Chapter Outline

SORCERY AND CONCEPTS OF DEVIANCE AMONG THE KABANA, WEST NEW BRITAIN * In the Trobriands, sorcery was both a criminal practice and a method of administering justice. * Sorcery may be either deviance per se, or it may be the control of deviance. * The Kabana have multiple levels of political negotiation that go into a decision about whether an act of sorcery is deviant. * KABANA MORALITY * Among the Kabana, the framework of ideal social values and morals is grounded in concepts of human nature and the obligations inherent in the structure of human relations. * Relations among individuals and groups do not exist in the abstract but always and only in connection with someone or something else * Offended persons may select from a hierarchy of responses of increasing complexity to restore and restructure their interpersonal relations. * Self-regulation entails that all individuals are deemed to be in control of their own existence, and, therefore are accountable to, and responsible for, others. * Self-help is the principle whereby individuals who perceive their rights to have been infringed may rightfully take retaliatory action against those who have infringed about them. * Kabana label behavior, not individuals, as deviant. * The negative sanctions in no way implies an intent to permanently discriminate against or stigmatize an offender. * The label an individual permanently as deviant is to place him or her outside the pale of human relations as a social pariah. * There is no intentional discrimination against, and no stigma applied to, offenders, for to stigmatize persons is to set aside and mark them permanently as incorrigibly different, thus denying them the opportunity to redress the imbalance in social relations caused by their offenses. * Most reactions to deviance occur at the level of personal relations, though they may involve whole families * LOWER LEVELS OF SOCIAL CONTROL * All Kabana relationships are face-to-face relations and everyone is known to, and knows about, everyone else. * Anonymity is impossible and no behavior, albeit good, bad, or indifferent, goes undiscovered. * Someone who ignores the rules of reciprocity is advised or reminded of the potentially negative consequences that could be experienced as a result of impropriety * Kabana do not equate simple non-conformity with deviance. * Shaming, gossip and ridicule are extremely effecting mean of sanctioning deviant behavior. * At a higher level of response, theft, physical violence and adultery often result in the perpetrator being brought before the village magistrate by the injured party. * Any sanction imposed by the public court allows the culprit the opportunity for expiation and limits the consequences of the transgression to a single event. * SORCERY AS SOCIAL SANCTION AND DEVIANCE * Sorcery can be defined as a form of esoteric knowledge bestowing personal power which the adept can use willfully to realize desired ends. * All have access to sorcery, but only a few can acquire the knowledge and skill. * Victims are assumed to be persons who have violated social mores and values * Kabana sorcerers also send calling cards in the form of ensorcelled stones that they throw onto or into the victim's house * If they are unable to identify the locus of conflict, the sorcerer might approach the, inform them why they have been ill, remove the spell, and restore health. * BREAKING THE TALK * to break the talk means to cut through the multitude of conjecture and gossip about why a person has been sorcerized and by whom * When the talk is broken, it is exposed to public scrutiny so that its veracity can be analyzed and a logical sequence of events leading up to the illness or death can be reconstructed. * Ultimately the talk is broken, when the silence surrounding the act of collusion is broken, thus publicly exposing those who participated in the decision to sorcerize * CONCLUSION * Generic processes noted in labelling theory can be applied to the cross cutlutral study of deviance