American Academy of Religion

Habu: The Innovation of Meaning in Daribi Religion by Roy Wagner

Review by: Donald R. Tuck
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 626-627
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1461749 .
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626

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION

Habu: The Innovation of Meaning in Daribi Religion. By RoY WAGNER. Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1972.
plates. $12.00. L.C. No. 75-188236.

xii+186

pages.

Maps, tables, figures, and

Many of the works correlating primitive religion and culture available in America
have suffered from extreme types of writing. The first is an intoxication with the exotic,
and the other is a static, systematic analysis of presupposed norms. The latter fails to
portray the vibrant life of primitive man and sets it aside for a structure that the primitive
people themselves would not recognize.
Recently, scholarly investigators who have lived among primitive peoples and experienced their culture and religion first-hand have in their writings attempted to avoid oversimplification and have tried to allow the variety of religious expressions to be a part of
their reports. These writers have lived among the people long enough to have jumped
the barriers of first impressions and experienced a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of the life style of the people.
Roy Wagner carried out his fieldwork among the Daribi, located in the Chimbu
District of the Territory of Papua-New Guinea, in two periods (1963-1965 and 19681969). Habu is the extension of certain ideas about the Daribi set forth in his earlier

book, The Curse of Souw: Principles of Daribi Clan Definition and Alliance in New
Guinea (Chicago, 1967).
Professor Wagner has attempted in a specialized way to unmask the levels of religious
meaning by studying the symbols and metaphors which characterize Daribi life. Complementary metaphors combine into an ideology, and contradictory metaphors give rise to
innovations of new meanings and relationships. Meaning cannot properly be understood,
he contends, within some closed system, but rather meaning is involved in cultural actions
and ideas. Consequently, cultural meaning must be understood as both open-ended and
continually changing. His approach is to formulate his theory, use the jargoned tools of
his trade, and illustrate the thesis by the data of the Daribi. He attempts to show that
"the conceptual basis of a culture can never be adequately summed up as a logical ordering
or a closed system of internally consistent propositions" (p. 10). He is one of a number
of symbolically-minded anthropologists who attempt to understand culture as a rather loose
cluster of meanings.
There are two parts to Wagner's work: (1) ideology and innovation and (2) the
invention of immortality. Part 1 discusses a variety of metaphors found in Papuan myths
of culture heroes, sex, and fertility (Chapter 1), the social institutions in which the complementary roles of male and female are expressed, the system of exchange or substitution of
wealth for human beings (Chapter 2,) the metaphorical structuring of power and influence
as they are perceived through magical spells and identity (Chapter 4).
It is in Part 2 that Wagner works with the final symbol and metaphor of a life's
cycle - death. He begins with a discussion of the ideological framework (complementary
metaphors) of mortality by examining the significance of cosmology and spacial conceptualization (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 investigates some of the innovations of meanings
derived from these ideological investigations, i.e., ghosts, extensions of the soul, sickness,
the manifestation of ghostly activities among men, and the corrective ceremonies of curing
The final chapter (7),
or divining performed by the religious medium (sogoyezibidi).
"Habu" (the mourning ceremonies for the dead), is the climax toward which Wagner
directs the thesis of his book. Wagner's emphasis upon metaphors of culture is illustrated
by showing how ". . . mourning uses the occasion of individual death to express the grief
of collective mortality by universalizing the sorrow it produces" (p. 145).

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627

REVIEWS

Although the book is demanding, it carefully reports the results of scholarly investigation and presents the reader with a wide variety of primitive religious phenomena. Some
of the collated materials offered within certain chapters are well worth the cost of the
book: the tracing of meaning expressed in myths as they spread from one area to another
(p. 20), primitive ideas about procreation and growth (p. 40), the economic system of
barter and exchange (p. 52), magical formulae (p. 64), dreams (p. 71), transfer of
meaning through names (p. 92), causes of sickness (p. 130), performances of the curer
(p. 139), and the ideology of death (p. 145). The task of trying to understand Daribi
culture from an American world view is arduous, but worth the effort demanded. Not
only is the raw material given (literal translations of recorded conversations), but also
Wagner gives interpretations of meanings learned from the Daribi. The most comprehensive material is that which clusters around the metaphors and ideology of death and
mourning. His terse remarks about "cannibalism" (p. 149) offer suggestive additions
to discussions relative to ritual identification of the living with the deceased.
His correlation of the myth of the habu (p. 153) with the ritual of death as observed
among the Daribi will be of interest to those working on this complex and sometimes
baffling relationship. Innovation of meanings has given rise to cargo cults in New
Guinea. Wagner includes tantalizing data and interpretations about the question of their
causes (p. 163).
By exploring meaning not only in man's words, but also in signs, gestures, actions,
styles of life, and the interdependent relationships of individuals and groups in society,
Wagner has given us a book of scholarship and innovation. Maps, charts, diagrams, photographs, and drawings enhance its value.
The author's inclusion of some of the Daribi language materials is valuable, although
the worth of the translations to the reader varies. Some are literal, nearly unintelligible
to a non-Daribi reader; some are more meaningfully translated into English. At least the
reader, if he will take the time, can sympathize with the agony of learning a complex
primitive language and can grapple with its meaningful metaphors and ideology.
Finally, Wagner includes within his materials an admission, which is rare, but so
definitely needed. He admits that, after he had investigated several alternative suggestions
with informants, he and they were still baffled as to "which idea is the correct one," and
"why is this so?" Meaning must be found in a greater cultural context than its verbal
expression.
Habu is a specialist's book. Its technical jargon and theory presuppose a rather
advanced reader. If the reader would begin with the Introduction and then skip over to
Chapter 7, "Habu," he could come directly to Wagner's thesis and its application. Then
he could return to the other cultural materials and their multiple meanings.
Although the index is a help, the reader finds that the text expects him to remember
quite a number of important technical terms in the Daribi language. A glossary of terms
would be most helpful and would enhance the value of this work.
Professor Wagner has referred too sketchily to the works of several other scholars
interested in the New Guinea people, e.g., R. Gardner, K. G. Heider, and F. E. Williams.
One wishes that a few more comparative-contrastive suggestions had been offered by the
author.
Western Kentucky University

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DONALD R. TUCK