Introduction

A feature of many Melanesian societies are male cults, in which men are promoted through a series of initiatory grades during the course of their lives, and at each stage are taught successively more secret, and more powerful, ritual knowledge (Allen 1967; Barth 1975; Herdt 1982; Tuzin 1980; Whitehead 1986). In this chapter I outline the male initiatory system at Avatip because the major political conflicts in the society, which I analyse in later chapters, are contests for pre-eminent positions in the organisation of the men's cult. It is this cult that provides Avatip men with their most powerful and compelling models of hierarchy, and it is above all the hereditary powers and privileges deriving from the cult which Avatip leaders are competing to control.

I begin by describing the stages of the initiatory cycle, starting with the ritual of first-stage initiation, and then discuss the privileges (these are primarily entitlements to different funerary rites) of the three ritual grades. I end with a discussion of the ritual elite, the men holding hereditary offices called simbuk, arguing that while these offices confer little authority in secular contexts, they are intensely significant symbols of the idea of ascribed inequality.

Ritual and social reality

The male cult, like most such cults in Melanesia and elsewhere, debars women and involves the deliberate hoaxing and deception of women and children.