The Logic of Retribution and the Study of Melanesian Religions

Author(s): Garry Trompf

Source: Iran & the Caucasus , 1997, Vol. 1 (1997), pp. 125-145
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4030746

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 THE LOGIC OF RETRIBUTION
and the Study of Melanesian RelIgions

GARRY TROMPF
Sydney

The logic of retribution is a perceivable configuration of human action and reflection.

It becomes a discoverable object of investigation when we ask of others why they 'pay back'
their fellow human beings by acting antipathetically, and why, conversely and at other times,
they behave with concession, generosity and forbearance. The questions we put to others
might just as well be put for our own introspection. Almost invariably, it soon becomes obvi
ous, reasons are given by which we ourselves or other agents explain why expressions of
animosity or friendliness have been enacted and uttered. Perhaps we will wonder whether
these reasons are ill-founded, or 'properly' stated, or plainly ex post facto 'rationalizations';
perhaps we will doubt whether the reasons would be present in someone's consciousness if
we had not pressed them with the question 'why did you do it?' That reasons are given at all,
though, and so ubiquitously, is the rationale itself for analyzing a logic or logics of paying
back other people, whether negatively or positively. The discourse of requital or retribution
itself is almost inevitably ostensive in character; we can usually only listen to communicated
reasons for acting (or for that matter to the thoughts which arise in consciousness when we
account for our own behaviour). The real reasons for our deeds one way or the other may not
be known to us, lying imbedded in the unconscious. But the remarkable phenomenology of
retributive logic - the constant attempts to explain, justify and rationalize requital - take up a
sizable part of human language and communication. We wage war and make peace, destroy
and build, avenge and play host, punish and reward, condemn and commend, vilify and edify
take and give, accuse or apologize, prohibit or pennit, and all the while telling or being able
to tell why. A vast field of mental constructions seems laid out around us, awaiting the care-
ful traversing of scholars.
The realm of relevant notions looms so much vaster when one considers that it is not
only our own or others' personal reasons for requiting which belong to it. A host of events
occur around us in daily life which draw responses from us in terms of praise and blame.
How prevalent is the human recognition that, after ill-chosen, unwelcome courses of action
some people 'get what they deserve'! The whole world, it seems - extraordinarily enough -
holds that significant outcomes in human affairs imply a 'because'. How characteristic is it of
human societies that there are reasons why some group runs into trouble, or an individual
falls ill and dies, or per contra some great 'blessing' is felt.
Now what we take as explaining our own and others' actions of revenge and conces-
sion will often but not always coincide with the reasons we ascribe to the working out of a
wider range of events. A typical coinciding arises if one senses that others' misfortunes have
resulted from some enemy's efforts to get back at them, efforts we recognize as possibilities
for ourselves. But we might not want to ascribe all outcomes of events to human intention; in
some of them we might perceive the finger of the divine, or the workings of luck, or the
forces of nature. A relatively more reflective and distanced assessment of what is going on
may result, yet still the logic of retribution pertains, indeed more decidedly so, because a
wider-than-usual repertory of causal possibilities is now brought to bear on the 'appearances'
of events. Any repertoire and the assumptions behind it could be criticized as inadequate; a
David Hume might object that causes of any kind have been evoked, or a neo-Positivist com-
plain that the best principles of verification are being shelved. Such charges, however, do not
have the power to wish away the realities of that great arena of ideas untouched by the stric-
tures of philosophers, a field in which logics of retribution are pandemic because groups anld
individuals interpret events with aetiologies that are mediated much more through tradition
than independent ratiocination.

Retributive Logic as Culturo-Religious Product in Traditional Societies

Upon reflection, and despite bot personal temperament and the particular
each context and pretext, reasons attendant upon acts of requit:al can be viewed as
IAN &c CAUJCASUJS, olJO 1, 1997, pp. 125-14S ? Itoratifonal Publication of Iranian Stuiods

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GARRY TROMPH?

ucts of culture. Not only the language used, but also the characteristics of the reaction, the
relative measures to which emotion can join with justificatory appeals, and especially the
ways given reasons for acting are related to group expectations about how to respond to types
of actions, are all heavily affected by cultural preconditioning. Around the globe, socializa-
tion and education in the broadest sense define the relative behavioural limits and foster the
recopizable outlooks of peoples, and with these the student may begin differentiating one
profile or eidos of retributive logic from another. In most traditional small-scale or tribal
societies, for instance, revenge raiding and warfare will be highly typical, and with group
pitted against group praise will fall on those who (sometimes even indiscriminately) kill one
or a few of the enemy on opportune occasions; as it will on those who show hospitality and
give lavishly to friends and allies. The logic involved is characteristically connected with
prestige; in small-scale survivalist and warrior societies, prestige accrues to those who give
their all both in bravery and in economic activity on behalf of their group. The pursuit of re-
venge is usually rooted in the need to assuage the loss of blood, while reciprocity is grounded
in a complex of obligations that a 'security circle' is committed to uphold.
A typical possession of such band, tribal or village societies is a range of prohibitions
instilled for group secunrty's sake through the direst threats, with 'tabu-breakages' often
bringing into play a regimen of severe physical punishments. This is the subject of legal an-
thropology. Accompanying the logic and calculation behind acts of requital and jural sanc-
tions is also that surprisingly universal if neglected manifestation of reflective thought in the
so-called 'primitive world': a body of consensus explanations or explanatory principles by
which significant events - especially trouble, sickness and death, and the blessings which are
their opposites - are placed in the spirit-influenced scheme of things. A death by disease
which a secular-minded Westerner might otherwise put down to genns is ascribed to the ma-
nipulations and nocturnal mysteries of sorcery; or to the potency of a father's, perhaps a
mother-in-laws curse; or to some 'place deity' in whose domain the victim has unfortunately
trespassed; or to ghosts or gods who have punished an evil deed that human arbitrators have
not been able to uncover; or to pollution through coming into contact with women's blood or
a corpse; and so on. In the operational modes of this Volkslogik, the desperations and flour-
ishing of the whole community, and sharp environmental shifts - with the devastations of
droughts and earthquakes or the surprising bounty of earth's best yields - can be attributed to
appropriate agencies and spiritual forces in the webbing of cosmic give-and-take. Honouring
the traditions will be seen to bring benison, while delects, ritual errors, vulnerability or in-
caution make for disaster, and the wise and good are those who see the difference and discern
what goes on in the changing circumstances of life.2
There are many complexities to address in the cross-cultural study of retributive
logic in 'primal' societies - far too many to enumerate here. In that majority of cultures that
prize warriorhood, the ability of young braves to face ordeals will mark their manhood, and it
should not come as a surprise that the custodial group at their initiations will appear to punish
them through the severest of tests - by scarifization, circumcision, dehydration and the like.
The expectations of one's security circle (lineage, clan, tribe) will heavily determine one's
sense of acting well and being worthy. So-called 'shame culture' predominates in the very
basic sense that kin- and peer-group pressures inevitably befall those failing to fulfill their
obligations in small-scale political economies. "Bad feeling" is what is brought into social
relationships by one's wrongdoing or mistakes; it is not so obviously an inward sense of
wrongdoing, although one ought not to eschew talk of 'guilt' being felt by tabu-breakers in
the anthropological analysis of any society.3 'Life-codes' instilled into the members of these
traditional societies condition both the logic of behaviour and explanation. The social phe-
nomena resulting may be far from unifonn - the gentle Semai will quickly cover wrongs with
material compensations and without violence; the Amerindian Ute brave will commit grue-
some suicide for what seems to others a minor point of honour - yet the calculations of ap-
propriate recompense constantly proceed. They loom as a symbiosis of "stone age econom-
ics", the "binary opposites" of la pensee sauvage and the human "need for meaning".4 The
tribal language of war, barter and belief run together to indicate both why one should act and
what are the factors behind change.5
In tribal and small-scale societies, it will now be obvious, retributive logic is an ex-
pression of religion, insofar as the termn 'religion' denotes 'total ways of life' which are also i
effect 'lived cultures'.6 Put more precisely, the logic of retribution, as a structuring principle
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 THE LOGIC OF ZZBUION
of action and thought, reinforces activities and Weltanschauungen that assume
involvement of cosmically-significant agencies in the give-and-take of life. W
ple in the West might deem mundane - the economic and the military - are in
societies of ongoing relationships that include spirit-beings. When rituals are
epitomize the broader ethos in an outward form that modems quickly perceiv
religious'. These rituals invariably entail reciprocity between humans and non-
sacrifice actualizing the logic of retribution most explicitly because something i
spirit-powers in order that something - security, health, prosperity, blessing -
the sacrificers. Dant ut dent.

Religions and the Logic of Retribution in Large Polities

With the development of larger unities - amphictyonies, kingdoms, empires, dy

ties and states - the circles of security are greatly extended. In these both military loyalty
sense of reciprocal obligation are now expected to apply beyond "the limits of the same
tribe". Enthusiasm for manslaughter and raiding against neighbouring groups must needs be
curtailed, although a new consciousness about the 'common enemy' - I' autre - almost in-
variably arises. To invoke Bryce's apt if old-fashioned maxim about the orientation of "civi-
lized countries":
"Although every individual man is now under law and not in a State of Nature, every
political community, whatever its form, be it republican or monarchical, is in a State of Na-
ture towards every other community."7
Empires conquer by defeating outsiders, very often under the pretexts that neigh-
bouring groups deserve being punished for their troublesomeness or that their order of life is
unworthy. Nations war against nations, usually on the grounds of righting some wrong - an
aggressive incursion, a border infringement - and recurrent hostilities can often reflect old
linguistic and neo- tribal 8 differences. The legitimations and discourse of conquest, then, and
of inter-imperial or international conflict, are characteristically retributive. They often reflect
application of that "geometric rigor" of requital which, according to all extant epics com-
posed at the interface between the tribal and the civilized, "operates automatically to penalize
the [perceived] abuse of force" by enemies.9 The perennially resurgent epical mentality reap-
propriates the barbaric-looking principle of payback as a national virtue, a principle now
acted out by members and recruits of armies rather than by most able-bodied men of a tribe.
Within larger unities (from city states to empires), however, the primal stereotypes of
the enemy as 'outsider' are seriously undermined. Life holds less certainty when, in the com-
plex relations of urban life, one's neighbours behave inimically, or when, as the ancient
Greek Theognis once lamented, it now becomes too easy for one to deceive a friend while it
still remains hard to trick an enemy (cX4poq, as outsider) (Eleg., 1219-20). The processes of
transition from the tribus to unitas so affect consciousness that words for enemy and the ob-
jects of revenge will now have to be carefully read in context, to see whether they apply to
outer or inner relations or both. Inside a newly-emergent political society, naturally enough,
pressures will be at work to do away with "wild justice"; law, as the quotation of Bryce (per-
haps unrealistically) suggests, holds previously disparate groups together with a more de-
tailed codification of punishments and appropriate payments.1? But enemies' inevitably turn
out to be of two sorts, and if one can be joyous about victory over external foes, allowance is
also commonly made for gloating over 'sweet revenge' on enemies within one's own commu-
nity, when a rival suffers a downfall or one's adversary loses out at court (e.g., Aristotle,
Rhet., 1370b; Aeschines, Orat., ii,182-3).
If the code of equivalencies satisfied most contingencies, one learns to appreciate
retaliatory urges which seem to render legal principles irrelevant, jealousy welling up over
adultery, for instace, "makcing a man so furious that he will not spare when he takes revenge,
and will accept no compensation" (Prov. 6: 34-5). Thus we find that apparently 'more civi-
lized' humans, ripped from a survivalist, tight-unit, outer-directed security circle, initially
double the sphere of their retaliations; and although each sphere has new curtailments put
upon it, with limits as to who goes to war and under which formnulated rules of military be-
haviour, and with laws applying across regions and even nations, one will continue to help
and engagie in reciprocity with friends while being ready to overcome or harm two kinds of
enemies.
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GARRY TROMPH

The widened horizons of poleis, nations and empires, however, do indeed enhanc
the possibility of 'more universal' principles of law, and the wider acceptance of them. Usin
Rome as his paradigm, the great Giambattista Vico long ago plotted shifts from the immed
ate, direct, severe, even brutal imposition of punishments in the barbaric 'age of the heroes'
the emergence of more humane abstract principles of equity and justice. In all realism, the
presence of these pnrnciples, both in an increasing number of the populace and as the ostensi
ble basis of institutions does not eliminate the possibility of savage punitive arts including
the human sacrifice of captured enemies or aliens.13 Certainly it is worth noting how the ex-
istence of a law-oriented society can curtail unbridled authoritarianism or civilize conqueror
with tribalist menlalites (as with the classic case of the great Khans)14, yet rulers, governin
bodies and law-enforcers around the globe have recurrently shown a capacity for totalitaria
impositions and torture in spite of enunciated humanitarian pnnciples. The sudden pro
nouncements of execution by an Hawaiian king or an 'Oriental Despot can even appear in
good light beside the holocaust-perpetrators of modem totalitarian regimes bolstered b
rhetorics of freedom.15
Political retribution usually falls on those deemed to threaten the unity or survival of
the impressive post-tribalist structures. Apart from those who resist conquest, there a
groups witfiin the larger unity - regionalist forces, armies headed by pretenders to suprem
power (as in Rome during the Civil Wars), tribes or ethnic groups holding a stronger power
base than the one maintained by a "fragile kingship" (as with African confederate kingdom
marginalized peoples creating moral outrage setting up social arrangements outside the pre-
conceived social order (as in the early thirteenth century Western Christendom), or rebel-
lions, protest and visionary movements through which colonized people work to throw off
imperial overloadship (as with Jewish zealotry in Antiquity or the many black new religiou
movements in latter-day colonial Africa and the southwest Pacific).16 At the village level in
dividuals and families who experience a larger social unity will develop their own ne
senses of "the enemy within" - the greater fear of an inimical sorcerer or witch being closer
at-hand, for example, rather than at a safer distance) in outsiders' hamlets17- but in the poli-
tics of nations and empires the "intemal enemies" - domestici hostes as Cicero dubbed them
(Pro Sest., ii. 11) is are the ones who subvert social stability and the established order of gov
ernment. Ideological justification for retributive action against these latter dissidents will a
ways be found with ease by appealing to the necessary preservation of territorial integty o
socio-religious cohesion, and by rhetorical stress on the criminality of the perceived subver
sives, or by 'scapegoating'.19 Per contra, group opponents to a disliked regime common
claim that its old legitimations are outworn - that the 'mandate' (ming) is lost, as the re
nowned Chinese dictum has it - or that other loyalties (ancient ethnic or else new religious
ones, let us say) demand rejection of a prevailing 'oppression'. Disaffection can result in ac-
tive physical reprisals against unwanted regimes, organized non-cooperation, movement
projecting the retributive intervention of the divine, or a mixture of all three.
In archaic and pre-modern political societies religions have been either conserving or
revolutionary in their consequence, as have both religious and secular ideologies over the las
two and a half centuries. Religious beliefs and practices have been useful tools of socio
political conservation, especially when what I have termed "the perennial religion" is ele
vated to a national significance. The religion that celebrates the victory of its warriors and th
fecundity of its fields is ideal for an expanding military state, confirming that the gods re
ward the proper (and now more centralized) rituals with success and give sanction to punish
those who stand opposed to the divinely-backed encompassment of empire. This is what has
hitherto been called the operations of 'natural' rather than 'salvation' religion, because the po-
litical society is conceived as a pre-existing condition and as much a given in the cosmi
scheme of things as the ancient tribal complex was. This natural religion is one of colour,
ceremony, and of concern to secure 'sympathetic connections' with environal forces (most
often by bloody sacrifices, in odd cases by orgiastic rites), and it imposes a socially-cohesive
binding (as the Latin religio already partly implies) without yet being subject to the critique
that it is formalist and fails to meet the interior spiritual needs of its votaries. In the articula-
tion of retributive ideas it tends to reproduce the perennial norm of tribalist mentalities bu
for a broader community, the changing fortunes of city-state or empire being dependent o
whether the spiritual powers are pleased and the populace keep up God-given rules of con-
duct. This religion breeds a concern among burgeoning priestly and scribal custodians to set
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 THE LOGIC OF RIDUTON
down legal principles better suited to the governance of larger unities. Revenge can n
be indiscriminate but fixed as a juridical punishment on particular culprits, and the
exaction and retributive equivalence - an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a toot
21:24) - is typical of a situation in which the old language of payback and exchange
yet given way to newer insights about forgiveness, mercy and a more humane resp
delicts.20
It is obviously of great moment in the history of consciousness that abstract theories
of retributive principles come to be enunciated - that a Goshala can see the whole universe as
a complex interplay of ineluctable forces called karma, or that a Heraclitus can borrow from
military discourse so as to conceive the cosmos as a vast arena of spi; (conflict). Still more
important are the religious stances by which the 'perennial religion' is exposed as complacent
or defrauding (as with Zarathustra, the Biblical prophets and Muhammad). For them the en-
larged scale of physical sacrifices that followed widened territories should be more spiritual-
ized, messages of social peace and salvation also being offered as antidotes to the human
strife that civilization only compounded (because it had augmented both the theatre of exter-
nal wars and the possible range of internal enemies). Just to persuade people that more 4XWia
(friendship) was needed in the world (Socrates), more reciprocity (shu) and humanness (/en)
(Confucius), more compassion (metta) (the Buddha), more love (ds, j, / ayawrI) (Jesus) was
significant enough in eventually mitigating strident legalisms and humanizing relations. Yet
to present at the same time critiques of religion that come near to visualizing a cosmic order
without negative retribution was actually subversive,to what religion, generically and histori-
cally, had been all about, and also running at loggerheads to the realisfts world of cut-and-
thrust, in which revenge, vindictiveness, resentnent, bargaining competitiveness and power
balance were inevitable components in the game of humanity's ceaseless struggle. There had
to be compromises in the 'working out of one's salvation', for the impulse to live under 'the
reign of God' occurred in a world in which there was little 'compassion for all sentient beings'
and one which was still decidedly 'fallen'.
The relationship between great spiritual traditions and the perennial religions against
which they react is variable and complex. Suffice it to say here that the older attitudes tend to
catch up on the newer (and what most would now accept as deeper) insights. Pacifist Taoism
eventually became accepted at the imperial court (under the Tang dynasty); Buddhism and
Christianity were appropriated as religions of the state (from Asoka and Constantine respec-
tively), and the prophetic utterances of the Qu'ran provided perfect inspiration for the mili-
tary expansionism of Khalifates. The logics of retribution well suited to the winning of exter-
nal victories and intemal security are eventually absorbed into those bodies of beliefs that
were originally propagated to counter the 'perennial norm'. Some older expressions of the
retributive mentality may have disappeared in the processes of interaction: blood sacrifices
perfonned as materialist-looking bargains with the gods, most pertinently. But the bloodless
rites replacing them - the Christian Eucharist being a pertinent example - have so often been
reinterpreted as acts of insurance against disaster or divine wrath. Outcomes will be assessed
in terms of whether the rules have been broken, and a life of love detached from all concerns
with security and success will be left unembraced. As time has unfolded, moreover, nations
have had less and less tolerance for the ambivalences and special privileges of soteric, spiri-
tualizing religions. The 'civil religions' of nationalism, for instance, usually finds neo-tribalist
logic more grist to their heavily-grinding mills, and economic rationalism prefers reduction
of values back to the primordiality of the market-place.
In the complex interactions between perennial and more spiritualizing tendencies,
very interesting permutations arise in reflective thought about requital. Pointed questioning is
made from time to time as to why troubles still occur even after public rites or moral codes
have been scrupulously observed. Some famous laments in the ancient Chinese Book of Odes
(Shih Chins) (eighth-seventh centuries BCE) were uttered about this kind of dilemma, and it
is one guaranteed to strain tche ablest minds engaged in that famous reflective mode we have
called 'theodicy' (lit, 'a justifying of the divine [ways to humanis']) since its coinage by Leib-
niz. Complaints like those in the Odes were met by Chinese philosophers in different ways,
and not the least significant among the logical loopholes was one invoked by the great Con-
fucius, who averred that the justness of Heaven will manifest itself in time (rather than in
'mechanical immediacy'). The renowned book of Job wrestles with a comparable
problematigue, its main protagonist being struck down by "unmerited" sickness and disaster.
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GARRY TROMPH

If the poetic kernel of the work leaves matters unresolved, with listeners of the dialogue ta
talized by Job's protestations of innocence left unsatisfied, the prose ending depicts a Job re
stored in fortune with children and much stock (42:10-17), a denouement reflecting Jewish
normative retributive logic giving the righteous their reward in this life. 21 Another conver
difficulty traditionally addressed by theodicy is the apparent 'prospering of the wicked' (cf
eg., Ps. 94:3 Jer. 12:1), which was claimed to be 'satisfied' by appeals to time, or by the un-
pleasant nature of an evildoer's death, or even by appeals that a life of virtue (apeslt) is still
to be preferred to being among the "evil ones" (Kaxot) (Theognis 315-18, cf. 101-04). Post-
mortem judgements of dead souls (earliest with the Egyptians), some kind of hell (as in Zo-
roastrian imaging, apud D6st6n-i-Mdnok-i Xrat), or a metempsychosis into a lower life-form
(according to some Brahmanical teachings Brihad. Upan. VI.ii.15) are other projected situa-
tions of appropriate, resolving retribution.
Another fascinating development concerns principles of honour. The passion and
intensity of tribal warriorhood become transformed into a precise, ritualized code of behav-
iour suitable for individual members of a nobility or armed elite. Recompense by force is
elevated beyond the brutal and the banal by curious processes of spiritualization, so that the
knowing soldier is in pursuit of higher mysteries (Mithraism), perfect self-control (the Samu-
rai tradition), the holy grail (a mix of old Celtic and Latin military idealism), monastic rules
of lex talionis (Irish Columbans), and so on. A refining of retributive logic ensues. If the
honour of one's family or a lady or one's own person is impugned, restitution through com-
bat is required, a principle enduring in European duelling (which was not abolished in France
and Germany until after World War II). If there is a certain danger of falling into the enemy's
hands, or if one has failed in duty or the upholding of honour, then suicide is preferred to a
death given unfortunate ignominy by some victorious foe invoking comparable principles of
vindication. 23
Just as noteworthy are those attempts in the wider unities of haute-civilization to
make up for the dismantling or underrnining of tribal-positive reciprocities. From Urukagina
the Sumerian reformer to Karl Marx, the anti-plutocratic voices have been lifted up against
social inequities and the wanton use of force by the greedy or arrogant, and some vision of an
alternative order of justice and fairer distribution typically accompanies this 'judgemental-
ism'. The Hebrew is called to remember the ideals of his semi-nomadic ancestors, the Greek,
Roman and Indian to imagine a Golden time of perfect social relationships and economic
conditions; 24 and in the ongoing history of the world's most influential religious tradit
we find generosity and sharing, almsgiving and tithing, care of the infirm and vulnerable,
well as opposition to excessive wealth, even usury, to be prominent themes. Visions of peac
broaden as the conditions under which positive reciprocity will strive, and peaceableness
conceived as one of its hallmarks. Certain primal societies have been known for their avoid-
ance of internal quarrelsomeness or the cultivation of serenity; 2s some have been touched by
the greater traditions to this kind of effect - as with the 'Hinduized' Balinese, who register
their disputes with the local headmen and then try to forget about them. But it is cross-
cultural political developments that engender conceptions of a 'generalized peace' that are
unknown to almost all small-scale societies (since in the latter any idea of humanity and of
'personhood' beyond the localized cosmos is typically lacking). 26
The history of consciousness, then, is witness to the lasting and perennially reappro-
priated effects of the very ancient logical and ubiquitous principles found among 'first peo-
ples', and although these are seriously modified, sometimes even turned on their head, by
teachings pitched against vindictiveness, against bargaining with the divine or attachment to
material benefits, very basic, less subtle insights about recompense have remained beyond
extirpation and are always on hand to defraud even those most valiant at 'purifying the soul'.
The documented history of ideas cannot be understood without an eye for conceptual
stratigraphy of retributive logics. Sometimes layers intermningle, sometimes they compete i
sharp contract and we see the conflict between old and new values. Sophocles senses the dis-
appearance of the old straight-forwardness, with his Antigone being caught between the sa-
cred, long-inured obligation to bury one's kin (to avoid cosmic retribution) and the newer
political duty to obey the king (to avoid decreed punishment). There comes a time in late Re-
publican Rome, to take a later example, when the censorious voice of Cato the Elder against
lwcuria and the breakdown of old reciprocities will not be heeded, and a new 'social myth' is
quickly swallowed that rich merchants bring benefit and prestige to the state (cf. Cicero, De
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 THE LOIC OF RE TmBUTXON

Offic., ii. 7). Later again, after the earliest generations of Christians had eschewed invo
ment in military action, the 'Christianization of the empire' made it inevitable that both
diering to check the barbarians and the following of the unanned Christ of forgiveness
now mix. Much later again, in a Protestant Christian context, the Scotsman Dugald Stu
rightly perceived, if classicist theorists of society had hitherto worried about the evil ef
of luxury on nations, Adam Smith positively extolled "national opulence" and the intem
tional reciprocities of freer trade that made it possible. 27 And so the complicated story
on.
The history of retributive logic, mind you, is not exclusively religious in nature. Pre-
historically speaking, one suspects it to have been a mode of thought integrally bound up
with religion because all thought appears to have been so, yet we sense that some motives for
requital, such as acting from self- or group-preservation, are not always distinctly religious,
and in any case moderns can appeal to survivalist principles as secular justifications of nega-
tive payback. Secular articulations of retributive notions, though, can vary widely. Some high
idealism shows up. In the history of ideas non-theistic minds can stand out against ordinary
practice like reformers, insisting, for instance, that "the true giver of a gift does not think of
the return" (Democritus, Frg. 68B96). On the other hand in a characteristically Machiavellian
explanation of events people only get their rewards if they are cunning and experience trou-
ble through lack of skill or foolishness, not an account of any divine governance. The famed
Marx in effect framed a sophisticated secular payback theory, both erecting it on "ethical
foundations" and bracing it with cold realism; one learns from him who the enemies (of so-
cial progress are), how history justifies retribution against the capitalists, and that the time
will come when the workers will know how to act in their own best interests (rather need to
be on the side of a God, as Wilhelm Wealing, Founder of the Commumst League, had a little
earlier contended, when he projected a returning Jesus to join the oppressed workers in
smashing the bosses). 23 The secularization of retributive logic, indeed, is an obvious datum
of contemporary life, but then, it is remarkable how 'post-religious' expressions of recom-
pense can have so much in common with the material concerns, simple realism and basic cut-
and-thrust known in tribalist mentalites. Ancient references to spiritual forces have come to
be replaced by new reverences - towards the saving achievements of science and technology,
the autonomous power of the gun, the uncanny miracle-working properties of money, the
'invisible and free hand' of market forces, as well as toward the groups or nations managing
these forces, and so on - all of which affect both the motives and interpretative modes of
payback in the modem world. 29
The logic of retribution, we have seen, is no simple instrument of consciousness. Its
negative aspect, for instance, cannot be reduced to aggression, for it can manifest without
physical outbursts. As Margaret Mead once put it, societies have pattemed aggressiveness in
many different ways: "they have regarded it as primary and rewarded it; regarded it as inci-
dental and extinguished it; regarded it as primary and punished it; regarded it as secondary
and develo ed it", but everyone at various times of their lives have had to bear "a chip on the
shoulder". A sullen rejection of life - what Nietzsche called ressentiment - can be just as
much a retribution when it cuts off fellow human beings who look for cooperativeness as 'in-
formal' gang activity is in the 'Third World', with youths raping and stealing because "they
get no satisfaction" out of 'ordinary living'.31 Humans are also quite capable of punishing
themselves - oftentimes inwardly. That is to make plain that the logic of retribution cannot be
reduced to the mechanical, outward processes of socio-economic exchange. It issues in the
psychological realm of interior and consensus reckoning, in minds and communications be-
tween them rather than just in material transactions or objects which are held or passed be-
tween hands. Apropos its interpretative mode, furthennore, retributive logic cannot be lim-
ited to a pre-scientific thought-form, or as pertaining to some set of human temperaments and
not others, or as a reflection of emotions interfering with reason. Its tokens lie in a thousand
different literary moods, nowhere more variously displayed than in the plots of creative
writing. Drama feeds on evil, on the idea that some fault in the universe - some arrogance,
immoderacy, sacrilege and sin - must needs be rectified by a resolution of justice, or by
nemesis and "the anger of Zeus", by the "retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice" of a
Moby Dick, or by the rebellion of Nature herself.32 Until our post-modern confusion,
lftterateurs have been either ceaselessly in search of a moral order or bent on defining one.

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GARRY TROMPH

Now they are caught between the very notion of such an order as 'totalist, or unwitting
suming it in their efforts at 'political and henneneutical correctness'.
Historiography, as an enormous literary corpus, has been highly devoted to pin-
pointing the rewards and punishments of the divine in recorded events. As I have written in
various places, it has been used by the victors to demonstrate why the losers were beaten or
could not hold 'the mandate'. As in the Hebrew Bible, in perhaps the most determinative way
of all, it has been applied to show that evil leads to disaster and righteousness to blessing.
Because "the wicked prosper", and those victorious in empire-building in the past have been
forced to give way to others, history has been written as a cautionary tale or as a sea of vicis-
situdes from which we can secure no pennanent comfort (unlike 'heaven'). Today intellectu-
als are less certain than ever that history has its own intrinsic meaning, since it has been ex-
ploited so much for the justifications of theory and action, but there still abound popular vi-
sions of it as 'vanquishing ignorance', moving towards the punishment of a foolish humanity,
or rendering lessons we are not supposed to forget. 33 In all forms of literature, in any case,
the retributive factor looms when we ask whom authors may be writing against, or over
which issues they are most defensive.

Instructions out of the Melanesian Complexity

All of the developments outlined in the above analysis are starkly illustrated by t
cultures of Melanesia. From the Vogelkop in west Papua (or Irian Jaya) to the central is
of Fiji, we find about one fifth of the known discrete languages and religions of the w
reflected in a tapestry of small-scale, usually isolated peoples across high mountain valley
dense tropical jungle and scattered islands. Out of this complexity, and through certain a
nies of rapid social change, there have arisen some of the newest nations on earth.
In work towards my quasi-encyclopaedic study of Melanesia, entitled Paybac
found the warrior ethos to be endemic to the Melaneslan region in pre- and immediate
contact times. A clan, or a cluster of initiated males belonging to a 'long', 'club' or 'men's
houses' within a tribal or small culture-linguistic complex, typically made up an armed 'secu-
rity circle', and also a 'jural group' bound to consensus rules of solidarity. Neighbouring
tribes, even within the same language area, were characteristically in a state of hostility, and
they relied on alliances with tribes (and long-houses) less proximate to maintain a power bal-
ance for their own survival. The enunciated pretexts for taking up anns or retaliatory action
could be particular grievances, ranging from a human death to the stealing of pigs or the
raping of a woman, but the genuine aetiology, as hundreds of tales about warfare have at-
tested, was blood revenge. The close kin of those who had lost a relative in an ongoing con-
flict fall under intense pressure to assuage the blood spilt - or the very loss of a hand from the
body as the islander Siassi metaphor had it - by taking a life from the 'culprit group'. 36
It is the thesis of Payback that the group impetus to avenge enemies is a 'religious
datum'. It involves mobilization of support by "owners of a quarrel" 37 (those most directly
affected by a death) who are under a severe obligation to requite (being 'morally pressed', or
'honour bound', to use expressions that are sometimes linguistically appropriate, or even
'guilty', as the highland Chimbu phrase pring pangwo best translates).38 More than that, the
condition of focused collective reprisal entails all sorts of investments of time and energy
that simply 'look religious'. Wompa youths of the Morobe plains do not become men, to be
graphic, until they (at least help) secure an enemy head; Middle Angoram spirit houses along
the Sepik River contain striking effigies of the departed whose involvement in former and
ongoing conflict placed a demand, even sanction, on the living to sustain the fight; Trobriand
war canoe prows and a thousand and one material artifices of war in other societies - deco-
rated arrows, stone pineapple-shaped war clubs, painted shields, war drums - were given
careful labour, bespelling and at times potent names. Sacrifices to war gods, spirit possession
to signal the necessity or requisite power to take revenge, the takcing of omens, the discussion
of dreams and the singing of chants before an assault, let alone the very effervescence or
collective vit:ality on-the field of battle itself, all bespeak the integral connections between
Melanesian 'revenge warfare' and 'religion'. It has become a nonsense to present ethnogra-
phies artificially demarcating 'the military' from 'belief systems', when traditional Melanesia
had spawned a multitude of 'warriorhood religions'.3

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 THE LOGIC OF NUTION
In any case much of the ostensible ritual and judicial life of Melanes
parently more palpable religious and moral manifestations of their behaviou
the nerve centre of revenge or 'negative payback'. Lexically, for instance, t
punishment of rule- (or 'tabu '-) breakers are commonly equivalent or akin t
getting back at enemies; in ceremonial life - as in the mock pandemonium-li
host dancers at a pig-killing feast among the highland Wahgi, let us say, or
attempt to drive away the bridegroom's party at an Orokaivan bridewealth p
terland Papua) the instability of tribal relations or the 'retributive impulse'
very often signalled at some strategic, preliminary moment. In male initiat
initiators were typically invited in from allied tribes, with the right to infl
ordeals on boys who had to be made into unflinching fighters. In select chieftain societies,
sorcerers, who along with 'war magicians' were traditionally more outer- and enemy-directed
in their activity, could be deployed - as wielders of 'spirit power' - to punish those commit-
ting delicts within the security circle. Sorcerers in most Melanesian societies, in any case,
were valued within their group for keeping up threatening energies against enemies while
fighting was not on; whereas witches were usually inimical, as women who had married into
a patriclan and showed signs of disturbing or dangerous behaviour. 40
I have gone so far as to argue that 'negative payback' constitutes one half of the
heartbeat of Melanesian religions, so magnetizing were the preoccupations with survival
against and prospective victory over foes. However, the other half has been treated under the
hermeneutical rubric of 'positive reciprocity'. Under this interpretative rubric we are ac-
counting for a range of concessive phenomena that are very commonly conceptually linked in
Melanesian societies as a 'paying back' (cf. the pidgin bekim) yet without hostility. Such for-
mal, usually ritual components as peace-making, compensation of allied tribes offering sup-
portive warriors, and the hosting of grandscale ceremonies involving deliberately magnani-
mous gift-giving to allies, are worth immediate recognition here. Formal group-to-group, (or
[living] human-to-human) acts of reciprocity also have their fascinating analogies with of-
ferings and sacrifices to ancestors, spirits, or gods, these activities presenting as reciprocity
with supersensual powers - though more often to forestall inimical consequences apotropai-
cally than cajole or express thanks. The great pig-killing festivals of the central highlands
(with the Chimbu, Wahgi, Mendi, etc.) or mass prestation of bananas on the Morobe plains
(by the Atzera), illustrate these connections very powerfully. Pigs and foodstuffs are given
away to guest tribes with astounding generosity (in the hope that the recipients will prepare
something similar for them in the future), but the display of wealth and fecundity is mani-
fested in front of ('cultic') structures from which, on imagined 'grandstands', the dead and
spirit powers can witness the achievement of the living and be persuaded to maintain their
benison. 41
The second, dystol-like half of our heartbeat cannot be reduced to 'forrnal-ritual' con-
figurations, however, because the nervous energy of everyday economics forces us to en-
compass within it more humdrum mechanisms of give-and-take. From the discovery of a new
yam tuber in the ground, or from the suckling of a new piglet on a highland woman's breast,
on to the multiple manifestations of exchange - within the family or lineage, along affinal
lines, at known trading points, or in inter-tribal ceremony - the vitality of handling the sur-
prising excesses of the tropics, and of constantly assessing what is being given and received
(including how much, and the 'balance of obligation' entailed), also constitutes a datum of
religion. Or so I have argued in Payback, where, against a prevailing narrowness, the defini-
tion of religion have been deliberately widened to face up to this reality, in an effort to ex-
plain the remarkable enmeshing of festal colour and a preoccupation with material results
(among "the most materialistic peoples on earth"). 42
If I have dared, however circumspectly, to generalize about the plethora of Melane-
sian religions in terms of retribution, both negative and positive, I have distinguished "com-
plexes of thought and action" placed under the headings of revenge and reciprocity from re-
quital articulated in a more reflective, explanatory mode. The logic of taking revenge or en-
tering into exchange is bound to particular urgencies and demands to act in singular circum-
stances, but decisions to act one way or another depend upon a broader pool of consensus
values, principles and explanatory devices. In this focus of research much interest centres on
the "consistency of logic" with which world-views and shared mcdi explicandi match up with
the world of action, be it violent, spontaneously merciful, ritualized, and so forth. And the
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CARRY TROMPH

greatest fascination lies in those patterns of thought that transcend language and cultur
ferences: the endemic tendency to explain what happens in one's tribally-centred cosmos in
terns of 'praise and blame' or 'rewards and punishments', broadly speaking. That is to say,
one finds shared modes of ascription instilled from childhood - through which trouble, sick-
ness and death are attributed to an enemy (most commonly a sorcerer) or to faults (especially
neglect of obligations), and wealth, victory, health or "fullness of life" to ancestral or sgirit
blessing - dominating thought in the processes of acting against foes and helping friends.
This reflective aspect of retributive logic I have taken to be intrinsically religious in
character, not only since it assumes so many non-empincal agencies, but especially because
it floods the whole realm of retributive action with its 'spirit-oriented' infusions. It is the
'thought-out' part of culture, which, better than more ambiguous, more mysterious and less
easily deciphered symbols, signs and long-inured rites, clinches the presence of 'religious
configurations' or matrixes that bind together (cf. Religatio!) what Westerners tend to com-
partmentalize into the economic, military and political.T4 When persons are sick among the
coastal Papuan Motu, for instance, a process of collective discernment goes on among the kin
around them, who press them to consider whether they have disturbed any relationships that
might have angered the dead, or ask them to recall where they have been in recent times and
whether they crossed paths with a hired sorcerer. When a person dies among the Toaripi,
further to the west, hours are spent at night by the male relatives, observing in the movement
of fireflies the likely direction and thus hamlet from which the deadly sorcery had come.45
Thus already, as a matter of course, the arena of consensus explanation opens its gates to
pressing, recognizably consequent, activity.
We are not saying in this analysis that retributive logic exhausts religion, but only
that it has a greater usefulness than any other 'religio-cultural constituent' in characterizing
Melanesian life-ways across the board, and also, as I go on to argue in Payback (parts 2-3), a
special value in explaining what happens in the post-contact religious history of the Melane-
sian region. The southwest Pacific, after all, is less well known for its confusing array of
small-scale traditional religions than for those extraordinary outbursts going under the
somewhat insensitive epithet 'cargo culf. These collective displays of hope in the coming of
European-style commodities, to be borne by the ancestors, or to accompany the newly pro-
claimed, prospectively returning saviour Jesus, were responses to outside contact, missionary
activity and the colonial impact. Especially from the 1880s, Melanesia became part of the
scramble for colonial territories, the Dutch consolidating their Indonesian holdings as far as
west New Guinea (now Irian Jaya), the Germans securing New Guinea, the British (and then
Australians' holding Papua, the French sending their convicts to New Caledonia, and every
part of the island region falling under non-indigenous jurisdiction by 1906. The so-called
'cargo cults', I have argued, once the superiority of European fire-power was palpable, pre-
sented the most of noticeable of 'new religious forms' arising in reaction to intrusion and th
dismantling of old autonomies. 46
Cargo cults were transmutations of the warrior spirit insofar as they were organiz
altercations against the 'disruptive order'. They were local acts of reprisal, forced by militar
inferiority into assertive, but usually unarmed non-cooperation with the new overlords, a
though projecting a radical reversal of fortunes in favour of the indigenous in some (rela-
tively) 'cosmicized' future. Mission talk, while preaching against the evils of revenge, opened
up the possibility of a final-looking magico-spiritual victory by which local peoples' lost
control would be restored. Future possession of the cargo, not uncommonly seen to include
guns, because emblematic of recovered identity that was cherished and reinforced in the once
solidary (but now fractured) tribal ethos.47 Leaders took followers down to the beaches to
wait for ancestral ships, wharves were sometimes built, or airstrips laid out, or even mocked-
up planes constructed out of building poles. The implications of retributio in all this, how-
ever, as I have already suggested, were not simply negative, as if the only object was to gloat
over an imminently recovered supremacy and to make a new foe 'lose out'. No. The 'cargo
cult situation' has its special bivalency and has never been so cut-and-dried. The ambivalence
in the response has to do with the connection between the newcomers, largely whites, and the
new goods they possessed. In that they were the introducers and teachers of new technics, the
intruders were welcome. There was a "place for [these] strangers", especially as in many ar-
eas they were for a long while associated with the distant dead or old culture heroes.46 The%;
brought with them the 'eschatological-looking' breakthrough to end eons of lithic culture,
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 THE LOGIC OF RETRIBUTION

and it was precisely the staggering difference between 'stone-age' technology and the re-
markable products of the West at the highest point of human industrial achievement (I 880s)
that gave the new goods a 'magical', indeed 'redemptive' significance." In the first flushes of
excited interest, local people showed their eagerness for the new sources of possible prestige.
Possible illustrations are endless. Some Kerdaakie of the Western district of Papua, for ex-
ample, went against tradition by selling out children beyond their culture area, one "for three
shillings, two pieces of calico, a box of matches and a knife". In the Wahgi valley a few
young women acquired discarded tins from the Mingende Catholic mission station in the
mid- 193 Os and wore them as armbands, a few in the course of time dying of their effects on
the circulatory system.51 These two and countless other pieces of data, however, show that
tribespeople were far from experiencing a ready or controlling access to the new items.
Melanesians were used to what we may call the 'reciprocal spread' of materially use-
ful things - foodstuffs, valuables, traditional housebuilding resources - yet the distribution of
the Cargo was either unsatisfactory or disrupting, and the new items often came to betoken
the ill-will or punitive power at their supply-source. Thus the colonialist cargo bringers ei-
ther did not bring enough of a certain type of goods to 'go round' (or last) or else brought too
many traditionally (or neo-traditionally) prized items, such as shell-money, dogsteeth, or
beads, that dislocating local price inflations soon followed. 52 The identified 'real Originators'
of the Cargo, if as typical they were identified as spirit-powers, had to be addressed through
collective and ritual action for apparently not granting riches to the locals as against other
peoples; although there was also a common suspicion that the Cargo was intended for the
villagers but intercepted and deliberately withheld by the whites (or any of their black abet-
tors who had annoyingly greater access to 'the prize'). 53 On the one hand, then, the quest for
Cargo implies a strategy to circumvent the blockage to an 'appropriate reciprocity' - the sus-
pected outsider emerging as "the non-reciprocal man", like an insidious sorcerer. "4 On the
other hand, the extraordinary character of the new goods engendered the hope of an as-
tounding prospect of "perfect reciprocal conditions" - when "all's square again"
(mngwotngwotiki) as the New Guinea hinterland Tangu expressed it - and thus a t
with eschatological-redemptive flavour because supportive spirit-powers were expected
ushur in. s
The mixture of "reprisal" and action towards "redemption" in cargo cults, then, al-
ready bespeaks homespun explanations of indigenous conditions in terns of retributive logic.
Ideological features of these social altercations called cargo cults centre on accounting for the
invidious conditions of the locals. This could be done by blending traditional myths and mis-
sionary-borne Biblical stories about 'original faults', as was so arrestingly done among the
Madangs of coastal New Guinea. According to the prophet Tagarab of Milguk (from the
Milguk-Yabob area) in the early 1940s, for instance, the culture-hero Kilibob (now identified
with 'God') originally gave "the natives" their chance to receive Cargo, but they had stupidly
chosen the wrong things and Europeans won out instead. God-Kilibob, however, had now
seen through the deceits of the whites and was returning in his movements and favours to-
wards the Madangs. He was sending the Ancestors, according to Tagarab's message of up-
heaval, in the guise of the Japanese (who bombed and took over Madang in 1942).56 T
message locked the punitive element in with the explanatory, foreshadowing problems both
for the whites and any local Madangs who opposed his movement. The vision of a cosmic
resolution involved the final-looking, transformative arrival of goods first brought to New
Guinea by the whites, but now known to be also possessed by another, advancing and ad-
vantaged people.
This combination of filaments - the coalescence of a following under a leader to "bite
back" at the mastas (colonial overlords), to "participate" in the newcomers' innovations, and
to explain new collective strategies in the light of discernible intentions by God, Jesus or the
spirits to deliver rewards and punishments - arises in other Melanesian new religious move-
ments as wvell. Or so I have exposed in the 20+ independent churches of the region, in politi-
cal fronts with a religious basis, in neo-traditionalist revivals, and in various other relevant
movements. 57 Such social phenomena issue in a mixture of resentments and high hopes for
the future resolution of a relational breakdown, and their following derives from leadership
accentuating the key point of grievance and elevating a vision of the coming sindaun gut
(pidgin: 'happy conditions') (which in actual fact becomes harder to actualize if some kind of
sectarian split or political divergence is being advocated).

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GARRY TROMPH

The third and last part of Payback faces issues of so-called 'modemization' in Mela-
nesia, with religion firmly in view. The separatist, non-cooperative features of the new relig-
ious movements just introduced require examination within an ethos of competing denomi-
nationalisms and sectarian strains. The "sinews of sectarian warfare" began in Melanesia in
the late nineteenth century, and severe Protestant-Catholic antipathies, while easing over
time, did not abate until the 1960s. Although representatives of the mainline traditions - the
Catholics, Anglicans, Reformation churches and Methodists - came to recognize the folly of
divisiveness, many sectarian Protestant groups have tried poaching into previously ratified
'spheres of influence', with a strongly competitive and confusing face at distinctive times in
the region's history. The rapid expansion of Seventh Day Adventism into as yet 'unreached
areas' of hinterland Papua and the Western Solomons caused a great deal of constemation
among the major churches during the 1910s. The opening up of the populous central high-
lands of Papua New Guinea after World War II gave opportunities for many small, independ-
ent, often North American missions to stake their scattered claims. And in recent times cru-
sades for lively charismatic or pentecostalist-style worship have resulted in quarrels, splits
and sometimes violence in the cause of either new spimrtual discovenres or the defense of
Christian practices that have settled into 'neo-traditions' since the days of pioneer missionar-
ies. 58
These 'negativities' aside, over 90% of Melanesians associate themselves with Chris-
tian missions, and the mass recognition of a desirable turning from revenge warfare has mad
for a 'shared sense' of Christian nationhood (as preambles to the constitutions of all the inde-
pendent states indicate) and a relatively healthy ecumenism and ecclesial cooperation
(through the Melanesian Council of Churches, the Evangelical Alliance, and Pentecostal Al-
liance). 59 While a recognizable 'Christianization' is the chief sociological datum of chan
and modemity, however, various complexities, all illustrating the importance of retributive
logic, have arisen.
In certain highland regions of Papua New Guinea, for instance, tribal warfare has
been resurgent, and has been especially problematic for the promising-looking and densely
populated Enga district since the 1970s. A number of new elements in this warfare are worth
noting. These include fighting over land, for a start, previously but one of the pretexts for
disputes (see above), and paradoxically enough health programmes, the (temporary) peace so
increasing the population that the Papua New Guinea highlands experienced the fastest
growing population in the world by 1970. Another related development is intra-tribal (or in-
ter-clan) fighting, traditionally minimal, and among the Chimbu new pressures on land have
been decisive as a factor. New leadership, whether church or new-political, has been per-
ceived by older warrior elements as unsatisfactory and very compromising with traditional
enemies. Youths who dropped out of the educational system or not benefiting from social
change have been drawn back into excitement of a military life. Police, and not just long-
inured foes, become the object of payback, as do farther-flung groups if someone from the
coast or further down the highlands highway runs over and kills a local." Guns also present
the newest, perhaps most worrying of recent shifts. After watching cowboy and war videos in
the evening, an early morning whistle in certain Enga villages will call women and children
to proceed to safe quarters, and by around ten o'clock in the morning warriors station them-
selves behind trees, guns at the ready for the day's shoot-out. Very recently, in the Kasap area
of Enga, a machine-gun has been helicoptered in by one tribe to secure the possibility of ex-
terminating neighbouring enemies. 61
Mainly (but not exclusively) in urban areas, youth groups have emerged as a disrup-
tive element in Papua New Guinea. My researches into gang mentalities found the presence
of surrogate tribal solidarity, ritual initiations, and shared assumptions that the "lack of sati
faction" offered by life in towns (pidgin: no gat satisfakshen) legitimated for 'rascals' their
attacks on property and persons.62 Gangs often reflect a cross-tribal membership, and signal
ize new regional identifications - the 'Gulfs' (from the Papuan Gulf), the 'Sepiks' (from both
sides of the Sepik River) - who in urban areas will support each other in conflict situations as
wantoks (speakers of the same or related language[s]), even though they might have griev-
ances with each other back home. Politicians can buy gangs' services, and in case the politi-
cal consequences of disorder in cities grow daily as a 'responsible workforce' face stresses of
physical danger. 63 Regionalist tendencies, also reflected in politics or general responses to
failures of national governments, and not just in gangs, can congeal into attempts at political
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 THE sLOGIC OF IETIIDUTON
separation. Fragile allegiances on Bougainville fed the secessionist spirit there (since 1962)
and eventually a war for independence from Papua New Guinea under the Bougainvi
Revolutionary Army (BRA). Closer inspection revealed spiritual inspiration and high cargo
ist hopes firing this last resort to arms (from 1990); Bougainville was extolled as a 'sacred
island' (Mekanui), and covert religious leadership promised that islanders would eventually
receive the material blessings they should not have been missing after the Australians est
lished the huge Bougainville Copper Mine at Panguna. "
'Nationalism", G.P. Gooch once wrote provocatively, is "the heir of tribal instinct"
but in Melanesia there are few signs of intemational tensions, only intra-national or intr
regional conflict thus far. We find the emergence of the Taukei movement on Fiji from 19
its post-independence slogan "Fiji for the Fijians!" (against the Indian politico-demographi
'threat' on the islands) providing impetus for the coup of colonel Raubuka in 1987. 66 We
witness the uprising of 'freedom fighters' against continuing colonialism (with the Kanak
front on French New Caledonia) and against neo-colonialism (with the Organisasi Pap
Merderka in Irian Jaya, and the BRA on Bougainville). In each case, the traditional pressu
to redress losses or reclaim land and the Biblical rhetoric of liberation from oppressors h
merged. a Per contra, governments and churches of the independent states of Fiji, Vanua
the Solomons and Papua New Guinea keep renunciation the virtues of village reciprocity t
were 'baptized' by the missionaries and now cultivated as a necessary 'toolkit' for inter-trib
and inter-regional cooperation. A propos positivities, traditional forms of exchange, comp
sation and sacrifice meet with seriously modifying effects of modernization. Monetarizat
of the economy has been steadily advancing through the islands. It is perhaps false to gen
alize about traditional Melanesian economies as 'primitive capitalist', but, as we have s
gested, the "Old Time" involved a lot of ongoing, consensus calculations - the Ilahita
Arapesh of the Sepik area tying the knots of the kills scored against enemies, for one exam-
ple, or the Manus Islanders monitoring their gifts so that, whether more or less, they were
never exact equivalents, for another. "Melanesian cultures were "cost-accounting" in such a
way that experiments with bisnis (enterprises) would spawn rampantly in the post-War pe-
riod, with "Big Men" making "Business", even though the endemic principle of sharing to
secure prestige meant that businesses commonly failed for lack of capital being ploughed
back into them. "Another, very worrying modifying factor, has been the use of liquor as a
newly favoured exchange item. Among the worst problems resulting from this preference
have been drunken brawls and unintended deaths after exchanges that were intended to patch
up conflicts or settle obligations.0
With regard to the resolution of conflicts, courts have been crucial as dispute-arenas
to replace flight-fields. As monetarization increases, however, especially with cash-cropping
and mining in areas where pacification has not been as decisive, sums expected for compen-
sation have soared. Payments for deaths (pidgin bain bodi) sky-rocketed in the highlands of
New Guinea to tens of thousands of kina in the late 1970s. Local communities' agreements to
provide constraining guidelines yet also in favour of retaining ritual processions to "sat
sorry" do show, however, that money can pay for blood and buy a society out of trouble.
The angst remains, admittedly, as to how long such alternatives to physical feuding can hold
in the Papua New Guinea highlands, considering the resurgence of tribal warfare in certain
key 'trouble spots' and the recent dissemination of guns.
'Maverick factors' in modem Melanesian payback configurations also need assessing.
Apparent political corruption naturally rears its head when government representatives re-
ceive bribes by which they can pay dependents and increase their clout, or when they deflect
grants to their own tribally-related constituents rather than effecting a more equitable distri-
bution of funds. In most cases placed before the Ombudsman Commission of Papua New
Guinea, it becomes apparent that politicians have not been able to distinguish their own indi-
vidual interests from group ones, and they usually lack universalist-looking values for the
common good. " In one classic case, Papua New Guinea's one-time Minister for Commerce
and Industry, the Wahgi (and ex-Lutheran seminarian) Opal Kanangl diverted funds ear-
marked for a highlands development project into the bank account of his two wives, pressed
by the demand to manipulate reciprocities at his home base."7
Much more at the village level, but certainly not exclusively there, sorcery continues
to present a 'social danger'. The paradox is, however, that whereas sorcerers were once highly
prized by 'in-groups' to "wield the spear by night" against enemy 'out- groups', pacification
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GARRY TROMPH

has brought previously antipathetic hamleters into closer quarters and relations.'4 Thus,
tribal warfare might be quashed in most areas, the fear of 'the enemy within' now enlar
villages, and of sense of vulnerability to sorcery because of roads, have been heightened.
Despite the acceptance of Christian talk about heaven and hell, in certain regions - the P
uan Gulf and the New Guinea Sepik areas especially - there is a tendency to continue ascr
ing all deaths to sorcery, and thus to an evil diametrically opposed to the proclaimed goo
the Gospel. In those areas where collective concern over sorcery is strong enough, techn
are used to isolate sorcerers as individual culprits through following the direction of a b
boo loosely held by a 'search party', for example, even oracular messages as among the
Murik Lakes people, going from one village to another without recrimination.76 There are
sometimes voices of hope in a movement arising to eliminate sorcery, but thus far these have
been rare - one being documented for the Cheke Halo on Santa Ysabel in the Solomons - and
nothing like the great purges of Africa have occurred.7 Sorcery has tended to 'catch up' with
modernity, moreover, football clubs employing specialists to sorcerize goal-posts, for in-
stance, and public service personnel being very careful to pick up any personal leavings -
hair, nail clippings, sucked pencils - before going out of the office, in case someone could get
these into a sorcerer's hands for occult manipulation. 78 The fact remains that the continuance
of sorcery is being accepted in many places as a not unuseful means of maintaining social
balance. When individuals neglect their traditional obligations, out of apparent greediness
building a large house and running an expensive car, their neighbours and kin will see them
ripe for sorcery, and nod to each other knowingly if trouble transpires.7' That has many
precedents or comparabilities in the history of retributive thinking in societies if we were but
to cull them; overly successful academics in late Graeco-Roman antiquity, for instance, could
be accused of sorcery by jealous colleagues!'* but in Melanesia even the academically clever
are not immune to powers traditionalists can claim to wield over any soul.
Sorcery, because of its covert applications, is typically the most resilient component
of negative payback across the Melanesian board; yet its survival paradoxically denotes that
something of local social control has survived, after the impact of colonial and then neo-
colonial officialdom. As has happened so often in culture-religious history across the globe,
the secretive occult arts to get back at enemies turn out to be the longest lasting element of
vulnerable small-scale or 'primal' religions.81 Seemingly at another end of a scale, by com-
parison, such "arts of civilization" as politics, sport, and literature echo traditional payback
themes less threateningly. The first two provide for new arenas of conflict, but without peo-
ple killing themselves, although they also open up reciprocation first by offering 'rules of the
game' which suggest the possibility of higher purposes beyond the interests of contending
parties.'8 Literature, for its part, might be at first assumed to be driven by 'high ideals' or
'deeper values', although we find, on closer inspection, that the 'sting' of the tribalist revenge
motif can be deployed in writing against a despised colonialism. Papuan John Waiko deliber-
ately grants sympathy for those who want to "kill" and "punish" the mastas yet cannot do so
(in The Unexpected Hawk); while Solomonese John Saunana projects a time when a black
civilization will emerge globally and "pay back" the whites."
Rhetorically identifying the urges to retaliate, however, a thousand-and-one preach-
ermen across the region are bent on containing negativities and monitoring the fragility of "a
thousand tribes" in relation to each other."' The Christian missions have fast been giving way
Melanesian churches under black leadership, with many theological colleges that work for
the indigenization of church leadership now looking as durable, if not more serviceable, to
the regions' nations, beside the secular universities (in Jayapura, Port Moresby, Lae and
Suva). 5 More than any other group, the inmates or seminarians of these institutions become
the purveyors of the new communio, collective sacrifice and cross-cultural values of respon-
sibility, sharin& peaceableness, and love, with all being meant to temper the forces of re-
fragmentation. It is indeed religious leadership, despite criticisms and examples to the con-
trary, that has shown itself more inspirational than political mastery, because of the expecta-
tion to mediate between sectional interests. The tireless attempts by Catholic Bishop Singkai
to cross between thle lines to attempt securing peace on Bougainville constitute an obvious
example; and less advantaged to act, but no less exemplary in this context, has been the
Choiseulese Leslie Boseto (former Moderator of thie Uniting Church of Papua New Guinea
anld the Solomon Islands)Y8 With continued killings in the unresolved strife on Bougainville,

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 THE LOGIC OF RETRIBUTON

politicians themselves are forced into religious rhetoric to lament acts by "ungodly c
ards"."
In an ostensibly 'modernizing' Melanesia, we are bound to ask in conclusion, what
happens to the explanatory modes of retributive logic we have hitfierto analysed in connec-
tion with tradition and cargo cultism? Of course universalizing and secularizing currents
manifest. Preachers will use Old Testament examples to suggest how God's wrath can fall on
the disobedient - against those breaking the Ten Commandments, let us say - and reward the
righteous, and so appeal to a more overarching-looking Principle of Causation. Deaths of na-
tionally-significant figures, especially expatriates, will be more than likely to be connected
with the Bikpela ap antap (pidgin: the Great One in Heaven) who monitors 'great affairs'.
Yet, especially in the countryside. God has tended to become one factor in a repertory of tra-
ditional astrologies of "blessings, trouble, sickness and death". Likewise the natural causes of
science. That germs bring on a death, or snakes 'naturally' bite, will not be seen as precluding
their manipulation by sorcerers; if 'accidents' occur on the road that does not rule out the in-
fluences of an angry dead relative on a driver. 89New and old explanatory talk overlap, and
overall the traditional ones tend to satisfy most cases of immediate concern, even if there is a
growing tendency to look to the new God as the 'panacea' for many ills. The kinds of retribu-
tions, or scenarios of blessing and punishment, have obviously multiplied with social change,
new 'agencies' (such as vehicles), and new ailments (from influenzas to AIDS), yet "the old
logics" die hard.90
The Christian preaching towards understanding the new God goes on its complex
way. On the one hand, this God is constantly if often unconsciously going to be distinguished
from traditionally-conceived Melanesian spirit beings who just act without righteousness -
out of a dark wrath, or aramitama as the Japanese would say, because of being trespassed
against or disturbed. The Christian God will be represented as demanding refonn and moni-
toring moral behaviour. On the other hand, there will be the less commonly heard message
that God is "interested in something more than retributive justice. He wants decisive renewal
and recreation", including transformations of conceptual orientation.91 Politicians will join
clergy and educators in also encouraging national loyalty pari passu with commitnent to
God - enjoining the citizen, like Plato and Cicero, "never to use violence to his country no
more than to his parents",9 but the appeals to country tend to bring up associations of force
and of competitions for influence and resources, while God, for all His power to punish, is
more definitely linked to grace and forgiveness - and to reconciliation after conflict.
In contemporary Melanesia, understanding the history of consciousness has become
a matter of urgent attention, and the plotting of logics of retribution - as sequence, as synthe-
sized, as overlapping or in a "split-level" effect - is absolutely urgent for the task.' The
challenges to be faced by peoples in this region will hardly be met without an intelligent ap-
praisal of powerful assumptive forces that are reflected in the peoples' retributive behaviour
and hermeneutics. The central challenge for Melanesia is arguably a universal one: to build
effective dykes against the urges and legitimations of revenge, and to channel energies to-
wards upshots that are socially redemptive. The study of retributive logic will eventually
evoke from us an axiological stance: to lay bare and deconstruct the unloving, while uncov-
ering and reconstructing its positive opposites.

NOTES

1. For the pioneering work on revenge warfare, S.R. Steinmetz, Ethnologi

Studien zur erster Entwicklung der Strafe, Leiden, 1892; and on primal recip
ity, M. Mauss, The Essai sur /e don, Paris, 1925.
2. For better known modern anthropological works impinging on the above anal
e.g. J. Ruud, Taboo; a study of Malagasy customs and beliefs, Oslo and Lon
1960 (Madagascar); H.G.S. Nordholt, Curse, Retribution and Enmity as Da
Natural Religion, Amsterdam, 1960 (Timor); Redf? eld, The Primitive World an
Transformations, New York, 1968 edn., ch. 3 .
3. See, e.g., R. Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Rose, Boston, 1946 (J
C. von FTrer-Haimendorf, Morals and Merit: a study of values and social
trols in South Asian societies, London, 1967, chs. 3-5 (south Asia); S. A.
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GARRY TROMPi

Schlegel, rTruray Justice, traditional Tiruray law and morality, Berkeley, 1970,
esp. pp. 32-34 (Mindanao), cf. B. Williams, Shame and Necessity, Berkeley, 1993
(Antiquity); J. Pedersen, Israel: its life and culture, London and Copenhagen,
1926, vol. 1, pp. 213-44 (ancient Israel in particular), P. Walcot, Greek Peasants,
Ancient and Modern, Manchester, 1970, ch. 4 (Greece in particular); and see rele-
vant edited collections, e.g., S. Howell (ed.), The Ethnography of Moralities,
London, 1997, and G. Outka and J.P. Reeder (eds.), Religion and Morality, Gar-
den City, N.Y., 1973.
4. 1 allude here to some famous themes and works; M Sahlins, Stone Age Econom-
ics, Chicago and New York, 1972; C Lsvi-Strauss, La Pensse sauvage, Paris,
1962; M Weber, "Zwischenbetrachtung, in Gesammelte Aufs-"tze zur Religions-
soziologic, TTbingen, 1920, vol. 1, pp.. 463-69 (esp. sect. 8).
5. For long-term theoretical background, see Friederich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie
der Moral, Leipzig, 1887, ii, 1-11.
6. Cf. C. Geertz, The Interpretaiion of Cultures: selected essays, London, 1975, ch.
4, for some complementary analysis here.
7. J. Bryce, International Relations, London, 1922, p. 3. The quotation earlier in the
paragraph derives from Charles Darwin's Descent of Man and Selection in Rela-
tion to Sex, New York, 1906 edn, p. 118.
8. Between situations in which acephalous tribal societies are in unstable relations
and the formation of larger and political societies, the cooperation of tribes in a
working unity (some kind of 'confederation') usually occurs. This is what I term an
'upgraded' or neo-tribalism, on which most of the world's cultures' claims con-
cerning ethnic identity have been based.
9. Thus S. Weil, The Iliad, or the poem of force (1940-1) (trans M. McCarthy),
Wallingford, Penn., 1965 edn., p. 15, cf. also H. Haag, Homer, Ugarit und das
Alte Testament (Biblische Beitrage, N.S. 2), Zurich, 1962 (for pertinent compari-
sons); A.A. Demerest and G.W. Conrad (eds.), Ideology and Pre-Columbian
Civilizations (School of Americian Research Advanced Seminar Series), Santa Fe,
1992 (for cases further afield).
10. S. Jacoby, Wild Justice, New York, 1983; L.J. Pospisil, The Kapauka Papuans
and their Law (Yale University Publications in Anthropology 54), New Haven,
1958, cf. "Legal Texts", in J.B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts,
Princeton, 1969 edn., pt. 2 (ancient Near Eastern law codes); K. Koch (ed.), Um
das Prinzip der Vergeltung in Religion und Recht des Alten Testaments, Darm
stadt, 1972 (Hebrew Bible); J.J.L. Duyvendak, The Book of Lord Shang: a clas-
sic of the Chinese school of law, London, 1928 (Chinese Legalism).
11. 1 allude to M.W. Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: a study in
Sophocles and Greek ethics, Cambridge, 1989, although she completely misses
the distinction between internal and external relations (esp. in ch. 2). On military
regulations, note the Indian Arthashastra, and on the important case of Rome,
C.E. Brand, Roman Military Law, Austin, 1968.
12. Vico, La scienca nuova, Naples, 1744, esp. 11, prolog. i, cf. I (11], xcv; idem, Op-
ere giuridiche: i# diritto universale, (ed. P. Cristofolini), Florence, 1974, 1, clxxxvii-
iff.
13. Cf. R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (trans. P. Gregory), Baltimore and Lon-
don, 1977, pp. 25, 89-118; W. Burkert, Girard and J.Z. Smith, Violent Origins:
on ritual killing and cultural formation (ed. R. Hamerton-Kelly), Stanford, 1987.
Human sacrifice was rare in Rome even if definitely known, e.g., W.W. Fowler,
'The Carmen Saeculae of Horace and its Performance, June 3rd, 17 BC", in his
Roman Essays and Interpretation, Oxford, 1920, pp. 111 ff., yet cf., among other
archaic polities, its prominence in Assyria, A.R.W. Green, The Role of Human
Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (American School of Oriental Research Disser-
tation Series 1), Missoula, 1975, pp. 87-89; and among the Aztecs, H. Gonzalez
Torres, El sacrificio huJmano entre los Aztecs, Msxico, 1995 edn .
14. See e.g., W. Cross, "Buddhist-Taoist Debate under the Yuan Dynasty' (Doctoral
dissert,, University of Sydney), Sydney (forthcoming).

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 THE LOGIC OF TRUTON

15. B. Moore Jr, Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery, Boston, 1973 edn.,
chs. 2-3.
16. For background to these clusters of phenomena, e.g., W.W. Hallo and W.K.
Simpson, The Ancient Near East: a history. New York, 1971, esp. pp. 57-59,84-
86, 144-49, 234-35, 250-52, cf. J.N. Postgate, "In Search of the First Empires",
BASOR ?? 293 (1994):3-9; E.S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Re-
public, Berkeley, 1974, chs. 7-11; M. Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal
Society, New York and Toronto.1965, chs. 3-4; E Mizruchi, Regulating Society,
Chicago, 1987; R.A. Horsley and J.S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs,
San Francisco, 1988; M. Adas, Prophets of Rebellion (Studies in Comparative
World History), Cambridge, 1979.
17. Thus E.H. Winter, "The Enemy Within: Amba witchcraft and sociological theory
in J. Middleton and E.H. Winter (eds.), Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa,
London, 1963, pp. 277ff. On transferences and transformations of gender tensions
during culture change, see, e.g., F. Sierksma, Religie, sexualiteit en agressie,
Groningen, 1979.
18. Cf. also, for the quoted expression in English, Edward Gibbon's, The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, London, 1910 edn., vol. 1, p. 39 (referring to a slave
revolt).
19. Each justificatory claim requires some kind of ethico-political evaluation by ana-
lysts, this being one of the most awkward areas for social scientists. Cf., eg., 1.
Lapenna, Soviet Penal Policy, London, 1968, esp. ch. 2, cf. M. Loney, "Social
Control in Cuba'; in I and L. Taylor (eds.), Politics and Deviance, Harmond-
sworth, 1973, pp. 42ff.; R. Girard, The Scapegoat (trans. Y. Freccero), Baltimore,
1986, cf. R. Schwager, Must There by Scapegoats? San Francisco, 1987, esp.
pp. 43-47; Burke, The Tyranny of Malice, London, 1984.
20. For relevant theory, Trompf, "Salvation and Primal Religion'; in D.W. Dockrill
and R.G. Tanner (eds.), The Idea of Salvation (Prudentia Suppl. No. 1988), Wel-
lington, 1988, esp. pp. 204-13; and most pertinent for longer term theoretical
background, G.F. Moore, The Birth and Growth of Religion (The Morse Lectures
1922), Edinburgh, 1923, chs. 1-2. The tendency towards lex talionis in early Antiq-
uity was not without limitations, see, e.g., on Summer, S. N. Kramer, The Sum-
erians: their history, culture, and character, Chicago, 1963, p. 48.
21. On the Chinese dilemma, e.g., R.D. Blakney, "Introduction" to his trans. of Lao
Tzu, The Way of Life: Tao Tr Ching, New York, 1955, pp. 13-25. On Job I follow
S. Terrien, "The Book of Job', in G.R. Butterick (ed.), The Interpreter's Bible,??
New York, 1957, vol. 3, esp. pp. 888-90, though not being unmindful of subse-
quent debates over the integrity of the text; cf. esp. N.C. Mabel, The Book of
Job; a commentary (Old Testament Library), Philadelphia, 1985; M. Barker, The
Older Testament, London, 1987, ch. 12; and on 'unmerited' trouble, W.J. Dum-
brell, The Faith of Israel, London, 1990, p. 218, cf. Girard, Job; the victim of his
people (trans. Freccero), London, 1987. Note also that the 'Job-figure' is a very
ancient one, Kramer, op. cit., p. 296. On 'theodicy', or the need to defend divine
justice, in providing impetus to explain past events, cf. idem, History Begins at
Sumer, New York, 1959, pp. 118, 165 (Babylonian wisdom literature also carrying
the theme of the Righteous Sufferer).
22. For further reflection, J.T. Addison, La vie apres la mort (trans. R. Godet) (Bib-
liothAque scientifique), Paris, 1936; S.G.F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead,
London, 1967.
23. For a variety of useful works on the above, C.M. Daniels, "The Role of the Ro-
man Army in the Spread and Practice of Mithraism' in J. R. Hinnells (ed.),
Mithraic Studies, Manchester, 1975, vol. 2, pp. 249ff.; I. Nitobe, Bushido, Tokyo,
1969, ch. 8; J.L. Weston, from Ritual to Romance, Garden City,, NY., 1957, chs.
5-14, cf. D. de Rougemont, L 'amour et occident, Paris, 1939; V.G. Kiernen, The
Duel in Eluropean History: honour and the reign of aristocracy, Oxford, 1988.
More recently, on enduring principles of honour in rural Crete, M. Herzfeld, Po-
etics of Manhood, Chicago, 1987.

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GARRY TROMPH

24. For seminal background, e.g., J.W. Flight, "The Nomadic Idea and Ideal in the
Old Testament' Journal of Biblical Literature, 42 (1923): 158ff.; A.O. Lovejoy
and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (A Documentary History
of Primitivism and Related Ideas, vol. 1), Baltimore, 1935.
25. M. Melko, 52 Peaceful Societies, Oakville, 1969; L.E. Sponsel and T. Gregor,
The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence, Boulder, 1994 (general), cf., e.g.,
C.A. Alien, "Semai Nonviolence" (Doctoral dissert,, University of Califiornia, Riv-
erside), Los Angeles, 1977; G.D. Paige and S. Gilliatt, Nonviolence in Hawaii's
Spiritual Traditions, Honolulu, 1991 (specific cultures).
26. For the best known case study, K.E. Read, 'Morality and the Concept of the Per-
son among the Gahuku-Gama' Oceania, 25 (1955): 233ff.
27. Stuart, "On Adam's Smith's Inquiry, etc.", introducing Smith's An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London, 1898 edn., pp.iv-v, cf. also
Sahlins' (stimulating yet partial and not fully informed article) "The Native Anthro-
pology of Western Cosmology", Current Anthropology, 37/3 (1996): esp. 396-400.
28. See E. Kamenka, The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, London, 1962, cf. W.
Weitling, The Poor Sinner's Gospel (trans. D. Livingstone), London and Sydney,
1969, chs. 6-11.
29. This is to foreshadow my cross-culturally oriented monograph on The Logic of
Retribution.
30. M. Mead, The American Character, Harmondsworth, 1944, p. 91.
31. Cf. M. Scheler, Ressentiment (ed. L.A. Coser, trans. W.W. Holdheim), New York,
1972 edn.; Trompf, "Gangs and Politics', Current Affairs Bulletin, 71/2
(1994):32-37.
32. The quotations derive from Aeschylus, Suppl. 428; H. Melville, Moby Dick, New
York, 1851 (= The Whale, London), vol. 3, ch. 93.
33. See esp. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, Ber-
keley and London, 1979, vol. 1, pp. 93ff., 155ff., 231ff., 285ff.; idem. To Forgive
and Forget? the logic of retribution in early Christian historiography (forthcom-
ing).
34. See Trompf, "Melanesian Religions'; in R.E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistics, Oxford and New York, 1994, vol. 5, pp. 2442-43.
35. Subtitled: the logic of retribution in Melanesian religions, Cambridge, 1994. Please
note that direct (as against indirect) equivalents for 'culture', 'religion', 'tradition',
'society', 'community', etc. are lacking in most Melanesian languages (amd even the
notion of language, as against 'talk' or 'place-talk', can be absent).
36. Ibid., pp. 27, 37ff. (including any criticism of eco-systemic explanations of Melane-
sian warfare), cf. also P. Hanser, Krieg und Recht: Wesen und Ursacher Kollek-
tiver Gewaltanwendung in der Stammesgesellschaften Newguineas, Berlin, 1985,
pt. 3 (questioning non-purposive social theories of conflict).
37. Cf. esp. M.J. Meggitt, Blood is Their Argument (Explorations in World Anthro-
pology), Pale Alto, 1977, p. 33.
38. Cf. B. Irwin, "The Liability Complex among the Chimbu peoples of Papua New
Guinea'; Practical Anthropology, 19 (1972): 280-81.
39. See T. Swain and Trompf, Religions of Oceania (Library of Religious Beliefs and
Practices), London, 1995, pp. ??
40. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., pp. 60ff., 74 ff., 83ff., 99, IlOff.
41. Ibid., pp. 99ff.
42. See Trompf, "Wondering About Wonder: Melanesians and the Cargo' in J.
Olupona (ed.), Beyond Primitivism, New York (forthcoming), cf. Payback, op. cit.,
pp. 10304, 11-s15.
43. See idem, Melanesian Religion, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 19-22 and ch. 3, cf. Pay-
back, op. cit., pp. 24-25, 1 28ff. The phrase "fullness of life" I take from the
coastal Papuan Motuan phrase tauanina goevagoeva. Detailed studies of child-
hood 'socialization' in the above terms are rare, cf. K. Barlow, "Learning Cultural
Methods through Social Relationshios. an ethnography of childhood in Murik soc
ety, Papua New Guinea" (Doctoral dissert.. University of California, San Diego),
San Dieao. 1985 (Sepik coast); B. Schieffelin. The Give and Take of Everuday
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 THE LOGIC OF IE BtINUTON

Life: language and socialization of Kaluli children, Cambridge 1990 (southern cen-
tral highlands, Papua).
44. See idem. In Search of Origins (Studies in World Religions), London and Delhi,
1990, pp. 131-32, cf. Payback, op. cit., pp. 95-96, 103-05.
45. See S. Kepi, "Babalau and Vada: religion, disease and social control among the
Motu', Oral History, 7/3 (1979), 20ff. (in advance of a forthcoming doctoral dis-
sertation); V. Koroti, "Explanation for Trouble, Sickness and Death among the
Toaripi" (unpublished MS, University of Papua New Guinea), Port Moresby, 19
46. Classic texts on cargo cultism include P. Lawrence, Road belong Cargo, Man-
chester, 1964; P. Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound, London, 1970 edn.; P.
Christiansen, The Melanesian Cargo Cult, Copenhagen, 1969; F. Steinbauer,
Melanesian Cargo Cults (trans. M. Wohlwill), Brisbane, 1971.
47. Trompf, "Introduction", to idem (ed.) Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements
(Religion and Society 29), Berlin and New York, 1990, pp. 8ff.
48. For the phrase, Swain, A Place for Strangers: towards a history of Aboriginal
being, Cambridge, 1993 (notice ch. 4 on Melanesian, south coastal New Guinea,
materials), cf. also Trompf. "Bilalaf, in idem (ed.), Prophets of Melanesia, Port
Moresby and Suva, 1983, pp. 17ff (on Papuan highland Fuyughe connecting culture
heroes with intruding miners).
49. Idem, "Man Facing Death and Afterlife in Melanesia" in N. Mabel (ed.), Powers,
Plumes and Piglets, Adelaide, 1979, pp. 135-36, cf. M. Eliade, The Two and the
One, (trans. J.M. Cohen), New York, 1965, pp. 125ff.
50. Of relevance, K.O.L. Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth, Oxford, 1969, p. 6 et
passim; J. Strelan, Search for Salvation, Adelaide, 1977, chs. 3-4.
51. F.E.Williams, 'Fieldnotes' B431 (Papua New Guinea National Archives), cf. idem,
Papuans of the Trans-Fly, Oxford, 1936, pp. 109, 139; Trompf, "Doesn't Coloni-
alism Make You Mad?" in S. Latukefu (ed.), Papua New Guinea: a century of
colonial impact 1884-1954, Port Moresby, 1989, pp. 262, 266.
52. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., pp. 239-48; R. Brunton, "Cargo Cults and Systems of
Exchange in Melanesia', Mankind, 8 (1971) 115 ff.
53. Trompf, "Wondering about Wonder' loc. cit.
54. For background, Burridge, "Tangu, Northern Madang District", in P. Lawrence
and M. J. Meggitt (eds.), Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia, Melbourne, 1965,
pp. 232-36.
55. Trompf, Melanesian Religion, op. cit., pp. 203-04, cf. Burridge, Mambu; a Mela-
nesian millenium, London, 1960, pp. 58-59.
56. Lawrence, Road belong Cargo, op. cit., pp. 98-115.
57. In Swain and Trompf, op. cit., p. 183 1 numbered 18 such churches, most of which
I document fully in "Independent Churches in Melanesia", Oceania, 54/L51ff. Now
I have to add the Maria church surrounding Bikana Veve (from 1984) (Swain and
Trompf, op. cit., p. 188), and two more recently reported cases, the New Cove-
nant Church among the coastal Papuan Suau and the Revival United Church among
the Tolai of New Britain. On these see H. Dian, 'The Pentecostal-Charismatic En-
counter in the Fife Bay Circuit of the United Church, East Papua Mainland Region'
(Bach. Of Divinity thesis, Rarongo Theological College), Rabaul, 1996, p. 53; and
P. Kowa, 'Re- Baptism - Tolai Initiation; towards a contextual baptism in New
Britain' (Bach. Of Divinity thesis, coll. cit.), Rabaul, 1996, pp. 60-61, respectively.
On other types of movements in the region, C.E. Loeliger and Trompf (eds.),
New Religious Movements in Melanesia, Port Moresby and Suva, 1985; M. Ernst,
Winds of Change: rapidly growing religious groups in the Pacific Islands, Suva,
1994.
58. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., ch. 7, cf. N. Turner, The &inews of Sectarian War-
fare, Canberra, 1972 (on Australian religious controversies) for the quotation.
59. Idem, Melanesian Religion, op. cit., p. 158.
60. For the details idem, Payback, op. cit., ch. 7 .
61. Idem and J. Bienek, "Nation under Curfew: guns in the highlands of Papua New
Guinea, and ther continuing conflict on Bougainville', Current Affairs Bulletin

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GARRY TROMPH

62. T. Martin and Trompf, Urban Warrior, London (forthcoming), cf. S. Dinnan,
Challenges of Order in a Weak State: crime, violence and control in Papua New
Guinea' (Doctoral dissert,, Australian National University), Canberra, 1996.
63. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., esp. pp. 345ff., 391ff.
64. Ibid., pp. 353-54 and the literature cited there.
65. Gooch, Historical Surveys and Portraits, London, 1966, p. 1 1.
66. See esp. J. Garrett, "The Coups in Fiji' Catalyst, 18/1 (1988):1ff.
67. Cf., e.g., M. Ireeuw, "A Plea for Melanesian Solidarity", in Trompf (ed.), The
Gospel is Not Western: black theologies from the southwest Pacific, Maryknoll,
NY., 1987, pp. 170ff.; J.-M. Tjibao, Kanaks, the Melanesian way, Papeete, 1985.
68. See S. Epstein, Capitalism, primitive and modern; some aspects of economic
growth, Canberra, 1974 (on the Tolai), cf. D. Tuzin, "Social Control and the Tam-
baran in the Sepik", in A.L. Epstein (ed.), Contention and Dispute, Canberra,
1974, p. 51 (llahita Arapesh); Trompf, Payback, op. cit., p. 112 (Manus).
69. B.R. Finney, Big-Men and Business, Canberra, 1973, cf. P.J. Korshin (ed.), The
American Revoluton and Eighteenth-Century Culture, New York, 1986, pp. 8-3-84
(on Western parallels and comparisons).
70. For background and case studies, M. Marshall (ed.), Through a Glass Darkly:
beer and modernization in Papua New Guinea (Institute of Applied Social and
Economic Research Monograph 18), Port Moresby, 1982.
71. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., pp. 376ff.
72. Whereas the tertiary-trained public servants have stronger universalist motives (or
at least start employment with these).
73. Trompt, op. cit., p. 392.
74. For the phrases, A. Forge, "Prestige, Influence and Sorcery: a New Guinea exam-
ple", in M. Douglas (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, London, 1970,
p. 68, cf. M. Patterson, "Sorcery and Witchcraft in Melanesia", in Oceania, 45/2-3
(1974-5): 132ff., 212ff. (on relevant in- and out-group relations).
75. See esp. Zelienietz and S. Lindenbaum (eds.), Sorcery and Social Change in
Melanesia (spec, issue of SocialAnalysis, 8 [1981]), cf. Winter, loc. cit. (on A
can comparabilities).
76. See, e.g., M. Tamoane, "Kamoai of Darapap and the Legend of Jari", in Trompf
(ed.), Prophets, op. cit., p. 125.
77. See G. M. White, Identity through History (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cul-
tural Anthropology 83), Cambridge, 1991, p. 246, cf. M. Wilson, Religion and the
Transformation of Africa, Cambridge, 1971.
78. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., pp. 363, 371.
79. Ibid., p. 362.
80. See S. Lieu, The Benefits of Higher Education - University Life in the Roman
East (Inaugural Lecture, 31 Oct., 1996), Sydney, 1996.
81. As even in ancient Israel, cf. A. Jotters, Magic and Divination in Ancient Pales-
tine and Syria (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 8),
Leiden, 1996. For the interesting early modern European scene, note K. Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic, Harmondsworth, 1971, ch. 14.
82. Ibid., pp. 365-72 for examples.
83. Cf. J. Waiko, dram. cit., in U. Beier (ed.), Five New Guinea Plays (Pacific Writ-
ers Series), Brisbane, 1971, pp. 29, 31; J. Saunana, "The Relevance of Retaliation
for the Black Man", Nilaidat 1/2 (1972): 19ff.
84. 1 allude here to 0. White, Parliament of a Thousand Tribes, Melbourne, 1972 edn.
(which occasionally also touches on culture-religious factors).
85. In 1997, in fact. Catholic institutes in Papua New Guinea will form a Catholic Uni-
versity there (its headquarters being at Madang).
86. Trompf, Payback, op. cit., pp. 393ff.
87. For background, Boseto, I Have a Strong Belief, Rabaul, 1983 .
88. Thus recently, Prime M-inister Sir Julius Chan, in The Sydney Morni
Oct., 1996, p.13 after the assassination of Theodore Mirung, Premier of Bougain-
ville's transitional government.
89. Trompt. Melanesian Religion, op. cit.. pp. 250-5 1.
144

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 THE LOGIC OF ETIBUTION

90. Idem, Payback, op. cit., ch. 9.

91. In the conceptual history within the Old Testament itself Yahweh takes on much
more "moral goodness" than is evident in various Genesis traditions (cf. interest-
ing observations by K. Singer, The idea of Conflict, Melbourne, 1949, p. 161),
and for the quotation, J. Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads, Maryknoll, N.Y.,
1978. pp. 369-70. (ASK GRAHAM HARRIS, his thesis p. 56)
92. Thus Stuart, oc. cit., p. ix.
93. Cf. H. Turner, "A Typology of African Religious Movements', Journal of Rel
in Africa, I (1967): Iff.; J. Butalao, Split-Level Christianity, Manila, 1967.

145

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