Sorcery and Animism in a South Pacific Melanesian Context

We had just finished our weekly shopping in a major grocery store in the city of Lae, Papua New Guinea (PNG).The young female clerk at the checkout had scanned all our items but for some reason the EFTPOS machine would not accept payment from my bank's debit card.After repeatedly swiping my card, she jokingly quipped that sanguma (sorcery) must be causing the problem.Evidently the electronic connection between our bank and the store's EFTPOS terminal was down, so we made alternative payment arrangements, collected our groceries, and went on our way.On reflection, the checkout clerk's apparently flippant comment indicated that a supernatural perspective of causality was deeply embedded in her world view.She echoed her wider society's "existing beliefs among Melanesians that there was always a connection between the physical and the spiritual, especially in the area of causality" (Longgar 2009:317).In her reality, her belief in the relationship between the supernatural and life's events was not merely embedded in her world view, it was, in fact, integral to her world view.Darrell Whiteman noted that "Melanesian epistemology is essentially religious. . . .Melanesians . . .do not live in a compartmentalized world of secular and spiritual domains, but have an integrated world view, in which physical and spiritual realities dovetail.Melanesians are a very religious people, and traditional religion played a dominant role in the affairs of men and permeated the life of the community" (Whiteman 1983:64, cited in Longgar 2009:317).The French missionary anthropologist Maurice Leenhardt asserted that "Melanesian persons are not constructed the same way as persons are imagined in the West. . .[T]he person is more 'outside of himself' than inside; that is, the person is constructed of relationships with others, including beings in the spirit world" (Maurice Leenhardt, cited in Rynkiewich 2011:158).