Who Sees What in Pororan Marriage Exchange?

Over time, anthropologists working in Melanesia have provided increasingly nuanced analyses of exchange and, specifically, of the transformation of ‘objects’ and ‘images’ that people perceive in the course of particular revelatory sequences. One aspect of the complexity of exchange in Melanesia appears to have become sidelined, however, by a predominant interest in the temporal transformation of objects and images. This is the multiplicity of objects, images and sequences of their transformation that different participants perceive in the same sequence of events. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate this aspect of exchange ethnographically, and to discuss some of its implications on Pororan Island in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]