La valeur immatérielle des nattes fines de Samoa

Abstract

The article examines the social value of the fine mats of Samoa. These objects do not feature in exhibitions of Pacific art because they appear to exhibit no aesthetic refinement and seem to be reproduced identically each time. And that is true. But their "qualities" in the Maussian sense of the term reside in their immaterial value, namely the genealogy silently woven into the web of fibres from which they draw remarkable "strength" (in the Durkheimian sense): to allow the funeral of a deceased person far away, to compensate for a life lost following a murder, to encompass any initial gift by being the counter-gift par excellence and, finally, to be the visual manifestation of the powers of life, in the Hocartian sense, that each society must be able to manipulate to justify believing in its continuing existence.