Sharing Your Hand: Unhelpful Help and the Ethics of Sharing in Mbuke, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In anthropological literature on gift exchange, Melanesia plays a major role since it is characterised by elaborate ceremonial exchange and reciprocity across the region. However, sharing is also widely found in Melanesia. In presentations of ethnographers, sharing has often been overshadowed by reciprocal exchange, but as described in this article, it is an integral part of the everyday in Melanesia. Not only is sharing part of solidarity among close kin but, as the case of boat building discussed in the article illustrates, it is also a mode of transfer with integrative force beyond kinship. I argue that sharing is particularly relevant in many contemporary settings such as the Mbuke Islands in Papua New Guinea that are characterised by work migration and an increasing dependency on the cash economy. These ongoing changes contribute to an increasingly uneven access to important resources. This, I argue, causes sharing to grow in scope and importance since it helps to even out growing inequalities. This is remarkable as the increasing influence of money has in other cases been considered as necessarily threatening sharing arrangements. In Mbuke it is the other way around: sharing is on the increase not despite growing monetarisation but, rather, because of it.