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The Political Order and Corporal Coercion in Kanak Societies of the Past (New Caledonia)
Author(s) -
Bensa Alban,
Goromido Antoine,
Mellott Noal
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4461.1997.tb02652.x
Subject(s) - chiefdom , politics , power (physics) , ethnography , coercion (linguistics) , ethnology , sociology , anthropology , history , political science , geography , law , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
Till the mid‐19th century, in Kanak institutions in north central Grande Terre (New Caledonia), chiefs received their titles from the ‘masters of the land’. To add material and symbolic power to their preeminent position, they received human sacrifices, as one of their kinspeople offered his/her body; and they waged warfare outside the chiefdom. Their fame was proportional to control over human bodies. Based on historical sources and ethnographic information gathered in the field, the effort is made to see how these precolonial cannibalistic practices fit into political systems. A comparison is made between Kanak chiefs and Melanesian big men and great men.