Why Do Yams?
While writing this book I also learned, that those who live on the Trobriand Islands relay heavily on the production of yams. The production of yams is their main economic source. Yam production is almost entirely done by the males in the society. Once a year men harvest a large amount of yams. Even though men control and do most of the work while harvesting the yams, women also play a part in the harvesting and production of yams. Women do this by helping the men cultivate the soil to prepare for the planting of the yams. Yams have a political significant in the fact that fathers prepare a yam garden for their daughters to receive upon marriage. The father provides his daughter a yam garden for his daughter every year until one of her brothers
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The way that they create this wealth is by selling bundles of bananas leaves and through the production of red skirts also known as doba. The Trobriand women typically display extravagant displays of wealth after a death of a fellow islander. Bundles represent western money and are given to out to workers during the mourning period after the death of an islander. The reason this is done is because of the amount of work that is done preparing for an individual death. So the workers are paid by the women in the form of banana leaves and red skirts. By giving away their resources to the workers, the owners provide a type of compensation pay designed to lighten any type of responsibility for the death of the individual. If the return pay is not large enough then payback or revenge plots will begin to be formulated against members of the matrilineal kin. The yams can only be exchanged when they are raw and they represent a factor of women's wealth. Through my study of the Trobriand Islands I have discovered that women are crucially important to the structure of the Trobriand society. Not only do these women transmit ancestral identity but they also control a major source of wealth. Trobriand women maintain a degree of power that is different from but equal to the power of
The way that they create this wealth is by selling bundles of bananas leaves and through the production of red skirts also known as doba. The Trobriand women typically display extravagant displays of wealth after a death of a fellow islander. Bundles represent western money and are given to out to workers during the mourning period after the death of an islander. The reason this is done is because of the amount of work that is done preparing for an individual death. So the workers are paid by the women in the form of banana leaves and red skirts. By giving away their resources to the workers, the owners provide a type of compensation pay designed to lighten any type of responsibility for the death of the individual. If the return pay is not large enough then payback or revenge plots will begin to be formulated against members of the matrilineal kin. The yams can only be exchanged when they are raw and they represent a factor of women's wealth. Through my study of the Trobriand Islands I have discovered that women are crucially important to the structure of the Trobriand society. Not only do these women transmit ancestral identity but they also control a major source of wealth. Trobriand women maintain a degree of power that is different from but equal to the power of