1989 "Defining the Posunodern", Lisa Appignanesi (ed.) Postmodernism: ICA Documents, London, Free Association Books: 7-10.

McCarthy, Thomas 1987 "Introduction" in Jtirgen Habennas, The Philosophical Discourse of

Modernity, trans. F. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press: vii-xvii.

Portoghesi, Paolo 1982 After Modern Architecture, New York: Rizzoli.

Poster, Mark 1981 ''The Future According to Foucault: The Archaeology of Knowledge and

Intellectual History" in D. Lacapra and S. Kaplan (eds.) Modern European Intellectual History: The Appraisals and New Perpectives, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: 137-52.

Rau!et, G~rard 1983 "Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel

Foucault", Telos 53:119-206. Rorty, Richard .

1985 "Habennas and Lyotard on Posunodernity" in Richard Bemstem (ed.) Habermas and Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press.

van Reijen, Willem 1990 "Philosophical-Political Polytheism: Habennas versus Lyotard",

Theory, Culture and Society 7: 95-103. Wel!bery, David . . .. .

1985 "Postrnodernism in Europe: On Recent Gennan Wntmg m S. Trachtenberg (ed.) The Postmodern Moment, London, Greenwood Press: 229-250.

White, Stephen 1988 The Recent Work of Jiirgen Haber mas: Reaso 'n, Justice and

Modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

20

SOCIAL ANALYSIS No. 36, October 1994

EQUALITY AS A VALUE: Ideology in Dumont, Melanesia and the West.

Joel Robbins

Introduction

"It is a platitude to state that inequality is socially ubiquitous." (Hamilton 1986:9)

"Sociologists typically write about inequality, not equality." (Turner 1986:15)

"If one concentrates no more on function but on meaning. then each sort of representation must be grasped where it is ful!y accentuated and elaborated, where it rises to predominance and not where it is kept, by the prevalence of other representations, in a rudimentary or residual state."

(Dumont 1980:xxxix)

Thar all people are equal and should in some sense be treated as such is surely the greatest scoff law in the Western tradition. Even if we grant that the Western tradition is in some sense an egalitarian one on the level of ideology, no one would claim that equality is regularly and thoroughly either achieved or aimed for in practice in any of the concrete societies to which the tradition has been attached. Equality as a value is so glaringly unrealized that it represents the most obvious rent in our ideological fabric and the one at which social critics most often begin the job of unraveling the whole. Such critiques from within the Western tradition are both necessary and laudable. But the fact that equality (whatever its rhetorical value on the ideological plane) is such an empirical non-starter in Western societies has led to a curious blindness on the part of Western social scientists: they are increasingly unable to see equality as an important feature of social life anywhere. At any rate, as Turner tells us in the statement quoted above, social scientists are certainly more likely to write about inequality than its opposite.

The general attitude towards equality in contemporary social science is best characterized as suspicious. People's claims to be acting to maximize equality or that equality actually exists in some sphere of their own society are taken to be ideological covers or supports for existing inequalities. It is as if in some way

21

equality is in its essence ideal and illusory, while inequality is simply the nature of social reality. This leads to a logic whereby all of the egalitarian aspects of a culture or ideology can be discounted in the face of any empirical (not to mention ideally sanctioned) inequalities, whereas any empirical equalities that might be found are immediately discounted as either ideological distractions, safety valves, or some other epiphenomenon in the service of a more fundamental inequality. Consider how absurd it would be, in the present climate, to contend that one had found a case in which the equalities were "real" and the inequalities were "illusory," where inequalities simply served to "mask" more fundamental equalities or represented simply an ideal (re)forrnulation of empirically existing equalities. When the argun'tent is turned around this way the language is all wrong, the assertions sound absurd. But this is the language of our social science, and such absurdity represents a lintit to our ability to conceive of equality.

The irony, of course, is that just such a notion of basic human equality, an equality which we feel is often warped or misrepresented in thought and practice, motivates our critiques of inequality in the first place. The assumption that underlies most of our critical practice is, as Wright (1992:121) puts it, that "[i]ndividuals are more 'naturally' equal than they are socially unequal." But the clumsiness that comes when we talk about equality as a fundamental feature of any existing society suggests that we have given up hope of discovering what equality might be like when it is culturally valued and socially realized.

In our own Western circumstances suspicions about equality are warranted often enough, and pointing out the ideological function of the notion of equality is important; but the situation is otherwise when anthropologists uncritically bring this suspicion to their analyses of other cultures. The cultures anthropologists study may not be egalitarian in any meaningful sense, but then again they might. Behind the present essay, as its most general motivation, stands the claim that anthropologists ought to be able to show both why the concept equality occupies the awkward place it does in our own culture and also what other sorts of places it might have in other cultures. Then anthropologists would at least be in a position to spur the Western critical imagination out of its rather pessimistic rut. As Beteille (1986:128) has advised, "if we are to take equality seriously, we must enlarge the concept of equality." If anthropologists are to assist in this task of enlargement, they will have to take other cultures' ideas of equality seriously and avoid approaching them simply as mystifications of more or less minimal conceptual complexity.

Claims about a disciplinary blindness to equality may seem overdrawn or inaccurate to anyone who has not been attentive to developments in the field of anthropology over the last decade or so. Despite the general Western skepticism concerning claims to have found an actually existing egalitarian society, the force of the binary logic implicit in anthropology's mission to study the "other" has often led to the labeling to the societies they study as "egalitarian," "acephalous," "non stratified," or "primitive communist." Such terms were, however, rarely well theorized and stood more as descriptive epithets or impressionistic tags than as analytic concepts. Flanagan and Rayner (1988:1) are thus accurate when they assert

22

that "egalitarianism remains a residual category" in the discipline. The theoretical vagueness of "egalitarianism" and related expressions is evidenced by how quickly anthropologists abandoned these terms during the last decade. Such rapid abandonment would not have been the case, one imagines, if anthropologists had possessed any satisfactory theory of what an egalitarian society consists in.

Echoing Evans-Pritchard's earlier claims of a shift from fllllction to meaning, we can say that the decline of notions of egalitarianism has come about as a consequence of the rise of a variety of concepts and theories that have engineered a shift from meaning to inequality, power and domination as the foci of anthropological studies. Various sorts of Marxism, feminism and cultural studies, along with the specific theories of Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Foucault, Gramsci, Hall, Said etc., have in different ways sharpened the anthropological ability to detect inequalities and have motivated anthropologists to be on the lookout for them in all domains of social life. These various approaches are also all suspicious of egalitarian claims. Indeed, even when some theoretical strands of movements that have participated in the shift to inequality, power and domination highlight the concept of egalitarian societies, as Collier and Yartagisako (1987:36-37) suggest is the case in feminist anthropology, the trend has been to argue that any inequalities in a society disqualify an egalitarian reading of its social life. Given both an enhanced ability to fmd instances of inequality and the tendency to let any instances of inequality render a society Wlworthy of examination as egalitarian, it is not suprising that egalitarianism has become a virtual non-topic in anthropology.

One might imagine that Melanesia, one of the ethnographic areas focused on in this essay, has been exempt from the recent anthropological concern with inequality. Melanesianist ethnographers have regularly described the cultures they study as "aggressively egalitarian" (Forge 1970:257), "fiercely egalitarian" (Burridge 1969:38), or as ones where "men assume a thoroughgoing posture of equality" (Schieffelin 1976: 129), to choose some of the more colourful examples. If we are willing to settle for more pedestrian proclamations of egalitarianism, the majority of Melanesian ethnographers will oblige in supplying them (e.g., from different phases of the field's development, Lawrence 1964:11, LiPuma 1988:40). But while these sorts of claims of egalitarianism were more often asserted than argued for, anthropologists have recently begllll to argue pointedly that they are incorrect. 'This trend has been well documented in Jolly's (1987) article "The Chimera of Equality in Melanesia." Indeed, the very title of the article is a symptom of the suspicious climate whose history she so ably traces. After discussing Forge's "The Golden Fleece," published in 1972 and one of the few attempts actively to actively think out what might qualify Melanesian societies as egalitarian, Jolly (1087:172-3) writes:

... ten years later, the dominant discourse had shifted from egalitarianism to talk of 'inequalities' among men and between men and women .... This dramatic shift was primarily the result of the challenge both Marxist and feminist theory presented in the context of Melanesian ethnography [footnote omitted].

23

This shift finds its landmark in Strathern's (1982) edited volume, Inequality in the New Guinea Highlands, while the tenor of the "dominant discourse" that was ftrmly in place by the mid to late 1980's can be exemplified by the following two quotations:

In many of these societies [of the Northern Highlands] clans are essentially communities of men in which women have only secondary rights (an arrangement that seriously qualifies Highlander's anthropological reputation for egalitarianism) (Lederman 1987:340).

Although compared to many other Highlands groups Kewa have only mild fears of female pollution and today practise very little sexual separation, women are clearly politically subordinated to men and economically dependent on them. This is the other side of the male 'egalitarian ethos' coin (Josephides !985:8).

The scare quotes around '"egalitarian ethos'" in Josephides conlribution are perched above the phrase like vultures waiting to devour a dying concept - the egalitarian epithet in Melanesia as elsewhere is quite obviously in trouble1.

To summarize, I am in no way claiming that the study of inequalities, whether consnued in indigenous tenns or in our own, is useless. I am, however, convinced that a failure to recognize how equality and inequality are differently defmed and orgartized in different cultures threatens the viability of any properly anthropological project. To see inequality everywhere, especially where an "egalitarian ideology" is vocally stressed, is an easy ethnocenlrism, relying as it does on our own ingrained sense, probably accurate enough as far as the Western world goes, that equality is never really a paramount value in any culture. Attempts to spot inequality and dontination anywhere and everywhere risk merely reproducing the Western social science and social philosophy upon which they are based, rather than expanding them or "enlarging" their concepts. Such efforts at reproduction might well bolster certain critical trends in theory that feel accurate or important in our own home contexts. But the possibility exists that in not taking equality as a value seriously as a possible aspect of other cultures we are missing out on opponunities to engage in the critical practices of situating Western discourses of equality by viewing them from another vantage point and of presenting other models of equality currently unthought of in the West.

The remainder of this essay thus develops two themes. The first considers the place of equality in Western cultures. One needs little coaxing to recognize that equality is a confusing, polysemous concept in the West. It is, in fact, something of a loose cannon on the ideological deck, firing consistently in favour of no panicular political side. Rather than take this state of affairs as an indication that equality is simply a mystification, however, the present task is to subject it to a cultural analysis that can to some extent explain its multivocality and political slipperiness. The second theme consists in the development of an analysis of the definition and place of equality in another group of cultures: those of Melanesia. The Melanesian material is

24

analysed with an eye toward specifying alternative modelings of equality and describing what at least one kind of "egalitarian" culture looks like in some detail.

There is a final aspect of this essay that requires introduction, as it underlies much of what has already been said and all that follows. In essence, this project is an attempt at doing "Dumontian" anthropology. As will be explained below and in the conclusion, the analysis springs from what I consider to be typically Dumontian motivations and proceeds theoretically and methodologically along the lines of Dumont's own analyses. Although I think few would argue that Dumont does not present a fairly coherent and original version of anthropology throughout his work,2 the fact that "Dumontian" sounds somewhat queer as an adjective, and does not resonate nearly as richly as, say, "Durkheimian," "Maussian," or "L~vi-Straussian," indicates that Dumontian anthropology has been neither fully codified nor institutionalized as yet. But if we define "egalitarian" as a culture in which equality is a paramount value, then Dumont is the most likely candidate among anthropological theorists to aid us in analyzing one. He is the one anthropologist working with a coherent theory of the operations of value in culture. Delineating what that theory is will be the task of the next section and constitutes a third major goal of this essay.

Dumont's Anthropology

While a thorough review of Dumont's works is neither possible nor desirable here, the above mentioned lack of standardization of a Dumontian approach necessitates that one make an effon to specify which aspects of his work one is putting forward as a coherent program.

Dumont is often enough understood primarily as a structuralist. Dumont (1986:234) himself is not beyond referring to his "structural allegiance," an allegiance made plain to readers of, in panicular, Homo Hierarchicus and his work on kinship. Douglas (1975:185) in fact remarks in regard to Homo Hierarchicus that, "when it was first published in French it was the first serious structural analysis of a particular society." At times one gets the sense that Dumont would like to fmd the similarities between his approach and Uvi-Strauss' explained most forcefully by reference to their common Maussian heritage, rather than by any casting of himself as an epigone of his contemporary; he also claims Evans-Pritchard as a major influence. Still, it is quite obvious that much of the force of Dumont's work comes from his supple use of both the holism and the relationalism that are central to structuralism. I will define these terms further in the course of a consideration of the important differences between Dumont and Levi-Strauss.

Uvi-Strauss has arguably developed the most sophisticated technique anthropologists have for specifying cultural differences. His structuralism allows for a consideration not only of differences between individual symbols and understandings but also, in the best cases, for a determination of more orgartized or fundamental differences in the ways such symbols, understandings, and their attendant social actions are related. As, for example, in his studies of kinship, the

25

study of differences between relational wholes promises a much fumer grasp of the nature of differences between societies than a simple cataloging of the heterogeneity of their elements considered separately. But then, again, Levi-Strauss is at heart a universalist: while he offers perhaps the finest tools for locating differences, he himself is most happy when he can reduce difference to transformation in his pursuit of basic structures of the human mind. While it is true that many structuralists politely look the other way when Levi-Strauss' universalism makes its entrance, Dumont's anthropology must be considered in relation EO the seriousness of the original structuralist comrniunent to universalism.

Put simply, perhaps even too boldly, it is Dumont who has most firmly yoked the ability ofstructuralist theory to specify cultural difference to an approach that also (I) aims at analyzing such differences as differences and that (2) is explicit about its motives for stressing those differences. In his imponant essay ''The Anthropological Community and Ideology" (reprinted in Dumont 1986), Dumont grapples with the tension between universalism and cultural particularism that is at the heart of anthropology. The first part of the essay suffers from a cenain lack of clarity. It is in fact an over-ambitious attempt to totalize an entire career, bringing in not only Dumont's theoretical concerns but also the results of his analyses of both Western and Indian (or ''nonmodem") ideologies. Still, one detects in this article the culminating statement of Dumont's motivation. For, here, the often anthropologically pedestrian claims Dumont has always made about understanding the other so as to better understand ourselves give way to the more charged contention that, in its ability to synthesize universalism with a systematic appreciation of differences, the "anthropological specialization corresponds to an avant-garde that is necessary in the movement of ideas" in the West (1986:207). While the modem (in Dumont's sense) notion of universalism is obviously a condition of possibility of anthropology, it is clear that Dumont sees the countering of that ideology with a sense of difference as a central intellectual and ''political" task of anthropology.

Anthropologists are likely to greet such an emphasis on difference as anything but news. Isn't difference what anthropology in general is about anyway? But it is precisely Dumont's structuralism that here differentiates him from the run of the mill specialist in difference, since he is looking primarily for differences between sets of relations, not between elements. And because he insists on analyzing societies as relational wholes, every element in every culture is, by virtue of the different relations it contracts, different from similar elements in any other culture. Differences in his scheme are never reducible to deeper lying similarities, except on the most abstract level where elements are not considered in relation to one another or to the whole.

Near the end of Homo Hierarchicus Dumont presents a synoptic "comparative diagram" laying out the relations between the major variables of his study first in India and then in the West (1980:233)[see figure 1]. While these diagrams may appear overly simplistic in the face of the massive analysis which precedes them, a possibility Dumont himself admits (1980:234), they exemplify in clear fonn what Dumont means by comparative analysis. First of all, both figures that make up the

26

comparative diagram auempt to depict the relations among a group or elements. And both diagrams conlain similar clemems. The senses of the clements in each of t.hc two halves of the diagram, however. are dcfmcd by lhcir relation to the other elements and to the whole. As these relations change, lhc same elements change Character between the two diagrams as to their nature, now fundamentally valued they are, whether they arc ideological or "non-ideological," and whether they arc more or less conscious. Second. since there is implied here Lhc comcntion that the meanings of each element can only lJ:e grasped in recognizing its relationship to the whole, any comparisons between societies must compare. or at least first understand

HOMO MAJOR HOMO MrNOR

o~"~>' ~,o .' ' \~(j.\~~ c.-Jo~O ' oc.-~ o'V-',$'

HIERARCHY EQUALITY Economics . Politics interdependence

separation

politico-economic religiOn (individualistic) c'<

... .~, .. ~ . \o..;a.\'\'6{' . {'bd~(('

. ({\ ' e,{ 'rio\''>

though they share the same name. Because he is working at the level of abstract cultural elements, one should not be surprised that purity and impurity do not figure in Dumont's final comparison - they are after all symbclic "concomitants" of hierarchy and holism and not vice versa. Similarly, because his attention is focused on what I am calling abstract cultural elements, one should not immediately balk at the universalism implied by statements like

... all societies contain the same 'elements,' 'features' or 'factors' ... .in any society there will always be found that which corresponds in a residual way ... to what another society differentiates, articulates, and valorizes .... (l980:420 fn.118d, see also p.237).

Here Dumont combines a theory of abstract universals with one of the irreducible differences between their various concrete manifestations. We are likely to fmd hierarchy, equality, individualism, holism etc. in all societies - they are elementary forms of social and cultural life- but what they acrually amount to in each culrure will depend on the structure of the whole of which they are a part.

For Dumont. the structure of the whole is a matter of value. Value in Dumont's work is not to be understood simply as that which is held to be good, or that which is maxintized, but rather as that which structures the relations of elements in the whole.4 Central to the definition of the kind of structure in question is Dumont's notion of hierarchy. A "dominant value in any given case is that element which in general encompasses its contrary, which conditions its opposite by controlling the places and means of appearance of that opposite. The contrary is not in any sense non-existent, although it may be pushed to fmd an existence outside of ideology or consciousness, and the forms it takes as a subcrdinated element will of necessity differ from those it might take in cultures where it is valorized. Because I will be giving a variety of examples of hierarchical relations below, I will not provide a concrete exemplification of this exegesis here.

But Dumont obviously claims more for his analysis of hierarchical relationships as defmed by values than that it is a simple addition to the structuralist arsenal of types of relation (see foomote 2). For in each society Dumont (1986:231) urges us to "seek out the preeminent value-idea by which it is animated." That is, preeminent values serve to structure the entire ideological whole, lending it its "main lines of organization" and its ''necessarily hierarchical configuration of levels" (1986:231). While hierarchical relations may appear between various elements throughout the whole, there are also overarching hierarchical relations which encompass the structure of all others and are determined by a culture's paramount value. Dumont has not been particularly successful in providing us with images or metaphors that heuristically define these value-structured totalities. Somewhere he fashions the role of value as similar to that of a magnet in creating a magnetic field. I have found it helpful to think in terms of a rather busy mobile with many separate and delicately balanced arms that are all, in the last analysis, dependent upon and coordinated in their movement by a central string. A preeminent value would be like such a central string, anchoring the play of the whole in space and being a reference point for the movements, caused by disparate natural forces of gravity and current, of any of the

28

parts. However one chooses to try to concretize what it is that Dumont is getting at, it is clear that it is at this point in our exposition that we are able to use his work as a strong theory of comparison- the comparison of value-structured totalities of abstract cultural elements.

Here we rejoin the question of what an egalitarian society might be. In Dumont's terms, an egalitarian society would be one in which equality is the paramount value, in which equality encompasses inequality on the level of ideology and serves to structure the relations between other values. But note, an egalitarian society would not be one where there were no empirical inequalities, nor even one where there were empirical inequalities but no ideological charter for them. Dumont, after all, has never denied the existence of power in India; only the universal nature of its valuation and application in social life have been put in question. Inequality will be a feature of all societies and all ideologies, and the question of egalitarianism asks only whether equality is the value to which all of the others must refer. Within the terms of Dumont's theory, equality does not become a mystification as soon as any inequalities are found in a society.5 At the very least the question of egalitarianism becomes more complex.

While I will eventually try to demonstrate that certain Melanesian cultures provide a fertile ground for considering how equality operates as a fundamental value, I cannot proceed immediately to that task. Standing in my way is the fact that Dumont has repeatedly been inclined to call Western culture egalitarian. As all readers of Dumont know, his work is based to a large extent on two pairs of opposed terms: hierarchy/equality and holism/individualism. In the logic of these oppositions the West becomes egalitarian (or "equalitarian'') and individualistic. This is unforrunate, for it is clear that individualism is the preeminent value in the West and that egalitarianism is beth conditioned and encompassed by it. In calling the West egalitarian, Dumont raises what is at best a secondary value to a primary place. This misplaced emphasis threatens to encourage the currently narrow view of egalitarianism as everywhere the secondary or mystifying value it seems to be in the West by suggesting that the West exemplifies the nature of egalitarian societies.

Acntally, despite the impression he often leaves with his readers, Dumont seems often enough to recognize that equality is subcrdinated to individualism in the West. Statements such as "it is not difficult to descry behind 'liberty and 'equality' their substratum, the valuation of the individual ... " are fairly explicit in making individualism the ground of modem ideology (Dumont 1977:19). Similarly, when Dumont (1977:4) claims that "it is by no means the case that all individualistic societies stress equality to the same degree," he implies that the core value of Western ideology is individualism while casting egalitarianism as a more variable feature.

But it is in his earliest work on the history of Western ideology, '"The Modem Conception of the Individual: Notes on its Genesis and that of Concomitant Institutions" (collected in Dumont 1986), that Dumont offers his clearest statement on the subcrdination of equality to individualism in the West. Pointing to the differences between a "liberal" theory of equality which champions "an ideal

29

equality ... of rights and chances," and a "socialist" theory "which wants equality to be realized in fact," Dumont argues that the latter should not be seen as a simple outgrowth of the former for "the transition bridges a discontinuity, a major change in orientation" (1986:76 emphases in the original). Here Dumont has accurately located the crucial point at which the concept of equality is sundered in two and then encompassed by individualism, but I must put off the explication of this claim until the following section. What is important in the present context is to note that Dumont's next move in this article is to claim that

as we are concerned here exclusively with the rise of individualism, it will be understood that we are leaving aside the extreme forms of equalitarianism [i.e. "socialist" in the above sense) which express the emergence of a contrary tendency (1986:77).

Two things become clear in the light of this passage: the first is that equality can in fact conflict with individualism, and thus there is no rigorous sense in which Western ideology can be said to promote both individualism and equality to their fullest extent; the second is that if one wants, following Dumont, to examine the core value of Western ideology, the focus should be squarely on individualism and not on those values that can represent 'contrary tendencies. 6

The issue of whether or not equality is the paramount value in the West is important. If it proves not to be, then, in keeping with Dumont's warning that served as an epigraph for this essay and urged us to study the meanings of representations where they are paramount, we must look elsewhere for a culture that values equality if we are successfully to study its meaning. I will not provide further evidence that Dumont recognizes that equality is not the fundamental value in the West but will instead attempt to demonstrate through a Dumontian style of analysis that it is not. This analysis should be useful in itself in clarifying the nature of Western individualist ideology and the confusing place of equality within it and it will provide the comparative touchstone for a consideration of Melartesian egalitarianism.

Individualism and Equality

What makes us all the same is that we are all different. (Television advenisement for American Telephone & Telegraph)

Philosophers and social theorists who examine Western ideas of equality tend to classify them into several types. The names and content of these types vary depending on who is doing the typologizing, but I want to suggest that no matter how the types are defmed the outcome of these analyses quite regularly serves to encompass equality within the dominant value of individualism.

I will argue that no matter how many types of equality are defmed in any analysis, they will fmally be dichotomized into those which are consistent with individualism and those which are not. In order to show this, it will be necessary to fmd a core meaning of individualism. I will suggest that just as Indian holism is articulated through the hierarchical opposition of pure and impure, Western

30

individualism is structured by a valuation of difference over similarity. Those types of equality which are not consistent with difference are abandoned as a value, leaving fmally an ideal of equality conditioned by and subordinated to individualism. Finally, I will point out that the most important relations of equality regularly argued for by Westerners show their dependence on individualism by their persistent avoidance of discussion of actual social relations with concrete others - equality is in the West a relation with the state, not with consociates. At this point Melanesian materials will be brought in to illustrate that there are types of egalitarianism not imagined in the Western tradition.

Before demonstrating the ways in which the value of individualism is articulated through the opposition of difference and similarity, it is useful to make a distinction not explicitly made by Dumont. The social forms that act as bearers of value need to be distinguished from the dimensions along which value is reckoned. What is meant by the social forms that act as bearers of value can be clarified by examining Dumont's notion of holism. Readers of Dumont are often left confused about the relationship of holism and hierarchy; it can seem that Indian culture is hierarchical because it is holist, but this working hypothesis leaves the reader confused when Dumont claims that hierarchy is a universal feature of culture. This confusion arises because Dumont uses holism in two different senses. On the one hand it refers to a kind of analysis carried out by the anthropologist in which he/she must perceive a culture as a whole in order to situate its values in their proper hierarchical places. It is in this sense that hierarchy is universal, since values as such appear to be universal and to universally entail hierarchy (cf. Howell 1985). On the other hand, in Indian culture as understood by Dumont the whole is not simply an analyst's construction, it is also a conception in the indigenous culture. In fact, the whole in India is what I am here calling the bearer of value, it is the state of the whole on the dimension of purity/impurity that is crucial. Individual actions are situated with regard to the impact they have on the relative purity of the whole. An indigenous conception of the whole is absent in modern Western culture. Instead, it is the individual which is the bearer of value. Difference/similarity is the dimension along which the value of the individual is reckoned. The actions of persons are situated not with regard to their impact on the whole but on the individual as regards its relative differentiation. But one must be an individual before one is even capable of bearing value. Thus, for example, the persons regarded as most fully insane in Western psychiatry and psychoanalysis are seen to have problems of incomplete differentiation (weak ego boundaries and the like) which render them less than individuals and thus incapable of bearing value.

We can now examine how equality is situated in a culture that reckons the value of individuals along the dimension of difference/similarity. Lukes (1973) provides a useful discussion of individualism which also considers its relationship to ideas of equality. Lukes mentions no fewer than eleven "unit-ideas" of individualism, but he isolates four of them as the "core" or "central values" of individualism (Lukes 1973:143, 148). The four core ideas of individualism are(!) the dignity of man, (2) autonomy, (3) privacy and (4) self-development. The intrinsic dignity of human

31

beings is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian tradition and to modem Western culture. It also, as Lukes (1973:125) notes, "lies at the heart of the idea of equality" that reigns in the Western world. Yet, as Lukes implies, the idea of human dignity is on its own rather devoid of content - in order to develop a program that respects the equal human dignity of each person one needs to define explicitly the content of the dignity they share (Lukes 1973:131). The other three unit-ideas of individualism (autonomy, privacy and self-development) serve to specify the content of that shared dignity. Thus, individuals share autonomy; they are capable of directing their own thoughts and actions. They are capable of activities and relationships that require privacy, non-interference from outsiders. And fmally, they are capable of self-

developmen~ of cultivating that unique "individuality" that is the familiar subject of romantic individualism.

Human capacities for and rights of autonomy, privacy. and self-development "represent the three faces of liberty ... " (Lukes 1973: 125). Thus it is the shared capacity for and right of liberty that defines the basic equality or dignity of human beings in individualist ideology. As Lukes ( 1973: !58) himself notes, he "presents equality in tenns of liberty." Indeed, equality in individualist ideology is defined completely in tenns ofliberty.

The representation of equality in tenns of liberty is a crucial maneuver in Western ideology and it is the means by which individualism is allowed to encompass and defme equality. At the heart of the "unit-ideas" that define the concept of liberty is the right of persons to differentiate themselves. To be allowed to make unique and uncoerced decisions, to define unique (different) relationships free of outside intervention, and to pursue the unique and differential development of the self - these all constitute liberty as the right to differ. Liberty is valued as an expression of individualism's chartering of difference. Equality is valued only inasmuch as it also squares with the valuation of difference. Indeed, few writers have failed to note that current doctrines of equal rights and a "career open to talents" charter unequal (i.e. differential) outcomes (e.g. Wood 1986).

It follows that liberty and equality are not equally subordinated to individualism in Western ideology- a fact Dumont (1977:4) appears to miss when he writes that "individualism entails not only equality but also liberty; equality and liberty are by no means always convergen~ and the combination of them varies from one society of the individualistic type to another." Liberty is not simply entailed by individualism; it is nothing but the concrete expression of individualism as a stress on the autonomy and unique individuality of each person and on their right to pursue the value of differentiation. Equality, on the other hand, exists only as the definition of that quotient of "individualness" and inherent capacity to differ shared by all individuals. Equality can only shine with the reflected light given off by liberty, while the latter is directly illuminated by the glow of individualism. /tis only as the equal ability and right to become different that equality is fully integrated as a value into Western ideology.

But as I mentioned above several types of equality exist in the Western tradition and not all of them are as intimately tied to ideas of liberty and difference as the one

32

we have been examining. Bryan Turner (1986:34) identifies four general types of equality that feature in Western discourse:

The first is ontological equality or the fundamental equality of persons. Secondly, there is equality of opportunity to achieve desirable ends. Thirdly there is equality of condition where there is an attempt to make the conditions of life equal for relevant social groups. Fourthly there is equality of outcome or equality of result [foomote omitted, emphasis added].7

Ontological equality is already familiar to us from our consideration of Lukes' analysis of the "dignity of man." Inasmuch as what persons are held to fundamentally share is the traits necessary to pursue individual liberty, this defmition of equality is allow~ under the ~verarching value of individualism. Equality of opportumty, at least m the abstract, IS also consistent with individualism because the opportunities imagined to be desirable are differentially defmed by the individual and their ~ursuit "?d attai_nment are understood to enhance that individual's liberty and capactty _for differenu~ self-creation. In practice, however, legislating equality of

oppo~tty becomes difficult. The reader will recall that it is precisely at the point where . an tdeal ~~equality ... of rights and chances" becomes a call for "equality to be realized _m ~~ct that Dumont clru_ms to encounter a "discontinuity, a major change m one~tauon that bnngs equality mto conflict with individualism (1986:76 emphasis removed). Dumont stresses discontinuity here in order to head off the assumption that the movement from the former to the latter kind of equalitarian claim represents a simple historical evolution from discourse to practice. The problematic

charact~r of calls for realized equality should not be understood as a simple problem of m~vmg from the_ 'ideal' to the 'real' as one moves from ontological equality to

~~tty of o~P?rtun~ty. The difficulties of engineering actual equality of opportunity wtthi~ an mdlVld~altsuc Ideology must instead be analyzed in relation to the place of equality of condtuon and of outcome in that ideology.

Equality of outcome is at once the least acceptable and the most potent idea of equality that enters discussions of equality in the Western tradition. This is the equality of leveling, of making people actually equal in concrete terms. Relatively

h~ral \Spiegelberg 1986:147) and reactionary libertarian (Flew 1981:30) thinkers altke re;ect out of hand any concrete efforts to achieve equality of outcome. fearing

tha~ respectively, "fanatical levelers" would produce "dull uniformity" or that proponents of "procrustean" enforced equality wish to see "the ceiling ... screwed

do~ onto the floor." Equality of outcome is the type of equality that most forcefully fltes m the face of individualist ideals of liberty as the right to differ. It threaatens to deny free reign to autonomy, privacy and self-development and implies that some

ce~tr~ authority must intervene to assure that similarity is not jeopardized by acu_viUes many of these areas (see Flew 1981). Flew (1981) shows clearly how easily mocked the tdea of equality is when, in an individualist universe it is ide~tified ~!ely with _equality of outcome. Turner (1986:123) is surely co;ect in

~oung that .. .a commitment to equality of outcome as a belief will be highly deviant m a society where individualism is a relatively dominant belief."

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Less often recognized is the extent to which this subordinated positioning of equality of outcOme within an individualist ideology severely compromises the scope of equality of condition. As Turner (1986:35) points ou~ "the concept of equality of opportunity is closely related to and somewhat inseparable from the notion of equality of condition." The argument, familiar to all, is that equality of opportunity cannot be achieved unless all start from the same place and with the same advantages. But equality of condition is also linked to equality of outcome, for if all are to start from the same place, some previous equality of outcOme rendering all the same is presupposed. While equality of outcOme is often understood as a leveling of achieved inequalities at some mythical endpoint (as if in heaven), the notion of equality of condition relies on a leveling at some equally ill-defined starting point (as if in school). But any leveled starting point must also logically be the endpoint of some episode or era of achieved leveling. Thus equality of condition contains equality of outcOme as a premise. Because equality of condition is linked to notions of equality of outcOme and thus to a valorization of similarity, it is difficult to argue for successfully from within individualist ideology -as anyone who has even passing familiarity with arguments about public educational provision in the United States is undoubtedly aware. Yet equality of condition maintains a measure of dignity or logical force within Western ideology not enjoyed by equality of outcome. The reasons for this will become clear below when we reassemble the four notions of equality in a model of the place of equality in an ideology hierarchically suucnrred by individualism.

The complexity of the notion of equality as delineated above may appear chaotic, and certainly leads to confessions, like that of Turner (1986:34), that " ... equality is almost as difficult to defme clearly as it is to achieve politically." However, if individualism is taken as the paramount value of Western ideology and to be articulated through a valuation of differenceover similarity, a Dumontian analysis of the hierarchical relations between elements within that ideology reveals a coherent order. As we have seen, "ontological equality," equivalent to Lukes' conception of the "dignity of man," is, when defined in terms of liberty and equal capacity to differ, little more than an aspect of individualism itself. In fact, it is necessary to individualism inasmuch as that doctrine requires some general definition of the individual. It is also at the hean of the universalism which Dumont is always quick to link to individualism (e.g. 1986). Ontological equality has thus had some freedom to develop in Western culture - elaborating itself in the religious, political, and economic domains.

The other three notions of equality, those of opportunity, condition and outcOme, all show the scars of their development under an ideology with which they are to different degrees in conflict. They are all linked in a logical chain that ends in their encompassment by individualism. Equality of opportunity is janus faced: it can be read both as a fulfillment of the dictates of the ontological equality of the capacity to differ and as a call for equality of condition. In the first case it occupies a valued place in individualist ideology, in the second case it comes into direct conflict with individualism. In its relation to notions of ontological equality, equality of

34

opportunity is nothing more than the abstract claim that persons should have equal access to those means necessary to develop the individualistic tendencies they all share. In this form, notions of equality of opportunity easily enough become ideological supports for that strand of individualism that charters radical inequalities. As Spiegelberg (1986: 139) notes:

The need for providing initial equality of opportunities may be comparatively obvious even for the denier of other equalities. For without equality of opportunities it would be impossible to determine and evaluate in an objective and impartial way even those natural inequalities which, according to him, should be the basis for differential treatment.

In the abstract then, notions of equality of opportunity and of ontological equality are both perfectly consistent with individualist ideology and with the existence of inequality.

But note: when equality of opportunity leaves the realm of abstractions to make concrete proposals it ties itself to the notion of equality of condition, which itself is tied to equality of outcome by a logic demonstrated above. Equality of condition and

SIMILARITY I DIFFERENCE Ontological~ - -+-- - Equality of Opportunity -1- ->Equality-!-> Equality

Equality / Abstract I Concrete : of : of Individualism Condition Outcome

~reamngValu.~----------------------------------------+ - --~=Entailment

Figure 2: The Logic of Equality Subordinated to Individualism

of outcome are both very much subordinated values in Western ideology, and equality of opportunity becomes so as well when it is linked to them. Any value that ultimately promotes concrete similarity is subordinated in the ideology because it conflicts with notions of liberty as the right to pursue difference. Equality of outcome, condition and concrete opportunity may be promoted at restricted levels of the ideology (especially in familial relations, friendships and voluntary groups, and some religious organizations), but only ontological equality fmds a secure place in the upper reaches of the ideological hierarchy.

The strucnrre of the concept of equality can thus be represented in its relation to the ultimate value of individualism as it is articulated through the opposition of sintilarity and difference in the diagram below [see figure 2]. The table is to be read with an axis of decreasing value from left to right. Ontological equality, as defined in Western culture, is fully consistent with individualism. But the other three concepts are locked in a chain of entailment such that equality of opportunity expects equality of condition for its fullest realization, and equality of condition similarly expects equality of outcome. As one moves down this chain of entailment, however, one

35

passes from the promotion of differences to the promotion of similarities, and subsequently lO a position less valorized within the ideology. This string of entailments, leading into less desirable arguments and ending with the reprehensible procrusteanism of equality of outcome is, I would argue, what renders debates about equality so prottacted and difficult to conduct. What begins as a highly valued position in favour of difference and Iibeny appears to be fully realizable only through the unacceptable eradication of difference. Given breathing room within the ideology, one could imagine equality formulating a compromise between its divergent drives toward difference and similarity. But under current conditions, the tonuous polysemy of "equality" is revealed as a product of the way its uneasy alliance between difference and similarity is fractured under the sway of an individualist ideology which rejects any alliance, at least at the highest level, with sirnilarity 8

Equality in the West, in its confusing commingling of both difference and sirnilarity, resembles what the phenomenological philosopher lhde (1986) calls a "multi-stable" figure. A multi-stable figure is one that can appear as several different things, but only as one at a time. The paradigm of the class are those optical illusions that can look like either two faces or a goblet but not both at once. Equality similarly can appear to promote difference or similarity, but not, under the current ideology, both at once. I would suggest that multi-stability is probably a typical state of existence for subordinated representations in an ideology, as the operation of a dominant value prevents them from working out their own syntheses by "unnaturally" weighting their parts. The situation here is similar to the one Dumont handles by the concept of levels, whereby a representation, say right and left, is allowed to reverse itself in terms of value in different contexts without precipitating a logical uproar. The concept of levels is indeed useful in dealing with specific reversals, but in analyzing entire representations as the often contradictory sum of their contextual manifestations it may prove useful to retain the concept of multi-stability.

In sum, similarity is the spectre that haunts all discourses of equality under Western ideology. Concrete similarity is anathema to both individualism and its allied notion of libeny. It is because the concept of equality contains within itself a valuation of similarity that, as many commentators have noticed, equality often conflicts with libeny. In Dumont's (1977:4) words "equality and Jibeny are by no means always convergent...". Difference, though not necessarily inequality, is the realization of Western individualism. Any aspect of the notion of equality that promotes similarity is subordirtated within Western ideology and this subordination serves to complicate the logic of the overall concept.9

Before turning to a consideration of the Melanesian materials, it is necessary to point out one further feature of Western thinking about individualism and equality. The individual is conceived of as apan from its social relationships inasmuch as each individual bears value for him or herself. Because social relationships are thus rendered irrelevant, equality is not a matter of social relations between people. Instead, equality in the West is always a matter of comparing two or more

36

individual's relationships with "society" or the state in the sense that the latter acts to equally guarantee the former's right to differ. People are equal with regard to the state or to society, but their equality does not refer to any relationship between them. 10 The mediated character of equality between individuals has deep roots in the Western tradition and earlier representations of equality placed God in the space now occupied by society or the state. The impon of this model of equality as a relationship between unrelated individuals and the state will, like that of Western notions of similarity, become clear when the Melanesian materials are discussed.

Some Features of Equality in Melanesia

Dumont (1986:215-16) himself has confessed that the cultures of Melanesia, and especially Papua New Guinea, fit poorly into either of the two models of society he has offered under the labels "Western" and "nonmodem" (or "Indian'~. He writes:

Let us take Melanesia, or, more precisely, New Guinea: what is known about it, and the failure of both substantialist and structuralist theories to this day in that field would seem to indicate that we have not discovered -or that, by comparison with other cases, we have not discovered at all-the ideological axes which would provide a relatively coherent and simple formula .... In terms of our present interest, these differentiations would lie beyond or outside the opposition individualism/holism, with the result that they would be as badiy described from one point of view as from the other (1986:215-16 emphasis in original).

This admission of difficulty invites us to formulate the hypothesis that at least some Melanesian societies need to be analyzed as ones in which equality is the paramount value. Yet Dumont does not mention the hierarchy/equality couplet here and equality as a value is not an element of the same son as individualism and holism. Adopting the distinction made above, individualism and holism are not in themselves values but rather refer lO the bearers of value. I will argue that the analogous element in Melanesia is the relationship; relationships are the social forms in regard to which value is reckoned. Once the "relationalism" of Melanesian cultures is recognized it becomes possible to demonstrate that equality is the paramount value there.

That Melanesiarts are best regarded as relational is a point that has long been implicit in the literature and has emerged strongly in M. Strathem's 1988 book The Gender of the Gift and in other of her recent essays (Strathem 1987, I992a). Strathem convincingly argues against the appropriateness of individualist and holistic models in Melanesia. Out of her critique of these models a relational model of Melanesian sociality emerges clearly.

Anthropologists are not often inclined to argue for thoroughgoing individualism as a value in non-Western societies and to this extent Strathem's critique of it is not surprising. But in the cogency with which she argues that it is relationships which are the fundamental reality in Melanesia her critique leaves a valuable resource upon which further work can build. Put too simply, Sttathem claims that persons are not

37

defmed as unitary individuals but are rather understood as a construction (an "effect'') of relationships. On the one hand, the relational construction of the person refers to the way persons are viewed as composed of the relations that produce them and that, often through idioms of substance, anticipate their own future relationships. This is the sense in which the person is "a nticrocosm of relations" (Strathern 1988:131 emphasis removed). On the other hand, the notion of the relational person also calls into question the construct of the individual as the unitary source of action, as when Strathern (1987:295) writes that "[a]nother person may be the cause of action, not as one mind overriding another's, but in terms of the requirement of a relationship in which the presence of one party is necessary to and created by the other ... ". Relationships thus "elicit" the person and its actions as well as composing it (Wagner 1974, 1986; Strathern 1988) . In Melanesia even the corporate groups which Western anthropologists so often figure as "supraindividual individuals" are more usefully understood as relationally produced. Where we are tempted to look for groups making relationships we often enough fmd relationships and their associated exchanges making and remaking groups (Schieffelin 1976; Wagner 1974).

Referring to Leenhardt (1979), Strathern (1992a:l00) argues that in Melanesia "[i)t is impossible ... to imagine a person cut out from relations and remaining alive." The implicit contrast here is with the Western idea that the person stripped of its relationships is precisely the individual, the social form to which value can be attached as it differentiates itself through relating and other activities. Melanesians do not recognize the individual as a bearer of value in this way, but in fact they do conceptualize persons who are relationally deficient - they are thought of not as individuals but as "rubbish men" (Burridge 1975; McDowell 1980). Without adequate relationships the person is something less than a person and cannot even participate in the creation of value, much in the way that those who cannot form adequate individual boundaries in the West are construed as insane and thus not capable of beming value.

Yet it is not Strathern's relational critique of individualism that is the most radical aspect of her work. As she writes:

The irony is that what clouds the anthropologists holistic enterprise in the late twentieth cenmry is no longer individualism. The 'death of the individual' has seen to that. Rather, the problem is the Western dismantling of the very category that once carried the concept of a holistic entity, that is, 'society' (Strathern 1992a:91-2).

For the Melanesianist, "society" is an inappropriate construct because "the people of Melanesia do not work with concepts of society or culture" (Strathern 1992a:73). Instead of an ideal of the social whole that we might gloss as "society," Melanesians work with concepts of relations. There is no notion of an ordered whole in which persons take their rightful places in Melanesia, and thus no whole can be the bearer of value as it is in holistic societies. In the absence of such a whole, relating carries its own intrinsic motivations as the creation of a social form to which value can attach rather than as a way of reproducing some piece of a larger strucmre. The protracted debate over "loose structure" in Melanesia evidences the importance of relational ism

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as opposed to holism. If this debate demonstrated little else, it firmly established that the creation and maintenance of relationships in general is far more important than the creation or maintenance of relationships that instantiate a specific place in some overarching model of the social whole. The anthropological apperception of Melanesian societies as loose rested on a misunderstanding of the fundamental importance of relationships there - for the holistic structure which Melanesians realized loosely was posited not by the actors but by the anthropologists themselves11

If relationships are the bearers of value in Melanesia, then in order to demonstrate that the societies of the region are egalitarian it remains to be shown that value in relationships is delineated along an axis of equality/inequality. Here it is important to recall what is virtually a truism in the Melanesian literamre: relationships are created, maintained and transformed in exchange. The fundamental place of exchange in Melanesian social life is central to the arguments of Strathern (1988) and the work of Gregory (1982) on which she draws. Burridge's (1975:98) assertion that in Melanesia "exchange ... [is] the basic value" is indeed no overstatement, though it confuses the mechanism which produces value with the value itself. What Melanesians value in exchange is equaiity. Relationships bear value by being the vehicle for equal exchanges.

Forge's (1972) article "'The Golden Fleece" is the most creative effort toward giving content to the claim that Melanesians are egalitarian that has yet appeared and his model is based on the creation of equality between persons in exchange. He writes that in Melanesia "the principal mechanism by which equality is maintained is equal exchange of things of the same class or of identical things" (Forge 1972:534). Persons are rendered equal within relationships through the exchange of equivalent things. This is a demonstrative equality, proven against continual challenge to demonstrate equivalent ability to give (Forge 1972:534).12 The principle of equality in relationships is expressed in a variety of social forms in Melanesia. People may render each other equivalent violence (see Schieffelin 1976) or misfortune (killing for revenge, for example, or harming themselves intentionaily to demonstrate equality with an accidentaily harmed friend). They may practice sister exchange to avoid the inequalities of asymmetrical affinity (Forge 1972). Men can choose to address one another using the same term or name (Flanagan 1988). And, fmally, in what is often understood as the canonical form of Melanesian exchange, people may simply exchange versions of the same material goods. What is at issue here is not the ability or desire of Melanesians to evaluate exact equivalence of items exchanged, an issue that in some cases may not be relevant despite the frequent indigenous use of measuring devices (Brown 1979:717-718, Foster 1990, Strathern 1992b). Rather, it is crucial that we recognize the widespread concern with what we might want to call an ethic of exchange, the expectation that people will provide what is reckoned as a sufficient return on items given, an expectation often enforced by the possibility of becoming a rubbish man and by the threat of sorcery (see Brison 1992:202). The exchange of strict equivalents is perhaps the realization of the ideal type, and this may be why it is often found useful in healing relationships damaged through

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disputes (Foster 1990:67, author's unpublished data); but even when strict equivalents are not exchanged the existence of standards of sufficient return ensures that relationships can be understood to be in a state of equality.

Revenge killing, the matching of homicides in war, the exchange of equivalent things or names, and even sister exchange are all similar to what in the West is considered "leveling." In all these cases an achieved or potentially achieved inequality between donor and recipient is erased by making the partners to the relationship equivalent in their "gifts" to each other. However, this is a leveling r:i persons within the relationship only. People may be differently leveled in each r:i their different relationships. Thus the notion of demonstrated similarity within concrete relationships - what Forge (1972:535) calls "the extreme of equality -identity"- does not perfectly resemble the everyone-the-same, 'ceiling screwed to the floor' leveling that so terrifies holders of modem individualist ideology. Similarly, it is not enough to see a certain empirical equalizing effect simply in the fact that the continual obligation to give prevents material accumulation in the hands of any persons (Mitchell 1978). Exchange does more than simply level everyone in an abstract sense through redistribution. The equality forged in exchange is relatioual, requiring partners to demonstrate equivalent capacities in regard to each other.

But there are also relationships based (ideally) on the continual giving of goods back and forth at ever increasing quantities which at first appear to us as far removed from any leveling of achieved inequalities. Such relationships often have a competitive quality, each partner struggling to give more in what looks like a pursuit of inequality. It is these sorts of relationships that have lead both Brown ( 1979) and Forge to write of the impossibility of achieving ''perfect balance" in exchanges where "the equality achieved is never perfect" (Forge 1972:535). Both Brown and Forge make these points as part of arguments attempting to prove that exchange relations have no fmal, equivalent end point, and thus, more important to their arguments, that series of exchanges do not end. But in doing so both of them atimit that while perfect equality may not be realizable, it is what is aimed for. Exchanges do not stop precisely because the desired equality is not definitively achieved.

Even where persons continually give more than they receive, they do so first to demonstrate their equality with their partner and only subsequently to give the relationship future impetus by subordinating the receiver. Exchanges that produce alternating inequalities always demonstrate equality as part of their "argument." The Hagen Moka nicely demonstrates this dependence of inequality on demonstrated equality, for there the repayment in the service of equality is conceptually separated from that "increment" which establishes a new debt and temporary superiority (Strathern 1971). People must first demonstrate equality before any bid for inequality is ntade. Furthermore, every incremental prestation expects a return by the currently bested partner. Thus, even when inequalities are generated the never ceasing flows of exchange ensure that they will only be "alternating" inequalities (Forge 1972, Strathem 1971). In sum, while perfect equality may never be achieved in certain

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societies, the point of equality is always passed through in the generation of what amount to alternating inequalities.

What we see here is a kind of future-oriented leveling, a leveling played in reverse. For if leveling is the redress of achieved inequalities, competitive egalitarianism through gift giving is the pursuit of achieved equalities. While the West at its most noble dreams of an egalitarian beginning from which people can attain the inequalities they deserve, Melanesians labour to create endpoints r:i equality. And while never-ending exchanges may evidence this valuation of equality without ever providing in practice that secure plateau free from the marks of alternating inequality, there follow two examples of the achieved egalitarian endings which are at stake in these sorts of exchanges. Consider Read's (1959:429) discussion of Gahuku-Garna soccer matches:

In these matches each 'team' aims to equal the goals scored by the other and no team should win, that is establish outright superiority. Garnes usually go on for days until the scores are considered to be equal.

Then tum to the Tangu relationship of mngwotngwotiki. Burridge glosses the name of this relationship, "usually entered into after a series of formal exchanges," as "enough. sufficient. equivalent," and he points out that entering into mngwotngwotiki ''points to a plateau of achievement, an approximate but mutually acknowledged moral equivalence" (Burridge 1969:61). The plateau in question bears some resemblance to the flat plane of leveled equality in the West, though it is specifically Melanesian in that it is not a starting but an ending point and is a plane upon which rest only specific relationships.

Having arrived at a general sense of the contours of Melanesian egalitarianism, noticed its relatioualism, articulation through exchange, demonstrative character, and "backward" and "forward" leveling aspects, we must now take up the question of the place of inequalities in these egalitarian societies. For, as Dumont would lead us to expect, it is not the case that Melanesian societies are without inequalities. But if equality is the paramount value, it should be possible to show that these inequalities are somehow defmed or conditioned by the value of equality. Here we will briefly consider the specific cases of big-men and affinal relationships.

Big-men appear at first to be a jarring feature on the egalitarian horizon. 13 Do they not cultivate a general inequality, or at least multiple specific relationships of inequality? Sahlins' (1963) classic argument that big men systems are egalitarian because positions of leatiership are open to all men on the basis of achievement is not adequate to answer this charge of inegalitarianism in the context of the present argument. He simply reproduces the Western model of equality as the liberty to differ, a point recognized by Jolly (1987:170) when she points out that Sahlins' scheme "exhibits certain classic features of the liberal discourse on equality." Instead, we must recognize that while there is no doubt that big-men are at least in some sense unequal with regard to ordinary men, there are several indications that the big-man's inequality is only possible when it is articulated through equality, much in the way power exists in India only as it is subordinated to a religious system with which it must negotiate its own peace from a position of weakness.

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Big-men are masters of the sort of escalating exchanges which produce alternating inequalities. These exchanges were shown above to contain egalitarian elements. Thus the exchanges through which big-men become big already implicate them in equality. Furthermore, the model big-man will in fact make equivalent returns on all things given to him by his supporters, thus maintaining many equal exchange relationships. Finally, in those exchanges which most demonstrate their bigness, big-men are involved in creating equal relationships with other big-men. As Burridge (1969:38-9) has written of the Tangu:

In order to show precisely how equal they are managers [big-men] require rivals of similar ability .... Those who work hard gain prestige and credit by disposing of their produce through a more rapid turnover and wider ranges of equivalent exchanges.

Big-men produce their superiority only through use of the idiom of equality, only by having more equivalent relationships than others. In this case Orwell's formula that "some are more equal than others" is perhaps not a logical scandal.

Despite all of this, it is true that big-men are unequal. Although they ideally reciprocate equally even to their less potent partners and allies, their manipulations of schedules of repayment and the economies of scale give them a surplus of prestige. (Prestige is in fact the most fully relational of inequalities: it cannot be hoarded and exists by definition only in relationships.) But the point is not that there are not inequalities, only that they are encompassed by equality: this obviously occurs here when inequality can only be the product of multiple equalities and when the big-man must never be without equivalent peers with whom he can exchange equally at the fullest of his capacities. Furthermore, big men recognize that they play on the margins of their cultures' paramount valuations of equality. Burridge (1975) has spoken of big men as beyond the moral sphere in precisely this sense. In the same vein, among the Gahuku-Garna, Read (1959:534) "heard some of the more respected leaders describe themselves as 'bad men' .... whose behaviour frequently seems to exhibit a small concern for the virtues which they attempt to encourage in others".I4

The case of affinal and matrilateral inequalities, those between wife-givers and wife-takers and between mothers' brothers and sisters' sons, is a bit more difficult to locate in regard to the valuation of equality. Sister-exchange marriage, and to a lesser extent patrilateral cross cousin marriage. serve in many Melanesian societies to attenuate these inequalities (Forge 1972). But the problem of affinal and matrilateral inequality is still worth considering for those societies that either do not practice sister exchange or patrilateral cross cousin marriage or practice them only sporadically.

At the heart of affinal and matrilateral inequalities in Melanesia is the belief, somewhat common there, that the gift of a woman can never be reciprocated equivalently except with another woman and that the maternal line's gift of substance to a child is similarly a debt that can never be made good (for the latter see e.g. Errington and Gewertz 1987a). Relationships between affines and matrilateral relatives often register these inequalities through exchanges of unlike, unequivalent things between the parmers. In the Western sense of ontological equality, which of

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course is not relational in the Melanesian sense, we can see a certain equality generated especially in the case of matrilateral relationships of inequality by the fact that everyone has them. But the argument being developed here requires a way to link these inequalities to more fundamental practices of creating egalitarian relationships. Forge (1972:537) describes such a linkage when he writes that "the satisfactory ntaintenance of their unequal exchange depends on each remaining a viable full member of the total community, that is, performing satisfactorily in their respective equal exchanges." Thus structured inequalities resulting from marriage, where they are rigid, are often used to form alliances that aid both parties in their pursuit of relationships of equality. Inequalities are again subordinated to, based on and put in the service of, the paramount value of achieving relational equality.

The above paragraph involves what Forge accurately calls inequalities between men generated by their relationships to women15 and thus leads us to a final consideration which complicates any egalitarian reading of Melanesian cultures: what equality is there in intersexual relationships, or in relationships between women? Throughout this paper I have followed the ethnography on which 1 have relied in presenting the logic of the male world as the logic of Melanesian societies as a whole. While Errington and Gewertz (1987a,b) and especially Strathern (1988) have convincingly shown that the ascription of inequality to woman in Melanesia is complicated when indigenous conceptions are taken into account, the fact remains that there is little available data bearing on how women are or are not integrated into the Melanesian egalitarianism I have so far depicted. Forge (1972:536) speculates intelligently on some of these issues in his attempt to build a model of Melanesian egalitarianism:

In egalitarian New Guinea society it is only the men who are equal in the sense of being at least potentially the same or identical. Women are different ... the differences are those of complementarity; men and women are interdependent but are in no sense the same or symmetrical and cannot be identical.

But as logical as this argument is, it tells us nothing about women's relationships among themselves and is based for the most part on an understanding only of Melanesian men's views of the issue16 The model here presented is necessarily incomplete. This should not, however, obscure the main arguments of this essay: that equality can be understood and applied differently in different cultures and that equality can be a paramount value elsewhere in ways that it is not in the West. It is a strength of Dumont's program, as has been noted, that the mere existence of inegalitarian elements in a society does not prevent us from studying it as an egalitarian one. These contentions can now be further elaborated through a detailed analysis of equality as a value in a single Melanesian culture.

Equality as a Value and the Structure of Emotion in Kala una

The Kalauna, Goodenough island dwellers numbering about 475 persons, are the subject of two fme monographs by Michael Young (1971, 1983)17 Living in the

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Massim, though not participants in the Kula, the Kalauna are deeply involved in working out the relationship between equality and inequality. In both monographs Young regularly refers to Kalauna's egalitarianism. Goodenough Islanders in general, he tells us, "affect an uncompromising egalitarianism" (1971:10). In the case of Kalauna he refers to their "fierce egalitarianism" and "the vehemently egalitarian ethos of the culture" (1971:62, 1983:31). And while neither monograph is focused per se on how this egalitarianism is patterned and manifested in Kalauna culture, Young more than other ethnographers attends to the conflict between equality and Inequality. As he has written:

The Intimations of rank on Goodenough are curiously persistent in an otherwise pervasive egalitarian milieu. Imagine trying to force a rubber ball under water: it persists in popping up again. Do not imagine a well-inflated beach ball, whose buoyancy sends it springing into the air, but rather a soggy, weakly inflated ball that rises almost apologetically to the surface where it bobs, partly submerged. That is the appearance of rank on Goodenough Island (forthcoming:2).

The current task is to demonstrate that what deflates the beach ball of rank and robs it of its buoyancy is its existence subordinated to and encompassed by a paramount value of equality.

While adjudications between equality and inequality exist in many domains of Kalauna social life, for example in those of marriage and affmity, it is evident that food (and the yam In particular) is the primary medium through which relations of equality and inequality are negotiated. IS What then is the relationship of equality and inequality in the world of food production and exchange? In general, there are no institutionalized inequalities in food production and exchange abilities. What is at issue however is not simply food production for exchange, but also gustatory abstinence aimed at preserving produced food for the exchanges where its prestige-generating social value is realized. While one particular clan controls important prospering and abstinence magic with commurtity-wide effectiveness, there is no shortage of land and in the fmal stages of the yam gardening cycle each person uses their own inherited magic for making yarns big and appetites small. Furthermore, in sorcery and in the ''malicious gossip" (veyaina) which is "thought to be almost as damaging as sorcery" the people of Kalauna possess effective leveling mechanisms for preventing or eradicating achieved inequalities in food production. As Young (1971:10, see also 1983:39) points out: "sorcery was, and still is, greatly feared by those who would display an uncommon talent or a conspicuous degree of wealth .... "

But this son of leveling, familiar to Westerners, is also complemented by exchanges that create that forward-riented relational leveling we have already described as characteristically Melanesian. This is evident in the two major food exchanges in Kalauna life, the abutu and the competitive food giving that constitutes the climax of individual festivals in the Kalauna festival cycle. Here we will look at the ways in which equality as a value encompasses inequality within these two institutions.

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Abutu are intra- or intervillage competitive food exchanges involving clans and other complexes of people related in a variety of ways. While Young (1985:185) notes that abutu is "a means by which egalitarian relations are competitively negotiated between individuals and groups," he makes it clear that these exchanges are also potential crucibles for the forging of relations of superiority and inequality. "The dominant intention of a party to abutu is to shame the opposing side by giving it more and 'better' food than it is able to pay back simultaneously, thereby demonstrating- within the tenns of the culture- greater power, worthiness, and even virtue" (1971:194). There is evidence to support the assertion that the abutu's potential to generate inequality is finnly anchored in a logic that presumes equality as a value. Thus, as in the case of moka, after A gives to B, "B amasses its return prestation. measured minutely for equivalence, and strives to give more," after which A has a final chance to carry out the same procedure (1985:186). Here again the first concern is to demonstrate equality through equivalent return, and onto that equivalent return is added a dominating excess. It is not simply a matter of giving more, but of giving the same "and then some" (maintaining the full temporal sense of "then" usually ignored in the clicM).

People of Kalauna go further than simply embedding inequality in the logic of egalitarian relationalism forged through equivalent exchange, however. For collective opinion (which is the only gold standard for prestige, as opposed to more materially or structurally based inequalities) seemingly insists on seeing these competitive contests as having ended in equivalence. In the dark night of general consertsus, all abutu are ties. To quote Young (1971:203) at length from an evocative passage:

There is no finale, no ceremonial declaration of the winners, and as the enemy jojojo [exchange representatives, literally trading partners - see below] and their women folk come for the last time to take away ... [their gifts] ... the feeling (in an observer at least) is one of anti-climax .... No one shouts abuse at the disappearing, food-laden figures of the enemy .... [The initiator of the abutu notes that his enemy] owes him eighteen bunches of bananas, a couple of wooden platters of 'taitu', and six yams of an impossible size. Their pigs were equal. He may conclude that he has won because of the bananas, while his opposite number, making similar calculations in his own house, may conclude U1at the victory is his because of the taro. A few months later they will tend to agree with everyone else that it was 'fair', a drawn contest. [emphasis added]

What has happened here is that the egalitarian emphasis of an exchange fonn which insists on equivalent rerums has asserted itself, both in the individual reckonings, where inequalities appear as needles in a haystack of successful equivalencies, and in the final verdict - which is for equality. On this reading, Young (1985:186) is referring to the structure of the institution, and not to contingent coincidences, when he remarks that "clear victories in abutu are rare." So, as with the "big-man logic" analyzed in the previous section, any outcome of prestige or other inequality that is

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produced through abutu is dependent for its creation on an institution that promotes demonstrably egalitarian relationships.

A closer look at how the actual task of giving is accomplished in abutu provides another way of comprehending the institution's egalitarian bias. The principals in an abutu are called inuba, and they are thought to be "enemies", at least for the duration of the contest (1971:190). Yet the inuba do not interact directly. Instead, from the initial challenge to the last exchange the main public roles are taken by the respective inuba's hereditary exchange partners (fofofo). It is the initiating inuba'sfofofo who carry the challenge to the "enemy." And upon the enemy's acceptance, their own fofofo take over all of their public functions in the exchange (1971:197). The two fofofo do the actual exchanging, they also do the stylized verbal and physical insulting and threatening that accompanies the exchanges. After the exchanges have been completed, the inuba do not even eat the food received from their enemies, and instead their fofofo eat and redistribute this food, feeding the inuba from their own stores. In all of this, "the inuba' s role is conspicuously and deliberately non-participant" (1971: 191).

The complicated structure of the actual practices of exchange in abutu evidences egalitarianism by preventing the parties who might potentially be related unequally from actually forming any direct relationships at all. Young (forthcoming:9) refers to the "displaced agency" of the two inuba who allow their fofofo to "insulate" them from one another. Although the two inuba are understood to be competing, the dyadic, relational structure of the potential inequalities is at least complicated if not fully obscured. Not only do they leave to the fofofo the work of exchange, but the two parties who stand to become relationally unequal refuse contact with each other and each other's dominating strength as embodied in the food through which such relationships are expressed. Even the displays of power through threat and insult are carried out by thefofofo, who are not at present endeavouring to back up their own claims to asymmetrical exchange (one wants to complain "let the inuba say that to my face!").19 The status contestants are not interacting with each other directly; if inequality results it is oddly removed from any direct relationship.

And fmally, it is important to remember the inactivity of the inuba. If this is dominance, it is a kind of dominance that immobilizes - at the moment of possible superiority one becomes, in one's inactivity, non-participation and non-relatedness, akin to a stone monument to one's own glory. Relating to no one, your power is noticed as if it is a thing you no longer, in your immobility, wield in any active sense. This question of the link between immobility and inequality or power leads us directly to a consideration of festivals. It is in the concluding phase of festivals that the stone monument metaphor fmds its clearest application.

Kalaunan social life is marked by a cycle of festivals put on by various clans with the assistance of their fofofo. Festivals can be drawn out affairs, consisting of several phases. Several aspects of the festival concern us here. Festivals conclude with a "large-scale" distribution of pigs and vegetable food which serves to pay off old debts and create new ones (1971:233). Festival climaxes are furthermore structured in a manner similar to abutu, with fofofo carrying out all of the active tasks

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(1971:233-4). There is, however, only one inuba clan and only one fofofo -the inequality or dominance aimed for here is with the rest of society, not with a single "enemy." Furthermore, the returns on initial gift-challenges made at the festival are not given immediately (as they at least ideally should be in the abutu) and thus imbalances of some duration are created. We might imagine that this is a greater threat to Kalaunan equality.

However, I will not focus on the way equality enters into the structure of potentially hierarchical exchanges in this case, preferring instead to accept festival cliruaxes as real threats to equality and to examine in this light the behaviour of the sponsoring inuba. At the climax of the festival, several men and women of the inuba are present, sitting atop a platform, as kaiwabu. The primary referent of the term kaiwabu is these festival sponsors seated atop their perch. As Young (1971:76) writes, the term "bears considerable and significant connotations of rank." Throughout his first monograph one becomes aware that kaiwabu are vinually the embodiment of hierarchy, and the term has secondary usages in describing people who are '"Lording it'" over others (1971:76). At the festival climax, the kaiwabu are decked out in fmery - "visible evidence of superiority and rank, which is reinforced by the physical position of the kaiwabu seated above the crowd" (1971:250)20.

But the true nature of equality's triumph over inequality in the festival climax can only be seen when the kaiwabu's behaviour is taken into account. As in the abutu exchange, it is the fofofo who do the active, publicly visible work at the festival cliruax. The fofofo do all of the talking -greeting visitors and demeaning the size of the feast in stylized refrains - and the fofofo do the distributing of food as well. What, then, do the kaiwabu do? Young answers:

From the moment of seating himself cross-legged on the platform at mid-morrting to the time of the depanure of the final guests at dusk, the kaiwabu should not be seen to move, speak, eat, drink or do anything except gaze fixediy at the crowd and vigorously chew betel (1971:249).

Kaiwabu do not speak, do not exchange, do not even move. Indeed, in their inaction they "epitomize the displaced agency" that was also evident in the behaviour of the inuba of the abutu (forthcoming: 9). Further adding to the sense that the leadership role is here severely compromised is the fact that those taking the role of kaiwabu are often not even the "real leaders ... who initiated the festival" but are rather "surrogates" who act the role while the real leaders "are likely to be squatting quietly under their houses with no more than a token feather in their hair by which to identify them with the festivity" (forthcoming: 11).

We are again faced with the seemingly paradoxical expression of inequality as non-relatedness, immobility, distance from and inactivity in the buzz and hum of social life as constituted at a high pitch by institutions of competitive exchange. How do we interpret this par