that they are right and that other people are watching
us and can see this too, then we are a bit ashamed about this; it is a pipil kel,
"small shame."
Another pipil, and this is a bigger one, is if a man who is really a rubbish man6 with
no resources dresses up and goes to a distant place. There he says he is a big-man and
people believe him and give him many things. He brings these home and he hands
them out again to people. Later, his creditors come to visit him and they see that in
fact he has nothing. They tell him that they are going to sleep in his house until he
finds something for them. He does not know what to do; he pretends he is sick; he
goes off and hides; and he suffers a pipil mam, a "big shame."
Another kind of "big shame" happens when we think there is no one around and we
defecate or urinate by the pathway or road. Then someone comes and sees us there;

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 WHY IS SHAME ON THE SKIN? 349

we look up and see them watching us; and that makes us very ashamed and we say,
"Oh, have they come to kill and eat me? Shall I go and hang myself?" We hide our
head in our hands.7
Another situation is if we find another man's wife and she agrees and we have inter-
course with her, then we hide and do it, but if someone sees or hears us doing it and
comes up and says, "Aha! I've found you out," then we die of shame (pipil korimon),
and we hide away. If they are sorry for us they say, "don't let's beat them, let the
man pay a pig in compensation,"so we are grateful for that and give a pig, and after-
wards we ask people not to mention the matter becausewe feel pipil over it. Or if we
have intercoursewith our own wife too and someone sees us, then we and the woman go
off in different directions suffering from pipil.8

These are kinds of pipil which are on people's skins (wamb king ile pipil petem pipil
kwkl).
For some sexual offenses, however, shame goes deeper than this, for I
mentioned the question of incestuous relationships and Ongka said:
Yes, that is when a really big shame comes out completely. This is a kind of shame
which is inside and it comes out. The shame cannot be got rid of, so they might hang
themselves. They say that a person is not a dog or a pig and they cannot hide them-
selves indefinitely so they may hang themselves. (In fact, the disapprovalof ancestral
ghosts is involved here. An alternativeto suicide is to make an expiatory sacrificeof a
pig and to pray to the ghosts.)
Another kind of pipil is the pipil that has to do with tipu9 or spirits. Our skin breaks
out in a sweat (kur ropa enem); the hairs on our back stand up; our teeth are set on
edge; we say that a spirit is going to kill us and eat us. This happens when we go to
a cemetery or a house where a man has died and we hear a bat or an owl calling or we
see a marsupialand we think it is a spirit doing this.

I asked Ongka about the difference between this and ordinary fear
(muntmong) and he said:
This (muntmong) is when we see a tree is falling on us or a river will sweep us
away or a car will hit us or we will fall down a slippery place or that some people
will kill us with "poison" (sorcery-stuff). We don't say that we feel muntmong of
spirits, only of people and things.
I asked if other words could be used as well as pipil. He said yes, nggorli
is an equivalent term:

We say we feel nggorli (nggorli enem, literally "it makes ngg0rli") when we see a
snake or another thing which we dislike, say a place where people defecate, and we
don't want to tread on it or see it or hold it. If we see a rotten or stinking thing, too,
we say we are nggorli.?

I then asked directly why Ongka had spoken of some kinds of pipil as be-
ing on the skin, and he replied:
It is when people see us, it is not that there is anything inside (mel ti rukrung pei na
petem) it is outside (ekit oronga) only; it is when people see us doing these things
that we feel pipil, when they see our skin, and we feel pipil on the skin.
All sensible people feel this pipil. If someone does not his relatives will tell him "you
have no shame on your skin, you are crazy (kuporl roron). People have shame on their

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 350 ETHNOLOGY

skin, but you have none. If you had a soul (min) as other people have, it would have
given you a good social attitude (noman kae, the noman is thought to be inside a
person'schest and to guide his thoughts, feelings, and actions). But you have no min,
and so you do not feel shame. A man who does not feel shame lacks a true noman
because the min in him has been lured out by a wild spirit (kor rakra) which lives
besides streams. The spirit steals the person's min and feeds it and talks to it, so the
person becomescrazy and does not behave normally.

As Ongka himself explained, his generalization applies only to some of

the instances of pipil which he discussed, those in which the shame is "on
the skin." So we cannot, on the basis of his account, dub Hagen simply as a
"shame culture" in the sense of the phrase used by Hogbin of the Busama.
Clearly, matters are complicated. There seem to be delicate semantic con-
nections or ramifications between separableclusters of usage of pipil, thus:
a. "shame"at being caught out in a culpable act, e.g. theft, adultery, incest.
b. "shame"at being seen while engaged in a private act.
c. "shame" before one's enemies as a result of a death caused by their
magic.
d. "shame"before the wider community as a result of being proved wrong
or inadequate in a discussion; or as a result of potential or actual failure to
keep one's promises and meet exchange obligations.
e. "shame" which indicates respect for someone else's body or skin.
f. "shame" which is physical revulsion at something unpleasant. (In both
e and f a notion of squeamishnessmay be involved.)
g. "shame"which is awe in the presence of spirits, or admiration at some-
thing which obviously reflectsspirit-derivedpower. In the case of some mani-
festations of spirits there may be a further sense of revulsion as well.
In usages a, b, c, d, and g there is a notion of a loss of prestige or in-
adequacy caused by a confrontation with the power of the community or
the power of spirits. If one is found in wrong-doing or in a private act, it
means that one's "powers," for example, powers of luck (kil koi), have
temporarily left one. Similarly, in the presence of spirit force one feels that
one's own forces have been removed from one. So the situation is threatening.
This idea of threat is partly carried over into e and f usages, which can be
summed up as "shuddering"to do something physically unpleasant, just as
a moral person would "shudder" to be seen doing something considered
morally wrong by the society.
In his exegesis Ongka took the discussion one step further than this listing
of interconnected clusters of meaning. After stating that pipil is on the out-
side only, he contrasted it with sickness. He said that people do not get sick
because of shame on their skin. Sickness comes from inside, just as does
popokl1 (anger or frustration). In Ongka's words:

When we are popoklaboutsomethingwe hide it; we keepit to ourselvesand don't

tell people.We preservea good exterior.With pipil,on the otherhand,we admitit
to the outsideworld,we say that we are pipil and ask them not to be hardon us,
but insideourselveswe may be feelingquitegood, and when we go off by ourselves
we feel all right.It is only when otherpeopleare therethatwe actuallyfeel ashamed
aboutit.

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 WHY IS SHAME ON THE SKIN? 351

In his analyses of people and events Ongka is very much of a social

realist. He is also somewhat sceptical about the alleged existence of the spirit
world. At the same time he is in many ways a firm traditionalist. It was he
who made the scornful remarks about rouging up old ladies to take part in
the cargo dance which were quoted early in this paper. His grounds were
that in the past prayersto ghosts had not produced wealth in the direct way
that the cultists were claiming their rituals would do, so why did they imagine
that such prayers would be successful now? However his explanation of the
relationship between pipil and pop.okl here goes a good deal further than
cynicism about people's actions. He is contrasting between popokl as anger
resulting from others' wrongdoings which the angry person feels inside him
but may keep to himself, and pipil as a feeling, perfectly genuine, which is
triggered off by encountering external social disapproval of what one has
done. Both feelings are in a sense, he tells us, guided by the noman, which
is inside one, and so both have internal origins in that sense. But pipil is
"on the skin" because it is felt when people see one or find one out. Popokl
stays in the noman. It may sometimes not be revealed. It may not show in
any obvious external signs. Hageners stress that one cannot see inside the
noman of another person. "Can I turn you inside out and see what is in your
noman?," they say rhetorically. "No, each one of us has his own "power"
and his own noman. You have yours, and I have mine." So whether some-
one is popokl or not cannot always be seen as easily as if the person is pipil,
ashamed. Popokl can be inferred, however. Sometimes it is thought to fol-
low closely on the feeling of shame itself. Thus if someone makes another
ashamed by asking him a question he cannot answer or refutes what he has
hazarded to say, the ashamed person is likely also to feel angry, popokl,
with the interrogator.12
Although this feeling of popokl may not immediately show, it is likely
to reveal itself over time in the social relationships which have been disturbed
by the popokl-producing events. The usual way in which it is revealed is
through sickness. This is why in his account Ongka goes out of his way to
say that with shame there is nothing "inside."It is all externalized. In contrast,
sickness, and popokl, both come from inside, and sickness is in fact the means
whereby popokl is shown to the outside world and moves can be made to set-
ting the situation to rights. Popokl, in fact, points out the guilt, and hence the
responsibility, of others in relation to a harmed person. Either the person
harmed falls sick in protest against the wrongdoing or the wrongdoer him-
self falls sick as a result of the wronged person's anger. The latter process is
similar to the process of witchcraft, but both are actually thought to be
governed by the actions of ghosts ancestral to one or other of the persons in-
volved or to both of them, and the ghosts' actions are held to be justified in
this context. In some cases, the ghosts themselves are said to be popokl with
a wrongdoer and to make him sick, whether anyone has specifically com-
plained to them or not. They would do this, for example, in a case of
incest between close kin, such as father-daughterincest. The only way to put
matters right and avoid serious consequences from the sickness is to make
an expiatory sacrifice as fast as one can. If a person has done something

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 352 ETHNOLOGY

very shameful (as incest) the ghosts may also make them mad, and again
a sacrificeof a pig is the only way to deal with such an emergency. If a person
becomes sick and some social complication or wrongdoing is suspected by
the kinsfolk, they kill a pig and ask both the ghost and the sick person why
it has happened. The sick person in particular is asked to reveal what is in
his noman, to tell the kinsfolk if he or she has done wrong or if there is
some anger against others for wrongdoing.13 After the talk has been re-
vealed, the patient's sickness may be healed, since confession is a step to-
wards the removal of popokl, either the patient's own or that of someone
else who is angry with him. Popokl thus both pinpoints responsibility or
guilt for wrongdoing, brings about, as people see it, punishment, and stirs
people into restoring the situation through a compensatory and expiatory
sacrifice. An impasse is created only if the popokl remains unrevealed and
the wrongdoing is locked in the private noman or conscience of the person.
Responsibility and liability in Hagen culture are symbolized at the group
level also in the notion of the mi or totemic divination substanceof the tribe.14
An individual person who is enraged with popokl at some slight or offense
against him may swear an oath on the mi of his group not to see the
offender again.15 The offender may feel uneasy, thinking that the mi may
punish him, especially if the offended man is from his own clan or subclan
or is a close maternal relative. Accusations of sexual delicts or criminal acts
of sorcery can be tested out by making people swear on or promise by the mi.
Because they have not been actually seen by others, the accused may choose
to deny the charges and thus avoid shame and the need to pay compensation.
However, the mi will find them out. They are required to swear on it by
eating a piece of it (usually the leaf or branch of a particularkind of tree or
plant, or it may be a kind of stone).16 Having taken the mi inside them-
selves, if they have lied and presented a false exterior the mi will discover the
truth which is inside them and will kill them. So their denial enables them
to avoid ordinary social contumely and shame but they are punished super-
naturally for not revealing their guilt. Finally, the mi also stands for the
notion of in-group solidarity and strength, derived from its members' proper
moral and ritual connection with the spirits, especially ancestral ghosts. The
mi, like the ghosts, particularlydislikes offenses within the group which are
not revealed and settled by compensation. If a son steals from his father, the
father may make him swear on the mi that he did not do so. Unless the boy
confesses quickly, it is thought that he will die, so it is a severe move for a
father to make in order to teach his son a lesson. In one case a boy was said
to have gone mad after denying such a theft and to have confessed just in
time. Similarly, the mi dislikes open fighting and killing between men who
belong to the same clan or closely related clans within the wider tribe. These
men are "brothers"and while they are expected to quarrel and fight they
should not kill one another by sorcery or with weapons of war such as the
spear and arrow. If they do, and do not settle this, ill-luck, sickness and
death may befall them, and the strength of their group will be lost. In one
case early in 1975, there were accusationsof killings within a particulartribe.
Following the death of a man in one clan, his clansmen, who suspected

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 WHY IS SHAME ON THE SKIN? 353

sorcery by their neighbors, rushed out to take physical revenge and were
met by a big-man of their own group. He urged them not to take violent
action in this way against "brother"clans, but they would not heed him and
swept past, stoning his car which he had placed across the road.7 They had
eaten the mi of their group and sworn an oath to fight. Not long afterwards
an extensive landslide occurred in their area, sweeping away most of the
houses they had built around a church, and the church itself. The landslide
carried away the body of the man whose death had sparked off the clans-
men's anger. The local member of the House of Assembly was reported to
have interpreted all this as an act of punishment from God.l8 In more
traditional terms, it was seen by many people as a punishment from the mi.
The clansmen had sworn by it in error, forgetting that it stood for solidarity
within the group. They had gone out to destroy their own basic values and
had refused to heed the secular restraining influence of their own big-man,
so they brought on themselves retributionfrom a source of power higher than
ordinary political authority.
To conclude, I have moved from an initial question, posed in the title,
about a statement which Hageners make with regard to "shame"to a further
question about "shame" and "guilt." We saw both how complex the various
referents of the Melpa terms which I have glossed as "shame" in fact are
and why a certain kind of shame is by Melpa speakers particularlysaid to be
"on the skin." We have in this expression a conjunction of physiological and
sociological appropriateness."Shame" does show on the skin and the com-
munication of it is heightened by explicit gestures such as hiding the face
in one's hands; but more crucially, it is caused by others seeing one, by being
found out. It is thus, in some cases, "only skin deep," and that is why, for
the Hageners or Melpa, it cannot produce sickness in people. So far it ap-
peared that we were dealing with a "shame-culture"as has been described
for some other Melanesian cases. But that would be a superficial view,
itself "only skin-deep," for it leaves out the whole dimension covered by the
ideas of popokl and mi, which Ongka explicitly drew attention to in counter-
point to his explanation of pipil. It is in the realm of popokl that we find the
counterparts of ideas of responsibility and guilt which are supposed to
characterize"guilt-cultures."To paraphraseBarnes (1967: 43), if we were to
set up a continuum between shame-culturesand guilt-cultures the Hageners
would be found at both ends.l9

NOTES
i. The text of the song is:
Kona kwi waka ile
pipil k0ng ile
oit k0ng ile monom
wua kamb Ruri
dola k0mb silpa
komb ronom
0 is a sound like German o. The text here omits many of the "fill-in"phrases which
contribute to the song as it is actually sung. There is no "but" in the text, but it is in-
cluded in the translationto show the meaning of the song.

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 354 ETHNOLOGY

2. Strauss (Strauss and Tischner 1962: 30) writes: "People feel 'shame' in front of
people but also, for example, before the spirits.Kor pipil iti, 'to feel pipil beforea spirit'
is an often heard expression and here the meaning of pipil is not quite that implied
in 'shame' (Scham in German). There is clearly a sense of 'fear' involved in it here
and so I use the term 'shame-fear'(Scham-Furcht)" (Translated from the German
original). Strauss also refers in this passage to the phrase minngon mundi which he
says relates to alarm at a manifestation of numinous power, "dread" or "awe"
("Angst vor dem Numinosen, die Scheu oder 'awe"). Pipil, too, as I have mentioned
carries something of this sense of "awe."As Strauss says, people may speak of feeling
pipil when faced with something unusual which they perhaps have not seen before
("etwas Ausserordentliches"),and which for them is a manifestation of power to
create or do things ultimately deriving from spirit forces. He cites the coming of the
first airplanes to the Hagen area in the 1930s as having set off a feeling of pipil
among people. Nowadays older Hageners who visit Port Moresbyfor the first time use
the same expressionwhen they see large buildings of permanentmaterials,such as the
University of Papua New Guinea's main lecture theater. "How did they build that?"
they ask, and one replies rather inadequatelythat it was done by carpenters(kamda,
a general term for "builders"in Melpa, derived from the English word). In these
contexts, part of the meaning is that the speaker feels inadequate, almost caught off
guard by the sight. In such a case he has not, of course, done anything wrong but
his feeling of inadequacymay be thought of as akin to the feeling of someone caught
out in an act which is socially disapproved. Strauss (1962: 129) also refers to a
related usage. If someone dies, people may say both that they are grieved and that
they feel pipil. Why should they feel the latter? Because the death may have been
caused by hostile magic of one's enemies. "One must be ashamed, then, in front of
one's enemies, for their powers are obviously stronger than one's own. One has to
be afraid in case the clearly irritated and angry powers (of the enemies) may cause
deaths to take place in one's own group. Or even worse, that perhaps one's own
group's powers have themselves set the death-dealing forces of sorcery and sick-
ness against the forces of life. A sufficientreason for feeling pipil." One of the core
feelings referred to in this example is the feeling of inadequacy,of a loss of strength
and prestige, in the face of a greater power than one's own, so that one becomes
ashamed of the inadequate 'strength'one has.
3. Hogbin (1963: 76) speaksof "maya,describedas the discomforta person feels when
he has been found out in an unworthy act. I shall translatethe word as 'shame'."
4. See notes 2 and io, and the later summaryof different usages of pipil given in the
body of the paper.
5. Ongka is a leader of the Kawelka Ngglammbo group in Dei Council. Our discus-
sion was not placed on tape, unfortunately,and my account here of what he said is
taken from my running notes made as he spoke or immediately afterwards. The
discussiontook place early in January,1975.
6. A "rubbish man" is a man of low status, possibly unmarried, the opposite of a
"big-man"or leader.
7. By custom, if a man sees a woman urinating or defecating he may ask to have
intercourse with her "to finish the shame" and this will often be granted. The same
custom holds among the Wiru people of Pangia in the Southern Highlands District.
The Wiru word ya has a semantic range similar to that of Melpa pipil.
8. Such an event is more likely to happen than might be imagined because sexual
intercourseis expected usually to take place outside, at the edges of gardens or similar
places. In this case, where a married couple is observed,probablythe person who sees
them suffers from pipil also, but the accent here is on the discomfitureof the marital
pair themselves. Sexual intercourseis known as ukl kit, "the bad act." This does not
mean that all intercourseis thought of as immoral or wrong, but rather that it is
private and thereforeit is shameful for others to see it. There is also a sense of potential
revulsion from the physicalact of sex itself, as well as a recognitionof its power, which
appearsin usages of pipil which have to do with spirits.

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 WHY IS SHAME ON THE SKIN? 355

9. A Northern Melpa or Dei Council usage. The CentralMelpa equivalent is kor, also
known to the Northern Melpa.
o1. It is my impression that nggcrli is more often used in contexts which imply a
direct physical revulsion from an object or an action. I am not sure of the actual
degree of mutual substitutabilitybetween pipil and nggorli. To this context belongs,
in part, another usage. On one occasion (January I975) a young man had received a
beating in a fight and he had two swollen black eyes. He decided that the bruises
should be lanced in order to let out the blood, and his friends preparedsome miniature
arrows from withies and pieces of broken glass, which they proposed to shoot at the
skin under his eyes from close quarters.When it came actually to doing this, however,
each one in turn said that he felt nggorli about performing this operationon someone's
skin, wamb king e-nga pipil enem, "we feel ashamed because it is someone's skin."
Here the revulsion is not from the sight of the bruised skin, but from the thought of
harming someone's skin. A notion of respect for the person's skin is perhaps implied.
ii. What follows here is closely connectedwith previousanalysesof popokl (cf. Marilyn
Strathern I968: 553-562; A. J. Strathern I968: 545-552). I wish to thank Marilyn
Strathern for discussion of this paper. In addition to the points which I make, she
suggests that shame can be viewed as a kind of "socialcosmetic,"a means of dressing up
one's behavior so as to appease others and forestall their anger. An elaboratedisplay
of shame may stop other people from becoming too popokl with one for what one has
done wrong. The suggestion here is fairly close to what Ongka himself says in his dis-
cussion with me and the term "cosmetic"is quite reasonablein view of the Melpa
phrase kep nui which can mean both "to deceive"and "to decorate."Marilyn Strathern
goes further and suggests that an interactionalparadigmcan in fact be set up, in which
we can see that "shame"behavior is a means of averting the "anger"of others, and
conversely "anger"may be a means of creating "shame"in others, so that they will
take notice of one and be sorry for what they have done. This could be so in cases
where an aggrieved person communicates that he is popokl to the person he thinks
has done him wrong. The twin themes of anger and shame have also been explored
by Valentine (I963).
I2. The example was given to me by a Melpa University student, Mr. Hugo Akie, and
I am grateful to him for pointing this out. Possibly he was quoting from his own
experience as a University student, who is likely often to be called on to speak in
public or semi-public circumstanceswhen he may not be quite ready to do so. His
example shows that the two feelings we are dealing with here, pipil and popokl, may
be felt together by the same person. Mr. Akie also stressed to me that in the case he
was referring to, pipil and popokl are both felt internally,so the idea of pipil as being
"on the skin" does not belong to this particularcontext. Usages of this kind are closer
to the ordinary English sense of the word "shame," which applies to an internal
psychologicalcondition of the individual resulting from recognition of guilt in relation
to some matter. In Mr. Akie's example, the shame is an internal individual responsetoo.
However, it is specifically shame triggered off by a social situation which is public
with many people watching or listening while a person is tongue-tied by a question.
13. These ideas antedate the missionization of the Hagen area, although they fit quite
well with certain mission-inspirednotions of confession. The general idea of linking
physical misfortune or sickness to moral or social causes is, of course, world-wide. The
Melpa phrase for "to reveal" is nimba mot ndui. Wrongdoers are asked to reveal facts
for their own sake, since otherwise they will get sick. The opposite of mot ndui is
namb rui, "to deny." Another expressionfor "to confess"is nimba prol ndui.
I4. Strauss (I962: 206-285) has organized a whole complex account of Hagen religion
around the concept of the mi. His account of the "legal aspects"of the mi contains
many case historiesof the situationswhich I briefly sketchhere.
I5. For a case of this, see A. J. Strathern(I972: 145-I56).
I6. Sometimes a big-man will decide that the group must "burn"their mi (mi kPkli)
as a test of a member'sinnocence or guilt. In one case during I974 a big-man (Ongka
again) threatenedto do this if young men of his own subclan did not reveal whether

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 356 ETHNOLOGY

they had committed sorceryagainst a big-man of a neighboring group who had died.
The dead man's relatives were threatening to kill Ongka as a result of boasts by the
young men of his group about the death, and Ongka wished both to declare his own
innocence and to force the matter into the open where it could be discussed.Burning
the mi would be a test within the group between himself and the young men. How-
ever, he did not carryout his threatat the time.
17. Many people in the Hagen area own vehicles, which are used for transporting
passengersand goods to and from the towns. The big-manhere was K?i, who belongs to
one of the Kombuklaclans in Dei Council.
i8. The event was reported in the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier,Wednesday,
February 26, 1975, p. 21.
19. I am grateful to all the institutions which have enabled me to work in the Hagen
area at various times from i964-75: Trinity College, Cambridge; the University of
Cambridge;the Royal AnthropogicalInstitute; the AustralianNational University;and
the University of Papua New Guinea. Most of all I am grateful to Ongka for ex-
plaining so many things to me.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes,J. A. 1967. Agnation Among the Enga, A Review Article. Oceania38 : 33-43.
Hogbin, H. I. 1963. Kinship and Marriagein a New Guinea Village. London.
Strathern, A. J. I968. Sickness and Frustration: Variations in Two New Guinea
Highlands Societies.Mankind6: 545-552.
I972. One Father, One Blood. Canberra.
Strathern,M. I968. Popokl: The Question of Morality.Mankind 6: 553-562.
Strauss, H., and H. Tischner. x962. Die Mi-Kulturder Hagenberg Stamme. Ham-
burg.
Valentine, C. A. 1963. Men of Anger and Men of Shame: Lakalai Ethnopsychology
and Its Implicationsfor SociopsychologicalTheory. Ethnology 2: 441-477.

This content downloaded from 62.122.72.154 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 02:41:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions