Allan Darrah

Our article explored current Trobriand cosmological views and compared the findings with what had been reported from Malinowski onwards. Using mixed methods research, we assessed contemporary ideas about rebirth and the afterlife and concluded that belief in reincarnation had "shifted significantly [.. .] or never was as widespread or constituted as reported." Francesca Mer-lan, Mark Mosko, and Michelle MacCarthy have engaged with the material presented in stimulating, contrasting , and provocative ways, thereby affording us a welcome opportunity to further elaborate on our results. In his extensive reply to our article, Mosko asserts that our findings do not supplant Malinowski's one-hundred-year-old description of the Trobriand socio-cultural system, nor Mosko's more recent model of Trobriand sociality based upon reincarnation and symmetrical exchanges between the living and the dead (Mosko 2017: 386; Jarillo et al. 2020). Mosko uses three lines of argument to rebuff our findings: (1) our project was flawed from the outset because we misread and misrepresented Malinowski's position on reincarnation ; (2) our methodology was ill-suited for our stated task and our results were further invalidated by the nature of our sample; and (3) our findings were tainted by the alleged involvement of our Trobriand co-authors in efforts to weaken the authority of the current Paramount Chief of Omarakana, of whom Mosko is the de facto anthropologist. In her comments to our piece, Mer-lan concludes that the negation of contemporary belief in reincarnation is probably correct, and credits Malinow-ski's intuition with foreseeing the full realization of its marginalization. MacCarthy concurs with our findings that baloma reside eternally in Tuma and reminds us of the dynamic characteristics of Trobriand culture, introducing a fascinating variation on reincarnation through the lens of born-again Pentecostal Christians. Mosko claims that our overly narrow reading of Ma-linowski overlooks his larger project, "an ethnographic analysis that would lead him to the construction of a model of the culture and social organization as a total system" (p. 402, emphasis in original). Similarly, Merlan advises that our article could be improved with an application of the nuanced, "unfolding" approaches to variations in beliefs advocated and practiced by Mali-nowski. Her comments, and for the most part Mosko's, are based on Malinowski's first essay Baloma, which was produced prior to his linguistic fluency, hereby ignoring crucial information from his diaries, notes, letters, and subsequent and more definitive works. In Merlan's conclusion , she cautions us that "we ought not attribute to

Our article explored current Trobriand cosmological views and compared the findings with what had been reported from Malinowski onwards. Using mixed methods research, we assessed contemporary ideas about rebirth and the afterlife and concluded that belief in reincarnation had "shifted significantly [.. .] or never was as widespread or constituted as reported." Francesca Mer-lan, Mark Mosko, and Michelle MacCarthy have engaged with the material presented in stimulating, contrasting , and provocative ways, thereby affording us a welcome opportunity to further elaborate on our results. In his extensive reply to our article, Mosko asserts that our findings do not supplant Malinowski's one-hundred-year-old description of the Trobriand socio-cultural system, nor Mosko's more recent model of Trobriand sociality based upon reincarnation and symmetrical exchanges between the living and the dead (Mosko 2017: 386; Jarillo et al. 2020). Mosko uses three lines of argument to rebuff our findings: (1) our project was flawed from the outset because we misread and misrepresented Malinowski's position on reincarnation ; (2) our methodology was ill-suited for our stated task and our results were further invalidated by the nature of our sample; and (3) our findings were tainted by the alleged involvement of our Trobriand co-authors in efforts to weaken the authority of the current Paramount Chief of Omarakana, of whom Mosko is the de facto anthropologist. In her comments to our piece, Mer-lan concludes that the negation of contemporary belief in reincarnation is probably correct, and credits Malinow-ski's intuition with foreseeing the full realization of its marginalization. MacCarthy concurs with our findings that baloma reside eternally in Tuma and reminds us of the dynamic characteristics of Trobriand culture, introducing a fascinating variation on reincarnation through the lens of born-again Pentecostal Christians. Mosko claims that our overly narrow reading of Ma-linowski overlooks his larger project, "an ethnographic analysis that would lead him to the construction of a model of the culture and social organization as a total system" (p. 402, emphasis in original). Similarly, Merlan advises that our article could be improved with an application of the nuanced, "unfolding" approaches to variations in beliefs advocated and practiced by Mali-nowski. Her comments, and for the most part Mosko's, are based on Malinowski's first essay Baloma, which was produced prior to his linguistic fluency, hereby ignoring crucial information from his diaries, notes, letters, and subsequent and more definitive works. In Merlan's conclusion , she cautions us that "we ought not attribute to

Reincarnation has been a fundamental tenet of anthropologists' representations of Trobriand cosmology since Bronislaw Mali-nowski published "Baloma; The spirits of the dead in the Trobriand Islands" in 1916. Yet, during recent ethnographic fieldwork, many Trobrianders repeatedly denied the possibility of rebirth. Faced with a potential major shift in this fundamental belief, we used a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods to assess current Trobriand cosmological views. Drawing on a combination of structured and semi-structured interviews and focus groups, we tested the current validity of prior cosmological representations as found in the literature. In this article, we first analyze the results of the questionnaires. Second, we examine some of the implications that current beliefs have for Trobriand kinship and cosmology. And third, in light of the observed near universal negation of reincarnation, we discuss whether Trobrianders' reported assumptions about the afterlife changed drastically in the last century or if Malinowski misrepresented them at the outset.