Baloma

What it is

Baloma is the word Trobriand Islanders use for the spirits of their dead. Bronislaw Malinowski, an anthropologist working among the Trobrianders early in the twentieth century, set out how these spirits fit into everyday thought in a paper he brought out in 1916. In Trobriand eyes, a baloma is what keeps the line going: the spirit of someone who belonged to a woman's lineage is held to be the true maker of each new child. A woman is thought to conceive when such a spirit reaches her as she bathes in the sea. Sex, in this view, does not itself make a baby; it only clears the way for the spirit to settle in the womb. The idea does the work that sperm does in other accounts of conception, and with it the Trobrianders explain why children belong to their mother's line.

Where it comes from

Knowledge of the baloma outside the Trobriands begins with the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. He worked among the islanders early in the twentieth century, and in 1916 he published a study of these spirits in a British anthropological journal. In it he wrote of the spirits as part of living Trobriand life, bound up with how the islanders reckon kinship and birth. An online version of the paper keeps the account within reach of any reader today.

How it is done

Conception is where the belief does its work. A woman bathes in the sea, and there, Trobriand teaching says, the spirit of someone who belonged to her lineage comes upon her and sets a child within her womb. The part of ordinary lovemaking is a preparing one: it is held to open the road by which the spirit arrives, while the spirit itself brings the new life. Each birth through this channel renews the mother's line, so the lineage gains its new members from its own dead rather than from fathers.

What it is for

The belief does two jobs at once. It explains where children come from, giving the spirit of a dead kinsman the place that sperm holds in other understandings of conception. And it props up the Trobriand way of reckoning descent through mothers. If a new child is begun by a spirit belonging to the mother's line, then the child plainly belongs to that line, and the account of birth keeps the matrilineal system in being, renewing the lineage through its own dead. In this scheme intimacy between a woman and a man is incidental to becoming a mother rather than the cause of it. The baloma thus serves the continuity of a kin group rather than any individual wish.

Peoples and places

Baloma belief is the property of the Trobriand Islanders, whose home islands lie within Papua New Guinea. The wider world learned of it through Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied the islands early in the twentieth century and published his paper on the spirits in 1916. Within the islands it belongs to the shared outlook rather than to any trained few: Malinowski wrote of a general Trobriand understanding in which children come from the spirits of dead kin met in the sea. Because those spirits carry the lineage, the belief shapes family life for everyone, setting each person's place through mothers rather than fathers.

What people believe

At the heart of the picture stand the baloma themselves, the continuing presence of people who have died. They are not remote figures: a spirit of the lineage can meet a living woman at her bath in the sea and begin a new life there. Becoming a mother, in this understanding, is a matter between the dead and the unborn, with the living couple holding only a preparing role. Intimacy is thought to clear the road the spirit takes into the womb, but the child itself comes from the spirit. On this rests the matrilineal rule, since the giver of the child belongs to the mother's line, so the child does too.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Scholarly knowledge of the baloma rests on Bronislaw Malinowski. He studied Trobriand life early in the twentieth century, and in 1916 he brought out a paper devoted to these spirits in a British anthropological journal. Malinowski read the belief as a doctrine of conception with social work to do: the spirit takes over the part played by a father's seed in other systems, and in doing so the account of birth explains and props up descent through the mother. The spirits, in this telling, are not a curiosity at the edge of Trobriand thought but a load-bearing piece of it, tying ideas about the dead to ideas about family.

Questions people ask about Baloma

Good reading and sources

• Baloma on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data