Feeding relationship: Uncovering cosmology in Christian women's fellowship in Papua New Guinea

While the Christian doctrine to which Hula villagers of the south east coast of Papua New Guinea today subscribe claims that community is achieved contractually through membership in the Church, this paper suggests that, in practice, Hula sociality is shaped by other exigencies. As part of their program the members of the Iru-ale United Church Women's Fellowship undertake the incorporation of certain outsiders (in this case the ethnographer) through the ceremonial presentation of food and the act of feeding. A phenomenology of this imperative reveals important connections to pre-Christian mythology and cosmology. Incorporation seen in this context situates the 'feeding relationship' at the core of a Hula ontology in which body and food are consubstantial. The manipulation of food as body is shown to play a determining role in the constitution of various modes of existence; human and non-human, male and female, the living and the non-living. The feeding relationship thus facilitates continuity between past and present practices and suggests that the Hula have assimilated the introduced religion into their lifeworld largely on their own terms.