The Trobriands Art of Persuasion
by Nancy Sullivan

The Trobriands are like nowhere else in PNG. So remote and yet so complex, locked into a Massim-wide trade in shell valuables, and characterised by matrilineality and a system of chiefs, the Trobriands are a busy, industrious island cluster. They are far from the sleepy South Sea islands they appear to be, although they cast that impression by their palm-lined white sandy beaches, surrounded by clear blue seas, and the unmistakable fact that the Trobrianders are beautiful people. Wiped by Malay-Chinese traders thousands of years ago, these are Melanesians stamped with the fine features of the Asian forefathers. And this beauty is an important part of their culture, because Trobrianders are masters of the art of persuasion. In youth, this might more aptly be called seduction. Young people use their beauty to pull lovers, enhancing it with shells, oil, flowers and, most importantly, love magic. As they grow older, such skills are refined into the arts of charm and persuasion, where other kinds of magic are used to lure trade partners, lovers and political allies into one's sphere of conquest.

Youngsters depend on adults to become beautiful: they must be given the coquettish banana fibre skirts, the ornate kula valuables and the secret magic spells that make them irresistible. At every public ceremony parents can be seen primping and perfecting their children's appearance, because a child's ability to influence his or her peers will be increasingly important in their future. But children are also constantly adorning themselves, placing fragrant flowers and herbs into their armbands, fashioning wreaths of hibiscus for their hair, and mastering the jaunty walk and evasive smile that heightens their appeal.

It is the art of influencing others while resisting their influence over you that becomes important as children grow into adults. Being able to acquire powerful magic spells that control the thoughts of would-be lovers develops into a more serious skill. Once married, Trobs men and women both hone their abilities to influence the feelings and desires of others. A woman may want to persuade her brother to give her the best yams of his garden, or a man may wish to influence a kula partner into giving up a prized necklace or armshell. Because Trobrianders believe everyone's desires are their own, and that mere argument is unlikely to change someone's mind, they focus on all the more indirect and subtle means of persuasion, from physical allure to gifts of betelnut, yams and shells valuables, to the elaborate love potions, gardening magic and kula spells.

If village life were as regimented and predictable as it sometimes appears, there would be no need for such skills. But in fact, even in a chieftainship where social and political status is inherited, women still compete to become master of ceremonies at special mortuary proceedings, called sagalis, where they will also gain acclaim by exchanging more of the banana fibre wealth they have spent many months producing. They charm and seduce men into favourable trade relations, and to secure better gardening lands from their uncles and brothers. Men also use their powers of influence to gain support of his wife's relatives, to have them produce more yams for him, and to assist in the complex activity of kula. Likened to three-dimensional chess, kula is a game of will, patience, memory and most of all persuasion. It is the only system of exchange like it in all of Melanesia, where equal but unlike valuables are continually moved from partner to partner around a ring of island throughout the Massim, passing slowly over vast distances, across languages and cultures, never removed from the ring, and always, systematically, tracked by all players at all times. Necklaces move in a clockwise direction as armshells move in another. And one armshell of a certain value must be exchange for a necklace of equal value. Players are required to anticipate the exchanges of their scores of partners' partners', to second-guess which piece will be coming to whom, and to negotiate their current exchanges in terms of what they hope will come their way in the future. Partners may send gifts of fish, betelnut, yams--they may arrange marriages and political alliances to persuade partners to favour them in an exchange several years down the track when a certain historic, yellowed, engraved and especially valuable kula shell comes their way.

Kula is nothing if not a game of influence. And, just as women will achieve reputations for being alluring and influential, men gain renown for their skill at kula. Indeed, in a matrilineal society, where land and titles are reckoned through the mothers and sisters of a family, and where men work for their nieces and nephews rather than their own children, it is kula that makes men famous. They gain status in life and live through history by their achievements at kula. And with the valuables they have worked so hard to win--but which must eventually be traded away--men will decorate their sons and daughters for ceremonial occasions. In this way, while bequeathing them nothing, they give them the gift of adornment and beauty, and in so doing provide that very important edge in the competitive art of persuasion.

Sometimes persuasion isn't subtle. A couple of years ago I watched a new masawa kula canoe being launched from Kaduaga village on Kaileuna Island. It was filled with twenty men vigorously paddling across the wide bay that shelters Kaduaga, while several outriggers pushed out from the shore. These were filled with women with piles of garden produce at their feet. They raced out toward the men and started pelting them with pawpaw, guavas, yams and bananas, bellowing insults and, as they reached the large slower canoe, trying to scramble aboard. The men kicked and pushed them away, laughing and cursing them back, but eventually the women gained purchase and boarded the canoe to the cheers of villagers lining the shore. One by one, the men jumped and dove off into the shallows, racing toward the beach. Within minutes they were running into the bush. But just as quickly, the women also abandoned the kula canoe and fled off in urgent pursuit. Nothing coy about this. When beauty, magic, little gifts, great skirts, jewellery and hair fail you; when gentle hints and kindness don't do the trick, just get out there and hunt him down!

No one has been able to explain this aspect of Trobs culture better than Annette Weiner. Following in the footsteps of Bronislaw Malinowski, the father of twentieth century anthropology, Weiner was able to build upon the insights of that great scholar, who spent two years in the Trobriands between 1915 and 1917, and who wrote four great books and several articles on Trobriands culture, and shed new light on the life and productive activities of Trobriands women. Weiner tilted the lens on Malinowski's work, viewing the Trobs from a woman's perspective. In so doing, she could draw the brilliant, now sensible, connections between so many aspects of Trobs culture by highlighting what seemed obvious to her--but hadn't been so obvious to Malinowski--about the lifelong need to ëwin friends and influence people' in the Trobriands.

Sadly, Annette Weiner passed away recently. She was all too young, and will be sorely missed by the students, colleagues and her friends in the Trobriands. Certainly she herself had mastered the art of persuasion, having served as the President of the American Anthropological Association and become a Dean of New York University. Her work, especially her Trobriands ethnography, ëWomen of Value, Men of Renown', survives, continually circulating like a piece of precious kula, creating networks of cross-cultural understanding and always, without end, building Annette's personal renown.