ABSTRACT
A couple is told they cannot marry; they share too much ancestral substance. A man who purchased land from the winning party to a land court case is killed by a tree-fall in the disputed area, and the loser takes this as vindication of her claim. The people of a coastal village say they live and grow food where they do because, several generations ago, a recognized chief settled their ancestors on the land. A man has a dream in which he is chased by a bright light ‘like a torch’ after visiting an old pre-Christian funerary shrine containing human bones. A woman inspects the hands of a visiting anthropologist for signs that he may be a long-lost member of her matrilineage, returning to his ancestral land. These situations are drawn from my research with the Arosi, a population of Austronesian-speaking Melanesians whose home region lies at the northwest end of the island of Makira in Solomon Islands. There is little in these incidents – apart from the simile ‘like a torch’ used to describe a bright light experienced in a dream – that self-evidently involves the making of comparisons. Yet my aim in this chapter is to show how these and other scenarios from my field research are indicative of how Arosi compare. Engaging with the work of Bruno Latour and Philippe Descola, I argue that each example entails a specific method of comparison conditioned by the ontological premises that constitute the distinctive Arosi variant of totemism I call poly-ontology.
