Whats the matter with technology?

Long
(and short) yams, materialisation and
technology in Nyamikum village, Maprik
district, Papua New Guinea
Ludovic Coupaye
Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur lOce anie (CREDO), Universite de Provence; Sainsbury
Research Unit (SRU), University of East Anglia
Things are not just consumable, they are made so. They acquire their materiality not only
through engagements with them as nished products, but also through processes that make
them material, i.e. technical activities. This eld of study in anthropology, rejected by domi-
nant trends because of its deterministic connotations, is a useful way to explore processes
of materialisation and to investigate the inbuilt relationality of things and activities. This
paper focuses on yam gardening in Nyamikum, an Abelam village of the East Sepik. Once
harvested, long (and short) yams emerge not solely as phallic symbols, but also as artefacts,
representations, living beings, ancestors, artworks, valuables and, mostly, food. Starting
observations at the beginning of the operational sequences (cha nes operatoire, Lemonnier
1992) within gardening techniques, a combination of gestures, body, materials, energy, tools,
knowledge and behaviours takes us across domains of experience (embodiments, transfor-
mations, sociality, narratives) to illuminate how yams are made into relational entities.
They demonstrate that techniques create a web that materialises social and cultural values,
condensing networks of relations into things. As the results of these (known or imagined)
processes, things can demonstrate the material validities of representationalor ideologi-
calcomponents of technological phenomena and may be used to generate sociality.
INTRODUCTION
In the anthropological re-engagement with material culture and materiality, tech-
nology (the study of techniques and of the process of making things), occupies a
revealing position. In this volumes examination of materialisation it is interesting
to note how technology and techniques are pervasive within the analysis of materi-
alisation. Veys discusses the ways in which barkcloth and mats are imbued with
feminine potency, Geismar looks at the process of making photographs and Bon-
shek mentions the importance given to the loss of technical knowledge in Santa
Cruz. At some stage all discuss how the making of things imparts them with sets of
values and properties. My own contribution focuses less on the artefacts themselves
than on the technical systems that materialise them. Technology, labour and
The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2009) 20, 93111 doi:10.1111/j.1757-6547.2009.00005.x
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 93
modes of production are familiar terms in anthropology. However, both vocabu-
lary and disciplinary boundaries have contributed to giving specic connotations to
these terms, and have cast them within specic forms of determinism: technology
with matter, labour with value, and production with social conditions. I argue that
objects do not emerge fully clad with their properties before being injected in the
different sets of transactions they are integrated into. Be it in exchange, consump-
tion or phenomenal engagements, things are also perceived as the materialor at
least perceptualresults of processes and agencies, the origins of which might be
imagined or unknown, but which are nevertheless presumed.
In this paper, which is situated in current discussions of materiality (Miller 1998,
2005; Ingold 2007), I explore this proposition through a review of the elements from
the study of technology in anthropology, before turning to the yam gardens of the
Nyamikum, an Abelam
1
village in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.
FROM BODY TECHNIQUES TO TECHNICAL SYSTEMS: TECHNOLOGY
OF MATERIALISATION
2
One of the main distinctions between English and French anthropology is said to
be the place given to techniques (Chevalier 1998, Faure-Rouesnel 2001). While
Mausss essay Body Techniques (Mauss 1950a [1935]), and his Manuel dEthno-
graphie (Mauss 1947; see Schlanger 2006) examine the relations between material
culture and physical interactions between people and their surrounding world,
Lemonnier (1992: 3, 5) has noted that this aspect of his legacy in the English-speak-
ing literature remains under-examined, especially when compared to the treatment
given to The Gift (Mauss 1950b [19231924]). Most developments in this trend
come from the work by a student of Mausss, the prehistorian Leroi-Gourhan
(1964, 1971 [1943], 1973 [1945]; Ingold 1999), and by Haudricourt (1968).
However, the position of what Haudricourt (1968) called la technologie culturelle
(cultural technology) has had some trouble nding its place in mainstream anthro-
pology (see Cresswell 1996; Lemonnier 1982, 1983, 1986, 1992; Jamard et al. 1999;
Dobre`s 2000; Schiffer 2001). In Anglophone anthropology technical systems have
retained some attention through studies in archaeology and its ethnoarchaeological
developments, such as in the study of pottery or iron working (e.g. van der Leeuw
1976, 1991; Gosselain 1999; Sillar and Tite 2000; Rowlands and Warnier 1995). A
few anthropologists have analysed techniques from an ethnographic point of view
(cf. Pfaffenberger 1988, Pfaffenberger 1992, Sillitoe 1988, Mackenzie 1991), espe-
cially in the United States where cultural aspects were, perhaps, easier to integrate
in a discipline that still had connections with archaeology (Lechtman and Merrill
1977).
For the purpose of this paper, three major interrelated aspects of processes of
materialisation outlined by these studies have been selected for discussion. First, the
idea of technology as being a black box in anthropological analysis; secondly, its
systemic nature; and thirdly, its sociogenic properties.
L. Coupaye
94 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
Just as material culture has often been rendered invisible in its contribution to
social life (Miller 1987: 85108), so too has the social component of technical activi-
ties (Pfaffenberger 1992: 500502). This may be responsible for its exclusion from
anthropological analysis. Not only does this property explain how technology can
be understood as a black box (Lemonnier 1996), but it also outlines what Sillar
calls the embeddedness of technical activities. This intimate relationship between
techniques and society has been notably highlighted by sociologists of scientic
knowledge and Science and Technology Studies (STS; Latour 1993, 1996). For them,
the sociality of technology (Pfaffenberger 1992: 492, 493) is such that the relation-
ship between techniques and society has sometimes been described as a seamless
web where the social is indissolubly linked with the technical and the economic
(Hughes 1990: 112). Sociotechnical systems are heterogeneous constructs that stem
from the successful modication of social and non-social actors so that they work
together harmoniouslythat is, so that they resist dissociation (Pfaffenberger 1992:
498; 500).
This seamless web constitutes both one of the major characteristics and one of
the major difculties for those who study these technical systems. Their systematic
nature not only gears technical activities to cultural and social phenomena, but also
associates several domains of activities together (Lemonnier 1992: 7). Observing that
planting yams amongst the Abelam is related to social organisation is no surprise;
that it implies other technical activities such as digging, rope-making, fence and
house building can also be easily perceived. Less evident is that body techniques
and technical operations on material involved are informed by emic conceptions of
labour, matters and substances, which in turn appear as embodied elements of the
habitus. This is difcult to perceive unless one records the operational sequences, as
verbal explanations of the actors themselves do not reveal these connections.
This systemic aspect has two main consequences for analysis. First, interrelations
between different operations, through similar materials or techniques that intervene
at different moments of the process, associate several domains and artefacts
together. Second, the obvious non-linearity of this system dees evolutionist or
technicist determinism (Pfaffenberger 1992: 510513, Coupaye 2004: 135160). For
instance, despite narratives about primitive tools, and supposed technical improve-
ment, the shovel has not replaced the digging-stick in the Abelam context
(cf. Schaniel 1988 for a similar situation amongst Maori cultivators). In this exam-
ple, not only do theoretical elements of consumption intervenethe symbolic iden-
tity value that the digging stick materialisesbut also so do phenomena that belong
to the sociotechnical system of gardening: the organisation of a work party similarly
corresponds to the embodied ways in which one does this type of activity (Coupaye
2004: 168169, 178181, Appendix 1; cf. McGuigan 1993).
The third aspect follows logically from the two previous ones. What stems from
studies of technical systems is their profound sociogenic properties (Pfaffenberger
1992: 500). Mausss premises emphasise that sociality is physically embodied
through the performance of physical action in relation to the world (Mauss 1950a:
Materialisation and technology in Nyamikum village
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 95
367, 384). Daily engagements with the material worlditself created by socio-
technical interactions with the environmentalso form physical occasions of
the re-enactment of social values. Rules of conduct, proper (or improper) ways of
doing things, be it how one forms a queue in a supermarket, or how one makes a
pot, can all be evaluated and formalised in term of appropriateness, either from the
angle of efcacy or the aesthetics of action (Hardin 1993). These embodied practices
outlined by Mauss, and underlying Bourdieus examination of generative schemes
of practical logic (Bourdieu 1977: 114124), are socialisation processesnot only
of the body of the actor, but also of their person, as well as of the artefact manipu-
lated and created. Materialisation is integral to socialisation.
Exploring these properties requires two interrelated observations. First, things
can be considered as representatives of congealed labour (Damon 1980: 284286),
but only so long as labour is understood as a materialisation of cultural values and
not as an ontological reality, as the Marxist vulgate tended to do (Bonte 1999: 16).
Second, things are always assumed to be the phenomenal indexes of the efcacy of
such invisible processes, even when the process is unknown (Gell 1992). From this
perspective, the sociogenic potential of things, released through engagements with
them, comes from the properties they acquired through the processes that led to
their materialisation. As Damon (1980: 284) notes in his discussion of kula valu-
ables, Things are parts of persons because they are creation of them.
In my discussion of Nyamikum village, I focus on the production of yam tubers,
and on how the properties of these artefacts stem from the ways in which they are
constructed through cultivation. I describe some components of the technical sys-
tem, as well as selected parts of the operational sequence that leads from the open-
ing of the garden to the consumption of yam. This allows me to suggest how yams
are composite objects, whose materiality is made of the intertwining of several layers
of relationships, wrought together by a sociotechnical system that informs their
consumption.
THE SETTING
Located between the villages of Nyelikum (Scaglion 1976) and Kimbangwa (Huber-
Greub 1988), Nyamikums borders follow roughly the course of one of the tributar-
ies of the Mitpem river in the west and the course of the Wutpam river in the east.
At the time of my stay, and based on the 2000 census, the population was slightly
above 1100 people. The village is composed of about twenty-ve to thirty hamlets,
three of them regularly used as centres for fortnightly meetings organised by the
Councillor and ceremonies such as the annual long yam display. Playing an impor-
tant role in the cultivation process, social organisation can be broadly described as
patrilineally-clan based with exogamic and virilocal rules of marriage. Lineages are
components of some twenty-ve kem, a term alternately used as clan and place,
3
who co-operate to clean footpaths, plant gardens and prepare ceremonies, among
other tasks. Each kem has a special relationship with a whole list of totemic species
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96 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
including birds, trees, insects and leaves (Forge 1966: 29). These ties also relate kem
to specic spirits, notably the
n
Gwaal
n
du, the clans mythical ancestor, as well as
with potentially dangerous spirits dwelling in specic places in the surrounding for-
ests, such as the waale living in water holes. Both ancestors and spirits, especially
because of their material anchoring in the land belonging to their clan, are said to
actively participate in the growth of food, and are thus believed to tie together land
ownership, personhood, spiritual powers and cosmology (Huber-Greub 1988, 1990).
The entire village is divided into ceremonial moieties that cross-cut through the
kem, which also fuels the dynamics of food production and exchange. These two
moieties (ara) are ofcially engaged in competitive exchanges involving mainly
yams of the long variety, where each man is confronted with his ceremonial partner
(saabera) in the other moiety (cf. Losche 1982: 8085). This dualist system, present
in every Abelam village, forms a web that ties Nyamikum to villages as far as Apan-
gai in the west and Kalabu in the east (Forge 1970: 273274). This partnership,
which used to be the underlying principle organising the initiations, is often com-
pared locally to two football teams engaged in a game, and reects the nature of
political alliances. In contrast, intra-village ceremonial exchanges are based on
friendly competition, saabera having a joking and motivating relationship with one
another, whereas inter-village ceremonial exchanges are more aggressive, with brawls
as a possible outcome (Forge 1990: 162). Nyamikum people present this dualistic
system as an integrated part of what growing food is about, with rivalry and sup-
port of the saabera necessary to the production of food in particular, and excellence
in general.
Nyamikums networks of relationships extend to other villages, both in and
beyond the Abelam-speaking area, depending on the geopolitical map of allies and
enemies. These networks sustain ceremonial practices such as initiations, but also
dictate secret connections between cultivators in order to provide material and
non-material support, notably through the relation with sacred stones, owned and
controlled by each kem. Linking together all villages through kinship, friendship
and moiety afliations, they serve as the conduits for the circulation of cultivars,
techniques, things, knowledge and magical substances (Forge 1962) on which the
success of yam cultivation is said to depend (Lea 1964; Forge 1966; Losche 1982;
Huber-Greub 1988; Coupaye 2004). Other components, which I will briey outline
in the following description, include cultivators bodily substances and magical
support from land through the co-operation and support of the series of totemic
spirits, who are able to recognise the legitimate owner of the land as well as the
quality of social relationships between genders, kin, moieties and other villagers.
LONG YAM CULTIVATION AS MATERIALISATION
Despite the increasing presence of a capitalist economy in the area,
4
food produc-
tion in Nyamikum is based mostly on shifting cultivation,
5
notably of yams.
6
Two
main species of yams are cultivated: short ones, Dioscorea esculenta (ka) form the
Materialisation and technology in Nyamikum village
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 97
main diet; and long ones, Dioscorea alata (waapi), grown by men for what is
generally described as ceremonial purposes. In these annual ceremonies,
7
waapi are
decorated and displayed (cf. Fig. 1), before being exchanged between ceremonial
partners (Kaberry 1941a: 355356; Tuzin 1972, 1995; Huber-Greub 1988: 347; 90:
274; Coupaye 2004, 2007a).
Figure 1 Waapi (Maa
m
butap cultivars) Kumim hamlets Waapi Saaki, Nyamikum village.
24 June 2003. Photograph: L. Coupaye.
L. Coupaye
98 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
An inventory in Nyamikum gives a list of approximately forty cultivars of
D. esculenta, and twenty of D. alata (Coupaye 2004: 9497). Both types of yam
gardening are perceived to be cosmologically and technically linked. Waapi are said
to be the sine qua non condition for the success of ka gardening; waapi harvest is
rst, and opens the road to all food. This causal association not only forms the
underlying justication for the cultivation of both species, but also invites us to
understand the materiality of each in relation to one another, and to approach their
cultivation as a whole.
Turning to technographic aspects (Sigaut 2002: 425), the basic sequence of
operations of shifting cultivation can be summarised as follows.
(i) Opening of the garden (ii) Clearing (iii) Planting (iv) Tending
(v) Cropping (vi) Fallowing.
8
This simple succession of operations can be broken down into several tech-
niques, each of which combines matters (earth, wood, water, bodies, etc.), energies
(the forces that move objects and transform matter), objects (tools, artefacts, means
of work), gestures (prodding, splitting, hitting, attening, etc.) and knowledge
(Lemonnier 1992: 59). Regarding ka gardens, steps two to ve of the above
sequence are repeated between two and four times before leaving the land to fallow
for 20 years (Lea 1964; Allen 1982, 1985; Lory 1982). In contrast, waapi gardens are
generally used only once and then left to fallow.
The systemic nature of these technical activities facilitates the mapping of this
sequence and thereby elucidates the layers of material activities (cf. Kaberry 1941a:
354, Lea 1964). The opening of the garden involves tools (axes and bush-knives),
the use of re, and networks of social cooperation (the landowner with a party of
his kin and the people of his hamlet). Men clear the heavy remains of trees while
women clear smaller bits. Planting requires techniques such as carrying the setts
(the full yams or cuts that are used as seeds), digging the soil and covering the sett
in its mound. In order to prot from both sun and water, yam vines (kute) are
staked or put on a trellis that elevates them above the ground (Johnston and On-
wueme 1999). Along with yams, several species (i.e. taro, bananas, tobacco, edible
cane, beans or peanuts) are planted and harvested at different moments of the year.
Gardening also requires many other operations not directly linked to the garden or
the growing of crops. House-making, such as the storage house (ka
n
diga), or the
garden house (
m
baare) and, in the past, fence-building, are integral parts of the
operations that people present as related to gardening. These activities involve
woodcutting, rope making, sago-tending and other tasks.
My description would be incomplete if I did not include other elements usually
considered as peripheral to most agronomic concerns (Coupaye 2004: 5153), but
which are viewed as essential to the entire process. Technical activities are differenti-
ated from other activities by the fact that they are not simply material, they are
intentionally material (Sigaut 2002: 424). This brings in the notion of efcacy that
was part of Mausss denition of a technical gesture (Mauss 1950a: 371). It also
calls for the inclusion of elements generally dismissed from pure technological
Materialisation and technology in Nyamikum village
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 99
concerns, such as rites and magic which, from an anthropological perspective, have
always been a part of technical activities (see Hocart 1935; Malinowski 1978 [1935];
Forge 1962; Gell 1988, 1992; Rowlands and Warnier 1995). Not only are these ele-
ments perceived locally to be materially effective, but also they inform the type of
causalities mobilised to constitute the nal artefact and the properties attributed
to materials. Forge (1962) and Malinowski (1978 [1935]) have outlined the role
of substances or chants, but I wish to focus here on two other main elements that
are considered part of the growing process and integrated in the materiality of
yams: (i) gardeners and their body substances and qualities; (ii) social behaviours
requirements.
The yam growing process involves the circulation of substances seen to be essen-
tial to its success. First, cultivators must submit themselves to specic prescriptions
and proscriptions, in Nyamikum called yaket, that include behavioural, alimentary,
and physical requirements. Restriction from sexual intercourse is the main proscrip-
tion, thereby enabling men to avoid contamination from menstrual blood. This
blood is considered dangerous and inimical to the growth of things and many other
activities of which success must be secured (i.e. painting, building, football and, for-
merly, war). In earlier times, penis bloodletting was considered as the only way to
get rid of the substance contained in menstrual blood. During my stay, some youn-
ger people explained that this practice could be replaced by giving blood at the
Maprik medical centre.
The Yaket is a process intervening in cultivation, and its content depends on the
kem and the individual. Its goal is to make the body light (ye pwi), a quality that
makes gestures and the spirit efcient, and thus increases the chances of success
(Coupaye 2004: 113121). The quality and nature of the yaket also have direct con-
sequences on the cultivation of yams. The failure to follow sexual restrictions can
result in tutelary spirits withdrawing their support, rendering the gardener unable
to obtain a proper harvestwhatever his other skills and qualities are. Menstrual
substance makes the gardeners body heavy (
n
gurnek) and makes him prone to
spiritual dangers, sorcery attacks, and fumbling when involved in technical action.
Equally, it affects the tubers. Passed on through the gardeners touch and sweat,
it results in tubers remaining small and without taste, or simply dying.
A second component fuelling the technical system is the jewaai. Alternately
blood, scent and esh, the jewaai is a substance that forms the basis of the gar-
deners ability to grow things, and also inuences the success of other activities such
as the performance of magic. Three types of jewaai are inherited from either the
mothers or the fathers line: bird, pig, and wallaby. While the main sign of the nat-
ure of ones jewaai is materialised through the size of ones yam tubers, individuals
also test its quality by planting a banana tree and checking the speed and the quality
of its growth. Jewaai is equally distributed in men and women. Some gardeners
remarked that, depending on their wifes jewaai, and provided that she followed the
same yaket as her husband, or was past menopause, she could assist her husband in
tasks not directly related to long yams (such as weeding other crops in the long
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100 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
yams garden, making re, etc.). Certain gardeners remarked that young girls (more
than young boys) could administer the magical substances on waapi tubers, as they
were the only people who were denitely not sexually active.
The jewaai is a component of both invisible and visible body uids such as breath,
smell, sweat, blood, saliva, and sperm. It forms the signature of an individual, and
entities which control the lands fertility spirits are able to recognise a persons jewaai.
It is also the means to successfully perform activities related to the spiritual domains,
such as the making of magical substances or the utterance of chants and words. Yaket
and jewaai thus relate to local conceptions of bodily tness, and how one can harness
the energies required to processes essential to build onesand by extension the des-
cent groupsfame.
The individuals sociality is also an integral component of the production
system. The association of yam cultivation with social dynamics is grounded on
the necessity of avoiding disputes and conicts within and between communities
(Scaglion 1976). During fortnightly public meetings organised by the Councillor,
recommendations from the local government are transmitted, and internal conicts
are mediated. Such conicts are understood as endangering the villages capacity to
produce waapi, and thus food. These occasions also involve rituals of peacemaking,
unmasking of sorcery and payment of compensations, all accompanied by meta-
phorical discourses on the necessity to keep the peace within the community to
avoid disrupting yam growth. Deploying references to seemingly heterogeneous ele-
ments, such as vanilla, national elections, World Cup, waapi, God,
n
gwaals spirits,
sorcery and yaket, these publicly performed metaphoric discourses (aa
n
jaku
n
di) and
debates are essential elements that heat the place and accelerate the growth of yams
(Coupaye 2007b).
Embodied sociality intervenes differently according to the type of garden.
Ka gardens entail the cooperation of the entire hamlet, with possible afnes and
partners (with whom the garden is shared), for the planting is usually performed in
one day. In contrast, waapi gardens are planted semi-secretly, by the gardener
accompanied by a few friends, in a strict state of yaket. The long yam gardens into
which I was allowed presented between ve and eight waapi of different cultivars,
all planted during a months period, but always including the cultivar known as
Maa
m
butap. Harvest of ka is made by the household, and sometimes afnes, while
waapi are harvested by the same group of men who planted them.
Finally, the material aspects of harvested yams also differ in terms of size, shape
and constitution. This is a result not only of the different cultivars, but also of the
techniques used to make them grow. Short yams are grown in holes that do not
exceed 0.4 m. The full yam is used as sett, and is placed at the bottom of the hole,
and recovered by nely hand-broken soil. A tuber is harvested after six to seven
months and yields, depending on the cultivars, between three to six new tubers that
vary between 0.005 and 0.025 m diameter in size. A planters jewaai inuences the
tubers size. These variations are a calculated effect by the gardens owners, as peo-
ple need different sized tubers for various purposes: to feed pigs, to be re-planted,
Materialisation and technology in Nyamikum village
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 101
for consumption, or for celebrations. The involvement of a work party of up to
forty people during the gardening of short yams is a way to mix the jewaai of indi-
viduals (Fig. 2), so that a wider range of tubers can be harvested. In contrast, waapi
are planted in individual mounds, and only a cut is used. The hole is dug ahead of
time and reaches up to 2 m. It is then lled with nely cleaned and broken soil, on
top of which a rounded mound of up to 1 m high is made (Lea 1966; Coupaye
2004: 166178). Once the mound is ready, the sett is placed on the top of the
mound, and the new tuber grows through the softened soil. An average size of
1.82 m is usually obtained, with an average weight of 4550 kg. This technique
can also be used to obtain ka tubers of up to 1 m, called jaa
m
bi, that are used for
ceremonial occasions.
Even more than the quantity of yams produced, the shape, size and texture of
yams are seen as the materialisation of a combination of bodily, social, spiritual and
moral qualities of their cultivators. However, waapi are perhaps the main manifesta-
tions of such qualities. While both ka and waapi gardening imply precise behaviours
and rituals, the cultivation of waapi requires the gardener to follow a precise and
more arduous yaket. This is combined with the fact that, while in the ka garden,
both men and women operate together, only men perform most of the techni-
cal operations in the waapi garden, and take care of the entire process. While all
cultivated waapi are submitted to the same requirements, they are especially applied
when one wants to obtain the head of food, the Maa
m
butap long yam cultivar,
Figure 2 Session of ka planting. 25 November 2002. Moses Bakanoses garden. Forty-eight
planters from six different clans. Photograph: L. Coupaye.
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102 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
around which the main ceremony, Waapi Saaki (The Lining Up of the Long
Yams), is elaborated. Growing Maa
m
butap, and the Maa
m
butap itself, materialises
the necessity to behave properly because, if men fail to grow waapi, then food
cannot come out of other gardens as people not in a Yaket state will most likely
act foolishly, commit adultery, engage in sorcery business or brawl unnecessarily,
instead of working in their gardens.
Such judgments indicate how the technical process of cultivation is a socialisa-
tion process, and also how the yam is the ultimate result of the process. During a
Waapi Saaki in June 2003, a man in his thirties was exhibiting a waapi he had culti-
vated, having been ned the year before by the inuential men of the village for
provoking a brawl during a waapi ceremony. In his public speech the man meta-
phorically referred to his waapi as his penalty, but also as the road he had used
to learn how to behave. The yam he was presenting that day, decorated with feath-
ers, owers, shell and mask, was the material index of him having become a man.
THE SOCIALITY OF SEQUENCES
Turning to the performance of the process itself, local perceptions reveal features
that conrm the inherent social component of food production, re-afrming the
validity of the notion of sociotechnical systems (Table 1).
The two summary accounts in Table 1 illustrate the different levels of interlace-
ments that contribute to the materialisation of yams. Kulangs sequence corresponds
to the activities he performed during the 200102 season and which allowed him
to harvest a Maa
m
butap that was considered to be the best during the June 2002
Waapi Saaki. He focused on the different moments when one had to give the
Maa
m
butap the two substances essential to help their growth: a vegetal-based liquid
called the gunye
n
gi (lit. water-stinging) and another substance sometimes only
powder mineral-based, kusbawu (lit. magic ash) (cf. Forge 1962).
Gayinigis and Kitnyoras sequence is different and appears less detailed, even
though it comes from acknowledged Nema
n
du (Big Great Men). What is relevant
here is that the different phases are less concerned with primarily material opera-
tions than Kulangs account, and not only include different types of operations but
also cover various domains. The two Nema
n
dus focus is on phases that deal with
the negotiation aspects of the process. The focus is on the interactions between and
with the different villages Nema
n
du as well as the Kajatu
n
du of different villages.
Individuals whose identity is kept secret, Kajatu
n
du, are wardens of secret stones
that control the fertility of crops (Coupaye 2004: 128133). They also remark on
the secret negotiations with and between the stone-wardens and negotiations within
the community to decide the type of ceremony to be held. They stress the impor-
tance of the cleaning of the place, both before the planting and after, as well as the
signicance of settling disputes and avoiding conicts. When I asked, both appeared
as two distinct moments, marking two thresholds of the year, each one marked by
the killing of pigs. However, during my stay, because of the scarcity of pigs, I was
Materialisation and technology in Nyamikum village
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 103
Table 1 Two local accounts of the long yam growing process (short version). Kulang in his
early forties and both Gayiningi and Kitnoyra are over sixty, and are considered to be Nema
n
du.
Nyamikum 2002. Note the inconsistency in the beginning of the Yaket. (NB: For the sake of
clarity, I have removed the superscripted consonants in this tables transcription of local terms.)
Edward Kulangs account Gayiningis and Kitnyoras account
Part I: From before the planting Gay nebel: cleaning of the place. Resolve
conicts and bring peace into the community
Beginning of the yaket Kwarebe n: The gathering of Kajatudu for each
crop. Share a pig. Transactions with the
Kajatudu. Decision of when the Maabutap
will be next planted
Clearing then burning the long yam garden Planting when the moon is out
Planting Start of yaket. Men gather and eat food in
the garden
Part II: From the moment the vines climb
the vertical trellis (taawu)
Then when the vine reaches the top of the
trellis, ancestors and bush-spirits are invoked
to help the growth of the Maabutap
Gathering the ingredients for the two main
magical substances fertilisers: gunyegi
(lit. water-stinging) and kusbawu
(lit. magic ash)
Giving the fertilisers to the Maabutap
(on the head)
Senaba: when the yam vines start to turn
yellow or brown, fertilisers are given to
the tuber (on the head). Then the tuber
is really starting to grow
Kwaat Baale (Pit-Pig). When leaves are
drying. A hole is dug underneath the
mound to check the growing point of
the tuber. Depending on the evaluation,
extension of the bed or addition fertilisers
can be made on the growing point of the
tuber
Harvest the food from the short yams gardens
Leraa: one moon after the Kwaat baale .
Another hole is dug under the mound to
check the growing point of the tuber
Waapi va: when all leaves are dry.
Harvest the Maabutap
Waapi Saaki: the Long Yam ceremony
presenting the Long Yam
Waapi Saaki: when the leaves start to dry.
All the Nemadu gather and decide
what type of feast will be held and when
Clean the place: Kill a pig and clean
the place. Time for saabera exchanges
L. Coupaye
104 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
not able to observe such a ceremony. Pig meat was reserved for the Waapi Saaki
itself and this gift of meat seemed to act for both phases of cleaning.
What emerges from these accounts is that growing waapi constitutes both a
mythic-technical frame for food production, while simultaneously constituting a
technical synecdoche for gardening. Growing waapi and displaying them is more
than about the phallic cult it was rst compared to (Kaberry 1941; Tuzin 1972,
1995), while simultaneously evoking spirits and initiates (Hauser-Schaublin 1995:
4143, Coupaye 2007a). It corresponds to the intricate perception of what yam pro-
duction is about, and how it weaves together social relationships with the perfor-
mance of material activities. To materialise a yam requires intertwining substances,
material actions, social interactions and symbolic negotiations. Nyamikum gar-
deners perceptions and interpretations of the process regarding the factors essential
for the success of the process force us to consider that growing of waapi implies a
wider system that calls upon and makes manifest types of relations in both material
and non-material aspects. It also re-adjusts our conception of technical systems as
the only functional and practical aspects of human agency intended to have a physi-
cal result on reality. Questioning what type of reality we are dealing with allows us
to extend the notion of technical systems towards domains that are usually consid-
ered only symbolic, or purely social or cultural, and to analyse processes of produc-
tion that bring materiality at the same level as sociality.
CONCLUSION: THINGS ARE PARTS OF PERSONS, BECAUSE THEY
ARE CREATION OF THEM
9
In this article, I have examined ways in which the Nyamikum materialise themselves
through their practices of making yams, and have argued for the investigation of
the inherent relationality of things and activities. Analyses of sociotechnical systems
demonstrate that technology is as much about the making of relations as it is about
the materialisation or the objectication of successful relations (cf. Strathern 1988,
1999). Material and non material, social and technical are wrought together in the
making of an artefact, which instantiates more than what is visible, and even more
than what is made of it, while being consistent with the material nature of the thing
itself. Yams as artefacts are more than congealed labour; they are condensed net-
works [which] work as summation or stop (Strathern 1996: 523). That is, they
are materialised moments when properties acquired from wider processes of materi-
alisation can be engaged with through consumption or use. They also offer an
insight about how certain categories of objects can be considered not as bounded
entities, but as shifting ones that have the ability to generate new sets of relations,
to have agency (cf. Bell & Geismar, this volume, p. 3).
The very notion of artefact goes beyond the mere idea of manufactured object
(Miller 1987: 112115). It always implies intentionalities that are perceived as
having been encapsulated within its material form (Gell 1992, 1998) or, better, made
of materials. Things capacities to participate in social lifein other words, their
Materialisation and technology in Nyamikum village
2009 Australian Anthropological Society 105
propertiesare not only made visible through the ways in which people engage
with them once they are made, but also stem from how they are made, produced,
fabricated, worked out. Things properties stem from the material and sensual
qualities they have acquired, or are thought to have acquired, through processes
made invisible by their completion. These technological processes, whether known
or unknown, always intertwine several levels of reality. Even when the technique is
unknown, or foreign, even metaphorically speaking, the origin of things is always
presumed by those who encounter them to be the result of processes: by analogy
money is assumed to be grown in the same manner as food (Bell, this volume,
p. 28) or, as I was asked, perhaps coming from specic machines that every white
man has in his home. Things are concretions of relations, and their materiality
stems from their manufacture and use.
This brings us back to labour, technology, or modes of production. To
approach the materialisation of artefacts from the angle of the sociotechnical system
itself is not only a methodological choice to attain an emic understanding of indige-
nous materiality. It is also grounded in the material validity of representational
or ideologicalcomponents of technological phenomena. Objectication, as Miller
denes it (Miller 2005: 710), is a powerful tool to understand how materialisation
is close to socialisation. However, human beings technical ability to concretise
social values in artefacts, to condense their networks of relations, and to surround
themselves with such materialised results of socialisation could indeed constitute
one of the main reasons why things still matter (Miller 1998): not only because of
how we consume them, but also because of how we make them consumable.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper is based on eldwork conducted from January 2002 to September 2003,
which was funded by the AHRC and the Robert Sainsbury Scholarship (Coupaye
2004). Subsequent research was carried out as a postdoctoral fellow at the Research
Department of the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris. I am deeply grateful for the sup-
port from Steven Hooper, Pierre Lemonnier, Philippe Peltier as well as Joshua A.
Bell, for our discussions, and his friendship. I am also thankful to the members of
the 2007 ASAO session for their comments, notably Wonu Veys, Liz Bonshek and
Haidy Geismar.
NOTES
1 Inasmuch as the very term Abelam is a construct coming from the encounters between
people of the Maprik area, colonial administrators and ethnographers, Nyamikum dene
their language as Abules, and acknowledge the entire area as part of the same group,
with further divisions such as Samukundi, within which they identify a disappearing
local language called Arenyem, distinct from the Maaje-Kundi (or Manje Kundi)
(cf. McGuigan 1993, Losche 1999: 215).
L. Coupaye
106 2009 Australian Anthropological Society
2 Sigaut (1985) restricts the term technology to the study of technical activities. Lemon-
nier considers technology as embracing all aspects of the process of action upon matter,
whether it is scratching ones nose, planting sweet potatoes, or making jumbo jets
(Lemonnier 1992: 4). Lemonnier suggests that to call an action technological, it must
involve at least some physical intervention which leads to a real transformation of
matter, in terms of current scientic laws of the physical world (Lemonnier 1992: 5).
3 The SIL transcription kem is the equivalent of the term kum (cf. Huber-Greub 1988) or
kim (Hauser-Schaublin 1989). Its translation as place has become part of names of
villages, such as Nyami-kem, Nyeli-kem or Sara-kem. Earlier transcriptions have often
led to the use of the spelling -kum or even -gum, such as the ofcial map spelling for
Neligum, Gweligum or Waigagum. I use -kem when referring to clans, and -kum
when referring to villages.
4 Most notably through a combination of activities such as cash cropping (i.e. coffee,
cocoa and recently vanilla), access to store food and better road system.
5 For other studies of shifting cultivation and its relations with magic, ritual, environment,
cosmology, food production, or time, cf. inter alia Malinowski 1978; Conklin 1961; Lea
1964; Serpenti 1965; Rappaport 1968; Sigaut 1982; Juillerat 1986, 1999; Bonnemaison
1991; Sillitoe 1999; Gross 1998.
6 While taro (Colocasia esculenta), aibika (Hibiscus (Abelmoschus) manihot) along with
sago (Metroxylon spp.) are also an important part of the diet, Nyamikum people
describe yams as being the most important crop (Lea 1964; Coupaye 2004).
7 According to Nyamikum gardeners, ka were also the subjects of a display ceremony set
after the waapi ceremony. However, no ka display ceremony was performed during my
stay.
8 Compare with Conklin 1961: 29, Fig. 1.
9 Damon 1980: 204.
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