ABSTRACT
Our analysis of the exchanges practised by four very different societies incites us now to attempt a comparison which, as we have already indicated, must treat each society in its entirety, not specific traits detached from the whole which alone gives them meaning. The Iqar’iyen, for whom women constitute a forbidden domain, assign no value whatsoever to the exchange of women. The two Melanesian societies place greater stress on exchanges of taros, pigs and, among the ‘Are’ are, of shell-money, than on the exchange of women. If a particular category of objects is isolated from the whole which characterises each society and hierarchically orders its exchanges, reality would be arbitrarily oversimplified. When the four societies studied are approached from the angle of their exchanges, the characteristics of these exchanges themselves oblige us to recognise the fluctuating nature of the distinction between subject and object.
