Les voyages et l'enracinement. Formes de fixation et de mobilité dans les sociétés traditionnelles des Nouvelles-Hébrides (3 fig.)

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Abstract
Forms of fixation and mobility within New Hebrides society. — In traditional Melanesian society, each group is linked through mystical and genealogical bonds to a closed, « personalized » and well-defined territory that is under its complete control. Although mobility within this territory is unrestricted, it ceases to be so beyond the « frontiers ». The rigid control exerted by each group on the section of territory that belongs to it results in a control over external mobility and hence involves an ideology of «fixation» or implantation. The territorial fixation, often justified by reference to a mythological origin that is also a cosmogony, forms the basis of land rights and entrenches the various clans constituting the social group. From this perspective, traditional society can be defined as a fundamentally stable grouping that rigidly controls the relationships of each of its members with the outside world. However, this does not necessarily mean that external journey or mobility is unknown or even uncommon; indeed, in the northern islands, the relationships of alliance or business arising from the exchange and loan of pigs — the basis of the grade system — often involved long and frequent journeys outside the territory. But each of these outside links needed to follow a number of norms in order to exist : the Big Men and the men of power had the « ex-officio » privilege of an external relationship and therefore of mobility. The latter, as far as it existed, remained socially formalized and geographically fragmented. The clash with the « white » world during the second part of the 19th Century and the development of a new political and economic structure have contributed towards the « destabilization » of traditional societies.

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