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Church Festivals and the Visualization of Identity in Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949460701610589

1545-5920

Anna‐Karina Hermkens,

Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

Abstract In Collingwood Bay, people celebrate the individual saints after which each Anglican church is named. These church festivals are a combination of Christian worship and traditional music and dances. They vary from small, village-based happenings to large regional performances in which objects and food are exchanged. For the Maisin people, the festivals not only express dedication to the church, they also embody the spirit of past clan festivities that connected clans and commemorated clan ancestors. This articleFootnote 1 discusses how, for the Maisin people, church festivals provide a contemporary arena in which various identities, emotions, and knowledge as well as affiliations are actually embodied and expressed visually. Notes The research on which this article is based was financed by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO) and the Radboud University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper, "Performing Bodies—Constructing Identities: Church Festivals in Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea," at the Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) in Melbourne in 2004. I thank the anonymous reviewer for Visual Anthropology for providing useful comments and suggestions. Field research took place from February 2001 until March 2002, and in June–July 2004. Research was mainly conducted in the southern Maisin villages: Sinapa, Sinipara, Koniasi, Airara, and Marua. The central and two largest Maisin villages are Uiaku and Ganjiga, with Iuwayu and Uwe as the most northern of Maisin villages. Like Maisin people, Miniafia and Korafe people equally distinguish two types of clan. In Miniafia, chief clans are called Iwob, while the others are called, just as in Maisin language, Sabu. Among Korafe people, the two clans are called Kotófu and Sabúa. John Barker [among others, 1985, 1985a, 1987, 2004] has described extensively the processes and dynamics of religious conversion among the Maisin and the position of the Anglican Church in Maisin societies. In Wanigela, this performance, whereby dancing and singing groups of people support and encourage other groups to make a good contribution to the local church, is called bobo. By guiding them to the church while singing and dancing, the dancers also attract donations from individuals, who, by giving a bit of money, increase the gift made by a particular group. For a description and analysis of the gendered production of barkcloth, see Hermkens [2005b, 2007]. The interplay between the production and use of barkcloth and formations of identity is elaborated in my Ph.D. thesis [Hermkens 2005a]. For an extensive analysis of dance as a form of nonverbal communication, see Hanna [1987]. In 1845, the Mothers' Union was established in England by Mary Summer, a pastor's wife. The purpose of the Mothers' Union is to be concerned with the strengthening and preservation of marriage and Christian family life. In the 1950s, the organization and its teachings were introduced among the Maisin. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAnna-Karina Hermkens ANNA-KARINA HERMKENS' Ph.D. research (2005) dealt with how Maisin barkcloth is made and used in rituals, dances, and exchanges, thereby engendering multiple identities. She is currently working as a postdoctoral scholar on religion, inequality, and violence in Papua New Guinea at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands.