ABSTRACT
The male initiation systems and the cultural premises about humans and the cosmos which infuse them with meaning are, like naven, total social facts in a Maussian sense; but they are more global in scale, more total in cultural salience and social consequences, than the Iatmul naven rite—or, indeed, than most ritual systems of the tribal world. The initiatory sequences also vary considerably in terms of age span of initiation, the age variation among the novices, and the number of ritual grades to full manhood. The elaboration of cosmologies and rituals, the creation of secret knowledge, the modification of common themes in locally distinctive ways—all become processes whereby populations differentiate themselves from their neighbors, as well as processes whereby senior men set themselves apart from women and uninitiated boys. The male cults of New Guinea have a wide significance for prevailing anthropological theories of culture.
