CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOR 



1441 



rather than initiating, a role into which both 

 some males and some females find it difficult 

 to fit. Aggression between males is handled 

 by strong dependent attachments between 

 little boys and older male relatives, whom 

 they help with hunting and gardening, and 

 by a very early retirement from competition 

 of the young adult men who take over the 

 role of looking for wives for younger male 

 relatives with whom they might otherwise 

 have competed. In social organization, in 

 handling the occasional fights, in sex activ- 

 ity, the phrasing is always one of respon- 

 siveness, leading because one is asked to 

 lead, helping another to build a house or 

 dig a garden, throwing a spear because one's 

 cousin has been wounded, responding to 

 direct seduction from the strange woman. 

 Attitudes strongly stressed in early child- 

 hood prevail through life. Habit patterns of 

 dependency, responsiveness, and low ag- 

 gression, and a preference for w^arm domestic 

 contacts rather than for violent or passion- 

 ate ones are developed early in life and are 

 expressed in almost every facet of the cul- 

 ture. This degree of internal consistency can 

 only be obtained in very small societies in 

 a culture area like New Guinea, which has 

 very low levels of political organization, a 

 high amount of continuous trait diffusion, 

 and a dependence for cultural integration 

 on emotional consistency rather than on 

 political forms. 



B. THE MANUS OF THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS 



The Manus tribe," a grouj:) of about the 

 same size as the Arapesh (about 2500 peo- 

 ple ) lived in houses raised on stilts in the salt 

 lagoons off the south coast of the Great 

 Admiralty Island, northeast of New Guinea, 

 and subsisted on fishing and trading. When 

 first observed by Europeans, the Manus, 

 like the Arapesh, had only stone tools, no 

 systen. of writing, and no political forms 

 capable of integrating more than about 200 

 people for any length of time. As among the 

 Arapesh, trade was conducted in a frame- 

 work of aflfinal ties within the community, 

 and some manufactured objects were im- 



^411 descriptions as of 1928-29 (Mead, 1930, 

 1934b, 1949h; Fortune, 1935). Later field work. 

 1953 (Mead, 1956) not ineluded, but because of 

 the great transformation since 1946 I have used the 

 ])ast tense here. 



ported from other groups. Where the Ara- 

 pesh were able to offer hospitality to travel- 

 ers who would otherwise have been burdened 

 down with food for the journey, the 

 Manus contribution to the economy of some 

 13,000 iK'oi)le of the Admiralty Islands was 

 a more active one. In their large ocean-going 

 canoes they undertook many voyages, trans- 

 l)orting the various specialized products of 

 different groups from one island to another, 

 combining fishing, which provided a surplus 

 which they traded for raw products of 

 garden and forest, with a middleman role 

 through which they themselves were well 

 supplied with every variety of tool, utensil, 

 and ornament which the entire archipelago 

 provided. 



Where Arapesh family life emphasized 

 warmth and diftuseness of response to all 

 relatives, ]\Ianus life, which also included 

 early betrothal, sharply differentiated 

 among four classes of persons: relatives 

 with whom one was at ease, relatives with 

 with wdiom joking and license were per- 

 mitted, affinal relatives to whom one owed 

 respect and in some cases complete avoid- 

 ance of any contact, and sex partners — hus- 

 band and wife, and captors and war captive 

 prostitutes, both of which were relationships 

 involving disrespect and hostility. Children 

 grew up in a world in which time and space, 

 number and ciuantity, categories and classi- 

 fication were important, speaking a bare and 

 accurate language, learning to climb, swim, 

 handle fire, report accurately on past 

 events, and respond with precision and initi- 

 ative to the natural world. 



From the moment of betrothal, little girls 

 of seven or eight or sometimes a little older 

 were subjected to rigorous supervision, 

 wrapping themselves in raincapes to hide 

 their faces from their betrothed or their fu- 

 ture male relatives-in-law, giving up the 

 gay excursions with their fisherman fathers, 

 who took them about with them into men's 

 groups until their betrothal shut them off in 

 an avoidance enforced by shame. Boys at a 

 slightly older age were also bound by these 

 same taboos, but where the taboos operated 

 to segregate a girl who had been active and 

 attached to her father, they simply served to 

 keep the boys more away from women's 

 groups and more intensely occupied in their 

 own world, wliich before marriage included 



