Although the ceremonial house is for men only, the reaction of the village women is never far from the men's minds. Activities in the house are a preparation for public ceremonies, in which the men perform before the women in full regalia. Initiations, which take place in the house, are deliberately staged so that parts of the ceremony are visible to the women who are nearby and outside, and who thus form an audience. The women also hear the sounds of the secret tribal instruments, and "the men who are producing these sounds are exceedingly conscious of that unseen audience of women." The whole culture, says Bateson, "is moulded by the continual emphasis upon the spectacular, and by the pride of the male ethos."
As might be expected, the ethos of Iatmul women is quite the reverse, though there are instances of remarkable female assertiveness which are regarded as admirable by the Iatmul people. But for the most part, if the lives of the men are preoccupied with "theater," those of the women are centered around "reality": obtaining and cooking food, keeping house, and rearing children. Such activities are done privately, with no regard to appearances. Female style is unostentatious, sometimes to the point of being taciturn. The general spirit is one of quiet jollity and cooperation, and it is the theatrical behavior of the men which provides most of the drama of a woman's life. When, however, the women are collectively called upon to dance publicly, they exhibit a proud ethos, wearing male ornaments and even moving with a slight swagger. This mild transvestism becomes full-blown during naven.
As Bateson points out, his sketch of the Iatmul sexual ethos is drawn from a European point of view. Male Iatmul behavior is histrionic to us but not to the Iatmul, who find it quite normal. If we put ourselves within the culture, we learn that the women find the men strong and assertive, whereas the men find female behavior weak, sentimental, and even shameful. Taking the female position in sexual intercourse is seen as degrading, and for this reason the role reversal during naven's simulated copulation is almost shocking. We see, then, that "each sex has its own consistent ethos which contrasts with that of the opposite sex." Naven is remarkable for its reversal of these two very rigid cultural styles.
We are finally in a position to understand why naven is performed. The immediate motivation is tradition: a child has achieved something noteworthy and its relatives must therefore publicly express their joy. In this sense naven is no more esoteric than a bar mitzvah. What we are really asking is why the celebration takes its particular form, for obviously, the Iatmul might simply celebrate with a feast. The sexual ethos described above provides the answer. The men are accustomed to a theatrical display of emotion, not the genuine expression of it. Women, on the other hand, are allowed to express real joy in the achievements of others, but are rarely involved in spectacular public behavior. The child's achievement, however, forces the Iatmul to enact a celebration that cuts across this rigid sexual categorization, violating the norms of both sexes. The men can identify with public display, but not with expressions of joy. The women can express joy, but to make a public display is to violate their norm. The result is acute embarrassment for both sexes, and it is this embarrassment that pushes the situation towards transvestism.
Bateson's point of comparison here is the fashionable English horsewoman who wears decidedly masculine clothing when she rides. Horse riding, compared to the more typically approved "female" activities of British culture, has a definite masculine flavor, generating as it does a powerful sense of physical mastery. In Britain no less than in New Guinea, men and women are socialized along very different lines. When she rides a horse the British woman is placed in a situation somewhat unusual for females, but typical for men; hence a masculine costume appropriate to an "abnormal" situation. Similarly, the Iatmul woman engaging in a public display is doing a man's "thing," but wearing a man's costume takes the edge off the resulting embarrassment. Wearing such a costume says, in effect, "It's really OK, I'm a man right now." As for the man, he wears filthy garments and acts in an ineffectual way because his ethos has taught him to regard female behavior as weak or dispicable. This "exchange" behavior is so emotionally charged that at its peak the 'wau' may simulate giving birth, while the 'mbora' ('wau's' wife) may jump on the 'wau' and humiliate her husband by taking the active role in ritual copulation.
Although he did not stress it at this point, Bateson did note one other psychological motive for naven besides the mitigation of embarrassment. Most cultures possess an aggressive male ethos of performance (the injunction to "Be a man!"); but in Iatmul culture, Bateson observed, this pressure may be an above-average burden on the emotions. As Jung noted, all personalities have both feminine and masculine components, and it is thus possible that the Iatmul sexual ethos is suffocating even to them. That a man must never express joy for another's achievements, or be passive in sex, and that a woman must never be ostentatious, or the sexual aggressor, probably generates enormous psychological tensions. Clearly, these tensions are a source of energy in the naven ceremony, which affords some relief by allowing each sex to "be" the other for a short time and act out the severely repressed parts of its personality. The very frequency of the naven ceremonial, which is performed upon the slightest excuse, further corroborates the argument that it is a counterbalance to a burdensome sexual ethos. As the Iatmul themselves would say, theirs is a "hot" society, generating powerful tensions that are frequently and dramatically relieved.
Bateson's reflections on the nature of these social and psychological tensions led to the formulation of his greatest anthropological concept, that of schismogenesis. Once again he searched for a social analogue to the biological distinction, emphasized by his father, between radial and meristic differentiation. Relations between Iatmul men built to a climax along symmetrical lines. In the ceremonial house, ridicule was met with ridicule, irony with irony, and boasting with boasting until some remark finally precipitated a brawl. Male-female relations, however, followed a very different pattern. Although we have spoken of a male ethos and a female one, they are hardly independent of each other. The men are theatrical because the women admire the show; the women are passive (for the most part) because the men are histrionic; and it is likely that the behavior of each invokes increasingly exaggerated reciprocal responses. Thus this form of schismogenesis, which Bateson calls "complementary" in contrast to the symmetrical schismogenesis of male-male relations, also escalates over time and builds to a climax, and we might reasonably wonder why Iatmul society does not simply explode from both types of schismogenesis. Indeed, at least in the case of the symmetrical rivalry, it does, and it is the naven ceremonial that keeps latmul society from falling apart completely. Although debates do become brawls, and brawls become longstanding feuds, the practice of naven strengthens affinal links and thus softens the harshness of clan opposition.
One sees here a mixture of the two types of schismogenesis. Relations between 'wau' and 'laua' are complementary, while the link between brothers-in-law is symmetrical. The 'wau-laua' relationship thus acts as a brake on symmetrical schismogenesis. In naven, the 'wau' insists on the complementary aspects of his relationship with his 'laua' at the expense of the symmetrical aspects of the family setup. He acts as "mother" or "wife" to the 'laua,' thus denying his real position as a (classificatory) brother-in-law, which is the symmetrical aspect of the relationship. Naven also prevents a cultural breakdown along sexual lines by allowing men and women to "become" each other even to the point of switching roles in simulated intercourse, thereby releasing the tension accumulated by progressive personality distortion. Naven thus defuses the climacteric that builds in both symmetrical and complementary schismogenesis; and once the ritual drama has ended, the whole process is ready to begin anew.
In general, Bateson defined schismogenesis as "a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behavior resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals." But he soon realized that the concept was more broadly applicable, for cumulative, or "progressive," behavior seemed to be inherent in numerous types of
human social and psychological organization. Bateson did not use "progressive" in its familiar Western sense, which has a melioristic connotation, but instead used the term to describe any type of behavior which built to a climax. In progressive change of this sort, the absence of stabilizing elements usually means that the process will end in explosion or deterioration (a "runaway" situation). To take the most general case, consider two social groups, which we shall label "A" and "B." (These could be men and women, parents and children, two nations, two political factions, etc.) Symmetrical schismogenesis occurs when the two groups get into a relationship that resembles the rivalry at an auction. The two behaviors are identical, with each group attempting to do the opposition one better: "Well, top this, then." This sort of rivalry can be seen at work in situations of culture contact, interpersonal competition, and in the whole arena of politics, as the tiresome game of Pentagon-Kremlin arms race clearly shows.
In the case of complementary schismogenesis, the rivalry is reciprocal; the aggressive behavior of A, let us say, provokes submissive behavior on the part of B, encouraging more aggression from A in what becomes an escalating spiral. The classic example is perhaps the traditional marriage, in which the pattern of dominant husband/submissive wife is initially satisfactory to both parties involved. Over time, however, the roles distort one another. The wife's submission provokes the husband's assertion, in turn encouraging her submission, and so on. No one is by nature completely assertive or submissive, but the dynamics of the relationship increasingly repress one side of each partners personality, until each recognizes the stunted aspect of his or her own personality overdeveloped in the personality of the other. Ultimately each becomes unable to see the others viewpoint. They have lost all interest in making the relationship work, while reciprocal tensions continue to accumulate. Finally, the husband may be goaded into totally despotic behavior in an attempt to provoke a counterreaction, and the wife may decide to blow her brains out -- or his. More typically, she will leave the marriage. This single example illuminates the mechanism of a number of other types of interpersonal or political situations. Complementary schismogenesis can be seen at work in certain cases of culture contact, in numerous types of group behavior (e.g., the reinforcing of one member's "deviant" pattern by the actions of the other members), and in situations such as class conflict or racial oppression.
As in the case of the Iatmul, we must ask why the whole world is not exploding; and again, we are forced to reply: it is. Nevertheless, as Bateson recognized, things do not always escalate to breakdown. Some marriages stabilize, though few are happy. The Pentagon and Kremlin may do us in yet, but have managed to avoid Armageddon thus far. Class rivalries are often bitter, but as Marxists have found, industrial societies are not fertile ground for proletarian revolution. Trying to explain why, Bateson theorized that, as in the Iatmul situation, schismogenic tensions were being eased by admixtures. Medieval principalities sometimes had one day a year in which serfs became kings and the king a subject -- a single brief role reversal that was often enough to keep the whole system going. The traditional marriage has been feasible up to recent times because the wife could at least be mistress of the kitchen, even if subservient everywhere else. Internal rivalties tear at industrial societies between wars, only to be resolved at a stroke by the appearance of a common enemy, which switches the internal symmetrical tensions into a complementary mode and provides a target on which to focus symmetrical schismogenesis. (Labor and management, for example, now share complementary roles in the effort to defeat a common enemy.)
The concept of schismogenesis also enabled Bateson to reply to the most trenchant criticisms of Ruth Benedict's type of anthropology. Of what real value were the concepts of "configuration," standardization," and "modal personality," it was asked, if it were obvious that any single society possessed a greater divergence of social types within itself than existed between it and other societies? How, for example, would you explain the deviant personality, the individual who has clearly escaped the pressures of his or her context?14
As early as 1942, Bateson pointed out that both individuals and societies are organized entities. In the Iatmul researches, it had not been enough to say that the character structure of one sex was very different from the character structure of the opposite sex. The point was that the ethos of one cogged into the ethos of the other; that the behavior of each promoted the habits of the other. All social, personal, and biological life has its own "grammar," or code. You can react against your particular code; but you can hardly behave in a way that is totally irrelevant to it. Furthermore, these patterns tend to be bipolar. If you are trained in one half of such a pattern, it is a fair guess that the seeds of the other half are sown somewhere in your personality. Thus, argued Bateson, it is not that husband and wife are trained, respectively, in dominance and submission. Dominance and submission are integrally (dialectically, alchemically) related; there is no pure dominance or pure submission. The couple was instead trained in dominance/submission, as a total pattern, and given enough dominance from the husband, the wife may assert her repressed dominance in the form of homicide. The fact that the 'mbora' can vigorously ape the male sexual role in naven suggests that submission was not all her society taught her. Hence, Bateson concluded that when we deal with relatively stable differentiation within a community, we are justified in speaking of a modal, or standardized, personality if we describe it in terms of the motifs of relationships familiar to the entire community. The deviant personality has not escaped the pressures of its community, for its deviance is a reaction to those motifs. The deviate's behavior may not follow social norms, but it is acquired with respect to those norms, and even if the behavior is the opposite of those norms, it still retains its relevance to them. The relationship of agent/tool, for example, is absent in New Guinea; Iatmul deviates do not behave in these ways. Or, to take a more famous example from Bateson's work, insanity is just such a reaction to cultural norms. Rather than being a "disease" that descends on the victim from out of the blue, it is a patterned, "logical" response that meshes quite efficently with the surrounding family structure.15
Is schismogenesis truly inherent in human behavior? It is a compelling thesis, yet one that was completely disproved by Bateson's next anthropological investigation, that of Balinese society.16 Without going into too much detail here, it is important to note that Bateson found the nondialectical situation of the Balinese totally unprecedented. Their culture was not, he realized, susceptible to any type of Hegelian or Marxist analysis. Balinese music and art are characterized by balance, not by tension and resolution, as in the West; and indeed, balance seems to be a metaphor that extends to every phase of Balinese life. The emphasis is on present enjoyment; the Balinese have no concept of future reward, and things are done in and for themselves. Life itself is seen as a work of art. The best metaphor for the Balinese way of life might be a tightrope walker constantly adjusting his balancing pole so as to turn out a graceful and pleasurable performance.
Competition and rivalry are thus absent in Bali. Should a quarrel arise between two members of the society, they will go to a local official and register the fact that they have a quarrel. There is no attempt at reconciliation and, in effect, they have drawn up a contract of enmity. Still, the two enemies are able to recognize their relationship as it is, to accept its existence at that particular plateau, and as a result, climactic interaction is obviated. The Balinese, like the Iatmul, recognize no central authority, but unlike the Iatmul they do not regard offences as personal. If, says Bateson, a casteless person fails to address a prince formally, the prince sees not a personal insult but an offence against the natural order of the universe, a violation of postural balance. In everything they do, optimization is the issue, not maximization. Balinese economics, for example, cannot be described in terms of a profit motive, nor can the Balinese social structure be seen as a collection of individuals or groups vying for status or prestige.
The Balinese app
arently achieve this balance through their child-rearing practices, teasing their offspring into cumulative interaction and then deliberately losing interest just shy of the point of climax. In most cultures this technique would produce psychotic individuals, but in Bali the totality of the pattern reinforces the practices and produces adults who distrust cumulative involvement. Still, we must resist our Western assumption that life in Bali must be one tedious attempt to preserve the status quo. Like the Iatmul, we are trapped in the notion that schismogenic situations, which are in fact profoundly neurotic, are exciting, and that anything else must be dull. In one of his best passages in "One-Dimensional Man," Herbert Marcuse correctly characterized the apparent dynamism of advanced industrial culture as fraudulent: "Underneath its obvious dynamics this society is a thoroughly static system of life: self-propelling in its oppressive productivity and in its beneficial coordination."17 Factory life, consumer life, business life, executive life -- all of these are, from the inside, boring, repetitive, and characterized by an absence of any real adventure or exploration.
The situation in Bali is just the reverse. It looks like a "cool" society, but is in fact very active. The Balinese, says Bateson, extend attitudes based on body balance to human relations. They generalize the idea that motion is essential to any type of balance. Their society is a very complex and busy one, but not in our sense, for theirs is steady state maintained by continual nonprogressive change. In his essay "Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art," Bateson analyzed a Balinese painting, showing that it had as its message the idea that "to choose either turbulence or serenity as a human purpose would be a vulgar error." The Balinese recognize that these poles are mutually dependent in art, sex, society, and death, but they have come to terms with this reality by means of a nonschismogenic solution. Although Bateson never believed in "primitive" solutions for the West, Bali served as an important model for him, acting as a kind of mirror in which the folly of most human interaction was sharply revealed and contrasted.
The Reenchantment of the World Page 23