Richard Thurnwald · 1912
Thurnwald’s third volume presents the sociological material of his 1906–1909 expedition, chiefly from Buin on Bougainville, as an argument against premature system-building. Social life is to be reconstructed from named events, native reports, ceremonies, payments, and genealogies; theory must be disciplined by documentation.
Gerade weil auf soziologischem Gebiet die Theorien eine allzu gefährliche Rolle spielen
English translation: Precisely because in the sociological field theories play an all-too-dangerous role
This principle shapes the book’s four-part structure: life stages, economy and polity, concrete events, and genealogical tables. Laws and institutions matter only insofar as they are enacted in marriages, debts, deaths, feuds, and inheritances. The Stammtafeln are therefore not an appendix but the empirical base of a biographical sociology.
Das Individuum ist oft wichtiger, als die Institution.
English translation: The individual is often more important than the institution.
The first part treats puberty, marriage, and death as mechanisms of incorporation. The Unu, ostensibly a puberty feast, makes a boy socially defensible by inserting him into a protection and blood-revenge alliance. Through pigs, panpipes, ornaments, speeches, and the transfer of a spear, chiefs become bound to avenge injury.
Der Vertrag bedingt gewissermaßen eine „Lebensversicherung“ für den Aufgenommenen.
English translation: The contract in a certain sense constitutes a "life insurance" for the one taken in.
Marriage is likewise political rather than merely domestic. Bridewealth, reciprocal meals, the bride’s movement into the husband’s house, and later house-feasts bind two groups. Thurnwald’s central thesis on exogamy is that “peace marriage” arose from relations between formerly hostile groups, where Konnubium and Komercium secured coexistence. His strongest evidence is the equivalence of bride-price and homicide compensation.
Es wird für sie derselbe Betrag an Muschelgeld bezahlt wie sonst für den Verlust eines Menschenlebens.
English translation: The same amount of shell money is paid for her as would otherwise be paid for the loss of a human life.
Death completes the cycle by turning property into ritual redistribution and revenge. In the account of Tom’s cremation, mourning, whitened bodies, offerings to the Óliga, knot-counting, and the dābe spear-breaking show that the dead reorganize the living. Inheritance is less accumulation than the conversion of shell-money, pigs, and goods into feasts and reciprocal claims.
The second part argues that economy and polity are inseparable. Buin is an agrarian world of taro, yam, pigs, palms, forest rights, and personal exchange. Land belongs broadly to the district, while concrete property arises through planting, tending, making, or catching. Exchange is episodic and moral; the māmoko “Trostgabe” may appease envy, acknowledge debt, or keep a relationship open. Money is not primarily market money.
Wir ersehen daraus, daß das „Geld“ nicht eigentlichen Handelszwecken dient, sondern gewisse soziale Funktionen zu erfüllen hat.
English translation: From this we see that "money" does not really serve commercial purposes but has to fulfill certain social functions.
This leads to Thurnwald’s main political move: the chief is powerful as banker, feast-giver, alliance broker, and war financier, not as a state magistrate. Chiefs are ranked and hereditary; their halls are council places, shrines, trophy archives, and signs of prestige. Yet authority remains personal and fragile.
Der Häuptling ist aber nicht Richter, er nimmt unter seinen Leuten nur die Stellung eines „primus inter pares“ ein.
English translation: The chief, however, is not a judge; among his people he holds only the position of a "primus inter pares."
Accordingly, violations of social order—killing, sorcery, forbidden marriage, adultery, theft, debt—are handled by compensation, avoidance, duel, expulsion, feud, or revenge. There is no court in the strict sense; punishment is relational equilibrium.
Die Strafe ist vollkommen in die Form der Rache gekleidet.
English translation: Punishment is entirely cast in the form of revenge.
The “Begebenheiten” demonstrate this system in motion. Wars over Manta, Pogóčika’s killing, the Mono attack on Muituru, and other episodes show violence emerging from sexual rivalry, insult, sorcery accusation, unpaid obligation, and chains of revenge more than from territorial conquest. The final genealogies extend the same method to demography: sex ratios, child mortality, marriage, polygyny, childlessness, and population decline. The volume’s relevance lies in its early fusion of legal anthropology, economic anthropology, political sociology, and demographic method, though framed by colonial assumptions. Its lasting insight is that Buin is not a timeless “origin” but a historical formation in which social order is made through insurance, prestation, revenge, alliance, and personal authority.
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