ABSTRACT
The Anggor conceive of inter-community relationships primarily in terms of a substrate of perpetual hostility, occasionally erupting in conventional manifestations of homicide and warfare. Anggor assertions about the taking of revenge are very similar to Anggor postulations of sister-exchange as the ideal form of marriage. The Anggor word for “anger” can be glossed as “internal heat”; on the other hand, acts of overt or covert violence and their associated paraphenalia are often described by informants as “hot”. Clearly Anggor ideas about death and about inter-village relations are inextricably linked on every level. All acts of violence, then, on any scale, find their meaning in the ideal model of inter-village relation symbolized in sorcery and reciprocal killing, and take their impetus from the “heat” of anger generated by previous acts of violence leading to death.
