SEMINAR: Anthropology and Sociology Seminar Series 2014: The Matter of Existential Relations. Growth, Life-Cycle, and the Form of the World in Reite, PNG.

In this paper, I present some of the life-cycle rites practiced by Nekgini speaking people on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. These rites have several fascinating aspects, including the consumption of substitutes for the growing child by their maternal kin. Interrogating the repeated substitution of specific game, domestic meat, artefacts, and garden food for a human body suggests that just as the materials and actions have specific effects on the emergent person, they equally have transformative effect on the maternal and paternal kin. In fact, the rites reconstitute a human world of exchange and morality among affines. I make the point that a focus on the individual and their transformation misses the mutual transformation of all involved. That is, instead of being ‘about’ the individual and the social recognition of their physical growth, these rites are existential in focus and concern.