they have different purposes, not the same ones. However, we can usefully
ask why in Hagen there could be a greater stress on binary opposites than
among the Baktaman, and an answer is readily available, since binary
categories and their recombinations are at the heart of Hagen social prac-
tices, as they are not in Baktaman. The Baktaman world is constructed
around a ritual hierarchy that is insulated from the practices of a political
economy of exchange, whereas these practices are central in Hagen. And
here one of Barth’s suggestions comes into focus. He suggested that it is in
transactions that commensurability between values can be progressively
achieved. The Hagen casefits this idea very well, whereas the Baktaman
case does not, in spite of an apparent hierarchy of values displayed in the
degrees of initiation.
Returning here to ourfirst case of Barth’s innovative work, on the
Swat Pathans, an intriguing possibility presents itself of comparing
Pathan and Papua New Guinea modalities of political competition.
Here too, however, we willfind that exchange practices are different.
In Hagenmokaexchanges linked and resolved issues of conflict in the
aftermaths of violence, but these conflicts were rarely zero-sum in the
way Barth found for the Pathans. And it is this difference that perhaps
points a way to understanding how the later trajectories of these socie-
ties differ. In Hagen, killings were always constrained by the need to
make reparations for killings. No such rule held for the Pathans, and the
possibilities for conflicts even between close agnates were also greater.
The fragmentations of descent groups conduced to the creation
of bigger and more violent coalitions. Here, we are applying our
‘Breaking the Frames’focus through deploying comparisons that can
lead to fresh insights by leaping across ethnographic divides. We feel
this is quite in harmony with the perennially exploratory and mindful
attitudes of Fredrik Barth himself.
A twist of perspective can be found here that is a part of the Barthian
magic of method. We have not explored here his seminal 1969 work on
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The twist he injected into the debates on
ethnicity was to move away from cultural contexts to the organization of
boundaries between groups. This is quite like his approach to knowledge
in general, where he is interested in how knowledge is created and
transmitted (or, for that matter, lost). Of course, in the end, cultural
content has to be involved, as a part of the competitive process of
creating meanings and defining boundaries. The example shows by
now familiar patterns. One frame is broken to create another. In another
30 BREAKING THE FRAMES