When a Fijian suitor’s family presents a whale tooth to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage, is this an advance payment for the services the woman will provide in cultivating her future husband’s gardens? Or is he purchasing the future fertility of her womb? Or is this a pure formality, the equivalent of the dollar that has to change hands in order to seal a contract? According to Rospabé, it’s none of these. The whale tooth, however valuable, is not a form of payment. It is really an acknowledgment that one is asking for something so uniquely valuable that payment of any sort would be
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