ABSTRACT
On the island of Ambae, in the western Pacific nation of Vanuatu, women make plaited pandanus textiles. These textiles, which are always dyed red, are pervasive in Ambaean life. Although pigs and food are also sometimes exchanged, the occasions are dominated by pandanus textiles, and at important occasions such as marriages many hundreds of textiles are exchanged. The production of the textiles is labour-intensive, involving harvesting, drying and softening the pandanus, plaiting the threads together one by one, and subsequently dyeing the completed fabric. A woman whose brother is to be married will spend up to a year before the ceremony feverishly plaiting exchange textiles of all types so that she can walk onto the hamlet plaza with a large basket of all of them on her head. The idea of captivation provides an analytical tool to investigate the distinctiveness of singo.
