.204 * fht> Emortvns References Briggs, Jean L. 1970. Never m Anger. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ekman, Paul. 1975. Unmasking the Face. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Freedman, D. G. 1974. Human Infancy. Hillsdale; N.J.: Erlbaum. James. William.. 1884. What is an emotion? Mind 9: 188-205. Levy, Robert 1.1973. Tahitians. University of Chicago Press. Levy, Robert I. 19 84. Emotion, Knowledge and Culture. In Richard A. Schweder and Robert A. LeVine, eds., Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindzey, Gardner. 1954. Psychology. Cleveland: Worth. -1961. Projective Techniques and Cross-Cultural Research. New York: Appleton- Century-Crofls. Lutz, Catherine. 1982. The domain of emotion words in Ifahik. American Ethnologist 9:113-28. Plutchik, Robert. 1962. The Emotions. New York: Random House. Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1984. Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling. In Richard A. Schweder and Robert A. LeVine, eds., Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sears. Robert R, 1955. Transcultural variables and conceptual equivalence. In Bert Kaplan, ed., Studying Personality Cross-Culturally. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson. Solomon, Robert C. 1976. Passions. New York; Doubleday. 1978. Emotions and anthropology. Inquiry 21:181-99. Notes This chapter was stimulated by the Social Science Research Council meeting in May 19 81 on Concepts of Culture and Its Acquisition. Special thanks to Richard A. Shweder for his helpful criticism and encouragement. A portion of the "methodology" section has been adapted from my "Emotions and Anthropology" (Inquiry 21 [1978]: 181-99), with the generous permission of the editors. 1. This has often been argued, and I shall not repeat the primary arguments here: see Solomon 1976, chap. 7: 1978. 2. It is worth noting, however, that the criterion used for distinguishing emotion words in Ifaluk was whether or not they were identified as "about our insides," despite the argument that "the Ifaluk see the emotions as evoked in, and inseparable from, social activity" rather than "internal feeling states" (Lutz 1982: 114,124). The Shame of Headhunters and the Autonomy of Self Michelle Z. Rosaldo My point is simple. Psychological idioms that we use in offering accounts of the activities of our peers—or our companions in the field1—are at the same time "ideological" or "moral" notions. As ethnographers (and moral persons) we are compelled at once to use and to suspect them. The assumptions bound to our familiar forms of psychological explanation prove attractive yet inevitably problematic when confronted with a cultural account. "Guilt" and "shame"2 are, of course, the idioms to concern me. Paired by Western theorists3 as complementary and/or alternative means for controlling selfish energies:.: that we think belong to every human heart, these terms assume our faith that people ■ everywhere are frustrated, repressed, rebellious, unfulfilled, or—at least—at odds with their society. Guilt and shame are seen, in short, as moral affects4 necessary to.: constrain the individuated self from dangerous and asocial acts of impulse, lust, and violence. Surely, this is a vision most of us find as suspect as it seems difficult to reject Guilt and shame may everywhere be linked to things like violence, sex, and; strain, just as, in every case, they may concern the threat of circumstance or activity to undermine an ideal presentation of the self. And yet the "selves" that these, or other feelings, help defend—and so, the ways such feelings work—will differ with the culture and organization of particular societies.-"Our" view of persons as embodiments of continuing and conflictual inner drives and needs is one which, in all likelihood, reflects important aspects of the "individualism" famous in the modern West, along with the experiences of Western "individual" suppressed by modern forms of social inequality. Considering data from the flongots,5 a horticultural and hunting population of Northern Luzon, Philippines, my questions here concern alternatives that emerge among a people who assume that persons want to be not different but equivalent or "the same," and see in individuaUry not essential self, but a persona born of conflict. To begin. Most adult Ilongot men at the time of my research were, or had been, headhunters. That is, most had at one time joined with fellows on a raid in which they -205- I; had the opportunity to toss a newly severed huc&n head upon the ground. In severing and tossing human heads, Hongot men recount, they could relieve hearts burdened with the "weight" of insult, envy, pain, and grief; and in discarding "heavy" thoughts, they could achieve an "anger" that yields "energy," makes shy and burdened youths "the same" or equal to their peers, and "lightens" both their footsteps and the feelings in their hearts. And yet occasionally, Ilongots say, some one among a group of raiders found himself immobilized by the "smell of blood." "Heaviness" would overwhelm his heart, so that he could not flee. When this happened, one of his fellows, generally an older man, would out a look of the afflicted's hair, hoot loudly, call for "lightness" and, in so doing, cause relief. What is involved here? Kind and generous in their everyday affairs, Ilongot headhunters were not reluctant to admit that there is something wrong or bad about the act of killing. But none appeared to feel remorse for prior violent deeds, or speak of moral right and wrong when telling why they killed. Did they not, then, feel anything like shame or guilt about the violent impulse celebrated in their murders? Did they not see difficulty in reconciling gory violence and a cooperative mundane life? With these questions in mind, let me consider three accounts for what we now might call the headhunter's paralysis. The first—the contribution, let us say, of a Naive Psychologist—holds that those Ilongots who claim that they are heavy with the smell of blood would speak more truly if they used the English metaphor instead and so described themselves, perhaps, as "frozen with fear." This translation, I suggest, can be discarded because it tells us nothing about why the stricken killers describe themselves the way they do, or why haircutting brings relief. Second, there is the Naive Culturalisfs account. It argues simply that Ilongots speak the truth: The "smell of blood" goes to "the heart" and sickens it, evoking a subjective sense of weight and immobility. The cultural remedy is then explained by cultural belief: Paralysis is eliminated by removing heavy hair from off the head when raiders wish their bodies light and fleet I argue later that this cultural account may lend itself to less naive reflections. But a third and, initially, at least, much richer explanation must first be entertained. This third account is one that sees in men's paralysis a cultural symptom in response to culturally induced distress. It argues that occasional killers, when confronted by the gory evidence of wrong, aware that they need not have killed, perhaps perturbed by the great gap between their savage practice and the humanity that roles then-daily world, are overwhelmed by sentiments of ambivalence, shame, and guilt. They hate their actions and the violence thus revealed within themselves. In such a story, paralysis marks the moral man. Haircutting is his purge. For some time, I found this third alternative most attractive. Not only did it hint at an ambivalence and moral,feeling that struck me as oddly lacking in most headhunters' reports, but it provided fertile ground for further musing. Surely, the fact that headhunters spoke of the "mark" caused by "the smell of blood" and sought to "beautify" themselves with a sweet-smeflrág fern suggests dynamics linked to things: like guilt, shame, and denial. And if some: killers were^ in fact, distressed by what they did, it made good sense that they should "sacrifice" some of their beautiful and carefully tended hair. Furthermore, because Ilongots saw in headhunting a device for transferring the fading energy of old men to growing youths—and an activity that boys should best perform before they married—it would seem reasonable to assume that headhunting itself involved the guilt of Oedipal conflict. In this case, haircutting would be a punishment aptly suited to the crime, a "compromise" that managed si-, multaneousiy to "castrate" and to absolve the .guilty psyche. Thus, although Ilongots never speak of guilt, require punishment for wrongs, or seek displays of suffering and remorse in making up for untoward violence, it might appear that they had managed to create symbolic forms designed to mediate, and thus help actors to resolve, inevitable tensions harbored deep within men's adolescent minds. Culture's wisdom, this sort of argument suggests, is as infallible as it is blind. But is it? In what follows, I want to show why Hongot talk of heaviness, does not' displace but qualifies our talk of guilt, because indigenous idioms help us grasp the ways Hongot killers think about the things they feel and how their understandings, figure both in social practice and in psychological process. My earlier question—do not killers suffer guilt?—is shown of questionable relevance to the Hongot moral world, because it presupposes notions of a selfish and impulsive self requiring the constraints of its society. And "shame," which for the Ilongots operates as much as stimulus as constraint, emerges as a concept that can help us understand what is involved in "weight" and how subjective experiences of heaviness are related to their social context. My argument proceeds as follows. First, I comment on my reasons for suspecting, if not discarding, the claim that Ilongot headhunters feel guilt. Second, I show that "shame" for Ilongot is-less concerned with the control of apresocial self than with a set of feelings that relate to the conflicting claims of hierarchy and "sameness," or autonomy, in Ilongot social life. Third, I ask how "weight" and "lightness"—understood as concepts that link physical sensation to the experience of "Shame" and its release— provide a reasonable and illuminating account of the paralysis that seems to interrupt headhunters' progress. And in conclusion, I discuss the ways that heaviness/lightness resembles and yet differs from accounts derived from our constraint-oriented psychology. What is at stake is an appreciation of the power, and limitations, of familiar ways of grasping psychic life, and the possibility of a more deeply cultural psychology. The fact that ilongots never speak of "guilt" in their reports of raids does not itself decide the cultural (or psychological) irrelevance of such things as self-recrimination and remorse in fee experience of killers. More teliing, I suggest, is the fact that Ilongots but rarely discuss actions with reference to established normative codes or formal rules of wrong and right. People do things, Ilongots say, because of kinship; because they "recognize" their "fellow humans," because they fear the consequences of acting otherwise, because of strength or weakness, "pity," "envy" or "desire."6 - But notions of "ought" and obligation appear lacking.7 as are ideas of punishment wherein wrong-doing children or adults are made to suffer for the untoward things that they have done." Thus, for example, rather than confess, and so be forced to pay for murder perpetrated by his kin upon a group of friends with whom he wanted to go fishing, an Ilongot leader, Tukbaw, lied, denying knowledge of the crime, in fell awareness that his fellows stood in supernatural danger should they fish and share a meal with unrepentant "slashers" of their "body." Clearly, for Tukbaw, strength, not care, was what decided his denial. Because he knew the fearfulness of the group that "he" had "kilted," he knew that they could not enforce demands for payment corresponding to their "anger" at the loss. He could, then let his fellows risk such suffering as might subsequently ensue,5 in favor of the opportune and henceforth realized claim that as a distant kinsman of his friends, he had no plans (nor had he had them in the past) to act in any way but as a brother who, of course, abjures all violence. Since they were, Tukbaw insisted, kin, there was no cause to look for payments, because kinfolk do not fight. My point is not (of course) that Ilongots take advantage of their fellows when, and insofar as, they see benefit in doing wrong: in fact, the evidence of 'criminal" acts like theft, adultery, or physical abuse is very small. Instead, I would suggest that if and when Ilongots see their interests as potentially opposed, issues of forcefulness and strength (Dare you confront me with a threat? Can I, through strength alone, insist that we construe ourselves as blood relations?) and not guilt, or personal desire and restraint, are likely to determine moral choice. "Punishment," when it occurs, is not for Ilongots a thing concerned wife a wrong-doer's "paying hack" or suffering for past wrongs. Instead, it is a gift to soothe offended parties who are "angered" and perceived as volatile because of loss or slight. What matters to disputants in the end is not the kind of moral change we seek within the criminal or guilty human heart, but, much as with Tukbaw's lie discussed above, the establishment of bonds of kinship wherein all violent, selfish, and disruptive acts are seen as "shameful" and at odds with an assumption of cooperation, "sameness," and autonomy. For opposites to act as kinfolk what is needed is, in brief, the "abolition" (by fiat, dominance, or gift exchange) of such grievances and fears as could be cause for untoward "anger." And for cooperation to proceed, no more is necessary than the correction of imbalances by which men are divided. Let us now go one step further. I have hinted as to why the concept "guilt" appears at odds with Ilongot mderstandings, actions, and so, I hazard, their subjective feelings bound to deeds of wrong, abuse, or violence. But is not "shame"—the sanction of tradition, the acknowledgement of authority, the fear of mockery, or the anxiety associated with inadequate or morally unacceptable performance—in some sense an "equivalent" Ilongot device in attuning individuals to the demands of social order? Surely, Eongots have a word—a set of words10 for "shame," embracing notions of timidity, embarrassment, awe, obedience, and respect. And they associate these words with prohibitions and constraints of'reai significance in their daily lives. Thus, for kin to fight, engage in contest, or pursue demands for payments in response to wrong or loss are all, Ilongots say, things to avoid for fear that "others" will "belittle" us or "shame" us.11 "Shame" keeps in-married men from naming kin of wives; it silences sexual allusions and innuendos among, sisters and brothers. "Shame" is what quiets noisy children in a household full of guests; it teaches youths to follow the directions of adults and leads women to obey commands by husbands." Is not Ilongot "shame," then, an equivalent to our guilt, an affect through which individuals are attuned to their society's controls—controls appropriate, perhaps, to a "traditional" and collectively oriented form of society? Ilongots may not feel any guilt for taking heads. Headhunters' paralysis stands 'unexplained. But maybe, this line of questioning suggests, it is a sense of shame that keeps Ilongot violence from erupting in more mundane kin-based contexts. Perhaps. As is the case with guilt, the argument that shame effects emotionally meaningful social control has evidence to recommend it. Given what I take to be a popular Western view, which holds that impulse harbored deep "inside" ourselves will ultimately be reflected in our acts, it would appear that Ilongot individuals need strong constraints if they are both to celebrate, and yet in daily life avoid, displays of violence. And yet I suggest, albeit quickly, that seeing shame essentially as a. mechanism of control is to miscast its place in Ilongot social life and psychology. Briefly, if guilt and shame are both, forus, affects designed to regulate aproblematic. inner self, Ilongot shame involves an "anger" bom not in a hidden and asocial sphere but in the confrontation of a would-be peer with facts of weakness and social inferiority. Striving for parity with their equals among men, Ilongots are aware as well that, preservation of ongoing bonds requires "shame" and the acceptance of occasional forms of social hierarchy. Thus, shame for Ilongots, as for ourselves, Involves a set of feelings tied to threatening sociality and threatened boundaries of the self. And-yet, for them, it is concerned much less with hiding or constraint than-with addressing, or redressing, situations where the fact of hierarchy provides a challenge to ideals of "sameness" and autonomy. Our inner truths are things for shame to mask, whereas for Ilongots "shame" speaks more of reserve than of disguise. The thoughts they harbor deep inside their hearts are more like plans than impulses repressed. And hidden thoughts do not contrast with spoken words as things more vital, true, or rich in inner conflict. In short, Ilongot "shame" is not a sentinel assigned to keep insides from corning out. It is, instead, a feeling of considered weight that can look forward to, inhibit, or replace displays of "anger" and activity characteristically born at times of conflict and perceived inequality. At times, "shame" is a thing that leads to striving and the shows of "anger" through which unacceptable imbalances are eventually overcome.13 At others, "shame" names the stasis born in the acknowledgment of asymmetry, and 210'- YhTB^eaohs" II Iff* lil'f J!! I! recogmtion tot^^ among kin, are sp~. to yield defeat, tense isolation, or destructive violence. Thus, if we examine situations in which Hongots speak of feeling '"shame "they, seem to fail into two sorts of contexts.11 Fust, there are the times when "shame" involves awareness of deficiency or slight, a weight one is enjoined to overcome in subsequent displays of one's capacity and "anger." Infants who, Hongots say, begin their lives in vulnerability and "fear," are in their early lives constrained by the related affects of "shame," "fear," and shyness.15 And yet, as children leam to speak, the verbal challenges of adults are seen to "shame" them in a way that motivates the acquisition of new skill and knowledge. Verbal wit, fine dress, productive skill are all, Hongots claim, things tot the young acquire because they envy the accomplishments of peers and would not have their fellows' excellence standto "shame" them. Growing up and learning to behave with competence and poise requires casting off youthful vulnerability to one's fellows' taunts, and doing this means one redresses "weighty" shame with "light" displays of energy and force. In fact, headhunting, as I suggest below, is in large part an angry answer to the distressing "shame" of childhood. But if at times the weight of "shame" is lifted through a passionate display, at other times (and especially, I would argue, among already-equal adult men),16 "shame" is accepted as a necessary constraint in order to avoid acknowledgment of conflict-breeding inequalities. Adult varieties of "shame" involve restraint and caution—much as the "shame" of youth—and yet where youthful "shame" inclines toward "anger" as the self transcends its "weight," "shame" in adults is characteristically concerned not with an ego but some other (a superior, or "equal" friend or kin) who one hopes to keep in a cooperative relationship with oneself. Thus, two men who fought when they were drunk in ways mat seemed to me to show dissension building in their everyday affairs, could, when sober, seriously declare that they were "ashamed" that the alcohol (and it alone!) had led them to forget their bond as "brothers." Subsequently, these men in fact behaved as "equal" kin, and to my knowledge, neither ever spoke again of what appeared the underlying cause of conflict. Ilongot children learn from youth that "knowing" kinship means one does not argue with one's kin, for fear that "someone else" will mock ox "shame" them. And similarly, most Ilongot adults confronted with dissension in their homes will move or flee instead of speaking out because the "anger" likely to emerge is dangerous, a cause for both anxiety and "shame," and, it would seem, best left to die in silence.1' Furtheimore, in those relationships where structural inequalities in fact exist, clear expectations of obedience (in "shame," most women will heed men's commands), taboos on naming (between a spouse and spouse's kin), and prohibitions on obscenity in speech (when sisters are in to company of brothers) at once depend upon and highlight "shameful" attitudes that, in turn, acknowledge and restrain conflicts associated with a volatile sexual politics. In summary, "shame" is, like childhood fear, a weight that can, in angry acts, be overcome. A cause for action, "shame" of this sort is as inevitable as it seems Undesirable Bui e'qusH", "shame" is associated with lutosromj and respect Constraints one learns for fear of others' laughter become-constraints that one accepts in situations where there is good cause at once to fear, and to abjure, displays of violence. Quests for parity, and arefusal to be "shamed," are necessary, in to Ilongot view, to children moving toward the status of adults. But married people (and in particular, of course, men) are seen as able freely to forget distressing differences among themselves, and in constructing a cooperative life in which coriflicting and unequal interests are suppressed, to show that they are party to a "shame" that grows not from the fear/inadequacy of youth, but from the knowledge of mature, already proved, adults. Thus, accomplished adult men, no longer fearful that they will be "shamed," can demonstrate consideration, pity, and an exemplary "humility/shame/ respect" that serves in fact to guarantee that everyday cooperation is not experienced as weight, and that mast Hongots, most of the time, construe their social bonds as the creation of autonomous and equal hearts.18 How does all of this relate to headhunting? Again, I must be far too brief. Feelings of "weight"—whether one's grief at loss, or shame at insult, or envy at the headhunting accomplishments of peers—are what make all men think of killing. Killing is the casting off of weight, an act designed to make the awkward and distracted heart a light and energetic source of joy. And in particular, it is through headhunting ■ that "shamed" and "clouded" youths begin to be like married men, who, proved in "anger," show themselves in everyday relations among kin as kind and generous; as they are socially secure and capable of avoiding mundane conflict. Headhunting. transforms the "shameful" weight of childhood into the ease and the respectful, "shame" appropriate to adults. Most youths declare that they are loathe to marry until toy have taken heads for fear others will "shame" them. As novices, their hearts are burdened by a readiness to take offense. They cannot work dependably, think clearly, or enjoy the company of kin because their "shame" brings sullenness, distraction, and ill-ease. But then, ■'. Hongots claim, headhunting cures'this. When on a raid, young killers who set out' with sullen hearts, slow movements, heaviness, and fear, will slowly learn from older men to "focus" thought until they literally can toss and thus discard a heavy head and heartfelt weight. And if intent and slow in their approach, successful killers shout and run with feelings of expansive ease tot come from "casting of accumulated burdens. Victorious, they ornament themselves with reeds and feathers that make their hearts and limbs as light and graceful as the wings of birds. The imagery of the headhunting raid, in short, appeals consistently to oppositions like motion/stasis, lightness/heaviness, ease/constraint. And these, I am suggesting, are consistent with the way in which raids are designed to turn the vulnerable, subordinate, and awkward youth into an adult peer. The heavy "shame" of youth becomes, through raiding, sometfiing more like "shame/humility/respect," made possible by the realization of new poise and "anger" in a.boy who can accept his fellows' subsequent demands without fear of being vulnerable to "shame."15 - ffilf II lull1 IH,ii If'4 i I [ I ft ill ^r~' ' — "-----■----.----— — KiJJing, however, is not really enough. Occasional raideis, as we have scan, are paralyzed by "the smell of blood.'' Andyet more frequently, experienced headhuncers report that they did not, on killing, feel a loss of weight and heightening of ease. In feet, their symptoms seemmost clearly to suggest abrief identification between still "heavy" killers and the victims of their raid, as both are, first, immobile, and then "lightened" through the shouts and gestures that accompany a severance of head or hair. For some, perhaps, identification of this sort reveals' unconscious feelings of ambivalence or guilt, to be resolved by sacrificing themselves in expiation. And yet my hunch is that, for most, paralysis has its source less in unspoken penitence for wrongs than in the "shame" which comes with recognition of the fact that not all men are equally involved in the collective celebration of lightness, parity, and well-being. Hakcutting, then, might best be seen iess as a personal sacrifice than as a reenact-ment of the crime—a new attempt to "lighten" hearts that are still burdened with a sense of "shamefulness," social impotence, and ill-ease. Whether initially distressed by fear, remorse, or memory of tensions unresolved in mundane lie, paralyzed killers are, I would suggest, men stricken with awareness of the ways that they are not "the same" as happy peers. In fact, my evidence on those who have experienced this paralysis in the past suggests that sufferers are all individuals who have previously taken heads, and yet (with one exception out of six), that all continue to be bachelors or otherwise marginal social figures.20 Their heaviness may be related, then, less to consideration for the dead, than to a felt inadequacy in their relationships with would-be equals. Certainly, the symptom is not a moral judgment on the act of headhunting per se. If anything, it is a considered statement of the raid as a transformer of relationships defined by "shame," and the creator of important moral and affective meanings. References Barth, F. 1975. Ritual and Knowledge Among the Baktaman of New Guinea. New Haven: Yale University Press. Benedict, R. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Dodds, E.R. 1951. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press. Doi,T. 1973. The Anatomy of Dependence. Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ekman, P. 1974. Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion, Culture and Personality (R. Levine, ed.), pp. 8-15. Chicago: Aldine. Geertz, C. 1973. Person, Time and Conduct in Bali. The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 3 64-411. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, H. 1959. The Vocabulary of Emotion: A study of Javanese Socialization Processes. Psychiatry 22: 225-237. Harris, G. 1978. Casting Out Anger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levy, R. 1973. Tahitians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lynci H 19;$ On ^ham? j«t. p.i2 Sajr:^ ior I/Until H->v Yolk. HBictraii,Btac: Marx,IC. 19.63. On the JfewisL Question. ■£eH.i^a^Mc^-TI/immgs-^^.Soatmiai»i-ed.), pp. 3- 40. Macpherson, C. B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murdoch, 1.1970. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Myers, F. 1979. Emotion and The Self: A Theory of Personhood and Political Order Among Pintupi Aborigines. Ethos 7:343-370. Neu, J. 1972. Emotion, Thought and Therapy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Piers, G., and M. Singer. 1953. Shame and Guilt. New York: Charles C. Thomas. Rosaldo, M. 1980. Knowledge and Passion: Eongot Notions of Self and Social. Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -. 1982. The Things We Do With Words: Hongot Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory in Philosophy. Language in Society 11: 203-238. Rosaldo, R. 1976. The Story of Tukbaw. The Biographical Process {F.Reynolds and D. Capps, eds.), pp. 121-151. The Hague: Mouton. -. 1980. Hongot Headhunting, 1883-1979. Stanford: Stanford University Press. -. n.d. Red Hornbill Earrings. Ms. in author's possession. Rorty, A. 1980. Explaining Emotions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Solomon, R. 1976. The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotions. New York: Anchor/Doubleday. Strathern, A. 1975. Why is Shame on the Skin? Ethnology.14:347-356. Williams, B. 1973. Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Notes 1. Thanks to Jane Collier, Ward Keeler, Robert Levy, Sherry Ortner, and Renato Rosaldo for their comments. 2. After this point, I use quotations around "guilt" and, in particular, "shame" only when referring to Hongot linguistic concepts. When the terms are used without quotations I am speaking both of "the real feelings" and "our" culturally organized understandings of these feelings; such" a move seems justified by my conviction that knowledge about feeling is always, and necessarily, mediated by some cultural/linguistic frame. 3. Of all themes in the literature on culture and personality the opposition between guilt and shame has probably proven most resilient (e.g., Benedict 1946: Doi 1975; Dodds 1951; Levy 1973; Lynd 1958; Piers and Singer 1953), at least in part because guilt and shame are affects concerned at once with psychological state and social context, thus providing a significant terrain for culturally oriented social scientists; and in part because the opposition is consistent with numerous others in our psychological and sociological vocabularies (inner/ outer; Oedipal/pre-Oedipal; The West/The Rest; modern/ primitive; individual/ ■ - ■ - ------rtii m,,,.....t, _ r^ communal; ega'us-.anlucrardi'can One or nrv piirpjics hei* u tn roui those Pi III F few (e.g., C. Geertz ly/JJ-wno nave been conccraea to go oeyona aicnotomi ing accounts and provide a vocabulary for cffisrentiatbig;cmc^s^-s$tfiat&& of affective orientation. What this requires is appreciation, not simply of the im-:. agery of particular emotional states (e.g., shame as the "stage fright" of Geertz's Balinese), but relationships among affective states and between affectives states and social process. So, for example, my discussion of the workings of Hon-got "shame" is informed by considerations like the following: for Ilongots and Javanese (H. Geertz 1959) "shame" is associated with "fear," but among Javanese (and many other peasant groups), shame is acquired in establishing a relationship.-with a relatively distant father; for Ilongots and Hageners (Strathern 1975), "shame" and "anger" are related, and yet for Hageners (unlike Ilongots) shame is "on the skin" and anger festers deep within the heart, whereas for Ilongots shame and anger contrast more as stasis/motion (in a context of ill-ease) than as outer/inner forms of conflict. Insofar as all emotional states involve a mix of intimate, even physical experience, and a more or less conscious apprehension of, or "judgmenf' concerning, self-and-situation, one might argue that emotions are, by definition, not passive "states" but moral "acts" (see, e.g., Solomon [1976]). Surely, affective life has more to do with social morality (and rationality) and less with (passive) irrationality than has often been assumed (see e.g. Williams [1973]). But the matter is complicated; how one transcends an opposition between an unsatisfactory physical determinism and an equally problematic model of free, existential consciousness seems to me the crucial philosophical and empirical issue in discussions of this topic (see e.g., Neu [1972], Murdoch [1970], and Rorty [1980]. By discussing guilt and shame as "moral affects" (and refusing to distinguish "affect," "emotion," "feeling," "sentiment," and the like), I have a dual purpose: first, to sidestep some of these difficulties by dealing with emotions that involve clear conscious, social, and cultural components (and attendant questions of judgment and morality), and second, to suggest that, as anthropologists interested in affect, we might do well to work from instances like these, where the relevance of culture is clear, towards cases where it is more problematic, instead of starting (a la Ekman [1974]) with presumed physiological universals and then "adding culture on." For more materials on Ilongot, and in particular, their conceptions of the self, affect, and headhunting, see M. Rosaldo (1980, 1982) and R. Rosaldo (1976, 1980, n.d.). Here, as elsewhere, my use of quotations indicates rough glosses on Ilongot words. "Desire" or "liking" (ramak) figures in accounts of action (like Tukbaw's below) in which actors perceive no reason not to "fallow" the "direction" of their "hearts"; strength, autonomy, and lack of fear are all, thus, relevant "ia. acts 3n«o\ ated 1 a goo J reason for so'ipenamg pmiii.gcb of strength anA pumng wio*\«;