WhatGoesAroundComesAround_DavisRob

practice as a social custom, something referred to by anthropologists as
“prescriptive cross-cousin marriage.” It is not, he pointed out, much
different from the marriage system of European royalty. On the one
hand, he viewed Miriam’s case with the fascination of a scholar – on the
other, he remained a member of the tribe and still lived by its complex
code of family traditions.
“I analyze it and I practice it,” he said. “I challenge it, but only part of
it. There are certain changes we have no choice but to accept, like
women’s rights and notions of equality. But there are certain things that
we are compelled to hold onto.”
Regarding Miriam’s situation, he explained, “Yes, a woman is treated as
a commodity, but in a spiritual sense it is much more than that. A
woman is an object, but she is a divine object. I would do the same,” he
says. “I have maternal uncles. I have a daughter. I must repay the debt
of all the work my mother did. One way is to make the payment in a
lump sum and give my daughter back in marriage.” He depicted
Miriam’s case as, “one which strikes at the root of things, kinship on
trial.”
While it may be difficult to understand how a Cambridge-educated
Ph.D. could subscribe to such a view, he did so with absolute conviction.
In fact, how is the certainty of his belief all that different from the blind
acceptance that millions of various religious and cultural adherents have
– ideas conceived of and articulated by some individual, possibly
centuries ago, often accompanied by claims of divine inspiration, which
eventually over time become accepted by their proponents as, “The
Gospel!”
Apparently, at some point in time in Papua New Guinea’s distant past,
someone dreamed up the botanical concept of growth, and ever since,