New houses are generated within a clan by the exchange of a man’s daughter as ama ’lo’en, “father’s forelock”, for gongs and elephant tusks, the exchange occurring between two houses of different clans. While the dynamics and mechanism of these exchanges and their consequences can be demonstrated in genealogical terms (see Lewis 1988), the people of Tana Wai Brama do not themselves conceive of them primarily in this way. Rather, the idiom and metaphors they employ are those of the distinction between the trunk and leafy tips of a tree and the generation of offshoots from the nodes of a bamboo’s culm. The mode of representation is thus, in terms of the Ata Tana Wai Brama themselves, a cladistic one in which a contemporary set of relationships among houses is the result of historical bifurcations from an original line of women. While the genealogical relationships between house founders and their descendants may be remembered, it is not necessary to know them in detail in order to calculate the status of a house or individual in a clan. In effect, the contemporary rank ordering of houses preserves and collapses into the present relations of temporal precedence which result from dynamic processes of generation and reproduction. These relationships are represented as much, if not more, in established patterns of ceremonial and ritual obligation than in genealogy.

The first principle of the generation of a new house is that the protogenitrix line abides and survives the generation of the new house to coexist with it. This is a crucial point in the logic of precedence by which clans are organized. The bifurcation of a trunk can take place in two ways (Figure 1).

In this case, A and B both have their origins in O (origin), but neither is O. As a consequence, O, having given rise to two branches, that is, to two new lines simultaneously, disappears. The Ata Tana ’Ai liken this pattern of bifurcation to that of a tree’s trunk at its first branching.

The second way a trunk can bifurcate is one which preserves the trunk while still generating new growth (Figure 2).

As the Ata Tana ’Ai pointed out to me, a tree’s trunk can give rise to only two branches, but a bamboo’s culm can give rise to many branches, one or more at each of its matan, “nodes”. Indeed, in order for this to happen the trunk, or origin, must be preserved throughout the chain of branchings. Thus, sequential bifurcations from the trunk can give rise to the pattern shown in Figure 3.

In this representation, a single, surviving trunk has given rise to many branches, one after another in sequence. This is the pattern of generation of houses within a clan and it is perhaps for this reason that the morphology of the bamboo is the most frequent source of metaphors for processes of social generation and reproduction in ritual language (cf. Lewis 1988:73-76).

Both patterns can, logically, provide the basis for the generation and differentiation of social groups from a single source. In the first case, however, two features of generation which may be exploited ideologically and in the ordering of the relations of social groups are lost. First is the temporality of the bifurcation. Both offspring groups are generated at the same time and, as a consequence, priority (or sequence) of generation cannot be invoked as a basis for subsequent differentiation of the groups without the imposition of another, externally derived principle. Second, neither group can be related in any material way to the origin line after the bifurcation because the origin line has ceased to exist of itself. Thus, the second pattern is perhaps better suited for the calculation of precedence, upon which the relationships of houses in Tana Wai Brama are articulated; first, because the origin group is always present and can more easily serve as the point of reference in the system and, second, because the generation of new groups occurs as a sequence of discrete events, each of which gives rise to one new group rather than to two. Thus, the new group can be juxtaposed to and differentiated from the original line without the invocation of additional principles, but merely by the application of a single value which accords superiority to the elder and relative inferiority to the younger. This single rule, applied sequentially as new lines are generated from a line of origin, is sufficient to order a limitless number of new lines in terms of precedence.

Not all houses in a clan of Tana Wai Brama arise directly from the line of ancestral founders. Houses, once generated, can themselves generate new houses, thus giving rise to the pattern implicit in Figure 4.

Two major conclusions may be drawn from this rather formalistic consideration of Tana ’Ai clanship.

First, if the order of society is considered atemporally at a particular moment in its history, then we might be led to conclude that Tana Wai Brama is a good example of a society consisting of rank-ordered groups — that is, that it consists of hierarchically ordered social groups. This conclusion would, of course, be in error. As time passes, old groups die out and new groups are created. As these events unfold, the statuses of individual persons change, sometimes radically, as when a high ranking group becomes pu’an, “source”, within its clan.

Second, in such a dynamic system, there is considerable scope for the negotiation of relationships in particular circumstances. For example, a particular exchange might occur which appears to violate rules governing the relations between groups of different status, but which does not threaten the whole system. Thus, this is a social order which is not only dynamic, but also extremely flexible and resilient to individual action contrary to accepted norms.

To this point I have dealt with what might be thought of as the fundamental order of the constituent groups of society, an order sanctioned in the mythic histories of the domain and articulated in its most important exchanges — i.e., in marriage. My argument has been that precedence, rather than hierarchy, is the fundamental operator which gives Tana ’Ai society its particular form.

There is, however, another aspect of hierarchy which must be considered in relation to the Tana ’Ai case, and that has to do with authority and power in Tana ’Ai society.