ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to show that appropriation is not a unilateral process; nor it is a process that pertains only to the relationship between native and white people. These two issues will here be examined principally on the basis of Sulka ethnography, complemented by further ethnographical material on other New Britain populations. Laufer postulates the existence of a Supreme Being, identified as the God of Scripture, within both the Sulka cosmological representations and those of the other peoples he visited in New Britain: the Tolai, Baining, Mengen, Arowe, Kilenge, Bariai, and Kove. The author examines the example of the Sulka who have joined the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church in order to demonstrate how the other, can just as well be a Sulka for another Sulka. The SDA assign an experimental and demonstrative value to their attempt to overcome fear; they test the power of disbelief, just as they do to other aspects of their nonconformist behaviour.
