Fetish and Fantasy in Sambia Initiation

Abstract

Sambia men come to "worship" those flutes with an ambivalent mixture of fear and affection. Sambia male and female residential patterns differ somewhat from those of other Highlands peoples. The nuclear family is an important subunit of the hamlet-based extended family of interrelated clans. Like the various forms of making grass sporrans or like incorporeally owned ritual customs, ritual flutes—both their size and associated tunes—are identified with phratry membership and political alliance among Sambia hamlets. Studying Sambia ritual experience always meant living in close quarters with individuals. Because the flutes symbolically preside over the collective initiations of the Sambia male cult, it is with the meaning of their mysterious voice that we are chiefly concerned. Psychodynamically, in a context of traumatic maternal separation, Sambia ritual attempts to use the flute as a detachable phallus and a substitute for the female breast.

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