Pigs as symbolic currency and social exchange among the Enga

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"Pigs are our hearts": Symbolic commodity exchanges amongst the Enga

Introductory Paragraph:

The Enga are an indigenous people of Papua New Guinea. The Enga speak only one native language, but tribal conflicts are rife within the region. As a tribe, they have many distinctive features, particularly the significance they give to pigs as modes of exchange within their culture. Due to certain destabilizing factors, such as the region's harsh climate and tribal warfare, the Enga use symbolic systems of regulation and exchange to exert a sense of control over their unpredictable external environment.

These control systems include a highly rigid social classification system of gender roles and commodity exchange systems involving pigs and other material objects. Their exchange systems reflect the Enga's need to impose meaning upon the external world and create a system of control over their interpersonal relationships and the external environment.

Primary mode of subsistence

The Enga are agrarian-state, subsistence farmers. Papua New Guinea agriculture consists of one large district, which is maintained to generate areal nourishment, along with another budgetary district of a much smaller size, which monitors all exported goods. The Engans produce yams, and taro, mainly, but also generate other staple vegetables which are native to that region in Papua New Guinea. Coping with the challenges of the climate, particularly frequent frosts, is a constant challenge for the Enga (Waddell 1975).

Possibly this accounts for some of the reason that the agriculture trade has not for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), their share of the Gross National Product (GNP), on a bit of a slippery slope within these previous three decades. What did provide over two-thirds of their GDP is now well under that two-third mark. What makes this decline to be perceived as such a drastic decline is due to the fact that more than four-fifths of their GDP depends upon the agriculture trade, subsistence agriculture; this noticeable decline in the GDP has given rise to several stimulant government-financed development programs to supplement the income for the majority of subsistence farmers outside of the urban regions.

Social organization and traditional Engan rituals

Despite the reliance upon farming, and the presumed need for social kinship in a harsh climate, war has been frequent amongst the Enga (Waddell, 1975). In a sense, these Papua New Guinea Natives traditionally "held down the fort" similar to Native American Indians. One commonality between Enga tribes and Native American tribes is the Freedom vs. Confinement sense expressed by means of the ceremony. Despite that Engans followed commonly known religions, such as Catholicism, Christianity, Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Lutheran Church, the Gutnius Lutheran Church, Baptism, and Methodism, amongst others, they also uphold Ceremonies within their collective tribes.

Such as the rituals and ceremonies practiced by the Native American, the Enga havce theirs, too. For instance, like the Arapaho, Arikara, Asbinboine, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros, Ventre, Hidutsa, Sioux, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibway, Sarasi, Omaha, Ponca, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Blackfoot tribes, the Enga hekd similar ceremonies. Like the Sun Dance, the Spirit Dance, the Rain Dance, the Stomp Dance, or the Summer Solstice Ceremony upheld by several (various) Native American tribes, the Enga ritually perform Pig slaughter rituals.

Of course, since the Enga regard the pig as such a sanctified mamal, every part of that pig is either eaten or used as tool (a device held in and manipulated by the hand and used by a mechanic, plumber, carpenter, or other laborer to work, shape, move, or transform material), or an implement (tool or mechanical device used for a particular purpose), or an apparatus (collection of distinct instruments, tools, or other devices that are used in connection or combination with one another for a certain purpose), or a utensil ( a hand-held implement for domestic use), or for its nostalgic or keep-sake value.

From Countries and Their Cultures (Mervyn Meggitt, 1996):

Ceremonies. Although lethal sorcery is uncommon, many men privately use magic to enhance their personal well-being, to acquire valuables and pigs, and to ensure military success. Clan bachelors regularly seclude themselves in groups to remove by magic and by washing the dangerous effects of even inadvertent contacts with women, after which the whole clan feasts its neighbors to celebrate the young men's return to secular life. Women employ magic to cleanse themselves after menstruation and parturition and occasionally to protect their garden crops. Following a Family illness or death, a female medium conducts a seance or a male diviner bespells and cooks pork to identify the aggrieved ghost. The family head then kills pigs and ritually offers cooked pork to placate that ghost. Occurrences of clanwide disasters such as military defeats, crop failures, epidemic illnesses, or deaths of people or pigs stimulate clan leaders to arrange large-scale offerings of pork and game while hired ritual experts decorate the fertility stones to mollify the punitive clan ancestors (Meggitt, 1996).

With this, it becomes evident that the ultimate worth of these aforementioned 'Sacred Pigs' is about on level as family life within the United States would regard children or grandparents. That is quite esteemed.

Gender relations

The Enga strictly segregate the sexes, and role division is extremely gendered. Polygamy is frequently practiced amongst Engan men, though not all -- or even the majority, for that matter. Ironically, women are considered 'polluting to males.' Intersex relations are described as fraught with anxiety and conflict (Feil, 1978).

The 'inferior' role of women has been reconsidered by some anthropologists, given their role in 'te' (pig) exchanges within the context of the society (Feil 1978). This also signifies how the consensus of those Enga males who have more than one wife are amongst the wealthy, or what Engans would perceive as the wealthy. As a base analogy to illustrate this, we can imagine a farmer at the local market place bringing four healthy pigs in exchange for an additional wife. In a rough sense, that speaks of the ethics of these Engans.

More on Polygamy:

Much like Mormons and Mormonism, many Enga men practice pluralism, or polygamy; this is the practice of these Papua New Guinea men to obtain and nourish more than one wife successively. Polygamy, then, always amounts to a common theme between brothers, sisters, half-brothers, half-sisters, but very importantly extreme communal respect between the wives, alongside a common theme of respect between these siblings. Moreover, complete bipartisanship must be displayed between all members equally. With the trepidation built due to the abundance and frequency of wars, however, this sense of tight kinship is not too completely difficult to discern.

From this batch of sources, collectively, we can gather that these rugged mountain people, the Engans, have quite rigid restrictions. Alcohol and firearms are banned. Upon entering this province, everyone -- locals just as well as visitors -- are thoroughly checked for both. From the Corporate Responsibility webpage, Police Deployment, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG):

The Papua New Guinea census of 2000 lists the population of Enga at

295,031 people, although the accuracy of the census is questionable. The provincial capital of Enga is Wabag. The two other main centers of population are Wapenamanda and Laiagam. Porgera, at the western edge of the province, is home to a gold mine operated by Barrick Gold.

Enga is unique among the provinces in Papua New Guinea in that it has only one major linguistic and ethnic group: Enga speakers. Although dialects of the Enga language vary greatly from Laiagam in the west to Wapenamanda in the east,

Engans' shared ethnic identity overshadows the existence of other ethnic groups in the province, such as Ipili speakers

(around Porgera) and Nete speakers.

Porgera, the giant gold and copper mine in the far west, has brought about rapid change for some, but most people still grow cash crops -- coffee, pyrethrum and cool-weather

European vegetables -- in their steep mountain gardens.

Porgera is all but spent, but other nearby mineral finds mean that the mining town will be there a long while yet.

As late as 1960s, Enga was still largely independent of government control and tribal warfare still occurs today.

Engans are well respected for their diplomacy and skill in the art of negotiation, but the provincial government also has the dubious distinction of having had its power suspended three times by the national government due to concerns over corruption and accountability (PNG).

Here are some more excellent concluding (or pre-conclusory) quotations:

The roughest yet most robust, all the while the tallest, of all the Papua New Guinea provinces is the Enga. Wabag is the capital city. The geographical coordinates of Wabag, Enga, are

5° 29' 0" South, 143° 42' 0" east and its original name (with diacritics) is Wabag (maplandia, 2005).

The word Enga refers to the province (the Enga Province,

Papua New Guinea), the inhabitants (Enga People, or Engans),

and the language (Enga Language). The National Statistic

Office has "established within the National Statistical Office the DHS [Demographic and Health Survey] Management Team

which is headed by one of the Deputy National Statisticians,

Mr. Bernard Kiele, as the 2006 DHS Director" (National

Statistical Office of Papua New Guinea).

*These two quotations might be extremely useful to work-in when you organize and construct your assignment.

Conclusion

Enga society is driven by a need for control, which is achieved through generating socially-engineered taboos and a highly elaborate system of exchange of commodities. Since Enga maintains merely one major linguistic and ethnic group, Enga stands alone. Herein, even the rustic capital of Wabag appears as more of an outlying town to Mt Hagen than a civilized gathering point. Wapenamanda and Laiagam, two more of the better known Egan regions, fit this rustic imagery completely.