Celine Romina Monatanano-Sulit BAA 2015-60097 ANTH194 November 2, 2017 Smuk is King Adam Reed in reflection of the Ontological Turn presented his paper on inmates in the Bomana gaol in Papua New Guinea. There he explored the implicit role of cigarette and cigarette smoking and concluded that the very casual and outright dangerous nature of cigarette smoking we have come to know amongst ourselves does not necessarily apply to all uses of the said subject. Reed explores cigarette and cigarette smoking from the inmates’ perspective, concluding that smoking as itself the meaning of which their experience of penitence and detention is highly liable on, hence “smuk is king” Cigarettes are a product of recent history whose expanse of use has become so spread out that cigarette in and of itself holds far greater meanings both symbolic and moral in interpretation other than playing the role of Nirvana-inducing materials. If therefore cigarettes and the act of smoking has such an influence over society, how is there not much said about it? If it were anything like the value of money, would it have anthropologically generated the same attention to its action as a thing of meaning founded on human experience? Thinking Through Cigarettes Cigarettes alone is understood by most to just be nicotine nicely wrapped in corporation-owned rolls and is a widely distributed commodity within the public; its utilization varied across places. But while society may disregard this as a mere drug stick, the act of smoking itself is regarded as the most important aspect. As Klein and Reed presents in cases of war and the prisoners’ society, smoking and its ability to temporarily take you into a higher state of mind, invokes patterns of thought and behavior and the relations between individuals and precisely because of that ability that the inmate society would constantly look to it for temporary relief. Needless to say, therefore that the inmate society that has come to depend greatly on the act of smoking would do anything to maintain their steady supply to the extent that they would change the rules of the game with regards to the actual role, even the value, of both the cigarette as an object and the act of smoking. In contrast to the world outside of the cell, where cigarettes are mere commodities, here they are as valuable as money is of great value. It can be said that within the confines of the inmate society the abstract and fixed value of money is rendered useless; here cigarette talks. However, what really plays the greatest role for the valuation of the cigarette at the end of the day is not its value and neither the kind or how many one has or its social implications but the act of consummation or smoking, which constitutes most of inmate life. Its authority rests on its consummation and not its material durability and the very need for it, Reed argues, is the prime mover of inmate societal organization, influencing the thought and patterns of behavior which the individuals exhibit. Summary: The act of smoking has so much influence that Reed argues without it, inmate society falls apart, both socially and economically. “Smuk is king” in a sense that their actions are dictated by the desire and the need for it. It exerts its authority, its agency through the immediate manipulation of it by the inmates but it is important to note that this authority is not imposed by any external agent. Smuk is king, power, authority and power without the need for further interpretation. That in itself is the unquestioned and for the ontological turn the purest kind of reality separate from other kinds of reality. Critique: Reed’s paper is an attempt to employ what Holbraad, Henare and Wastell has termed the Ontological Turn whose very core is to equalize the position between familiar and unfamiliar concepts. The subject of Reed is cigarette and cigarette smoking, what it equates to and, the smoking experience in Bomana. Interesting to Celine Romina Monatanano-Sulit BAA 2015-60097 ANTH194 November 2, 2017 note how he frames the role of smoking as being something more than just a favorite pastime but according to the inmates themselves to be taken as authoritarian, plain and simple. The mission to see the world from the perspective and the experience of any one society may still be subject to debate. At some point, one begins to wonder whether everything written in paper is the untainted version. In the first place, I find it hard to believe that the slightest bit of ‘authoritative Western’ representation will not be found among texts, even as they claim otherwise. Take Reed’s article for example: What he is trying to say in the broadest terms is that cigarette and smoking takes on a different role in Bomana as it does outside of it. He offers that the pole which dictates that behavior of those in Bomana is the desire to smoke and that gives it the influence they attribute to it. If we were to believe that Reed’s Bomana mission is to place ideas in their own special space without the amalgamation into other spaces under the command of an interpretative authority; in other words that there is no underlying cognitive aspect that an anthropologist must explain through its already established theoretical frameworks, it does no good if even the different worlds created are a product of our own categorization. Does that not count as an interpretation by ‘Western frameworks’ asserting that that world entails a reality they truly live by? And even if we were to say that Reed does not ‘sully’ his paper with the said framework, it begs the question: should we accept what is written/stated simply because that is their explanation? Are we no longer subject to question where inquiry is possible and accept that that is their reality set in stone, no more no less? Can Reed confidently claim then that he has explained the reality of the life at Bomana as revolving around smuk in all its totality? And as consequence are we supposed to acknowledge that that is their reality as portrayed by Reed and is indeed a shared reality and move on? Conversely, can we expect the prisoners at Bomana to acknowledge smuk as king? If so, are we not regressing back to classic anthropologists who are burdened to write to represent the other that results in romanticism “…’understanding’ becomes ‘knowledge’...” brings us back to square one where what could be subject to contestability becomes an established body of information; smuk is king as a concept wherein Bomana society revolves around risks becoming the only established knowledge on the way Bomana society functions and consequently risks exoticism and romanticism.
